In a project supported by the NASA Global Climate Change Education Project, a group of research scientists at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University have been working with teachers and students at the Poudre and Greeley-Evans School Districts in Northern Colorado. We have created classroom modules that use NASA data sets that teachers may use to instruct students about climate change. We take a cross-scale approach, using local demonstrations of climate change effects to put in context regional and even global changes. While these modules have a local component, the content can easily be used by teachers from across the globe.

We have the following goals:

  • Improve the science content knowledge and preparedness of middle and high school teachers

  • Increase the science content knowledge of middle and high school students

  • Increase the awareness, opportunities, and participation of middle and high school teachers in content-based professional development activities

  • Broadly disseminate our model to districts across the country
Our objectives, activities, and evaluation metrics will connect NASA datasets with state science and geography content standards, the science curricula, and teacher and students needs within our partner districts through the development of modules that will be used in middle and high school science courses.

MODIS beetle-killed trees
MODIS images with statewide greenness standardized across years, showing declines due to killed trees, which appear red in the high resolution image.