Students make predictions about marine ecosystems based on combined impacts of anthropogenic and natural disturbances. They evaluate others' predictions and create concepts maps to identify cause and effect relationships.

In this computer-based activity, students download, graph, and analyze authentic satellite temperature data for coral reef sites around the world. The activity includes a mapping component so the students work individually on one particular coral reef location and then the findings for the whole class are summarized on a set of world maps. After observing global trends in the data, students evaluate the threat to coral reefs from heat stress, which has been occurring with increased intensity and frequency in recent years.

Students use coral reef ecosystem case studies to explore the ecological principles of shifting baselines, natural and anthropogenic disturbance, succession, and sustainability.

In this lesson, students read about restoration projects and evaluate the Santa Catalina Island restoration project. Students will gain knowledge about the restoration work scientists are doing to restore the natural resources that were harmed by DDT discharge.

Students will explore organic farming, conventional farming, and biotechnology farming methods through a close read approach. Then they will dive deeper into the different production methods by creating a video that discusses the merits and faults of each production method. Lastly, they will write an opinion piece for an agriculture journal that explains their stance as to the best farming practices.

Students will investigate how nutrient enrichment in aquatic habitats can result in hypoxic or anoxic conditions and design an experiment to test their hypothesis.

Explore water pollution and its impact on ocean life in aquatic dead zones.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

In this activity, students explore a map of the global "human footprint," created when researchers overlaid the locations of more than 400 hypoxic systems linked to eutrophication. Students will analyze the map and then answer a series of questions to better understand the connection between dead zones and areas that are heavily impacted by humans.

In this video, John Fitzpatrick, Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, gives his perspective on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill one year later.

Students will collect data through a simulation game on deforestation and be able to describe how humans have impacted a simulated forest. Students will also learn about subsistence farming and its role in rain forest (primary) forest deforestation.

In this lesson, students will infer how human activities may impact the environment and consider an example of human impact by studying a research project where drones are used to make observations about the ocean and life forms living in the ocean.

In this lesson, students explore some of the issues affecting Yellowstone National Park. They will work in small groups to consider management issues that meet both of the conflicting mandates that the National Park Service must follow. After the investigation, students will be able to answer the question: How does the National Park Service attempt to balance the dueling mandates of preservation and use in complex dilemmas?

This lesson is about the flow of energy in ecosystems. The setting is Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, where students will learn about the first Thanksgiving meal in America, celebrated in 1621 by early American settlers and Wampanoag Indians. By examining this meal and comparing it to a modern day Thanksgiving celebration, students will be able to explore the way in which food energy moves and is transformed in an ecosystem.

In this field investigation, students will develop a question regarding an environmental change and its effect on insect visitation rates to a plant community. After writing a question, students will develop multiple hypotheses and design an investigation to test their hypothesis. After their investigations, a presentation will be given to their classmates discussing their results.

This blog is designed for North Carolina's K-12 teachers and students who are interested in the topic of energy and alternative energy (nuclear and renewables). This blog is maintained by Dana Haine, K-12 Science Education Manager for UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute for the Environment, with funding provided by Progress Energy.

In this lesson, students explore the connections that can exist in a natural environment, and examine how changes to the environment, particularly those caused by human activity, can affect those connections.

This series of lessons focuses on the impacts - both positive and negative - that humans have on the oceans. In Lesson Plan 25, "Seals, Corals and Dollars...," students will study the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ecosystem and research the environmental issues surrounding monk seals and precious corals of the region and the management of these species. In Lesson Plan 26, "Polar Bear Panic!" students will graphically analyze data on sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean and discuss possible causes and effects of the trends in the data.

Students analyze a map to identify and describe the relationship between habitat loss, land cover, and indigenous territories. After analyzing the effects of human activity on the current map, students make a prediction about how railroad development may impact the rain forest ecosystem and distribution of indigenous populations.

Students explore the effects of human development on the Amazon rain forest in order to access valuable resources by analyzing the map Amazonia: The Human Impact. After analyzing effects due to mining and the construction of hydroelectric dams and oil and gas blocks, students write a proposal to protect an area that is at risk of being developed in the future.

This lesson is the first of a two-part series focused on how scientists perform their work. These lessons make use of a book called The Frog Scientist, by Pamela S. Turner. Students will read the book and view and analyze supplemental resource materials to better understand how scientists are using the scientific method to study human environmental impact.