Discover the Wonders of Biodiversity: A Hands-On Adventure for Middle and High School Learners - Alicia Carlson

Audience

Middle school and high school

Time

Approximately 2 class periods:

1. Day 1: Dive into the fascinating world of biodiversity through reading, exploring images, and analyzing charts.
2. Day 2: Apply what you've learned by engaging with GLOBE resources and interactive tools.

Materials

• The World’s Forests 2 (pdf), Inquiry 2
• Earth System Poster learning activities (pdf)
• Analyzing Global Patterns with the Earth System Satellite Images (see text for instructions)
• Optional: GLOBE Protocols
  • Tree Height

Biodiversity and the world’s forests

The world’s forests are diverse. Your students will learn why biodiversity is important and how it can be enhanced through reading informational text, analyzing data and images, and collecting data in their local environment.

[Note: read the first blog post in this series to learn about where forests are found around the world.]

What’s Inside The World’s Forests 2, Inquiry 2

The second inquiry in The World’s Forests 2, on pages 19 to 24, describes how the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization measured forest biodiversity through the size of primary forests and those in protected areas. Your students will learn in this section about threats to biodiversity through changes in land cover, invasive species, and forest fires.

You will find the lesson plan for this inquiry, starting on page 52, helpful as it provides tips for students to examine images and have discussions.

GLOBE Resources: Visualizing Vegetation Changes Over Time

After reading the Natural Inquirer text, activity 2 in GLOBE’s Earth System Poster learning activities (pdf) Activity 2 will help your students visualize changes to global vegetation over time (nearly a decade apart), which will further enhance their understanding from the readings in Inquiry 2.

[Read more about the Earth System Poster activities in the first blog post in this series]

My NASA Data updated the images for the Earth System Poster learning activities.

To complete this activity, I suggest that you download images from 2013, the year closest to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, and 2021, the most recent set of data.

Step-by-Step Instructions for Using My NASA Data

If you completed the activity in the first blog post of this series, use the 2013 Vegetation images again. Then:

• Visit My NASA Data’s Analyzing Global Patterns with the Earth System Satellite Images.
• Scroll down the page to “2021 Earth System Satellite Images” and click the “Global” link.
• A Google Slides page opens. Click the “Make a Copy” button to save a copy of the “2021 Earth System Satellite Images-Global” slide deck to your Google Drive.
• Open the slide deck and scroll to slide number 38 to find the series of six Vegetation slides.
• Follow the instructions in the Earth System Poster learning Activity 2, but rather than looking at images from only one year, use the full set of images for both 2013 and 2021 to compare differences between the two years.

Optional: Extended Learning

GLOBE Protocols

Bring learning to life by taking students outdoors to explore their local ecosystem using GLOBE measurement tools.

• The Tree Height protocol is used to help students identify species and measure vegetation to classify land cover in their location. The Tree height protocol can be found within the Biometry protocol (pdf) or by using the Tree Height tool in the GLOBE Observer app.

Join GLOBE Campaigns: Engage in Real-World Research!

GLOBE hosts regional and global data collection campaigns on a variety of topics seasonally and throughout the year. This can be a great experience for students as they participate in these collaborative campaigns to help us learn more about the Earth’s systems.

• Through the Trees Around the GLOBE Campaign, students can collect measurements of tree height to understand how the change in the structure of tree canopies (the overstory in a forest) can affect how ecosystems function. Air and surface temperature measurements can also be collected.

Still Need to Be GLOBE Trained?

If you’re not yet trained in GLOBE or you aren’t familiar with these protocols, I recommend you take the eTrainings associated with each protocol as well as the introductory training for the sphere the protocol is associated with.

• Tree Height eTraining with Introduction to Biosphere eTraining, both found on the Biosphere training page.

Upload Your Data to the GLOBE Database

Once you’ve completed these trainings, you can then add your students’ data to the GLOBE database. GLOBE’s database contains 30 years of data collected by GLOBE students, educators, and citizen scientists. Learn more about GLOBE Data Entry.

Up Next

After completing Inquiry 2, continue on to Inquiry 3 to learn how the world’s forests benefit people and the environment.

Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by USDA Forest Service Eastern Region (Agreement no. 20-PA-11090100-026). Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDA Forest Service.

This blog post is part of the   GLOBE and the Natural Inquirer Crosswalk Project . Other blog posts are available on the   U.S. GLOBE Teacher Resources page .

Natural Inquirer issues can be downloaded and classroom sets of many issues can be ordered from their website. Find the complete list of issues available and instructions for ordering on the  Natural Inquirer website .