Picture of urban flooding

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Unit 8 covers the basics of hydroclimatic extreme events with a focus on floods and droughts. Topics include introduction to floods and droughts, impact of urbanization on extremes, how to understand and predict extremes, how to tackle them (management strategies), and elements of urban climate resilience. The teaching strategy is designed with short and divided lectures filled with discussion questions and a group activity. Students will be working with time series flow data for statistical analysis of extreme events.

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Suggestions are made on how to use the resources featured in the issue of Beyond Weather and the Water Cyle in a unit on the greenhouse effect. Hands-on experiences and nonfiction text are provided to help students answer the question "How is Earth like a greenhouse?" Suggestions are also made for formative and summative assessments.

Unit plans at two levels, K-grade 2 and grades 3-5 develop understanding of the issue theme, We Depend on Earth's Climate, by focusing on adaptations and environments of local plant species and polar mammals. The units are modeled after a learning cycle framework built around five key steps: Engage, Explore, Explain, Expand, and Assess. The lessons are aligned with national standards for science education and English language arts.

Unit plans for Grades K-2 and 3-5 are a regular feature of the magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The plans draw on articles and resources in a themed issue and are aligned with national science and language arts standards. This unit is designed to provide elementary students with the opportunity to investigate how the annual rings in trees help scientists learn about past climates. It uses hands-on experiences and nonfiction text to answer the unit question: How do trees help scientists learn about the past?

Four unit plans provide opportunities for in-depth explorations of important foundational climate concepts -- weather, water as a solid, liquid and gas, and the water cycle -- that are appropriate for K-2 and 3-5 learners. These unit plans incorporate many of the lessons highlighted in other articles in this issue of the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The magazine is structured around the essential principles of the climate sciences.

In this article, teachers find two unit plans (grades K-2 and 3-5) that use resources featured in the science and literacy articles in the magazine. The unit plans are modeled after the five key steps in the learning cycle: engage, explore, explain, expand, and assess, or evaluate. The plans are aligned with the science content standards of the National Science Education Standards and the English language arts standards of the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. The plans appear in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

Environmental geology is applied geology and being applied requires an understanding of all of the pieces of the puzzle. This activity is a culmination of many ideas learned in environmental geology: discussing the issue of population growth as well as a driving force, plate tectonics, behind a changing climate and many hazards, and then the hazards themselves, discussing anthropogenic climate change and the implications globally. An understanding of each of these and their interconnectedness provides a great context for decision-making and earth science literacy. This activity attempts to take all of the knowledge mentioned here and make judgements and decisions based on a real-world scenario

This article describes how polar scientists collect ice cores from ice sheets and glaciers and how they use these cores to learn about Earth's past climate.

In this video segment adapted from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Inuit observers describe how their traditional understanding of weather patterns is being challenged by unpredictable weather behaviors.

In this activity, students examine a pair of satellite images of the ocean and determine whether there is a relationship between the height of ocean waves and the sea level. Data from the two images are plotted side by side and students discuss the reasons for their findings. The resource includes the images and a student worksheet. Summary background information, data and images supporting the activity are available on the Earth Update data site. To complete the activity, students will need to access the Space Update multimedia collection, which is available for download and purchase for use in the classroom.

After completing this activity students should be able to:

- demonstrate sediment core collection through a field exercise (whether or not you use that core's data).
- recognize potential errors and contamination risks and identify ways to minimize them.
- distinguish different layers within the cores and use appropriate terminology to describe them.
- identify cyclical variations in the core layers, and correlate those with remotely sensed lake temperature data over a regional spatial scale.
- estimate lake evaporation rates from lake temperatures.
- reconstruct regional lake evaporation based on core layers.
- evaluate the effectiveness of point observations to represent regional paleoclimate

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Two simple experiments/demonstrations show the role of plants in mitigating the acidification caused when CO2 is dissolved in water.

“Designing a dream city is easy. Rebuilding a living one takes imagination.”    -Jane Jacobs
This course examines the challenges that cities will face and strategies they can use to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Particular attention will be paid to the presence of global disparities, the needs of vulnerable populations and resource constrained locales, and the ways in which local government and community-based activities can achieve equitable levels of climate-readiness.

"Designing a dream city is easy. Rebuilding a living one takes imagination.â€ " " " -Jane Jacobs This course examines the challenges that cities will face and strategies they can use to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Particular attention will be paid to the presence of global disparities, the needs of vulnerable populations and resource constrained locales, and the ways in which local government and community-based activities can achieve equitable levels of climate-readiness.

This resource seeks to equalize access to learning materials that address the subject of human impact on the environment.  The design of this resource is structured in a manner that will allow it to be adapted and further destributed.  This particular module examines urban gardening, specifically identifying the conditions and vegetation associated with urban gardens in the Southern part of the United States. Specific topics include: Urban Gardening, Identifying Vegetation, Planting, Soil, Sun Exposure, Watering, and Optimal Season Planting.

Students will collect their own data on urban heat in order to understand how different city design choices change temperatures.

Urban areas are getting hotter, a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Our multimedia animation offers an engaging way to explore what UHI is, why it occurs, and what can be done to mitigate its impact.

In this video segment from Louisville Life, high school students in Louisville, Kentucky describe the benefits of creating rain gardens as a solution to non-point source water pollution.

This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and engineering of transportation systems in urban areas, with a special focus on the Boston area. It covers the role of the federal, state, and local government and the MPO, public transit in the era of the automobile, analysis of current trends and pattern breaks; analytical tools for transportation planning, traffic engineering, and policy analysis; the contribution of transportation to air pollution, social costs, and climate change; land use and transportation interactions, and more. Transportation sustainability is a central theme throughout the course, as well as consideration of if and how it is possible to resolve the tension between the three E’s (environment, economy, and equity). The goal of this course is to elicit discussion, stimulate independent thinking, and encourage students to understand and challenge the "conventional wisdomâ€ of transportation planning.

This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and engineering of transportation systems in urban areas, with a special focus on the Boston area. It covers the role of the federal, state, and local government and the MPO, public transit in the era of the automobile, analysis of current trends and pattern breaks; analytical tools for transportation planning, traffic engineering, and policy analysis; the contribution of transportation to air pollution, social costs, and climate change; land use and transportation interactions, and more. Transportation sustainability is a central theme throughout the course, as well as consideration of if and how it is possible to resolve the tension between the three E’s (environment, economy, and equity). The goal of this course is to elicit discussion, stimulate independent thinking, and encourage students to understand and challenge the “conventional wisdom” of transportation planning.