This article from the free online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle provides appropriate science lessons for Grades K-5. The focus is on acquainting young learners with climate-change concepts that are not too complex for their grade level and will not frighten them. In each issue, the magazine develops articles around one of the seven essential principles of climate science. The author believes early lessons about water availability and extreme weather events will prepare students for complex climate concepts they will encounter in later grades.

This design challenge moves your students from passive to active learners through a cross-curricular, hands-on team challenge in direct correlation to real-world issues of water conservation. By creating prototype desalination plants and companies, students in grades 6-8 will understand how substances are separated, the need for freshwater conservation, and ultimately how a desalination plant works.

DATA: Worldwide Wetlands Inventory. TOOL: Ramsar International Wetlands Data Gateway. SUMMARY: Learn about wetlands around the world. Perform a series of searches to identify wetland areas that need protection.

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This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Nitrogen is vital to aquatic ecosystems. But too much nitrogen, which can build up from fertilizer use or wastewater discharge, can be deadly. A recent study examined how two groups of nitrogen-removing bacteria interact in the hopes of discovering a synergy that can help remediate over-nitrified lakes. The two groups consisted of anammox bacteria, which feed on ammonium and release nitrogen gas and denitrifying bacteria, which do the same but feed on nitrates instead. Researchers locked the bacteria in bioreactors and monitored their activity for over a year as they fed on sediments from a nitrogen-rich lake. Findings revealed high nitrogen removal efficiencies of up to 86% for ammonium and 95% for nitrites with denitrifying and anammox bacteria showing signs of cooperation. For example, certain denitrifiers may provide amino acids and vitamins that support anammox bacteria..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This is a field and computer laboratory exercise that introduces undergraduate students, advanced high school students, and members of the general public to using Google Earth, GPS, aerial imagery, and an online illustrated vegetation and tidal marsh environment identification guide to distinguish and map vegetational and physical environmental zones within a salt marsh. They also learn about the physical and ecological relationships between these environments.

Students use GPS devices to collect field data as waypoints and tracks, and upload the data to computers in GPX format. They learn to open the data in Google Earth along with infrared and color aerial imagery, and use the GPS data to interpret the aerial imagery. Using Google Earth tools, they draw polygons to demarcate the boundaries of environmental zones in the wetlands that they recognize on the imagery.

The students and instructors also take photographs of the students in each of these environmental zones and embed the photographs into information balloons of placemarks in Google Earth.

The exercise was originally designed for use at Flax Pond, a salt marsh on the North Shore of Long Island. However, it can easily be adapted for use in other tidal marshes, and can serve as a template for developing similar activities to be conducted at other locations in which aerial imagery can be used to distinguish various forms of land cover.

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This article aligns the concepts of Essential Principle 2 of the Climate Sciences to the K-5 content standards of the National Science Education Standards. The author also identifies common misconceptions about heat and the greenhouse gases effect and offers resources for assessing students' understanding of interactions among components of the Earth system. This article continues the examination of the climate sciences and climate literacy on which the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle is structured.

This article identifies age-appropriate national science education content standards and curriculum connections for introducing complex concepts contained in Principle 7 of the Essential Principles of Climate Sciences. The principle describes consequences of climate changes on Earth systems and human lives. The content standards will help teachers determine appropriate topics for their students. A number of resources from the online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle are highlighted for their connection to the science curriculum in the early grades. In addition, the article identifies common misconceptions about weather and the water cycle often held by students.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, are photosynthetic bacteria that live in water and are important oxygen producers. Human-driven changes are a major factor causing seasonal cyanobacterial blooms, which can cause mass death of aquatic animals. Bacteria-infecting viruses, called phages, could potentially be used to control these outbreaks with minimal environmental disruption. But to date few freshwater ‘cyanophages’ have been isolated or had their genomes sequenced. Recently, researchers isolated a strain of cyanobacteria from Lake Chaohu, a massive lake in China with seasonal cyanobacterial blooms. Using the new cyanobacteria strain, they isolated five new freshwater cyanophages with varying tail structures from the same lake. While viruses can have RNA genomes or even single-stranded DNA genomes, all five isolated phages had double-stranded DNA genomes. Further analysis suggested that they all use different DNA packaging mechanisms and are evolutionarily distinct..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

