Climate change

5. Biodiversity loss

Goals

 -understand how biodiversity is defined,
 -learn why biodiversity is important,
 -understand the methods used by science to measure biodiversity
-understand that each habitat (school garden) has a variety of plants,
-understand that each species is defined by its own unique characteristics,
-learn that biodiversity is an cimportant characteristic of a habitat.

 Subject

Biology

Students age

14-18 y

Description

Activity1 (1h) :

General introduction to biodiversity (key words).
-Students learn to measure the richness and abundance of a model ecosystem (can of beans)
-Students learn to graph data for model ecosystems and the histograms will be used for the
poster.
-Students learn to calculate a value that represents diversity (Simpson’s diversity index).
- Students learn to use findings to answer questions about model ecosystems.
-Students take some photos of their model ecosystem for the poster.

Lab.activity1     Bean biodiversity

Activity2 (1h) :

to identify and count the school garden tall trees to measure biodiversity
- General introduction to taxonomy.
-Students learn to identify the different tall tree species present in the school garden.
- Students take some photos of the tall trees for the poster.
-Students count the number of the different species to measure the richness and abundance.
-Students graph data for school garden ecosystem and the histograms will be used for the
poster.

-Students calculate Simpson’s diversity index for school garden ecosystem.

Lab.activity2        Simpson index