The current practice of burning fossil fuels to provide energy adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere more rapidly than it is removed. The result, most climate experts agree, is an intensification of the greenhouse effect and an increase in global temperatures. This graph of monthly carbon dioxide concentrations at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, shows an increase of nearly 20 percent from 1958 ... Full description.

Made available by Thirteen Ed Online Master Teachers, these lesson plans use internet as well as classroom resources. Some plans are designed for a single class period while others are for an entire unit. These plans give an overview with objectives for learning, procedures for teachers to put together the lessons, and student organizers to hand out during class. Topics covered include experiment ... Full description.

That portion of the earth's surface known as "the Big Bend" has often been described as a "geologist's paradise". In part this is due to the sparse vegetation of the region, which allows the various strata to be easily observed and studied. In addition to a geologic history of the region, this site includes photographs, maps, recent earthquakes, volcanoes, petrology and paleontology relating to the ... Full description.

The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The specific focus of this Earth Observatory website is natural hazards. Earth scientists around the world use NASA satellite imagery to better understand the causes and effects of natural hazards. ... Full description.

This college course offers a basic introduction to the sciences of hydrology and geomorphology, which are two branches of Geography dealing with earth surface processes. This page contains two labs, a summary of each unit covered, a syllabus for the course, and example questions. Topics covered include plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes, weathering, soils, mass wasting, fluvial processes, ... Full description.

This lesson is designed to help students understand how the sun supplies almost all the energy we use, black body radiation, the balance between incoming solar energy and outgoing heat, and the greenhouse effect and gases that contribute to it. Students will discover that convection of heat in the atmosphere is the cause of weather phenomena and that water vapor also carries solar heat and plays an ... Full description.

This site is the homepage of Alan L. Jones, of the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Jones is interested in most earthquake-related topics, computer graphics, and computers in education. He has created various computer-based visualizations: Seismic/Eruption, Seismic Waves, AmaSeis, and Eqlocate. Seismic/Eruption is a program used to visualize seismicity and volcanic activity in space ... Full description.

This web site describes a series of Lahars that occurred from the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in the Andes mountains, the northernmost and highest volcano in Colombia. Beginning in November 1984, the volcano began showing clear signs of unrest. An explosive eruption from Ruiz's summit crater on November 13, 1985, at 9:08 p.m. generated an eruption column and sent a series of pyroclastic flows and surges ... Full description.

This Classroom Connectors lesson plan teaches students how clouds are formed through the condensation of water vapor. This includes learning about climate types and how they change, the greenhouse effect, how clouds affect weather and climate, and condensation. The site provides goals, objectives, an outline, time required, materials, activities, and closure ideas for the lesson. The Classroom Connectors ... Full description.

Ocean basins are filled with loose sediments, which are the products of erosion. This sediment originates inland and is fed into oceans by rivers. Debris from cliffs and other coastal landforms provides additional sediment volume, as do skeletons, shells, teeth of marine organisms, ash from volcanoes, and even asteroids. This interactive feature shows how these different parent materials influence ... Full description.