In each project of our pilot course, Ecologica, students used data from several sources in several formats acquired primarily over the Internet. Students derived their own information products in visualization, manipulation, editing and layout, applied the data to their quantitative models, and inter-connected them as objects in a semantic network in their hypermedia scientific communications on the Internet (WWW protocol). These communications will continue to be available to the general public. The table below identifies project themes which have been investigated, datasets used and proposed themes and datasets.
Following the model of the Earth as a system of interacting subsystems presented in NASA's Earth System Science: A Closer View, we divided the course into seven projects limited by timescales of decades to centuries, in which Earth processes are dominated by the physical climate system and the biogeochemical cycles, with human activities playing an increasing role in both. This presented Earth processes in the context of a human lifetime. The first and the last project focused on the investigation and definition of the Earth as a system, reflecting the synthetic nature of the course and its activities. We categorized the other projects according to subsystem: atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, anthroposphere. With the guidance of national science education standards (NCSESA, 1993) we mapped out a collection of major themes which typically highlight Earth system phenomena (e.g., radiation budget, ozone depletion, El Nino). The themes cross Earth subsystem boundaries and, therefore, require a systems approach to understand. The major themes stressed fundamental principles of biology, chemistry, physics and math, such as respiration, photosynthesis, the interaction of energy and matter, conservation of energy, wave theory, algebra and others. We grouped these themes by subsystem, such that each project included a number of inter-related themes each of which was investigated by a student team. For example, the atmosphere project included solar radiation, the energy budget and ozone as themes. We choose the atmosphere as the first project because of the significance of the solar radiation and the energy budget to the Earth system and its processes.
Over twenty user support staff at the archive centers and scientists involved with the USGCRP at NASA and other public science agencies have committed to continue to help us make this data available to our community in the appropriate technical and scientific context.
*These datasets will also be applied to project themes in the ESSCC testbed.
The Earth System Science Community Curriculum Testbed
keeler@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov