Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

• Teaching Tips
  Teachers will need to provide additional guidance for a higher quality lesson. Students can take a tour of how to navigate this tribal climate tool.
• About the Science
  Students analyze credible data (on tribal lands) focused on different climate variables such as precipitation, temperature, snow, soil moisture, stream flow/temperature, vegetation, fire and sea level rise. Students look at climate projections over different time periods based on different emission scenarios. Students can download the datasets that are cited in the documentation. Comments from expert scientist: Tool provides easy way to visualize climate change data across western US for different tribal regions. There is a significant mismatch between the scales shown in the tool and the native resolution of the climate models used to generate the climate change data and scaling methods were not described. Data used is from CMIP5 climate projections while CMIP6 data is now becoming available.
• About the Pedagogy
  This is a resource tool in accessing current data and projected possible environmental (temperature and precipitation) trends based on high or low emissions in selected regions of the US. Regions are based on Native American tribal lands. Interactive only in that users are able to select the data parameters they wish to view. Structured activity will need to be developed to use this resource as a learning tool. This website provides great data for students to use but students will need detailed instruction and additional support from teacher.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  Requires high-speed internet access. Suggests using Google Chrome and tool may not work on other browsers. Activity is free and students are also able to download climate data.