Students learn how to use and graph real-world stream gage data to create event and annual hydrographs and calculate flood frequency statistics. Using an Excel spreadsheet of real-world event, annual and peak streamflow data, they manipulate the data (converting units, sorting, ranking, plotting), solve problems using equations, and calculate return periods and probabilities. Prompted by worksheet questions, they analyze the runoff data as engineers would. Students learn how hydrographs help engineers make decisions and recommendations to community stakeholders concerning water resources and flooding.

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 video segment adapted from NOVA/FRONTLINE examines the greenhouse effect, its role in keeping Earth habitable, and the industrial changes that have led to an increase in the planet's average temperature.

This activity is an interactive lecture, where students will learn that fresh water is a limited resource. They will also see that drinkable water is not distributed evenly over the earth.

Students learn about energy and nutrient flow in various biosphere climates and environments. They learn about herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, food chains and food webs, seeing the interdependence between producers, consumers and decomposers. Students are introduced to the roles of the hydrologic (water), carbon, and nitrogen cycles in sustaining the worlds' ecosystems so living organisms survive. 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.

Students are presented with a guide to rain garden construction in an activity that culminates the unit and pulls together what they have learned and prepared in materials during the three previous associated activities. They learn about the four vertical zones that make up a typical rain garden with the purpose to cultivate natural infiltration of stormwater. Student groups create personal rain gardens planted with native species that can be installed on the school campus, within the surrounding community, or at students' homes to provide a green infrastructure and low-impact development technology solution for areas with poor drainage that often flood during storm events.

In this video segment adapted from United Tribes Technical College, meet Native Americans who are concerned about climate change and believe that action today can help future generations once again live in harmony with Earth.

Students learn about the human water cycle, or how humans impact the water cycle by settling down in civilizations. Specifically, they learn how people obtain, use and dispose of water. Students also learn about shortages of treated, clean and safe water and learn about ways that engineers address this issue through water conservation and graywater recycling.

In this video segment adapted from the National Film Board of Canada, learn how the Inuit people have used their traditional knowledge to understand and adapt to changes in their Arctic environment, particularly when hunting and navigating the landscape.

Hands-on group activity in where children go outside to find clouds, document with pictures, and identify them.

This activity is a classroom investigation where students predict, explore and evaluate what happens to water as it travels through the water cycle.

Students are presented with examples of the types of problems that environmental engineers solve, specifically focusing on water quality issues. Topics include the importance of clean water, the scarcity of fresh water, tap water contamination sources, and ways environmental engineers treat contaminated water.

This activity is an investigation where students gather information about the rate of evaporation, interpret their findings, and apply this knowledge to the water cycle.

This inquiry is designed for supporting students' independent exploration of water outdoors as well as the use of computer interactives. 

This activity is an outdoor lab in which students investigate the process of evaporation, record their findings, and use the data to make connections to the environment around them.

In this science activity, students investigate the water cycle by testing the water evaporated from leaves (transpiration) in a field experience. Students use elements of this information to track the water cycle through it's various stages.

Through multi-trial experiments, students are able to see and measure something that is otherwise invisible to them seeing plants breathe. Student groups are given two small plants of native species and materials to enclose them after watering with colored water. After being enclosed for 5, 10 and 15 minutes, teams collect and measure the condensed water from the plants' "breathing," and then calculate the rates at which the plants breathe. A plant's breath is known as transpiration, which is the flow of water from the ground where it is taken up by roots (plant uptake) and then lost through the leaves. Students plot volume/time data for three different native plant species, determine and compare their transpiration rates to see which had the highest reaction rate and consider how a plant's unique characteristics (leaf surface area, transpiration rate) might figure into engineers' designs for neighborhood stormwater management plans.

In this video profile produced for Teachers' Domain, meet La'ona DeWilde, an environmental biologist who integrates her Athabascan heritage and her Western scientific training to help remote Alaskan villages address environmental issues.

In this fun activity, you will investigate some of the processes that happen in the water cycle-inside a small plastic bag.

Students use everyday building materials sand, pea gravel, cement and water to create and test pervious pavement. They learn what materials make up a traditional, impervious concrete mix and how pervious pavement mixes differ. Groups are challenged to create their own pervious pavement mixes, experimenting with material ratios to evaluate how infiltration rates change with different mix combinations.