Interlinked Challenges features bits of information about global challenges from the last 400,000 years. Challenges include: biodiversity, climate change, eco-migrations, economy, energy, food, health, hunger, population growth, poverty, security, sustainability, transportation, urbanization, and water.

Info bits are drawn from articles, podcasts, blogs, press releases, institutional reports, testimonies, encyclopedias, books, and documentaries. Each bit is referenced, date stamped, linked to the original article, tagged on multiple themes, and assigned a related image, which has its own description, author credit, date stamp, image permission, and back link. Connections are made to bits of info from the 2007 IPCC Report on Climate Change.

The Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. It is a collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public.

In Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico, an estimated 150,000 children are malnourished. To end this problem, governments have implemented food security policies, including food importation and industrial food production. In 2008 alone, Mexico imported 20 million tons of food. While these policies certainly help to remedy the problem in the short term, the massive importation of basic foodstuffs and incentives to industrial agriculture may widen social inequality, threaten health and deteriorate biodiversity and ecosystem services. I will present the objectives and achievements of initiatives born in the highlands of Chiapas to enhance local food production free of hazardous pesticides and appropriate to the culture of the region. Examples include the rescue of local knowledge for food production, a school gardens program and the Network of Producers and Consumers for Healthy Local Food.

The resources included in this collection will provide support to teachers who are instructing students about the causes of tides, but also it includes resources about the impacts of tides on coastal ecosystems and tides as an energy source. Some of the websites allow the teacher and student to view and use real time, historic and predicted data for a large number of tide stations along the coast and in the Great Lakes. Lessons are included that will provide ideas for ways to use this data with students. Changing tides have significant impacts to the ecosystems along the coast. We have included resources that will help teach about the impacts of tides on some of these ecosystems.

This Climate Change Impacts Collection provides the teacher and their students the opportunity to explore some of the environmental changes already observed, from the Arctic to tropical regions. Data sources provide historic precipitation and temperature records, allowing students to compare changes in their own local area to others. Lessons included, provide opportunities for place-based instruction related to climate change, others provided a more global perspective. The background resources provided in this collection tend to be for the teacher and/or the advanced student.

Students are introduced to the classification of animals and animal interactions. Students also learn why engineers need to know about animals and how they use that knowledge to design technologies that help other animals and/or humans. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

The newness of the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill limits the number of educational products designed to investigate and teach about impacts to the Gulf ecosystem. Ongoing efforts are being undertaken to develop lessons, media, and resources for educators to use in their teaching to help students and the public to better understand this event. The materials provided with this collection present the facts surrounding the spill and ongoing research, monitoring, and restoration efforts. More general education products from previous spills are provided to help educators present the concepts of human impacts on the ocean, oil specific impacts, spill clean-up, and the effects of toxins on natural environments. This site will be updated periodically as more information becomes available.