NSES Content Standard D  Earth and Space Science: Origin and evolution of the earth system Grades 9-12, page 189 Interactions among the solid earth, the oceans, the atmosphere, and organisms have resulted in the ongoing evolution of the earth system. We can observe some changes such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on a human time scale, but many processes such as mountain building and plate movements take place over hundreds of millions of years.

 
Benchmark 4B The Physical Setting: The Earth
Grades 6-8, page 69
Climates have sometimes changed abruptly in the past as a result of changes in the earth's crust, such as volcanic eruptions or impacts of huge rocks from space. Even relatively small changes in atmospheric or ocean content can have widespread effects on climate if the change lasts long enough.

Benchmark 4C The Physical Setting: Processes that Shape the Earth
Grades 6-8, page 73
Some changes in the earth's surface are abrupt (such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) while other changes happen very slowly (such as uplift and wearing down of mountains). The earth's surface is shaped in part by the motion of water and wind over very long times, which act to level mountain ranges.

Benchmark 4C The Physical Setting: Processes that Shape the Earth
Grades 9-12, page 74
Plants alter the earth's atmosphere by removing carbon dioxide from it, using the carbon to make sugars and releasing oxygen. This process is responsible for the oxygen content of the air.

Benchmark 10D Historical Perspectives: Extending Time
Grades 9-12, page 246
The idea that the earth might be vastly older than most people believed made little headway in science until the publication of Principles of Geology by an English scientist, Charles Lyell, early in the 19th century. The impact of Lyell's book was a result of both the wealth of observations it contained on the patterns of rock layers in mountains and the locations of various kinds of fossils, and of the careful logic he used in drawing inferences from his data.