26 resources and 0 collections matched your query.
Library of 3383 accessible STEM media resources.
Showing resources 21 to 26 of 26
Select a resource below to get more information and link to download this resource.
Polar bears are living on borrowed time. They are the descendants of grizzlies, long ago evolved to live and hunt on the frozen ice of the Arctic, eating a specialized diet of seal meat. But the winters have become increasingly warmer, the ice is disappearing, and raising a family becomes a much more difficult proposition when hunting time is short and food is scarce. Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham narrates.
(Source: DCMP)
With support from the National Science Foundation, Lake Ecologist Jasmine Saros and her team from the University of Maine are gathering diatoms from the lake waters of southwestern Greenland. They are using the diatoms in their studies of how climate change is affecting this Arctic ecosystem. Diatoms are a type of algae that responds rapidly to environmental change. Diatom species generally associated with warmer conditions are increasing at unprecedented rates in the sediment record.
Whether they arise from human causes or forces within planet Earth itself, natural disasters threaten life and civilization with what seems to be growing frequency. Studies troubling developments in marine, arctic, wetland, and urban environments while highlighting research opportunities that may help prevent future catastrophes. Coral reef decay, Everglades habitat loss, polar ice disappearance, and global warming are all analyzed. Looks at earthquake prediction, hurricane and tornado tracking, air pollution monitoring, tsunami warning systems, and the cleanup of toxic flood sediment in New Orleans.
With support from the National Science Foundation, Astrobiologist Richard Hoover really goes to extremes to find living things that thrive where life would seem to be impossible--from the glaciers of the Alaskan Arctic to the ice sheets of Antarctica. He thinks it is even possible that over the course of billions of years, life has spread around the solar system--a sort of cosmic cross pollination. Microbes could live in the ice deep within comets, frozen there for eons until a collision with another planet or moon delivered them to a new home.
It is late spring on Kodiak Island, Alaska, and all eyes are on the horizon for one of nature’s most graceful giants: the gray whale. It is here that they begin and end the longest migration of any mammal. They will travel 12,000 miles from the icy waters of the Arctic to the warm lagoons of Baja, Mexico, and back again. Today, nearly 24,000 gray whales continue their annual migration along the coast of North America giving humans a glimpse of these majestic creatures that live in the deep.
One of the oldest, most successful arthropods on Earth, horseshoe crabs have existed for over 350 million years. But in recent years their populations, have crashed by 75% from overfishing, resulting in moratoriums on catching them. Few of us know that most human lives depend on the valuable, shockingly blue blood of these "living fossils." Even more surprising, a tiny shore bird, the red knot, is so dependent on them that the crabs' population crash may make these long-distance flyers extinct. This mystery of mutual dependencies emerges from filmmakers and scientists revealing a disturbing ecology story ranging from the Arctic regions to the southern tip of the Americas.
