Overview
Goal: Create a sustainable ecosystem to track interactions of organisms and matter and to conduct an experiment that simulates human influences on the environment.
Description: In this project, Environmental Sustainability students were challenged to construct a sustainable small scale ecosystem in which they would investigate a human influence on the natural world. The ecocolumns have two chambers: the terrestrial chamber, the aquatic chamber. Within these chambers, students observed interactions between living and non-living factors and traced cycles of matter, including nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus. Also, students chose a variable to test within the ecocolumn and designed a 6 week investigation to simulate the effects of a factor such as runoff or pollution. They presented their findings through a detailed sketches and scientific papers which summarized their investigation and findings.
Subject: Environmental Sustainability
Grade Level: 10th-11th
Materials
- Ecocolumns Cycles Sketch
- Baseline Data Lab
- Designing Investigation: guidelines, peer edit, starting paper
- Ecocolumn: Final Paper Guidelines
- Final Paper Template
- Group Evaluation
Mastery Assessment
- Labeled sketch of ecocolumn with biogeochemical cycles
- Formal lab report of 6 week investigation, including data and literature review and conclusions
