Students gain an understanding of how a species becomes threatened, their needs and interactions between the natural landscapes and humans. This session explores the challenges our biodiversity face, policies and legislation and simple actions that can be done to restore the balance and help conservation. This is a field based activity including site visits to numerous coastal locations observing and discussing issues and options.
Victorian Curriculum Learning Outcomes:
Science inquiry:
Formulate questions or hypotheses that can be investigated scientifically, including the identification of independent, dependent and controlled variables (VCSIS134)
Science understanding:
Science and technology contribute to finding solutions to a range of contemporary issues; these solutions may impact on other areas of society and involve ethical considerations (VCSSU090)
Biological sciences:
Interactions between organisms can be described in terms of food chains and food webs and can be affected by human activity (VCSSU093)
Ecosystems consist of communities of interdependent organisms and abiotic components of the environment; matter and energy flow through these systems (VCSSU121)
Human activities (for example, over-exploitation, habitat destruction, monocultures, pollution) can reduce biodiversity and can impact on the magnitude, duration and speed of ecosystem change (ACSBL028)
Geographic knowledge – landscapes, environments, interconnection, management, biodiversity:
Human causes of landscape degradation, the effects on landscape quality and the implications for places (VCGGK119)
Human alteration of biomes to produce food, industrial materials and fibres, and the environmental effects of these alterations (VCGGK136)
Different types and distribution of environmental changes and the forms it takes in different places (VCGGK144)
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ approaches to custodial responsibility and environmental management in different regions of Australia (VCGGK148)
The interrelationships between land cover change and biodiversity loss, for example, the processes of evolutionary diversification and species extinction and their implications for land cover in the future. (ACHGE080)
The effects of biodiversity loss on ecosystem services and species, and ecosystem and genetic diversity. (ACHGE081)
