Teachers will want to start by reading the Introduction.

The lessons can be downloaded from our Lessons Page in 3 different formats - .pdf, Word documents, and .rtf files.

In the first lesson, "Studying Vegetation From Space", the students create two specialized satellite images used to specifically study vegetation called Normalized Difference Vegetation Index or NDVI for short. If time is limited then they can use prepared images from the data page.

Once the students have created or downloaded the "NDVI" images they will need to create a different image that shows change between the two NDVI images. The new image is called a ΔNDVI or Delta NDVI (Delta (Δ) signifies change) This is a simple process and is explained in the "Create ΔNDVI" lesson. If time is limited then they can use a prepared image from the data page.

To determine the land-use in the satellite images area students will use aerial photographs. The detailed "birds-eye" view of the earth that aerial photographs and satellite images offer is valuable. They will need to identify areas where change has occurred between the dates of the two satellite images. In this case, we have provided two images. One was taken in 1984 and the other was from 1997. The "Aerial Photography Interpretation" lesson will help prepare their investigations of the way a small part of the Earth has changed in only 13 years.

In the "Using ΔNormalized Difference Vegetation Index Image" lesson, students can investigate vegetation loss and patterns of change in a given time period. They can use ancillary data- topographic maps and aerial photographs to help identify the ΔNDVI image. This lesson offers students an excellent opportunity to solve problems in small groups. They can manually interpret the ΔNDVI image using topographic maps and aerial photographs.

The data necessary to each lessons can be downloaded from our Data Page, and the software necessary to use the data can be downloaded from our Software Page.

In addition to the lesson, there are other parts of this web site to both support the teacher and the student. The Remote Sensing Glossary is provided to help introduce the scientific terms used in remote sensing. There are numerous Appendices to help teachers implement this unit in the science classroom alone or an interdisciplinary project.