Habitat

Select a habitat and form an answer to each of the question words regarding that space. Who lives there, what are the conditions in that habitat that are just right for those creatures, where can this habitat be found, when do the animals eat (hibernate, sleep, migrate, etc.), why do these animals live here and not in a different habitat, how do they hunt, communicate, create shelter, get water. Create a class poster about that habitat and allow several students to illustrate it.

Watch a movie or a science program about habitats (or a specific habitat) and summarize the key points of the presentation.

Consider how one creature might view the environment of a habitat differently than another from the same habitat. Would a mountain goat see a mountain in the same way as a lizard? Or imagine how an animal from one habitat might view another habitat. How would a penguin view a desert habitat? Write a narrative from the point of view of one or more creatures. 

The HabCam is a camera placed in the ocean to take pictures of the ocean habitat and wildlife that happens by. Take a look at some of the images and count how many different animals you can see.

The HabCam is a camera placed in the ocean to take pictures of the ocean habitat and wildlife that happens by. Take a look at some of the images and count how many different animals you can see.

Survival can depend upon how quickly an animal can move. Here is a great lesson (PDF) from the National Wildlife Federation on calculating average speed.

Humans have a habitat too. Many of us purchase homes as our habitat. Check out this set of data on Idaho’s statewide housing analysis.

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.

Examples of plants and animals changing their environment could include a squirrel digs in the ground to hide its food and tree roots can break concrete. Things that people do to live comfortably can affect the environments around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land. They live in places that have the things they need. Examples of relationships could include that deer eat buds and leaves therefore 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.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things. Designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models. These representations are useful in communicating ideas for a problem’s solutions to other people. 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.

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.

Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment. Characteristics result from individuals’ interactions with the environment, which can range from diet to learning. The environment affects the traits that an organism develops. 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.

Local, regional, and global patterns of rock formations reveal changes over time due to earth forces, such as earthquakes. The presence and location of certain fossil types indicate the order in which rock layers were formed. Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant fossils and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time; and a canyon with different rock layers in the walls and a river in the bottom, indicating that over time a river cut through the rock.

Energy and fuels that are modified from natural sources affect the environment in multiple ways.  Examples of renewable energy resources could include wind energy, water behind dams, and sunlight; non-renewable energy resources are fossil fuels and atomic energy. Examples of environmental effects could include biological effects from moving parts, erosion, change of habitat, and pollution.

Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere. Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments. Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms. Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land, tropical plant fossils found in Arctic areas, and fossils of extinct organisms.

Sometimes the differences in characteristics between individuals of the same species provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing. 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.

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.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. 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. 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.

Examples of types of interactions could include competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial. 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.

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.

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).