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Database Provider

Author

Probable Futures

Grades

9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, AP® / College

Subjects

Science, Social Studies, Biology, Earth and Space Sciences, Geography, English Language Arts

Resource Types

  • Ebooks
  • Interactive Media

Regional Focus

Global, North America, Oceania, Africa, Asia

Land: A Tour of Drought

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Synopsis
  • This reading explores the predicted effects of drought due to global warming in Canada, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, and Australia.
  • This reading puts into perspective the uniqueness of Earth's climate, compares it to Mars, and highlights the importance of solving climate change to prevent prolonged or severe droughts in the future.
Teaching Tips

Positives

  • Through a series of case studies, students learn about how different climates, like deserts and grasslands, are affected by drought.
  • Students can use the interactive maps to visualize the likelihood of a year-plus drought in different regions of the world at 1°C and 3°C of warming.

Additional Prerequisites

  • This resource is the third part of a four-part series on land but it can be read as a standalone.
  • Students should have a general understanding of climate change and its effects on weather patterns.
  • Students should understand terms like climate and precipitation and have a general understanding of different biomes, including grasslands, steppes, deserts, savannahs, and shrublands.

Differentiation

  • This resource can be used in geography classes during lessons about how different climates affect development factors, such as poverty and conflict, and in social studies classes during lessons about how humans will be affected by the increasingly limited availability of natural resources, such as water, due to climate change.
  • For more advanced students and older age groups, use this article to learn about doughnut economics
  • Science classes can use this article to connect to lessons about the water cycle, weather patterns, and evapotranspiration.
Scientist Notes
This resource evaluates the impact of droughts and how humans from different geographies have responded to extreme conditions. It presents two warming scenarios, thus enabling communities at risk to plan and implement action that would reverse the impact. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
  • Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
    • ESS2: Earth's Systems
      • HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
    • ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
      • HS-ESS3-3 Create a computational simulation to illustrate the relationships among management of natural resources, the sustainability of human populations, and biodiversity.
      • 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.9.9-12 Evaluate the influence of long-term climate variability on human migration and settlement patterns, resource use, and land uses at local-to-global scales.
  • Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
    • Reading: Science & Technical Subjects (6-12)
      • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.9-10.2 Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; trace the text's explanation or depiction of a complex process, phenomenon, or concept; provide an accurate summary of the text.
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