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PowerPoint used

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PowerPoints used

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Some readings on the topic

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Step on it! A life-sized food web — The Science Penguin

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This is a fun idea to add to your unit on ecosystems. Make a life-sized version of an ocean food web for students to work their way through. How fun is this! Setting Up Print off the photos and at least 9 arrows. Set up the food web in a large open space. You can use sidewalk ... Read more

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explorer-IE-test | CHARLIE-GIBBS MARINE PROTECTED AREA

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Free Drupal themes | Host gator coupon | best wordpress themes © CHARLIE-GIBBS MARINE PROTECTED AREA 2019

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Could you describe the kelp forest food web as a system? Your students will design and use a simple model to test cause and effect relationships or interactions concerning the functioning of a marine food web, ranking their hypothetical ecosystems according to their stability when faced with a natural or man-made disturbance.

This interactive lesson will demonstrate the difference between "rotation" and "orbit."

In this role-playing skit your students will describe the various processes of the water cycle in the Amazon.

How does the finite amount of carbon on this planet move around in the environment, from one place to another?

Ever wonder what 38,000 animals are up to after dark?

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Could you describe the kelp forest food web as a system?

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8. Students should be able to explain how matter and energy flow through ecosystems.

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Some helpful resources

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Loss of biodiversity is just as catastrophic as climate change | Robert Watson

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Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history, says scientist Robert Watson

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Flow of energy and matter through ecosystems | High school biology | Khan Academy

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The destruction of nature threatens humanity at least as much as human-induced climate change, a global report on species loss will warn on Monday.

Complied by hundreds of leading specialists on biodiversity loss, the report will provide evidence that the planet's life-support systems are approaching a danger zone for humanity.

Up to a million species are at risk of annihilation, many within decades, was one of the findings in a leaked draft of the global assessment compiled by the UN's leading research body on nature.

The 1,800-page study will show people living today, as well as wildlife and future generations, are at risk unless urgent action is taken to reverse the loss of plants, insects and other creatures on which humanity depends for food, pollination, clean water and a stable climate.

The final draft will be completed in Paris on Saturday by experts and representatives of 132 governments including Ireland, before being issued on Monday.

The overall message is already clear, according to Robert Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

"There is no question we are losing biodiversity at a truly unsustainable rate that will affect human wellbeing both for current and future generations," he added. "We are in trouble if we don't act, but there are a range of actions that can be taken to protect nature and meet human goals for health and development."

Compilation

Like its predecessor issued in 2005, the report is a compilation of hundreds of studies, on subjects such as ocean plankton, honey bees and Amazonian botany. It is expected to provide further evidence the world is in a sixth wave of extinction. Unlike the past five, this Anthropocene extinction is human-driven.

Irish Wildlife Trust campaign officer Pádraic Fogarty said he expected it will confirm what is known, "that global ecosystems are collapsing".

"I do think it's important however that this will be spelled out in a way that we find hard to ignore. Last year, the climate scientists were very successful in grabbing attention through their use of uncompromising language - I hope this report does the same."

He hoped people would see the connections between climate breakdown and mass extinction as they are two sides of the same coin.

"We have all of the solutions to hand but what we've been lacking is any sense of urgency to get on with it. So I hope next week the penny will drop that we really need to get on with it."

Oonagh Duggan of BirdWatch Ireland said the report's significance would be on a par with recent UN reports on climate change. It should be the platform "to set out on a course of radical action to halt biodiversity loss", to end unsustainable development and to set targets - and ensure they're met, she added.

It was hard to make progress on conservation, but she believed "a green wave is happening", as indicated by Wicklow County Council declaring a "biodiversity and climate emergency" this week, but this needed to be followed up by green actions.

Mike Barrett executive director of science and conservation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said: "All of our ecosystems are in trouble. This is the most comprehensive report on the state of the environment. It irrefutably confirms that nature is in steep decline."

This posed an environmental emergency for humanity, which is threatened by a triple challenge of climate, nature and food production, he said.

Additional reporting: Guardian Service

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Up to a million species are at risk of annihilation - UN report

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The destruction of nature threatens humanity at least as much as human-induced climate change, a global report on species loss will warn on Monday. Complied by hundreds of leading specialists on biodiversity loss, the report will provide evidence that the planet's life-support systems are approaching a danger zone for humanity.

