Satellites & Bleaching Education Standards

This tutorial can be used to help students learn about scientific inquiry, science and technology, how changes in the natural environment can be measured remotely by satellite, how different hazards (both natural and human-induced) can threaten and impact the natural environment, and how science and technology can be applied to address local and global challenges in the natural environment.

You can use different chapters (sections) in this tutorial to address the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). The NGSS provide expectations for what students should learn in the science and technology subject areas. They are based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (National Research Council, 2012) and are organized around three dimensions: science and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. The disciplinary core ideas are further grouped into four domains: physical sciences; life sciences; earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology and applications of science.

This tutorial addresses the following, example NGSS:

Third Grade

3-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

• 3-LS4-4. Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.

3-ESS2 Earth’s Systems:

• 3-ESS2-1. Represent data in tables and graphical displays to describe typical weather conditions expected during a particular season.
• 3-ESS2-2. Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.

Middle School

MS-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity

• MS-ESS3-2. Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
• MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
• MS-ESS3-4. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.
• MS-ESS3-5. Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

High School

HS-LS2 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

• HS-LS2-6. Evaluate claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
• HS-LS2-7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.

HS-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

• HS-LS4-5. Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.
• HS-LS4-6. Create or revise a simulation to test a solution to mitigate adverse impacts of human activity on biodiversity.

HS-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity

• HS-ESS3-1. Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
• HS-ESS3-4. Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
• HS-ESS3-5. Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems.
• HS-ESS3-6. Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.

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