Tag Archives: agriculture

Ecology resources for students: Part 1

Good afternoon!

I’m back with another set of bookmarks for students and teachers. Because I’ve taught the IB Environmental systems and societies course for several years, this set of online resources is closest to my heart. Some of these links are here simply because I think they’re cool or fun. Many may also be applicable for studying biology and chemistry as well. Let’s get to it:

Happy learning!

Cheers,

Mr K

Sustainable Food Resources

My 8th grade classes developed independent projects focused on the role of plants in society, and I received a wide variety of products from them, from posters to presentations to animations. The one I’ve embedded below is a particularly solid example of the kind of work young people are capable of doing when given the freedom to choose a topic of interest and the resources to create something different.

Thanks for this, Abby!

Biotechnology in Agriculture

Good morning and happy new year!

Back at school today after a lovely 3-week holiday in southern Spain, so it seems best to start with a celebration of one of my student’s Genius Hour projects. The animation below was created by 8th-grader Darik de Jong, and it explores the positive and negative impacts of biotechnology in agriculture. I think the quality of animation is excellent, and Darik communicates the required scientific information clearly.

Enjoy.

Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience

That’s the title of a recent (June 2013) publication from the World Bank, which outlines the probable impacts of continued global climate change. Among the highlights of the article, according to the official press release:

  • This report, part II in a series, looks at likely impacts of 2°C and 4°C warming across three vulnerable regions.
  • It describes risks to agriculture and livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, the rise in sea-level and devastation to coastal areas likely in South East Asia, and water extremes facing South Asia.
  • Turn Down the Heat warns that poor coastal urban communities are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

As a poor, coastal, urban community in Sub-Saharan Africa, Dar fits this description perfectly. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, talks about the perils of climate change in the brief video embedded below.

Image

Creating Self-Fertilizing Crops to Feed Increasing Global Population

Image Credit: treehugger.com

Image Credit: treehugger.com

Here’s an intriguing article about research into a new method of fertilizing food crops. Nitrogen is one of the key elements required for plant growth, but because it’s not found everywhere on the planet, people use nitrogen fertilizers to boost yields in areas with low nitrogen levels. Unfortunately, the Haber process (the industrial process of producing nitrogen fertilizers) requires large inputs of energy, which then means large outputs of greenhouse gases. Commercial fertilizers are also expensive, especially for low-income and subsistence farmers, and they often leach into rivers and lakes, causing eutrophication.

This potential discovery from the world of biotechnology could change food production in several important ways. First, the plants themselves would be able to ‘fix’ nitrogen directly from the atmosphere, essentially supplying their own fertilizer. Second, small-holder farmers (like most of the farmers in Tanzania) wouldn’t have to buy fertilizer anymore, which means they’d have more money to spend on things such as education and health care for their families. Third, reducing the energy demand for the Haber process would lessen our carbon footprint and our contribution to climate change. And lastly, the problems of eutrophication – lifeless, oxygen-starved lakes and streams – may also diminish.