In March, 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules for mercury that power plants release into the air when they burn coal to make electricity. The plan, called the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), is designed to limit the tonnage of mercury that is released per year. This lesson on mercury contamination begins with a video about CAIR, and has students read a short article about ... Full description.

Students learn about the formation of craters and their structure, exploring the effects of mass, velocity and size on the resulting crater. The parts of a crater are also identified. Full description.

This site provides a collection of audio, visual, and informational resources about soil erosion. Animations and MPG movies cover topics including the migration of African dust across the Atlantic, bank erosion, rain splash erosion, dune sand saltation, and the physical and cultural effects of erosion in Haiti. The site also features audio and visual files about the Dust Bowl during the 1930's as ... Full description.

In this exercise from SERC's Starting Point, students get experience with image classification. Images are an increasingly important source of information about land cover and land use over time because comparisons of historic and current images can provide an estimate of change in the landscape. Full description.

These lecture notes provide an introduction to igneous rocks. The notes cover information about characteristics of magmas, plutonic rocks, volcanic rocks, and textures of igneous rocks. There are several illustrations within the text. This resource is part of the Teaching Petrology collection. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/petrology03/index.html Full description.

These lecture notes present a discussion of mineralogical classification of granitic rocks, definitions of hypersolvus and subsolvus granites, tectonic and chemical classification, and depth of emplacement of granites. Other topics include pegmatites, continental rhyolites, origin of large volumes of silicic magma, continental flood basalts, continental rift valleys, evolution of rock suites, and ... Full description.

This undergraduate level course examines the causes, effects, and options available to mitigate natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, subsidence, flooding, severe weather, and meteorite impacts. A brief course description links to course lecture notes, homework exercises, and a list of other natural disaster information sites on the World Wide Web. Full description.

World Ocean Radio is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays on a wide range of ocean issues hosted by W2O's own Peter Neill. Available for RSS feed (bottom of page), podcast, and syndicated use at no cost by community radio stations worldwide. Full description.

ScienceDaily is an online magazine devoted to science, technology, and medicine. This is the home page for the Earth and Climate News section of ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily is unique in that the magazine's articles are selected from news releases submitted by leading universities and other research organizations around the world. Each news release is posted in its original form, with a contact name ... Full description.

This resource provides a collection of links to photos and information about volcanoes. Links are divided into the following categories: volcano classifications, types of eruptions, volcanic deposits, scales of impact, and volcanic hazards. Full description.