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Topic 4 Practical Ideas

Water and Aquatic Food Production Systems and Societies Practical Ideas: Students need to be able to monitor aquatic ecosystems and so there are some practical ideas which should be introduced in this topic. The ideas in this section involve students collecting and analysing data, data analysis tasks and a lot of skill building with links to the syllabus contents. Some teachers have investigated the use of aquaponics in the classrooms. This is not an area that I am very familar with but if you are interested try this resource from the FAO of the UN[1]​.

Analysing Water Use

This is a good activity for raising awareness of water use and practising data collection, processing and presentation.1. Collect the following data over a weekend, e.g. From Saturday morning to Sunday...

Viewpoints on Water Use

Reading the Siemens Green City Index recently I was interested to learn that the study rated different cities on water for different environmental indicators. Access to clean water was not the only indicator...

Water Temperature and Dissolved Oxygen

This could provide students with the opportunity to manipulate data and plot graphs. I have modified this activity from Ossabaw Barrier Island Observatory where the data was located in 2013. The Observatory...

Biological Oxygen Demand

This practical took me quite a few tries to work and requires a little bit of care but it really makes the point that added organic matter increases the BOD of a sample. I usually do this activity with...

Water Quality

I use these activities as skill building. In Switzerland, (un)fortunately it is difficult to find any contaminated water but we do test a variety of water samples, including snow, and water that has been...

Water Quality and Indicator Species

In Switzerland I have found it very difficult to do any studies in situ to look at the use of fresh water invertebrates. Instead I use data that I have invented to teach the use of this indirect method...

Factors Affecting Transpiration

Transpiration is the method by which plants move water from the soil through themselves. It is driven by the process of evaporation at the leaf surfaces. We can investigate the factors which affect this...

Growth rate of duckweed with eutrophication

This experiment using duckweed, Lemna minor, may not be possible everywhere as it is considered an invasive species, but if you can use duckweed it provides an ideal model species as it grows really quickly....

Soil Dry Percolation Rate

The dry percolation rate of a soil is a measure of how fast water flows through dry soil. This is important as it will help determine how well a particular soil will cope with heavy or continuous rain...

Soil Porosity

Porosity is the amount of air space in a soil sample. These air spaces are what facilitate the movement of water, oxygen and nitrogen through the soil. The pore spaces also form an important part of the...

Tragedy of the commons fishing activity

This activity can be done easily in one hour long lesson and requires no more than some spoons, bowls, straws and m&m's (peanut and chocolate). it does not require access to a lab. Obviously, be careful...

 

Footnotes

  1. ^ Thanks to Chris Leonard for this resource
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