(Part of the PAESTA In The News - Current Events in Earth and Space Science Series. This series compiles current resources and background materials for recent scientific events in the news. Questions are provided with each topic, written across Bloom's Taxonomic Scale, and can be used for classroom discussion and/or as a writing prompt at the beginning/middle/end of an instructional unit.)

(Part of the PAESTA In The News - Current Events in Earth and Space Science Series. This series compiles current resources and background materials for recent scientific events in the news. Questions are provided with each topic, written across Bloom's Taxonomic Scale, and can be used for classroom discussion and/or as a writing prompt at the beginning/middle/end of an instructional unit.)

With advances in technology and access to remote locations across the globe, scientists are rediscovering species that were once thought to have disappeared or thought to be extinct.

(Part of the PAESTA In The News - Current Events in Earth and Space Science Series. This series compiles current resources and background materials for recent scientific events in the news. Questions are provided with each topic, written across Bloom's Taxonomic Scale, and can be used for classroom discussion and/or as a writing prompt at the beginning/middle/end of an instructional unit.)

(Part of the PAESTA In The News - Current Events in Earth and Space Science Series. This series compiles current resources and background materials for recent scientific events in the news. Questions are provided with each topic, written across Bloom's Taxonomic Scale, and can be used for classroom discussion and/or as a writing prompt at the beginning/middle/end of an instructional unit.)

(Part of the PAESTA In The News - Current Events in Earth and Space Science Series. This series compiles current resources and background materials for recent scientific events in the news. Questions are provided with each topic, written across Bloom's Taxonomic Scale, and can be used for classroom discussion and/or as a writing prompt at the beginning/middle/end of an instructional unit.)

Field exercises are a valuable addition to introductory-level geoscience courses but are not always possible in an urban setting. To further develop student skills in rock identification, a project implementing the scientific method has been constructed that allows students to examine the building stones found in the store fronts at a shopping mall.  This exercise is conducted after the rock and mineral identification laboratories and requires a visit to a local shopping mall. 

There are websites and curricular materials to assist teachers with classroom instruction relating to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Although it is important for students to be familiar with the current disaster, it is just as important for students to examine the historic occurrence and context of past oil spills from across the globe.  Fortunately, a Google Earth file exists that contains location information and details of oil spills.  We have modified this file to assist teachers in engaging students to explore the spatial and temporal distribution of global oil spill disasters.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Ocean Service has an Office of Response and Restoration that publishes a series of Environmental Sensitivity Index Maps (ESI Maps). [See More Information About ESI Maps]

The GLOBE program has created activities to accompany the GLOBE Earth System Poster "Exploring Connections in Year 2007" to have students identify global patterns and connections in environmental data contained in the poster.  Images displaying global environmental data (insolation, surface temperature, cloud fraction, precipitation, aerosols, and the biosphere) through the course of 2007 are compared in order to understand how the Earth works as a system.

There are many variations of this exercise to have students generate the plot to the left, but I follow the Carbon Dioxide Exercise from the SERC website, where "Students work in groups, plotting carbon dioxide concentrations over time on overheads and estimating the rate of change over five years.