Ecology

Make a two-column list of living (biotic) and nonliving things (abiotic) that can be found in the schoolyard environment. Pick another environment — forest, ocean, desert, backyard, classroom, grocery store, etc. — and make similar lists.

Create a poster about some aspect of ecology. Include details and scientific facts about your topic. Illustrate your poster.

What makes something a living thing? Research the properties of living things. Write an opinion piece about fire. Is it living? Why or why not? Support your answer with details.

Bury some standard garbage objects — such as paper, aluminum foil, plastic bottle cap, etc. — into small containers of soil. Water them often and check them daily to see how quickly the objects decay. Create a graph to plot the decay process.

Test acid rain and plant growth. Plant seeds in soil placed in small containers such as plastic drinking glasses. Arrange the cups so they will get sunshine. Water them with regular water until the plants can be seen.

Once the seeds have sprouted, label the cups to indicate how much “acid rain” they will receive. Then on a regular schedule, water the plants with acidic water (vinegar is an easy option), varying the amount of acid each plant cup receives. Measure the vinegar going into each cup and modify the amount used to water each plant. Compare the plant growth. Create graphs and/or plot lines to show the results.

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.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things. Examples of human influence on the land could include planting trees after a burn, protecting farm fields from erosion, or keeping plastic trash out of waterways.

Living things need water, food, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. An example of a relationship is that deer eat buds and leaves so they usually live in forested areas, and grasses need sunlight so they often grow in meadows. Plants, animals and their surroundings make up a system.

Plants depend on water and light to grow.

Some plants can depend on animals, wind, and water for pollination or to move their seeds around. Emphasis is on the interaction between animals and plants rather than all forms of pollination and seed dispersal.

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

Interactions with the environment affect the characteristics that organisms develop. 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.

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.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

This two-part experiment can be adapted to fit the target grade level. 

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. Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

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 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.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the soil in terrestrial environments or to the water in aquatic environments. The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem. Emphasis is on describing the conservation of matter and flow of energy into and out of various ecosystems, and on defining the boundaries of the system.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

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, nutrient recycling, and prevention of soil erosion. Examples of design solution constraints could include scientific, economic, and social considerations. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase. Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship. Examples can include water usage (such as stream and river use, aquifer recharge, or dams and levee construction); land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, wetland benefits, stream reclamation, or fire restoration); and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).