For the first time in history, the global demand for freshwater is overtaking its supply in many parts of the world. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, more than half of the countries in the world will be experiencing water stress or outright shortages. Lack of water can cause disease, food shortages, starvation, migrations, political conflict, and even lead to war. Models of cooperation, both historic and contemporary, show the way forward. The first half of the course details the multiple facets of the water crisis. Topics include water systems, water transfers, dams, pollution, climate change, scarcity, water conflict/cooperation, food security, and agriculture. The second half of the course describes innovative solutions: Adaptive technologies and adaptation through policy, planning, management, economic tools, and finally, human behaviors required to preserve this precious and imperiled resource. Several field trips to water/wastewater/biosolids reuse and water-energy sites will help us to better comprehend both local and international challenges and solutions.

This article highlights resources that can be used to supplement lessons on extreme weather, including games and video clips. The article appears in the free, online magazine for K-Grade 5 teachers Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle. The magazine focuses on the essential principles of climate science.

Students will investigate caffeine as a potential new pollutant in a northwest river system. Effects of caffeine on invertebrates and salmon fry will be explored through field work and lab work.

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Students will examine the complex issues that result from human use of ecologically sensitive areas. The students will investigate these issues from the point of view of their major/career path.

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1) What are some of the biological effects of dam removal (good and bad)?

2) What are some of the more pressing/compelling reasons to remove a dam? Explain.

3) The Stanley and Doyle (2003) article states that, "dam removal cannot be avoided." Hypothetically, let's say you are placed on a committee to oversee the removal of the Aswan High Dam, since Doyle et al. (2003) states that, "the functional lifespan of most dams is approximately 60-120 years." What scientific studies would you conduct before/during/after dam removal? Why?

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In this activity, students learn about ocean currents and the difference between salt and fresh water. They use colored ice cubes to see how cold and warm water mix and how this mixing causes currents. Also, students learn how surface currents occur due to wind streams. Lastly, they learn how fresh water floats on top of salt water, the difference between water in the ocean and fresh water throughout the planet, and how engineers are involved in the design of ocean water systems for human use.

The Chukchi Sea, a broad and shallow sea between Siberia and Alaska, has a profound influence on Arctic climate and on the supply of fresh water and nutrients to the Arctic Ocean. Join Scripps Oceanography geophysicist Neal Driscoll as he presents research findings from two Arctic cruises onboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy that provide intriguing new insightsinto the complex climatic and sea level history of the Arctic. (55 minutes)

Today's lesson is about Saltwater vs. Freshwater and what can and can not drink or live there. There are 2 Activities and a story slide with this lesson. If time permits, there is a video at the end of this lesson. 

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum/Geology of National Parks module. Students use the geometric mean and multiplicative standard deviation to examine the right-skewed distribution of nutrient concentrations in water-quality data at Mammoth Cave National Park.

In this presentation, we will discuss how saltwater intrusion affects small islands freshwater supplies, and how tourism is a significant part of this. In Zanzibar fresh water for drinking and other purposes come from rain that replenishes the island’s groundwater reservoir and in many cases freshwater is a scarce resource. On top of this, the excessive pumping in groundwater for the tourist industry increases the risk of salt water seeping into the freshwater magazine from the sea, thereby destroying the freshwater resource.

In this presentation we will discuss how tourism affects the daily water use in Zanzibar and how a significant water consumption, has the potential of undermining the sustainability of the tourist sector in Zanzibar. Zanzibar has a great water disparity with 15 times higher daily water use per tourist compared with local residents.

In this video, members of the Menominee nation discuss their experiences with climate change.