After 90 percent of the town was damaged or destroyed by a tornado, Greensburg, Kansas, and Kiowa County Memorial Hospital developed a Long-Term Community Recovery plan to rebuild for resilience.
Trees within a city can help reduce urban heat, control stormwater, and provide habitat to local wildlife. As climate conditions change, a Chicago group is working to enhance its urban forest so that the city can continue to receive these benefits.
Titles currently available include:
*Lily and the Eco Club to the Rescue! (Gr 4-6)
*Living in a Warming World (Gr 3+)
*The Fall of Dr. Mike Roe Plastic (Gr 6+)
*What is an Insect? (K-4)
Students learn how the greenhouse effect is related to global warming and how global warming impacts our planet, including global climate change. Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and how we react to these changes are the main points of focus of this lesson.
When you think of fresh produce and fields of grain, the Arctic may not spring to mind. But just 800 miles from the North Pole, the Global Seed Vault holds emergency stockpiles of most of the world's crops. It provides scientists with the tools they need to breed plants able to cope with a changing world.
This video explores the Global Seed Vault and its uses, especially with the threat of climate change for crops.
The University of Saskatchewan offers this tremendous resource that promotes the richness and diversity of the sciences, nurture curiosity and innovation, and inspire students to consider a career in science, and support teachers to provide exciting educational experiences.
Check out the great collection of video and activity resources for teachers and parents to supplement and enhance Grade 7 science learning.
Free Environmental Science Resources for Teachers, including curriculum connections, project objectives, lessons and more.
GreenLearning creates free education programs about energy, climate change and green economy that engage and empower students to create positive change for our evolving world. Our programs include both hands-on and critical thinking activities to equip educators with the educational tools they need to help students understand complex environmental issues.
Available programs include:
- The Ripple Effect
- Sila and the Land
- Eco 360 - Transitioning to a Circular Economy
- Energy Revealed
- Decoding Carbon: A Climate Policy Quest
- Re-Energy
- Flood:Ed
- Real World Ecosystems
- Real World Energy
- Oil Sands Education Dialogue
- Electricity All Around Us
- Lending A Hand
- Climate Change Where I Live
- Come Alive
- Make A Splash!
- EnerAction
- Cool 2.0
- E-Cards
- Climate Action 150
Check out their challenges:
- Eco 360 - Transitioning to a Circular Economy
- Decoding Carbon: A Climate Policy Quest
- Re-Energy
- Flood:Ed
- School Earth Hour Challenge
Other resources include:
- Location Matters
- The Spiral Inquiry Model
- Make-Remake Design Activity
- Maple Syrup Inquiry
- Science Fair
- Monthly Spark Activities
How do greenhouse gases affect the climate? Explore the atmosphere during the ice age and today. What happens when you add clouds? Change the greenhouse gas concentration and see how the temperature changes. Then compare to the effect of glass panes. Zoom in and see how light interacts with molecules. Do all atmospheric gases contribute to the greenhouse effect?
A regional conservation partnership in Massachusetts needed to update their approach to evaluating land acquisitions. Adding the complexity of climate change to their map helped resolve their vision.
Solving food shortages caused by droughts is a big challenge that may benefit from a tiny ally. Turns out that the microbes living in the soil around plants can give them a boost when water's scarce, which means more food for us, which is a big win!
As climate chaos increases around the world, Michelle Week, a farmer outside of Portland Oregon is drawing on her Sinixt indigenous knowledge to adapt her farm to the changing seasons. By practicing techniques like seed saving and dry farming, Michelle is combating the increasing food security crisis while continuing to provide fresh food to her local community.
Women of the Earth is a new show on PBS Terra, produced by Summer Moon Productions, featuring stories of women across America who are leading a new movement to restore and protect the land. By focusing on women in land stewardship roles like farmers and shepherds, the series will explore women’s unique relationship to the earth and their innovative undertakings to heal the earth from climate change.
