This video is accompanied by supporting materials including background essay and discussion questions. The focus is on changes happening to permafrost in the Arctic landscape, with Alaska Native peoples and Western scientists discussing both the causes of thawing and its impact on the ecosystem. The video shows the consequences of erosion, including mudslides and inland lakes being drained of water. An Inuit expresses his uncertainty about the ultimate effect this will have on his community and culture.

This video, from Yale Climate Connections, explores the 2014 melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet that captured headlines. Interviews, animations, and news broadcasts explore what the melting meant for both the future of some of the Antarctic glaciers and sea level rise, and informs the viewer how seafloor terrain influences the speed of ice sheet melt.

In this activity from NOAA's Okeanos Explorer Education Materials Collection, learners investigate how methane hydrates might have been involved with the Cambrian explosion.

List of countries with their annual methane emissions. The data are from 2005. The data are given in total annual emissions, thus must be compared with economic activity, geographic and most importantly, population data to be relevant.

This on-line open source BIOL& 260 (Microbiology) is a health sciences oriented course in microbiology. It has a laboratory component and the labs are intended to be integrated throughout the course. BIOL& 260 is intended primarily for students going in to health-related professions and will emphasize the human disease and health related areas of microbiology. Areas of microbiology such as environmental, agricultural, taxonomy or astrobiology may be mentioned but not emphasized.

There are more microbes permanently living in our gut than there are cells in the human body. This rich community of bacteria, fungi and viruses, called the microbiome, plays a central role in human health and disease. Recent research has linked this passenger community to nutrition, circadian rhythms, infectious disease, inflammatory disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and even immune system and nervous system development. How can we analyze such a complex system? Can we exploit the microbiome to improve human health? Can interactions with microbes be harnessed for drug delivery?
In this course, we will learn to critically assess the primary scientific literature to find answers to these questions and learn to distinguish between correlation and causality. We will learn how mechanistic insights and emerging tools, such as synthetic biology and microfluidics, together are transforming microbiome research, and might lead to new types of therapeutics and drug delivery for improving human health.
This course is one of many Advanced Undergraduate Seminars offered by the Biology Department at MIT. These seminars are tailored for students with an interest in using primary research literature to discuss and learn about current biological research in a highly interactive setting. Many instructors of the Advanced Undergraduate Seminars are postdoctoral scientists with a strong interest in teaching.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Microbiome research has consistently been placed in the spotlight over the past two decades, and has shown tremendous promise in the fields of medicine, environmental science, food production, and agriculture. Life on Earth does not exist without microbes, and we may benefit from learning more about them. Yet, there is no common understanding amongst researchers of what a 'microbiome’ actually is. Researchers are now proposing a common definition of ‘microbiome’ to ensure better, more robust research across different disciplines. The authors build on the historical definition offered by Whipps and colleagues in 1988 using new research insights. Additionally, they highlight the importance of microbiomes as drivers for the health of many eukaryotic hosts, including humans and plants. The proposed amendments to the definition specify the elements of microbiome composition and their interactions..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

A year long field study of a deciduous tree and its interdependence through phenology.

What do Prairie Chickens Need in Order to Survive Today's Prairie?

This middle school unit covering ecosystems, animal behavior and symbiosis was developed through the Storyline approach. Middle school students will be figuring out why prairie chickens have a very unique dance and understand the role cows play to help ensure the dance takes place. Using this approach, students engage in science concepts to help ensure the survival of the prairie chicken.

The Middle colonies consisted of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware. Located in the middle of the Atlantic seaboard, their economies combined the industry of the North with the agriculture of the South. They were unusual, however, for their degree of religious toleration and their wide range of ethnic diversity.

This recourse contains a chart and asks students to compare the Cherokee tribes that stayed in the Appalachians to the tribes that migrated across the US to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears as well as to the Great Plains tribes who were already in the region. The comparison chart contains a section for culture, agriculture, local governance, and treaties with the US government. 

In which Hank and John Green teach you about humanity conquering the Earth. Or at least moving from Africa into the rest of the Earth. As human beings spread out across the world and populations grew, humanity reached a critical mass of innovators, and collective learning took off! All these innovations were great for lots of human endeavors, but none fared better than agriculture.

Looking for a project for middle school-age students? This project-based learning experience will allow students to solve the problem of excess beeswax, a byproduct of honey bees, by developing a useful beeswax product and marketing their product to be sold in a local boutique or farmers market. This is a great way to drum up business and interest with students and the community in preparation for starting your own Bee Club! This lesson has step-by-step instructions and how-to documents to help the educator facilitate the process.  

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module. Students use Excel Solver to find the linear combination of servings of two specified foods that minimize cost while meeting nutritional requirements.

Students simulate operating an iron mine, from choosing property to writing an environmental impact statement to setting up the mining operation. Chocolate chip cookies (with the chocolate chips representing iron ore) are used for this experiment. Students are challenged to operate the most profitable and environmentally sound mine they can.

The activity is a field trip to Minnehaha Falls where students will observe and record their findings in a science notebook.

In this video segment adapted from Hope in a Changing Climate, learn how an environmentally devastated ecosystem has been restored, benefiting both the local economy and global efforts to fight climate change.

Students gain experience using a spreadsheet and working with others to decide how to conduct their model 'experiments' with the NASA GEEBITT (Global Equilibrium Energy Balance Interactive Tinker Toy). This activity helps students become more familiar with the physical processes that made Earth's early climate so different from that of today. Students also acquire first-hand experience with a limitation in modeling, specifically, parameterization of critical processes.

In this activity, learners use the STELLA box modeling software to determine Earth's temperature based on incoming solar radiation and outgoing terrestrial radiation. Starting with a simple black body model, the exercise gradually adds complexity by incorporating albedo, then a 1-layer atmosphere, then a 2-layer atmosphere, and finally a complex atmosphere with latent and sensible heat fluxes. With each step, students compare the modeled surface temperature to Earth's actual surface temperature, thereby providing a check on how well each increasingly complex model captures the physics of the actual system.

This article describes a number of creative projects that incorporate art and literacy skills into a science unit on biomes and ecosystems.