Identifying Landforms

Since its creation in 1958, NASA has been studying the Earth, and its changing environment, by observing the atmosphere, oceans, land, ice, and snow, and their influence on climate and weather. It is now generally accepted that a key to understanding the global environment is exploring how the Earth's systems of air, land, water, and life interact with each other. This approach called, Earth System Science, blends together fields like meteorology, oceanography, biology, and atmospheric science. NASA's current Earth Science Program has, among other components, a series of Earth-looking satellites called the Earth Observing System (EOS) that enhance the study of clouds, water and energy cycles, oceans, chemistry of the atmosphere, land surface changes, water and ecosystem processes, glaciers and polar ice sheets, and the solid Earth.

In this lesson learners will analyze high quality satellite images of parts of the United States to determine what sorts of information can be found in the image and how the information can be used.

Next Generation Science Standards addressed in this lesson:
    MS-ESS2-2     MS-ESS3-5