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Curriculum Materials

Standards Alignment

Disciplinary Core Ideas

LS2.D: Social Interactions and Group Behavior (MS)

  • Changes in biodiversity can influence humans’ resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on – for example, water purification and recycling (secondary to MS-LS2-5)

 

ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions (MS)

  • Sometimes parts of different solutions can be combined to create a solution that is better than any of its predecessors (MS-ETS1-3)
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Science & Engineering Practices

Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions (MS)

  • Apply scientific ideas, principles, and/or evidence to construct, revise and/or use an explanation for real-world phenomena, examples, or events.
  • Apply scientific reasoning to show why the data or evidence is adequate for the explanation or conclusion.
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Crosscutting Concepts

Patterns (MS)

  • Patterns can be used to identify cause and effect relationships.
  • Graphs, charts, and images can be used to identify patterns in data.
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In this task, students will evaluate existing beef cattle production/industry practices and determine their impacts on water quality and biodiversity. Using scientific evidence for support, students will identify a potential solution that could improve key biodiversity variables among water ecosystems.

Students will evaluate data regarding harmful algal blooms in New York waterways and determine that livestock allowed to drink directly from waterways can have a negative impact on water quality. For this reason, physical barriers are often observed on cattle farms. Through their work, students will be able to identify the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy water ecosystems. Next, students will evaluate 4 common conservation management practices -  managing the beef lifecycle, filter strips / forested buffers, managing grazing, and fenced farm dams. After learning about these practices, students identify the solution that most improves the water quality of New York water ecosystems.