As the Atlantic Ocean warms, many marine speciesincluding commercially important fish stocksare moving further north along the Northeast United States. As a consequence, fishing boats based in traditional ports need to travel further to catch the same fish, or change their strategy to pursue different species of fish. In turn, businesses that serve fishing communities may need to purchase new equipment, develop new practices, or encourage workers to gain new skills. In order for fisheries and the businesses that depend on them to prepare for such changes, fisheries managers need tools to identify which fishery resources may be most vulnerable to our changing climate.
In this 2-part inquiry-based lesson, students conduct a literature search to determine the characteristics of the atmospheres of different planets (Venus, Mercury, Mars and Earth). After collecting and analyzing data, student teams design and conduct a controlled physical experiment using a lab apparatus to learn about the interaction of becomes COå_, air, and temperature. The resource includes student worksheets, a design proposal, and student questions. Connections to contemporary climate change are addressed. This lesson is the first of four in Topic 4, "How do Atmospheres Affect Planetary Temperatures?" within the resource, Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate?
In this kinesthetic activity, the concept of energy budget is strengthened as students conduct three simulations using play money as units of energy, and students serve as parts of a planetary radiation balance model. Students will determine the energy budget of a planet by manipulating gas concentrations, energy inputs and outputs in the system in this lesson that supports the study of climate on Mars, Mercury, Venus and Earth. The lesson supports understanding of the real-world problem of contemporary climate change. The resource includes a teacher's guide and several student worksheets. This is the second of four activities in the lesson, How do Atmospheres affect planetary temperatures?, within Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The resource aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.
How does climate change affect agriculture? A changing climate makes growing conditions more difficult. This video by Syngenta talks specifically about how soil impacts agriculture and how soil improvements will be key to agriculture with climate change.
These activities for ages 11-16 explore the human impact of the climate emergency and provide new spaces, approaches and opportunities for climate education and social action.
This resource frames the climate emergency as a human rights and people-centered issue and supports teachers to promote a sense of agency and empowerment within young people.
This in turn is recognized as one strategy to help young people manage eco-anxiety, as well as disillusionment and disengagement with climate issues.
The resource includes five activities:
Activity 1 - Climate change, human rights and equality - An activity to introduce the links between climate change and human rights
Activity 2 - Climate justice - A mystery activity to demonstrate the inequalities inherent in the global interconnectedness of climate change. All people are affected in some way by the climate emergency but who you are and where you are in the world matters
Activity 3 – Critically thinking about evidence -An activity to examine case study films and make conclusions about which human rights are most threatened by climate change, which groups in society are most affected and what the solutions are.
Activity 4 – A climate consequences wheel - A consequences wheel activity using evidence from one case study film to make inferences about the different impacts of climate change on members of a community with different personal characteristics (for example: male or female).
Activity 5 – The climate game - A role play activity for which a clear space, either indoors or outdoors, is required. Learners compare the impacts of climate change on people from different backgrounds and in different circumstances. For some participants, the impacts of climate change overlap and are amplified. This strengthens learners’ understanding of intersectionality (interconnectedness).
Facing sea level rise, increasing numbers of wildfires, and encroachment of invasive species, managers of a national forest chose to integrate climate change into their new plan.
A federal study assessed vulnerabilities of transportation infrastructure to extreme events in Mobile, Alabama. The effort also resulted in tools and approaches that other transportation departments can use to assess and address their own vulnerabilities.
The City of Ann Arbor recognized stormwater runoff as a growing threat to the quality of their water supply. They're addressing the issue with two complementary strategies.
Students are presented with examples of the types of problems that environmental engineers solve, specifically focusing on air and land quality issues. Air quality topics include air pollution sources, results of poor air quality including global warming, acid rain and air pollution, as well as ways to reduce air pollution. Land quality topics include the differences between renewable and non-renewable resources, the results of non-renewable resource misuse and ways to reduce land pollution. (Water quality is introduced in a later lesson in a separate presentation, as it is the focal point of this unit curriculum.)