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3. Managing Extreme Environments

Lesson Plans for Managing Extreme Environments

These learning activities cover everything in the IB guide for this topic. Lesson plans include resources to use on an interactive whiteboard and worksheets to print. The pages have full student access to give maximum flexibility to the teacher and the student. There are theoretical notes for extended reading and teacher notes at the top that provide timing information lesson objectives and activity instructions

Syllabus

Agricultural opportunities and challenges in arid areas, including the distinction between aridity and infertility, irrigation access, salinization risk and land ownership

    The Opportunities and Challenges of Agriculture in Arid Environments

    This pages provides resources and lesson ideas on opportunities and challenges of agriculture, in extreme environments, predominantly hot arid environments. It develops a broad range of place examples, skill-based activities and multi-media resources to cover the challenges of irrigation and environmental problems such as salinization and irrigation. Students are introduced to a number of ways of managing arid environments, not all of which are pro-poor. Resources include graphs and photographs, unequal access to resources are looked at through gender differences. Video resources on benefits of permaculture are included in this lesson.

    Competing Demands for Land and Water

    This page provides an in-depth case study into the competing demands for water in the Ica Valley Basin in Peru. Students develop a deep understanding of the physical and human factors that impact on the supply and scarcity of water. Students become aware of conflicting interest groups and come to realize that not everyone's right to water is equal.

     Syllabus

    Human and physical opportunities and challenges for mineral extraction in cold environments, including inaccessibility, permafrost and resource nationalism

    • Case study of one cold environment to illustrate the issues

    The Opportunities and Challenges of Mineral Extraction in Cold Environments

    This pages provides resources and lesson ideas on opportunities and challenges of mining minerals in cold environments. It develops a detailed case study on gas exploration in the Yamal Peninsula in Russia. Students first begin by examining the challenges and opportunities of cold environments through a photo gallery. Then they use a question sheet for a video resource based on general challenges of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. This is followed by more in-depth graphic resources that look at Russia's economic dependence on oil and gas. In addition there is a card sort on resource nationalism in Russia before students investigate the issues based on a Blendpspace resource embedded in the site.

    Syllabus

    Human and physical opportunities and challenges for mineral extraction in arid environments, including inaccessibility and climatic and political factors

    • Case study of one arid environment to illustrate the issues

    Opportunities and Challenges of Mineral Extraction in Arid Environments.

    This page develops resources and lesson ideas on mineral extraction in Australia, building on the research investigation students completed earlier in the topic. Students first explore the political importance of mining to the Australian economy through a number of graphic and text resources. They then complete a series of focused tasks based on a bespoke resource pack to develop an understanding of both opportunities and challenges based around a fly-in-fly-out mining industry including, remoteness, inaccessibility and climate as well as the inevitable social problems that come with migrant based mining towns.

     Syllabus

    Opportunities and challenges for tourism in extreme environments

    • Detailed examples illustrating the involvement of local and global stakeholders

    Opportunities and Challenges for Tourism in Extreme Environments

    This pages provides resources and lesson ideas on the opportunities and challenges of tourism in a number of extreme environments including Antarctica and Nepal. It develops a broad range of skill-based activities that allow students to investigate the impacts of tourism in Antarctica. There are a number of detailed resource worksheets that lead students through the lesson. There a number of skill based activies including graph and photograph interpretation questions and a mystery activity based on a critical investigation into the ethics of tourism on Mount Everest. The lesson also provides a resourced research project into the different stakeholder interests of tourism in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia.

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