To correctly identify natural environments you need their geographical characteristics such as:
• SOILS
• CLIMATE
• TOPOGRAPHY
• NATURAL VEGETATION
GO OUTSIDE!!
• Take the kids outside!• I go out to the trees just
outside my room. I get the kids to “touch and feel” and tell me how the soil feels in their hands, tell me what the weather is general like here this time of the year, tell me what the shape of the ground is like and what trees we are looking at.
SOILS
• TYPE• ORIGIN (HOW WERE
THEY MADE)• TEXTURE• PH- ACIDIC, ALKALINE
OR NEUTRAL• WATER CONTENT• MINERAL CONTENT• Literally the foundations of
the environment because it dictates what will grow= FERTILITY
CLIMATE
• Average temperature• Average rainfall• Patterns over time and
seasons. A summary or judgement about whether a place is dry, cold, wet or hot in general or at certain times of the year.
TOPOGRAPHY
• The shape of the land.• The up and down bits!• Is it flat or hilly or
steep• “YMCA”- arm
movements to match the words steep, flat, undulating-DO IT DURING THE EXAM TO REMEMBER!!
NATURAL VEGETATION
• BASE for the biosphere and what animal life can be supported by it.
• What is used for food and what for habitat.
• THEN you CAN DISCUSS INTRODUCED SPECIES later.
Its not enough to just know the ingredients!
• You also need to know:• The components• The inputs• The Processes• The Outputs
Processes put simplyerosion Like a Bulldozer on
construction siteEg: rain, wind, human machines, animals digging or destroying.
Transportation Like a dump-truck taking dirt from the construction site
Eg: wind or flowing water carry dirt.
deposition The dump-truck empties its loads in layers at a new site
Eg: wind or water flow lessens enough to drop its load somewhere new.
components• Base or what you start
with such as
• Soil
• Topography
• Natural vegetation and animals
inputs
• What is added or comes in from outside eg: rain, sun, water flow from up-stream and wind.
• Introduced species• Interaction between different
natural environments-do they blend or have buffer-zones?
processes
• What happens to it• Eg:• Photosynthesis and
respiration• Erosion, by the wind,
rain or animals• Transportation, carried
by wind, rain or animals• Deposition, being laid
down in another location
outputs
• What's the result?• Landforms slowly change
over time.• Drastic change due to
natural disasters such as death, starvation and disease.
• Natural waste products of photosynthesis and respiration.
• Survival and reproduction in the biosphere.
BACK OUTSIDE!!
• Go outside again to the small plantation of trees at the back of our oval.
• Discuss the recycling of carbon in this place and students handle leaf litter.
• Discuss the water cycle and what is happening now its drought
• Discuss habitats or food we see and guess what animals big and small live here.
Change in natural environments• Time period for events eg:
seasonal, immediate, annual or evolution.
• Scale of change: widespread or localised
• Connections, links and relations between all four spheres and the results
• Recycling of nutrients through the environment
• Human impact direct or indirect
Top Related