This interactive map allows users to view the locations of levees and land areas projected to be below the average annual flood elevation at various times in the near and distant future.
The map is worldwide and searchable, with slider tools, a settings menu, and an instructional video about how to use the map.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This map is easy to use and understand.
The ability to change settings and projections to view the impacts is useful and fun.
The information tabs on the settings menu provide many opportunities for extension activities based upon this map and the data sets employed to create it.
Additional Prerequisites
Depending on the student level of understanding, it may be helpful to explore the impacts of rising seawater on populations and infrastructure when including this map in a learning activity.
The instructional video has an ad before it begins and is just under 5 minutes long.
Differentiation
For students who may be interested in the economic and social impacts of sea level rise, invite them check out this video resource.
Encourage students to look at the NASA data on sea level rise and make some projections of their own. These could include simple predictions, such as future sea level height, or more complicated predictions, such as the possible migrations of at-risk communities to higher elevations.
For students in upper elementary and middle grades, this explanation of how humans measure global sea level is both interesting and helpful.
Scientist Notes
This map shows the current state of sea level rise and areas under flood protection. It projects impending coastal flooding and land below water level. Although, marginal error increases when down-scaled to the local level because datasets were collected from a global level. It is also unable to predict extreme storm surges and flood events, since it does not take into account erosion and storm intensity. The map is objective and suitable to explore and project coastal risk, thus it is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience 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.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.1.6-8 Construct maps to represent and explain the spatial patterns of cultural and environmental characteristics.
D2.Geo.2.6-8 Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions, and changes in their environmental characteristics.
D2.Geo.2.9-12 Use maps, satellite images, photographs, and other representations to explain relationships between the locations of places and regions and their political, cultural, and economic dynamics.
