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:

"Fixing carbon through biological methanation is a promising technology for generating renewable energy. It remains unclear, however, how microbial species interact to generate biogas. To find out, researchers explored the community dynamics of microbes found in biofilms from four biogas reactors. Metagenomics revealed 59 species of microbes with five accounting for more than 70% of total abundance in the four reactors under investigation. Experiments showed that Firmicutes spp. GSMM966 and GSMM974 and Limnochordia sp. GSMM975 played a central role in biofilm formation. And metabolic reconstruction indicated complex metabolisms for the two dominant species M. wolfeii GSMM957 and Limnochordia sp. GSMM975. Simulations of the core biofilm community showed that these same species exhibit the highest increases in growth rate with increasing uptake. And cross-feeding interactions, not easily measured in vivo, were visualized..."

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

This lesson explores factors that control the character and fate of carbon delivered by rivers from the continents to the oceans, using mapped characteristics and data from 12 different rivers, including the MARGINS Waipaoa and Fly systems.

In this video, adapted from KUAC-TV and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, viewers learn how one-celled organisms in permafrost may be contributing to greenhouse gas levels and global warming.

In this interactive, students learn all about soil and how to conserve it. Students are walked through a series of questions and scenarios to help them learn about the connection to the carbon cycle and climate change.

This is a jigsaw activity in which students are assigned to research one step out of five in the geochemical process stages of the organic carbon cycle. Students then teach their step in cross-step groups until everyone understands all five process stages.

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:

"Mangrove forests are home to many varieties of methanogens, microbes that digest surrounding carbon into methane under low-oxygen conditions. Despite their important role in the global carbon cycle and climate change, the metabolic potentials of two novel methanogens in mangroves remain poorly understood. A new study reports on the ecological importance of Methanofastidiosa (MF) and Methanomassiliicoccales (MMA), two recently discovered groups of methanogens found to dwell naturally in the Mangrove Nature Reserve in Shenzhen, China. Using metagenomics, researchers examined how MF and MMA produce methane. Results showed that the two groups of microbes both use hydrogen to produce methane from compounds found naturally in mangrove sediments, including methylsulfides, methanol, and methylamines. This marks the first time the two groups of methanogens have been studied in the wild and could help scientists understand how these microbes contribute to global methane emissions and a changing climate..."

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

For this unit plan, see the old unit calendar (link on left sidebar, click ALT7 tab at the bottom).  Once we update this unit to the new Doc template, we will post it here. This is now unit 7, but it used to be unit 4 (we will update file and folder numbering as we continue to revise the units). Thanks for your patience as we work hard this year to update all of the materials to the new unit template and unit/standards arrangements.

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

Students explore the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 40 years with an interactive online model. They use the model and observations to estimate present emission rates and emission growth rates. The model is then used to estimate future levels of carbon dioxide using different future emission scenarios. These different scenarios are then linked by students to climate model predictions also used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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:

"Across all three domains of life, organisms have adapted to earth’s natural light-dark cycle, setting their genetic, metabolic, and behavioral clocks to it. That includes the single-celled cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, one of the most dominant phytoplankton in the oceans. Recent lab experiments revealed that cyanophages, viruses that infect Prochlorococcus, also show light-dark rhythms and express different genes according to their stage of infection: early, middle, or late. But whether that phenomenon occurs in the open ocean remained unclear. To find out, researchers analyzed genetic material from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. They set out to test whether cyanophages express infection genes in unsynchronized or synchronized patterns. In unsynchronized expression, early, middle, and late infection genes are transcribed at any time. While in synchronized expression, gene transcription evolves with the time of day. Early genes, for example, are expressed at sunrise and late genes close to sunset..."

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

This activity introduces students to visualization capabilities available through NASA's Earth Observatory, global map collection, NASA NEO and ImageJ. Using these tools, students build several animations of satellite data that illustrate carbon pathways through the Earth system.

This is a short NASA video on the water cycle. The video shows the importance of the water cycle to nearly every natural process on Earth and illustrates how tightly coupled the water cycle is to climate.

This static image from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Carbon Program offers a visually compelling and scientifically sound image of the sea water carbonate chemistry process that leads to ocean acidification and impedes calcification.

Students explore the carbon cycle and the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. Students create and compare graphs of carbon dioxide and temperature data from one local (Mauna Loa, Hawaii) meteorological station and one NASA global data set. These graphs, as well as a global vegetation map and an atmospheric wind circulation patterns diagram, are used as evidence to support the scientific claims they develop through their analysis and interpretation.

This high-resolution narrated video shows levels and movements of CO2 globally through the course of a year.

Overview of how carbon is recycled through our biosphere in the carbon cycle.

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:

"Although lakes cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, they are an essential component in the planet’s carbon cycle. But there are striking regional differences in the degree of carbon cycling that occurs in lakes, and the underlying causes aren’t well known. To improve understanding of these differences, an international research team has proposed a geographic framework to connect carbon processing at the ecosystem level with regional drivers such as climate, land cover, and human activity. Based on this framework, they’ve described two mechanisms that explain geographic differences in carbon cycling, providing new insight into the role of inland waters in the broader global carbon cycle. The first mechanism proposes that regional differences in lake carbon cycling are linked to whether water color exceeds a threshold level. Where these levels fall in relation to this threshold affects ecosystem patterns, such as lake metabolic status..."

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