Use links in the right hand column to find information which will help you complete your assignment on the biomes of the Earth. Hold your mouse over the links to see a summary of the type of information you will find in each link.
Ms. Mostad's Science 10: Assignment
Learning intention: use a food web to show relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers in a particular ecosystem. Display your understanding in a poster.
- Select a particular ecosystem (e.g. Vancouver Island temperate rainforest, Brazilian rainforest, Pacific intertidal, Vancouver Island pond, etc.)
- Check with your teacher to register your choice. Everyone will choose a different ecosystem.
- Research the roles of organisms in the ecosystem: What do they eat? What eats them?
- Include organisms from each trophic level: producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, tertiary consumer, decomposer.
- Include the name and a picture of each organism.
- Include arrows on your web to show the flow of energy.
Check with your teacher to make sure you understand the criteria by which your work will be assessed.
Mr. Spray's Science 10: Ecology Project
Use this checklist to make sure your research is complete:
What are biomes? - List them.
Vocabulary: abiotic, aeration, adaptive radiation, bioaccumulation, biodegradation, biome, biotic, climax community, carbonate, commensalism, decomposers, denitrification, ecological succession, ecosystem, food chains, food pyramids, food webs, heavy metals, keystone speicies, lightning, mutualism, nitrification, natrual selection, nutrients, parasitism, PCBs, pesticides, pH, phosphorus, photosynthesis, potassium, predation, proliferation, symbiosis, trophic levels.
Abiotic and biotic components in the ecosystem: Identify distinctive plants, animals and climatic characterisitics in the biome such as the cactus in the desert, the kangaroo in the outback and the extreme cold and heat of the boreal forest. Describe reltationships between the biotic and abiotic elements such as air, water, soil, temperature, bacteria, plants and animals. Food chains, webs and pyramids such as producer, consumer, decomposer, predator-prey cycle, symbiosis.
Nutrient cycles; carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus: Carbon-carbon dioxide, carbonate, photosynthesis, respiration, decomposition, volcanic activity. Nitrogen - nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, nitrogen fixation. Phosphorus - phosphate, weathering, sedimentation, geological uplift
Effects of altering an abiotic factor: Climate change, water contamination, soil degradation, deforestation.
Species adaption: Drop leaves to conserve energy in winter, change fur colour in winter, insects that look like a twigs, needles on branches... Ecological succession. Climax community. Natural selection.
Food webs or pyramid: Straight forward.
Mechanisms and/or impacts of bioaccumulations: What is it? Effects on various levels in food chain; producers, consumers (primary, secondary and tertiary). Removal of a keystone species. Effects on different levels such as red tide in oysters and humans; heavy metals in fish, then humans.
Traditional ecological knowledge.
Impacts of natural phenomena such as foreign species, diesease, pollution, exploitation of resources: Examples: If a species fails to adapt to changing environment such as the cod stocks in the Atlantic to increasing water temperature and the removal of their food stocks; pine tree devastation from pine beetle due to warmer winters; burning rain forests to grow crops and losing all soil nutrients in three years; or introducing the American Bullfrog into Vancouver Island lakes.
Click on the image below to view the criteria by which this assignment will be evaluated.
