Mrs. Irwin's integrating science in garden restoration |
Ecosystems
Ecosystems
From the NGSS disciplinary core ideas for Biodiversity and Humans LS4.D: populations live in a variety of habitats, and changes in those habitats affect the organisms that live there.
From the NGSS disciplinary core ideas for Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems LS2.A: organisms and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with non-living factors.
From the NGSS disciplinary core ideas for Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems LS2.A: organisms and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with non-living factors.
Ecosystems are places where atoms cycle and energy flows within and between living and non-living things. Throughout this website I have talked about these ideas and how matter and energy moves throughout our garden. When we considered which plants we would like to add to our plot of the garden we decided to focus on what kind of consumers that we wanted in the garden. The whiteboard below outlines the animals that we wanted in our habitat and which plants to plant in order to attract them. While the list of plants that we did get differs from this one a little, they still focus on inviting the key animals listed. As each consumer takes in food, part of that matter is used up in building factories or dumped out as unused materials. Less and less matter and energy is available from the source
a walk-through the kedzie garden food web
Producer makes the food, consumer eats the producer, consumer eats the consumer. As each consumer takes in food, part of that matter is used up in building factories or dumped out as unused materials. Less and less matter and energy is available from the source.
A mushroom breaks down the tilled up grass from when we started to prep our soil for planting. Some of the grass leaves the mushroom, while some is stored for the mushroom to use later to make energy. The nitrogen is carried through the soil by the flow of water. The nitrogen left behind by the mushroom is taken up with water by the blackberry bush and used to make protein chains from amino acids in the protein building factory. The blackberry bush makes berries after fertilization occurs. A squirrel ingest a blackberry it pulled from the bush and stores some of the sugars while burning the rest to run away from a car that almost hit it. A red-tailed hawk takes his chance while the squirrel is busy burying a nut and snatches it up to eat in its nest. Even though the hawk had the whole squirrel, he received less matter from the plant then originally consumed by the squirrel.
A mushroom breaks down the tilled up grass from when we started to prep our soil for planting. Some of the grass leaves the mushroom, while some is stored for the mushroom to use later to make energy. The nitrogen is carried through the soil by the flow of water. The nitrogen left behind by the mushroom is taken up with water by the blackberry bush and used to make protein chains from amino acids in the protein building factory. The blackberry bush makes berries after fertilization occurs. A squirrel ingest a blackberry it pulled from the bush and stores some of the sugars while burning the rest to run away from a car that almost hit it. A red-tailed hawk takes his chance while the squirrel is busy burying a nut and snatches it up to eat in its nest. Even though the hawk had the whole squirrel, he received less matter from the plant then originally consumed by the squirrel.
A Bill Nye the science guy episode on life cycles
Along with the Magic School Bus, I always found Bill Nye extremely entertaining and informative as a kid.
Photo used under Creative Commons from JSF539