Unit 6: Biodiversity & Ecosystem Resilience

Performance Expectations:

• MS-LS2-2: Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.

• MS-LS2-5: Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

• MS-ETS1-1: Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principlesand potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.

• MS-ETS1-3: Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combinedinto a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.

Essential Questions:

• Why is biodiversity important to the survival of ecosystems?

• How do ecosystems change and function over time?

• How do humans affect the biodiversity of an ecosystem?

• What are possible solutions to problems created by the natural world and the material world?

Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science & Engineering Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, Supporting Standards:

• • MS-LS2-2

  • MS-LS2-5

  • MS-ETS1-1

  • MS-ETS1-3

Concepts & Skills:

• The students will know...

  • The importance of biodiversity within ecosystems.

  • Ecosystem services.

  • The components of an estuary/wetland and how it functions.

  • How human activity and pollution affect ecosystems and biodiversity.

  • What a healthy wetland/estuary consists of and its effect on the natural world.

  • How to design a healthy ecosystem that can be sustained over time.