In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn about the unique environment of southern Florida's Everglades and gain insights into the interrelatedness of living things, nonliving things, and climate.

This activity is a guided inquiry by students into balancing ecosystems through food chains and webs.

How does energy move around an ecosystem? Students will be able to visually represent how moves through an ecosystem and predict how changes to one part of a food web will impact other populations.

The World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy have compiled a comprehensive database about the freshwater regions of the world. Includes great interactive maps to find detailed information about any area of interest. Explore what's being done to conserve freshwater resources and why freshwater is so important.

This video segment adapted from NOVA explores the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam on the beaches, wildlife, and vegetation of the Colorado River.

This case study helps students see how soil or nutrient inputs affect soil chemistry, the importance of controlling variables, and how to analyze yield data to determine if an agriculture treatment for a particular issue (in this case, specific nutrient and mineral availability) is worth the investment. This unit features 3 lessons and 13 files. Lessons are aligned to NGSS.

The H2Know case study invites students to investigate water quality in Lake Erie. Students will gather information about the problem, consider potential contributors and environmental factors, review data and research happening in the field, and engage in discussions and activities related to effective solutions that will improve the water quality of Lake Erie. This unit features 1 lesson and 1 file. Lessons are aligned to NGSS.

What’s happening to honey bees? This unit contains three different ways to learn about honey bees and pollinators: a video for all to learn more about bees and how to successfully keep them, a problem-based learning unit to support populations of pollinators aimed at elementary students and a problem-based learning unit including forensic skills for middle/high school. This unit features 4 lessons and 9 files. Lessons are aligned to NGSS.

Access to clean water is a critical issue in many countries. In the United States there are few places where we cannot find clean water to drink or swim in. This unit explores some of the potential problems involved in maintaining good water quality. This unit features 3 lessons and 6 files. Lessons are aligned to NGSS.

This video segment, adapted from NOVA, explores reasons why Homo sapiens had an advantage over Neanderthals in the pursuit of territory and natural resources.

This video segment adapted from NOVA describes the emergence of life on the islands of Hawaii from a barren volcanic platform under the ocean waves to the rich explosion of life that covers the many climate zones of the islands today.

The Great Smoky Mountains is home to over 21,000 species - but where do they call get their energy? Chris learns about food webs and trophic levels with special guest, conservation biologist and host of the Rewildology podcast, Brooke Mitchell.

Students are presented with an engineering challenge: To design a sustainable guest village within the Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Through four lessons and six associated activities, they study ecological relationships with an emphasis on the Sonoran Desert. They examine species adaptations. They come to appreciate the complexity and balance that supports the exchange of energy and matter within food webs. Then students apply what they have learned about these natural relationships to the study of biomimicry and sustainable design. They study the flight patterns of birds and relate their functional design to aeronautical engineering. A computer simulation model is also incorporated into this unit and students use this program to examine perturbations within a simple ecosystem. The solution rests within the lessons and applications of this unit.

This field activity asks students to examine and interpret a given environmental site where a disturbance (fallen tree, beaver dam etc.) has taken place.

This activity is a field investigation where students will observe, discuss, and gather evidence on how environmental changes affect animals that live in that habitat.

In this field lab students will investigate the biodiversity around their school. Students will perform a biodiversity count using transect line. The students will develop multiple hypotheses relating to biodiversity and propose additional procedures for studying, collecting and testing these questions.

This activity is a field investigation in which students identify organisms and their energy sources. Students collect data and create a food web that explains how the organisms in their ecosystem are related.

This investigation is a field study where students compare the diversity of plants and insects in a naturally existing habitat to that of a human altered habitat.

This activity is field investigation where students map a neighborhood wetland and generate various watershed questions. Students identify engineered structures in or around this wetland and consider how flood water can be controlled.

This activity is a field investigation where students conduct biological sampling on goldenrod galls and form conclusions.