It is a tall order to try to study even the recent past, so visitors should find the research accomplishments of the staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Paleoclimatology Program quite impressive. Their work revolves around examining different aspects of the natural world, such as ice cores and lake sediments, in order to understand climate variability over...

NOAA offers links to a variety of educational materials on meteorology, hydrology, climatology, and other weather-related fields for children, teens, and young adults at this website. Students can find websites where they can learn about hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, and floods through interactive games. Teachers can find lightning safety presentations, satellite images, lightning photos, and...

The mission of NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration includes providing "scientific and technical support to prepare for and respond to oil and chemical releases", along with working to protect and restore marine and coastal ecosystems. On the homepage, visitors will find the "Current News" area a good place to start. Here they can learn about current response situations and some of the...

The Great Lakes are vast, and provide fabulous laboratories for people to learn about everything from hydrology to cultural geography. This remarkable collection from NOAA brings together multimedia, lessons, real-world data, and background information about these bodies of water. The homepage features a meditative narrative essay that combines topographic description with general observations...

The National Geophysical Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a wide range of educational materials designed for oceanographers, private industry partners, and a range of other users. This particular corner of the site brings together dozens of resources that deal with seafloor topography, sediment thickness, natural hazards, and unique animated dives to...

Educators in the geophysical sciences will find much to work with on this site created by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s National Geophysical Data Center. Utilizing data captured over time by their team of scientific experts, the site includes a climate timeline informational tool which can be used to demonstrate the transformation of the Earth’s climate over the past 100,000...

This website presents the collaborative work of Texas Water Resources Institute, the Agriculture Program at Texas A&M University, and Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) to investigate water quality protection and improvements in six Texas reservoirs. Visitors can discover the vulnerabilities of Texas's water quality and how this collaboration intends to deal with increasing threats. The...

Drawing on material support from the National Science Foundation, the American Association of Community Colleges, and Chemeketa Community College this site provides access to a number of instructional items for those who are teaching classes about the world of sustainable resources. As one might guess, the "Instructional and Educational Materials" is a fine place to start. This area has complete...

For many years, WGBH - the PBS member station from Boston - has provided excellent programming and online content on many different topics, and NOVA has been one of their most popular offerings. Now WGBH presents NOVA Labs, a series of interactive online science activities that would be a wonderful addition to secondary science curriculum. Users should create a free login, which will allow them to...

When a team of archeologists uncovered a mass grave in East London in the 1990s, they initially hypothesized that it must have been a burial site of victims of the plague. However, radiocarbon testing revealed that the skeletons dated from sometime around 1250 CE, a century before the plague was introduced to Europe. So what happened? Through examining a number of historic manuscripts,...