Deserts

Create a classroom desert book. Have students research a plant, animal, or even a specific desert and do a short report. The project should include vocabulary and at least one illustration. Put them together to make a “Desert Book.”

Read about Idaho's Sand Dunes. Have a class discussion about the significance of the dunes for the history of Idaho and their general impact on the region and the state.

Select one of the following topics. Research the issues and write a clear argument for or against with detailed support and factual ideas and reasons.

• Deserts show proof that the earth changes

• We should transform desert lands into community farms

• Deserts are useless areas of the earth

• Deserts are important ecosystems and provide valuable resources

Sort desert pictures from pictures of forests, oceans, mountains, etc. You might also consider sorting desert plants or animals from those of other biomes.

Learn about the Tohono O'odam Nation. They are a desert people that live in Arizona. Here is a math/art lesson that involves creating a design for basket making. You may want to see some basket designs before doing this activity.

Using data from NASA's Earth Observatory for the city of Cairo in the Sahara desert, calculate the average annual temperature, average annual precipitation, range and variation. Compare the variation measure to that of other biomes. 

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow. Examples of observations could include that animals need to take in food, but plants produce their own; the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals; the requirement of plants to have light; and that all living things need water.

Animals have body parts that capture and convey different kinds of information needed for growth and survival. Animals respond to these inputs with behaviors that help them survive. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to see, hear, grasp objects, protect themselves, move from place to place, and seek and take in food.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land. The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions and the extent to which those conditions vary over years.

Scientists record patterns of the weather across different times and areas so that they can make predictions about what kind of weather might happen next. Examples of data could include average temperature, precipitation, and wind direction.

The environment also affects the traits that an animal develops. Some characteristics result from individuals' interactions with the environment. Examples of the environment affecting a trait could include that normally tall plants grown with insufficient water are stunted, and a pet dog that is given too much food and little exercise may become overweight.

Different sense receptors are specialized for particular kinds of information, which may be then processed by the animal’s brain. Animals are able to use their perceptions and memories to guide their actions. Emphasis is on systems of information transfer.

Plants and animals have both internal and external structures that serve various functions in growth, survival, behavior, and reproduction. Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc. Examples of structures could include thorns, stems, roots, colored petals, heart, stomach, lung, brain, and skin.

Nearly all of Earth’s available water is in the ocean. Most freshwater is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. When the environment changes in ways that affect a place’s physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.

Sometimes the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics. Examples of cause-and-effect relationships could be that plants that have larger thorns than other plants may be less likely to be eaten by predators, and animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

Emphasis is on how patterns vary by latitude, altitude, and geographic land distribution. Emphasis of atmospheric circulation is on the sunlight-driven latitudinal banding, the Coriolis effect, and resulting prevailing winds; emphasis of ocean circulation is on the transfer of heat by the global ocean convection cycle, which is constrained by the Coriolis effect and the outlines of continents. Examples of models can be diagrams, maps and globes, or digital representations.

Natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others. Emphasis is on using concepts of natural selection, including overproduction of offspring, passage of time, variation in a population, selection of favorable traits, and heritability of traits.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth’s terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem’s biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health. Changes in biodiversity can influence humans’ resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on—for example, water purification and recycling. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in these competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments, both living and nonliving, are shared. Emphasis is on predicting consistent patterns of interactions in different ecosystems in terms of the relationships among and between organisms and abiotic components of ecosystems. Examples of types of interactions could include competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources.

Plants, algae (including phytoplankton), and many microorganisms use the energy from light to make sugars (food) from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water through the process of photosynthesis, which also releases oxygen. These sugars can be used immediately or stored for growth or later use. Emphasis is on tracing movement of matter and flow of energy.