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Diplomats from 130 nations gathered in Paris today to validate a grim UN assessment of the state of nature and lay the groundwork for a rescue plan for life on Earth.

The destruction of nature threatens humanity "at least as much as human-induced climate change," UN biodiversity chief Robert Watson said as the five-day meeting began.

"We have a closing window of opportunity to act and narrowing options."

A 44-page draft "Summary for Policy Makers", obtained by AFP, catalogues the 1,001 ways in which our species has plundered the planet and damaged its capacity to renew the resources upon which we depend, starting with breathable air, drinkable water and productive soil.

The impact of humanity's expanding footprint and appetites has been devastating.

Up to a million species face extinction, many within decades, according to the report, and three-quarters of Earth's land surface has been "severely altered".

A third of ocean fish stocks are in decline, and the rest, barring a few, are harvested at the very edge of sustainability.

A dramatic die-off of pollinating insects, especially bees, threatens essential crops valued at half-a-trillion dollars annually.

Twenty 10-year targets adopted in 2010 under the United Nations' biodiversity treaty - to expand protected areas, slow species and forest loss, and reduce pollution - will, with one or two exceptions, fail badly.

Based on an underlying report that draws from 400 experts and weighs in at 1,800 pages, the executive summary has to be vetted line-by-line by diplomats, with scientists at their elbow.

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) document, once approved, will be released on 6 May.

Historically, conservation biology has focused on the plight of pandas, polar bears and a multitude of less "charismatic" animals and plants that humanity is harvesting, eating, crowding or poisoning into oblivion.

But in the last two decades, that focus has shifted back to us.

"Up to now, we have talked about the importance of biodiversity mostly from an environmental perspective," Watson told AFP ahead of the Paris meet.
Agriculture is key
"Now we are saying that nature is crucial for food production, for pure water, for medicines and even social cohesion."

And to fight climate change.

Forests and oceans, for example, soak up half of the planet-warming greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere.

If they didn't, Earth might already be locked into an unliveable future of runaway global warming.

And yet, an area of tropical forest five times the size of England has been destroyed since 2014, mainly to service the global demand for beef, biofuels, soy beans and palm oil.

"The recent IPCC report shows to what extent climate change threatens biodiversity," said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a main architect of the Paris Agreement, referring to the UN's climate science panel.

"And the upcoming IPBES report - as important for humanity - will show these two problems have overlapping solutions."
Extinctions hard to see
That overlap, she added, begins with agriculture, which accounts for at least a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.

Set up in 2012, the IPBES synthesises published science for policymakers in the same way the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) does on climate.

Both advisory bodies feed into UN treaties.

But the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has always been a poor stepchild compared to its climate counterpart, and the IPBES was added as an afterthought, making its authority harder to establish.

Biodiversity experts are trying to engineer a "Paris moment" for nature akin to the 2015 Paris climate treaty.

Public concern about global warming has crystallised around impacts ranging from rising seas to deadly heatwaves, and the Paris pact's hard target for capping the rise in global temperatures.

The 2018 IPCC report cited by Tubiana added a time imperative: to hold the line at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world must reduce CO2 emissions 45 percent by 2030, and become "carbon neutral" by mid-century, it concluded.

But finding the equivalent for nature has proven difficult.

"Extinctions are not something the public can easily see," said Watson.

A growing number of scientists and NGOs are calling for 30-50% of Earth's surface to be "sustainably managed" by 2030, and more thereafter.

But the draft report makes no such concrete proposals.

The next opportunity for a visionary plan to be ratified would be the next full meeting in October 2020 of the parties to the Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China.

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Destruction of nature threatens life on Earth, UN warns

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Diplomats from 130 nations gathered in Paris today to validate a grim UN assessment of the state of nature and lay the groundwork for a rescue plan for life on Earth. The destruction of nature threatens humanity "at least as much as human-induced climate change," UN biodiversity chief Robert Watson said as the five-day meeting began.

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NoS 6, 7, 8, 10
E&S 6&7
CW 10
PW 6&8
BW 3&10