Geographic Alliance of Iowa

Putting Iowa in its place

Misery Mountain Melting (How Climate Change Affects Ski Resorts)

This lesson, created by Tami McIntroy from Forest City High School, allows ninth grade students a real life look into climate zones and climate change. At the end of the lesson, students must take what they have learned about climate and decide the best location for a new ski resort.

Discipline/Subject

Physical Geography

Theme

Landforms

Climate

Region

North America

Five Themes of Geography

Location

Human-Environment Interaction

Region

Common Core Standards

Readings Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies (RH)

National Geographic Standards

1. How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective

2. How to use mental maps to organize information about people places, and environments in a spatial context

5. That people create regions to interpret Earth's complexity

7. The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth's surface

14. How human actions modify the physical environment

18. How to apply geography to interpret the present and plan for the future

Iowa Core Social Studies Standards

GE 1. Understand the use of geographic tools to locate and analyze information about people, places, and environments

GE 2. Understand how physical and human characteristics create and define regions

GE 5. Understand how human actions modify the environment and how the environment affects humans