Wetlands

Together as a class, research wetlands in general, noting specifically what makes a wetland unique. Create a list of wetland-specific animals, plants, and environments. From that, generate a class or small-group diorama of a wetland.

Take a field trip to a local wetland environment that includes a map or brochure about the area. As students explore the wetland, have them identify their location and associated points of interest based on the map. Later, have students create their own map of the wetland and label the plants, animals, and other important objects they saw in and around the wetland.

Visit the website Give Water a Hand and look over the Action Guides and project Success Stories. Then have students write up a proposal for selecting a service project to help a wetland in your area. Present the proposals to the class. Students could vote on the best proposal and perform the service project together.

Gather cattails for your class to measure the heads. Label each cattail with a sticker marked A, B, etc. to make sure students have the chance to measure each one.

Plants in a wetland actually hold water in the soil. Weigh some common plants before and after watering, for a period of weeks, to determine the average amount of water the roots will hold in the soil. Allow the plant to become as dry as possible between watering. For a faster experiment with water-weight measurement, compare the water retention ability of wetlands to that of other materials using Amazing Wetlands: The Giant Sponge Effect.

Visit a wetland. Students use equipment to measure the positive and negative elevation changes within the wetland area. See Field Studies: Slope Survey for more details. 

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. All living things need water.

Plants and animals can change their environment.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land. They live in places that have the things they need. 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. Examples could include keeping plastic trash out of waterways. 

Plants depend on water and light to grow.

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.

Water can change the shape of the land.  Examples of solutions could include different designs of dikes to hold back water, and different designs for using shrubs, grass, and trees to hold back the land.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. 

Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles. Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.

Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment. Characteristics result from individuals’ interactions with the environment. 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.

Examples of evidence could include needs, characteristics of the organisms, and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around. Living things also affect the physical characteristics of their regions. Examples could include a beaver constructing a dam to create a pond.  Examples of variables to test could include angle of slope in the downhill movement of water and volume of water flow.

Energy and fuels that humans use are derived from natural sources, and their use affects the environment in multiple ways. Examples of renewable energy resources could include water behind dams. Examples of environmental effects could include loss of habitat.

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. Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there.  Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.

A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants and animals) and therefore operate as “decomposers.” Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil. Matter cycles between the air and soil, and among plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. Organisms obtain gases and water, from the environment, and release waste matter (gas, liquid, or solid) back into the environment. Newly introduced species can damage the balance of an ecosystem. 

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. 

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

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.

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, both living and nonliving, are shared.

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.

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

Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation, crystallization, percolation, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land. Movements of water and its changes in form are propelled by sunlight and gravity. Emphasis is on the ways water changes its state as it moves through the multiple pathways of the hydrologic cycle. 

Humans depend on Earth’s land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. Minerals, fresh water, and biosphere resources are limited, and many are not renewable or replaceable over human lifetimes.

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Technology and engineering can potentially help us manage natural resources. 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).