This activity is a classroom quick lab where students explore sand, soil, and water in relation to absorption and permeability.

This activity is a guided inquiry investigation where students gather data on which soil is the best for growing plants. Student will interpret their data, and develop a conclusion from the data. The student will determine which type of soil they would like to use in the next activity of making their own terrariums. The data collected could lead to further questions, which can be investigated in some extension activities.

This guided inquiry is a laboratory investigation on soil textures where students gather and analyze data, compare findings and develop new experimental questions.

This activity is a set of student-centered exercises that enable students to learn about the individual stories of Goldman environmental prize winners, the activism and organizing that grounds their work, and the underlying political and social contexts from which their struggles emerge. The lesson inspires critical reflection about justice, power, and democracy in green politics, and encourages ways to make personal connections to activism and environmental work.

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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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America's most famous drought resulted in an environmental disaster called the Dust Bowl. From 1931 to 1939, a five-state region of the Great Plains received little rain and experienced horrendous dust storms that stripped the land of its topsoil. The event went on to shape the demographics of the American West as thousands of people migrated out of the plains and on to western states.
In this activity, students will watch a PBS video and/or interact with the video's companion website. They will also examine maps and animations that show the distribution of drought patterns over the past 300 years; these maps were reconstructed from environmental records. Finally, students will examine the amount of time different areas spend in drought.

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The first lab for an online introductory soils course for non-majors, this lab introduces students to landscapes and spatial patterns using Google Earth. In addition to learning to navigate in the imagery software, students re-learn or learn simple landscape parameter calculations like slope and area.

soils, landscape, aerial imagery, online

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This lesson centers on a deeper exploration of the water footprint associated with food. Students learned in Lesson 1 that virtual water, especially as it relates to food, typically makes up the majority of their water footprint. In this lesson, they find out why. First, they see an attention-grabbing demonstration of how much water is needed for three food products. Second, they break into groups to do research, and then they teach their classmates about key aspects of water use related to food and agriculture. Next, they think about how their diet is influenced by social groups, advertising, and structures in place at home and at school that encourage them to potentially eat food with large water footprints. Finally, they brainstorm ways they might be able to influence change in those areas. The lesson concludes with students sharing their ideas and providing one another with constructive feedback.

This is the second of the three-part Lessons for Understanding Our Water Footprint: High School Lesson Plans.

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This lesson centers on a deeper exploration of the water footprint associated with food. Students learned in Lesson 1 that virtual water, especially as it relates to food, typically makes up the majority of their water footprint. In this lesson, they find out why. First, they see an attention-grabbing demonstration of how much water is needed for three food products. Second, they break into groups to do research, and then they teach their classmates about key aspects of water use related to food and agriculture. Next, they think about how their diet is influenced by social groups, advertising, and structures in place at home and at school that encourage them to potentially eat food with large water footprints. Finally, they brainstorm ways they might be able to influence change in those areas. The lesson concludes with students sharing their ideas and providing one another with constructive feedback.

This is the second of the three-part Lessons for Understanding Our Water Footprint: Middle School Lesson Plans.

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Freshmen enrolled in the Spaceship Earth Living Learning Community conduct research on a real project that is formulated and conducted during a 2-semester academic year.

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Students will choose a physical place to study, a site that is close enough to visit at least four times during the quarter/semester. Using writing prompts, text-based research, and close observations in the "field" (the chosen place), students will create a "mashup" of spatially referenced pop-up balloons. These will include researched and narrative prose, citations and links, and some visual images, embedded into a map via Google Earth technology. Through this unique presentation, the research and writing can encourage viewers to better understand the place they have chosen to study.

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This activity uses a mix of multimedia resources and hands-on activities to support a storyline of investigation into melting sea and land ice.

Module 12 is comprised of Stage 5 of the semester-long capstone project. In Stage 5, students compile, organize, summarize and synthesize the data and information they've collected through the semester about their assigned food region into a final website or presentation. As outlined in the diagram below, the final website (or presentation) should summarize the physical and human environment of the food region and assess the current status of the regional food system. Students must then discuss future scenarios for their region for temperature and human population growth. Based on their research on the regional food systems, students will assess the resilience and vulnerabilities of the exiting systems to the future scenarios. Finally, students will propose strategies to increase the sustainability and resilience of the regional food systems.

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Each spring, students in a 300-level field course collect samples from urban community gardens to monitor soil lead concentrations.

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Many terrestrial sedimentary processes are not difficult to observe, describe, and interpret. Yet many of these dynamic processes are not limited to the Earth. One example is the formation of mudcracks that provide critical evidence of the presence of liquid water saturating a fine-grained sediment and then evaporating. The documentation and analysis of this process can provide insight into geologic and environmental conditions on other planets (Mars?). Images and video snips are used to engage students who must attend to careful observation, description, and interpretation (qualitative and quantitative) from laboratory and field examples.

In this activity students read articles or excerpts of books to explore the topic of sustainability in terms of food webs, roles of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria and their own food choices. Students continue their exploration of these kingdoms with a visit to a farmers' market and a grocery store to compare locally grown foods and grocery store selections.

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This activity is an introduction to setting up a composting worm bin in the classroom. It is part of a yearlong study on the interaction and influences that living system have on each other.

Students will understand how ethics and psycho-emotional factors influence our relationship to and our use of the natural world. Students will read, mark, and summarize text and will use writing as a tool to explore the connections between ethics, psychology, and sustainability.

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Lab: Particle Size Analysis, Soil Texture, and Hydraulic Conductivity

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