Climate Change in Wyoming

Grade Level: 9-12

Lesson Background:

In this lesson, students will learn about the various ways climate change is impacting Wyoming. Students will use the Global Vegetation Project platform to interpret temperature and precipitation data from six sites in Wyoming representing different ecoregions. They will compare historic data to current data and use that information to project the future climate of Wyoming.

Lesson Resources:

• Lesson Plan (PDF)
• Lesson Plan (Word Doc)
• Lesson Data
• gVeg User Guide
• Walter-Lieth Diagram Guide
• Whittaker Biome Diagram Guide

Possible Guiding Questions:

What are the current impacts of climate change in Wyoming? How might climate change affect Wyoming's ecosystems in the future? How are the different types of ecosystems in Wyoming responding to climate change? How can past climate data allow us to project Wyoming's future climate?

Possible Instructional Uses:

You may use this phenomenon to explore the current and future impacts of climate change in Wyoming. This lesson also provides an opportunity to take a data-driven approach to analyzing climate change and forecasting into the future. This may also serve as a starting point to deeper investigations into how particular species in Wyoming have responded to climate change.

Performance Expectation Connections:

HS-ESS3-5. Analyze data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.

Image: Rick Cummings - licensed under the CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Science and Engineering Practices

• Analyzing and Interpreting Data
• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Crosscutting Concepts

• Cause and Effect
• Stability and Change

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Global Climate Change