This writing assignment uses the "Sustainable Development Triangle" as a framework to critically evaluate an environmental issue of the student's choice. This learning activity provides an opportunity for an introductory chemistry student to use the sustainability's "Triple Bottom Line" as a tool to use material learned in the classroom to look at how environmental science helps inform economic and social/cultural factors in the development of sustainable solutions to our environmental challenges.

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Students are assigned to observe and research a local place of their choosing and to develop a unique analytical argument about the social and/or ecological sustainability of this space. The final project is a pamphlet directed to a public audience accompanied by a proposal for its production and distribution.

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Students generate hypothesis regarding the causes and consequences of obesity. Based on these putative causes and consequences they propose sustainable solutions (e.g. walkable neighborhoods, community gardens, etc.) that would be appropriate for and effective in their bioregion.

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Perhaps best known for its role as the antagonist in the film Jaws, the Great White shark is probably the world‰ŰŞs most feared animal, and easily the most fearsome of the sharks. In this video, Jonathan travels to Mexico to meet a Great White up close and personal. Nothing can prepare him for the sheer size and strength of a fully grown Great White shark! He learns how white sharks are being studied and how they react to both people and sea lions. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

When manatees were first seen by Columbus, he thought they were mermaids..but he had been at sea for a long time! Today these gentle marine mammals are threatened by loss of habitat and collisions with boats. This video segment explores the endangered manatees of Florida and their struggle to survive, as well as some of the people who are working to save them. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.

This video clip highlights the effort on by a group of young students to ban the use of plastic shopping bags in the city of Santa Monica. The video documents the effort and provides visual testimony of the effects that trash and specifically plastic bags have on the ocean ecosystem.

Objectives:
* Learn about Native American culture
* Introduce codependent plants (ecosystems)

In this video, members of the Menominee nation discuss their experiences with climate change.

This web-based activity tackles the broad reasons for undertaking ocean exploration - studying the interconnected issues of climate change, ocean health, energy and human health. Students examine the types of technology ocean scientists use to collect important data.

To Drill or Not to Drill is a multidisciplinary problem based learning exercise, which intends to increase students' knowledge of a variety of topics through a real world environmental topic. In addition, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) impacts students either directly (depending on the age level) or indirectly (through their parents) as gas prices soar to record high levels.

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Students reenact a public hearing to determine how to manage a deer herd that is overpopulated.

This video describes the role that dendrochronology plays in understanding climate change, especially changes to high elevation environments at an upper tree line. Dendrochronologists from the Big Sky Institute sample living and dead trees, describe how correlations between trees are made, and explain how tree cores record climate changes.

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:

"Tropical ecosystems can transition between forest and savanna but how these transitions are affected by changing rainfall patterns remains uncertain Climate changes interact with local grazing and wildfires to determine the growth of tropical trees and grasses A new study looks at how feedback between wildfires, herbivore grazing, and rainfall variability impacts the amount of tree cover in the tropics Researchers found that fires stabilize savannas under intermediate rainfall values while increasing rainfall variability boosted the potential for sudden transition between forest and savanna A similar phenomenon was found under drier rainfall conditions, but in this case herbivores kept grasslands open Forest-savanna transitions have important implications for ecosystem services and people How tropical forests and savannas will function in the future depends on interactions between rainfall, fires and herbivores Staal A., et al..."

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

This article assembles free resources from the Tundra: Life in the Polar Extremes issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine into a unit outline based on the 5E learning cycle framework. Outlines are provided for Grades K-2 and 3-5.

This project involves pairing pre-service teachers with students in the rural Alaskan village of Eek in Southwestern, Alaska. By creating effective writing prompts, the pre-service teachers hope to better understand how climate change is affecting the people of this region.

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The University of California's White Mountain Research Station provides science unprecedented access to unique environments, environments where life exists at the edge of extremes. This award- winning documentary weaves a story of how this unique access is yielding an understanding of change, from physiology to climate, from the oldest known living organism, to a short-lived beetle, and what this understanding means for all. (59 minutes)

Understanding Biodiversity presents an overview of biodiversity, its importance and relevance to humans, all living things, and the Earth. It includes species pages and a template to engage and involve students in real-life data collection.

This lesson plan has students working in small groups to research the Mountain Pine Beetle in Colorado and other inter-mountain Western states. Students identify the factors that control pine beetle population and research how warmer winters and decreasing spring snowpack allow the population of pine beetles to expand.

This video from Kentucky's Last Great Places shows how the Green River has remained unusually clean and why it is home to several endangered aquatic species.

In this activity, students are introduced to the concept of ecosystem services, provided with a tool for exploring these services in particular landscapes, and led through a few examples so that they will be comfortable using the tool. Google Earth is presented as a tool for exploring landscapes and evaluating the ecosystem services provided by those landscapes, including spatial and temporal variability. Students use Google Earth to identify and classify ecosystem services according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) categories, first by looking at an example landscape along the the Missouri River, and then by looking at an example specific to their location.

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