How do we know what kind of phytoplankton are in the water? The Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) is a robot that scientists use to image phytoplankton in the water. One IFCB can take up to 30,000 pictures per hour! The IFCB can be used in the field to detect plankton blooms in real time. In this activity, students will practice
This content has been created with the intent for the teacher to develop it to best suit their classroom setting. In its most basic form, students are asked to analyze wet and dry berry data to determine how water content changes (or doesn’t) for several berry species over the course of one season.
This lesson has multiple stages or
Melissa Lau spent a month in the tundra ecosystem gathering data using a device called a Greenseeker. This device measures exactly how green a plant is by calculating its NDVI or Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. In this lesson, students will explore light waves, how they interact with plants, and find out how green is green.
As technology advances, the way in which geologists study the Earth also advances. Some of these new technologies also make it possible to bring aspects of the field into the classroom. This opens up opportunities for broader audiences to explore a wider range of geologic structures and localities. Structure from motion (SfM) is one of these technologies that is
This lesson is intended to introduce students to the concept of using ice core samples to learn about the past. Students will be “collecting” a sample from a model of ice. They will then evaluate the sample to see how the layers change as the depth changes.
Objectives
At the completion of this lesson, students will gain a greater
NASA’s Operation IceBridge uses remote sensing techniques to build a picture of parts of our world not accessible or easily observed by humans. Flying 1500 feet above sea and land ice, the science team uses LiDAR, Radar, Infrared imaging, and high resolution digital imagery to collect information about our polar regions year after year. In this classroom project, inspired and
In this webquest, students use maps to relate global temperature change to changes in the range of insects and birds and projected changes in tree range. The activity could be used to teach a lesson via class discussion and/or written response; it could be completed by students in cooperative groups on paper or with shared computers; on the other
One of the most important indicators of our warming climate is the extent and thickness of polar sea ice. Currently satellites measure the extent of polar sea ice but it takes more sophisticated equipment aboard a low-flying plane to actually measure the thickness of sea ice. This lesson will show students how this is done.
This lesson was written for the 2012 Arctic Ocean Ecosystem Workshop and was inspired by the research work conducted off the coast of Barrow, Alaska by researchers Steve Okonnen and Patricia Yager with PolarTREC teachers Lollie Garay and Chantelle Rose. Students will engage in a series of exercises to investigate seasonal change in the Arctic ecosystem based on authentic