This page from the National Hurricane Center hosts a variety of still graphics that can be looped into animations of the storm's progress. Images include 3- and 5-day Watches and Warnings, Wind Swaths and Strike Probabilities.

The purpose of this exercise is to integrate modeling with field data. The activity includes links to a "virtual field trip" of maps and photographs. Data from a creek is included in the field trip and students use an Excel spreadsheet model to analyze the data.

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Students begin this investigation by watching several short videos and reading a NOAA article to learn about some some of the ways that declining fish populations have come to be, what fishing management and sustainable catches mean, and how the U.S. established fisheries to monitor fishing. In Part B, students examine graphs and read data maps to explore how the increase in the global number of fishing vessels and the ability for fishing to take place over more of the global ocean by more people than ever before led to a decline in the numbers of fish available. The investigation concludes with students reading the data from the UN's FAO to learn about how fish are used after they're caught - both for food and non-food uses.

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Students build a physical model to explore watershed features, then use Google Earth software to tie the model to a real place. By exploring several layers of map-based images and data, students develop an appreciation of the complexity of a watershed and river system in the context of a both a local and national scale.

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In this Lab students focus their attention on an area significantly larger than their study site as they apply their developing knowledge of local Earth system interactions to the regional scale. Although the scale changes, the questions remain the same. How does organism or process or event "A" influence, or become changed by organism or process or event "B"? Specifically, in what ways is my local region interconnected with adjoining regions? What types of matter and energy cross the regional boundaries to help define and shape the neighboring regions?
Although students will investigate the region in which they live, the concept of a "study site" changes: instead of focusing their attention on an actual plot of land, students will investigate their region by combining their personal knowledge of the region with information they can learn from Google Earth.

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In the first part of this lab, students learn about land ice and the processes and timescales involved in glaciation. In Part B, they use an online interactive to explore how glaciers provide scientists with evidence for climate change. Finally, students use image processing software to measure how much area a real glacier has lost over time due to rising temperatures.

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Students begin this investigation by reading about the basic premises of Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) and how it can be applied to fisheries management — Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM). In Part B of the investigation, students learn about Integrated Ecosystem Assessments and how they are used as a tool for ecosystem-based fisheries management.

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In Part A:Students are introduced to the global circulation patterns of the atmosphere and the oceans, and investigate how those circulation patterns might influence their local region.
In Part B: Students study surface ocean currents and then predict the pathway of a floating object dropped into the ocean at a particular point, maybe one closest to their own region. Then, using a computer model of ocean currents, they test their predictions.

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Students select a storm from the HURDAT database and create its track in the tool, Google Earth. The visualization they produce details the location and intensity of their storm through time. Afterwards, students access an online mapping tool to examine the locations and life cycles of hundreds of Atlantic storms.

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In this activity students develop a practical understanding of the causes and symptoms of drought. They read background articles and prepare a physical model to illustrate the role that soil moisture plays in preventing or promoting drought. Students use Google Earth to examine precipitation and streamflow data and use them to predict locations that are experiencing drought. They check their predictions by comparing them to a drought monitor map. In the final section, students examine and interpret the current map of the Palmer Drought Severity Index.

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In Lab 5, students learned about some of the global circulation processes that transport both matter and energy around the planet. In Lab 6A they get a much more specific picture of the Earth system at the global scale as they investigate data collected by NASA satellites. The data is displayed in image form in the NEO (NASA Earth Observations) data visualization tool. How do the four interconnected spheres show up at the global scale in these data representations? Is it possible, from studying this data, to infer some of the same interconnections at the global scale that were identified at the local study site? What can students infer from studying changes across the seasons?
In Lab 6B students play a game that focuses their attention on the global water cycle, but at the particle scale: what might happen to this molecule of water that falls onto the ground, or into a stream? Next they step back to the macroscopic scale as they diagram the ways in which water moves through the four interconnected spheres of the Earth system.

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In the previous lab, students explored the characteristics of the ocean environment in which coral reefs thrive. Unfortunately,there are a number of factors, both natural and anthropogenic (resulting from human activities), that can alter the ocean environment and threaten the health of coral reef ecosystems. In this activity, students will examine the three main factors that disrupt corals.

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Students have been examining Earth as a system of interacting parts, initially from the local perspective but more recently from the regional and global perspectives. In order to fully understand the Earth as a system and how its components interact with each other, students need to consider change over time. On relatively short times scales, these changes are related to the fact that the solar energy that drives the Earth system passes through an atmosphere that varies across space and time before reaching a spinning sphere. Across longer seasonal and annual time scales, these changes are more specifically related to the differential heating that results from the tilt of Earth's axis and Earth's orbit around the sun. At this longer-term global scale, it may be easier to see the repeating patterns of change across space and time and to infer how changes in one sphere may be linked to changes in others.

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Aquaculture is the most rapidly growing food-production industry in the world. In Part A of this investigation, students examine and analyze U.S. and global aquaculture data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Fisheries and Aquaculture database. In Part B, students examine global trends in aquaculture production and learn about aquaculture methods and their associated environmental impacts. In Part C, students use Google Earth to analyze before and after satellite images of the Pacific coast of Honduras to illustrate how aquaculture is altering coastlines.

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Students have been examining Earth as a system of interacting parts, initially from the local perspective but more recently from the regional and global perspectives. In order to fully understand the Earth as a system and how its components interact with each other, students need to consider change over time. On relatively short times scales, these changes are related to the fact that the solar energy that drives the Earth system passes through an atmosphere that varies across space and time before reaching a spinning sphere. Across longer seasonal and annual time scales, these changes are more specifically related to the differential heating that results from the tilt of Earth's axis and Earth's orbit around the sun. At this longer-term global scale, it may be easier to see the repeating patterns of change across space and time and to infer how changes in one sphere may be linked to changes in others.

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Students explore issues related to the rapid intensification of hurricanes. They become familiar with the concepts of heat energy and the specific heat of water and interact with animations of sea surface temperature images to identify the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current. Students use NOAA View and Google Earth, free data-image tools, to explore visualizations of heat content in the Gulf of Mexico just before Hurricane Katrina. The examine a plotted path of Katrina as an overlay on these visualizations and observe changes in the heat content of Gulf waters as the hurricane passed over it.

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Students search for images and video that illustrate the dangers that hurricanes pose to property and life. They consult Morbidity and Mortality Reports to find the common causes of death attributed to hurricanes and to discover the challenges to counting deaths attributed to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Students explore hazards from storm surge, high winds, and inland floding and outline a plan that would prepare them to survive a hurricane.

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Students use the modeling program STELLA to see what combinations of runoff and evaporation might have lead to Pleistocene lake level oscillations in California's Owens River system.

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Students create a STELLA model of two marine terrace platforms separated in elevation by a cliff, using the hillslope flux equation to simulate the change in the cliff face over time as diffusive processes tear it down.

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This site offers information about wind tunnels. Learn how to build a wind tunnel, read about wind tunnel history, download flow-simulation software, view experiments for grades 8-12, and link to other wind tunnel websites