The Higher Education sector has a critical role to play in shaping our global response to "wicked problems" and nowhere is this more evident than in university research, teaching, and public engagement on sustainability that seeks to tackle the increasingly perilous environmental situation. However, despite this critical civic mission,…

Ventura, California's 2023 winter storm activity underscored the impact that runoff has on recreational water quality and public health. To examine public perception of stormwater runoff, coastal water quality, and community decision-making toward recreating in polluted water, an online survey of the Ventura River watershed community determined…

O•, O[subscript 2] and O[subscript 3] play vital roles in the Earth's atmosphere, regulating ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and being essential for life. However, the oxygen family, O•, O[subscript 2] and O[subscript 3], also provides a source of the HO radical, the atmospheric detergent that removes pollutants from the atmosphere. This…

In this article, the author describes an activity using physical models -- each a clear plastic box enclosing a miniature coastal town, complete with real water in the "ocean." This activity shows students a natural cause-and-effect relationship that is scientifically simple, yet even many adults don't grasp the worldwide implications:…

Research has shown the highest level of understanding in the geosciences to be the ability to think about the Earth as a dynamic system. The Earth system contains four spheres: the geosphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. These spheres are linked through the biogeochemical cycles that move matter and energy through the…

This textbook provides K-12 science teachers and educators innovative uses of anchoring phenomenon-based teaching approaches from a justice-oriented lens (Morales-Doyle, 2017). It discusses topics such as the use of anchoring phenomenon-based pedagogies, qualities of productive anchoring phenomena and includes examples of unit plans that use…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of educational movies that are used in teaching the chapter of Mystery of Earth Crust / Earth and Universe on the environment-related knowledge levels and attitudes of students. Another purpose of the study is to find out about the views of students in the experiment. As a result of the…

This column contains exercises to challenge content knowledge. This month's issue discusses ways to remove CO[subscript 2] from the atmosphere.

We report our progress on the "River Memorial Museum" didactic intervention project developed with schools, in the basin of the Atoyac River in Mexico, that are significantly impacted by the pollution produced through industrialisation. The teachers of the elementary schools in these communities, environmental scientists, educators, and…

An interactive, field-based course on the environmental aspects of natural water was developed as part of STEM initiatives at a comprehensive university in the United States. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The course is focused on two fundamental student skills, such as hydrologic field procedures and analytical methods.…

While the literature is replete with studies examining teacher knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), few studies have investigated how science teacher orientations (STOs) shape classroom instruction. Therefore, this research explores the interplay between a STOs and the topic specificity of PCK across two science topics within a grade…

Creation of physical models can help students learn science by enabling them to be more involved in the scientific process of discovery and to use multiple senses during investigations. This activity achieves these goals by having students model ocean currents in the Gulf of Mexico. In general, oceans play a key role in influencing weather…

This research project represents the Status of Biodiversity and Its Conservation of Kobadak River basin of Maheshpur Upazila. The study was designed to develop a set of information about the present condition of biodiversity of the study area. Both primary and secondary data have been used to fulfill the survey successfully. Primary data have been…

Modern data collection in the Earth Sciences has propelled the need for understanding signal processing and time-series analysis techniques. However, there is an educational disconnect in the lack of instruction of time-series analysis techniques in many Earth Science academic departments. Furthermore, there are no platform-independent freeware…

Understanding of Earth's systems, including the crucial role of human beings within them, is an important part of citizens' ability to think intelligently and critically about the environment, pollution, sustainability and other socio-economic and scientific issues central to life in the modern world. Part of this understanding involves seeing the…