This six-day unit provides an in-depth look at the dynamic forces at work on the sea floor. Throughout the unit, students collect their findings in a portfolio. The comprehensive curriculum materials include teacher tools such as individually downloadable readings and detailed daily breakdowns of tasks, a hands-on experiment, three activities about how scientists find deep sea vents and two activities about the thriving ecosystems found in deep sea vents.

This is a National Geographic short video that briefly describes how succulent plants in the South African Karoo biome are dying off due to changes in climate.

This activity identifies and explains the benefits of and threats to coral reef systems. Students read tutorials, describe the role of satellites, analyze oceanographic data and identify actions that can be undertaken to reduce or eliminate threats to coral reefs. As a culminating activity, students prepare a public education program.

This video adapted from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department describes how humans are helping restore safe nesting grounds for the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle to ensure its successful repopulation.

In this video from Science City, Kerri-Ann Richard, an environmental engineer, describes how she became interested in the field and why it is important to clean up the environment by removing contaminants from soil and ground water.

This video segment highlights how the U.S. military is the single largest user of energy in the nation, but it is also trying to reduce its carbon bootprint. Scenes taped at Fort Irwin and Camp Pendleton show the Army and Marines experimenting with wind and solar in order to reduce the number of fuel convoys that are vulnerable to attack.

ZOOM guest Amy wants to be a meteorologist and volunteers at a weather observatory. In this adapted video segment, she shows us instruments used to predict the weather and describes how air pressure affects weather patterns.

Giant clams are no myth. In New England, people love clam chowder, but in the Pacific, some of the clams are as big as a suitcase! In this video filmed in Micronesia, Jonathan goes in search of Giant Clams. These clams are so big that people used to think they caught people...and it almost looks like they could. It turns out that the real problem is that too many people are eating the clams. Please see the accompanying lesson plan for educational objectives, discussion points and classroom activities.

Knowing Home attempts to capture the creative vision of Indigenous scientific knowledge and technology that is derived from an ecology of a home place. The traditional wisdom component of Indigenous Science—the values and ways of decision-making—assists humans in their relationship with each other, the land and water, and all of creation. Indigenous perspectives have the potential to give insight and guidance to the kind of environmental ethics and deep understanding that we must gain as we attempt to solve the increasingly complex problems of the 21st century.

Students begin this investigation by watching several short videos and reading a NOAA article to learn about some some of the ways that declining fish populations have come to be, what fishing management and sustainable catches mean, and how the U.S. established fisheries to monitor fishing. In Part B, students examine graphs and read data maps to explore how the increase in the global number of fishing vessels and the ability for fishing to take place over more of the global ocean by more people than ever before led to a decline in the numbers of fish available. The investigation concludes with students reading the data from the UN's FAO to learn about how fish are used after they're caught - both for food and non-food uses.

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Students annotate a photograph of their local study site and then develop a more abstract diagram of the site that highlights the flow of energy and matter among the four components of the Earth system. The investigation concludes with students sharing their diagrams and creating a single class diagram to represent their study site.

After completing this investigation, students will be able to:

- analyze a photograph of their local study site with respect to Earth systems;
- annotate interconnections among components of the Earth system on a photograph;
- translate their analysis of their study site into a diagram of energy and matter flow among components of the Earth system; and
- interpret and evaluate diagrams of their local study site.

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In this Lab students focus their attention on an area significantly larger than their study site as they apply their developing knowledge of local Earth system interactions to the regional scale. Although the scale changes, the questions remain the same. How does organism or process or event "A" influence, or become changed by organism or process or event "B"? Specifically, in what ways is my local region interconnected with adjoining regions? What types of matter and energy cross the regional boundaries to help define and shape the neighboring regions?
Although students will investigate the region in which they live, the concept of a "study site" changes: instead of focusing their attention on an actual plot of land, students will investigate their region by combining their personal knowledge of the region with information they can learn from Google Earth.

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Students begin this investigation by reading about the basic premises of Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) and how it can be applied to fisheries management — Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM). In Part B of the investigation, students learn about Integrated Ecosystem Assessments and how they are used as a tool for ecosystem-based fisheries management.

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This lab activity introduces students to Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). In Part A, students read about what MPAs are, what purposes they serve, and how they are classified. In Part B, they learn about the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of CortÃs). This tiny strip of sea has historically been one of the richest and most productive marine ecosystems in the world, but today faces many of the same threats that are destroying ocean health worldwide. Students watch short videos and read about challenges of new MPAs in the area as well as about Cabo Pulmo, which has been an MPA since 1995.

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This lab activity introduces students to overfishing, using Georges Bank groundfish as a case study. In Part A, students learn about overfishing by examining trends in annual haddock landings and mortality in Georges Bank from 1969-2016. In Part B, they learn about what it means for a species to be overfished by examining trends in Georges Bank Atlantic cod recruitments and spawning biomass from 1978-2014. In Part C, students explore the issue of the still-collapsed cod stocks and the role ocean warming may play in the failure to for the stock to rebound.

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In the previous lab, students explored the characteristics of the ocean environment in which coral reefs thrive. Unfortunately,there are a number of factors, both natural and anthropogenic (resulting from human activities), that can alter the ocean environment and threaten the health of coral reef ecosystems. In this activity, students will examine the three main factors that disrupt corals.

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Aquaculture is the most rapidly growing food-production industry in the world. In Part A of this investigation, students examine and analyze U.S. and global aquaculture data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Fisheries and Aquaculture database. In Part B, students examine global trends in aquaculture production and learn about aquaculture methods and their associated environmental impacts. In Part C, students use Google Earth to analyze before and after satellite images of the Pacific coast of Honduras to illustrate how aquaculture is altering coastlines.

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Human-induced nutrient loading of the world's oceans has been linked to increased and prolonged algae blooms, sometimes with potentially deadly consequences. In this investigation, students will create their own algal blooms, analyze satellite images of chlorophyll concentrations in the Sea of CortÃs, and learn about two alarming consequences of excessive algae growth-—dead zones and harmful algae blooms (HABs).

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This activity is an on-line research activity in which students research different Minnesota lakes and determine their physical characteristics, chemical characteristics, and the overall health of the lake.

Stratified lakes exhibit vertical gradients in organisms, nutrients, and oxygen, which have important implications for ecosystem structure and functioning. Mixing disrupts these gradients by redistributing these materials throughout the water column. Consequently, it is critical to understand the drivers of lake mixing and thermal stratification, especially because of the sensitivity of lake thermal conditions to altered climate. In this module, students will explore spatial and temporal patterns of lake mixing using high-frequency temperature data from lakes around the world. They will also explore how increases in air temperature affect thermal stratification by interpreting output from a lake model. Project EDDIE modules are designed with an A-B-C structure to make them flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures.

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