ACTIVITIES BOOK - Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

More documents

Recommendations

Info

• Keep connecting the links (based on who eats who) until you have a very complicated web.• Next, stage a ‘climate change’ event. You can use a different one each round. These could includethings like: rising temperature causing coral bleaching or algae outbreak, ocean acidification, sea turtleor sea bird nesting failure, or a shift in ocean current patterns.• Cut the strings directly around the students involved in the event (i.e. the corals for a bleaching event;the shells, crabs or zooplankton for ocean acidification; sea turtles or bird for nesting failures, etc).Students not connected to anything anymore, sit down. You could also discus which parts of the foodchain might increase (e.g. with a temperature rise corals would decrease while algae wouldincrease… this means that things that eat coral decrease while things that eat algae could increase).• Students connected to elements of the food web that are impacted are affected too and their stringsare cut. Keep cutting more strings as more parts of the food web are affected.• Eventually the whole food web should collapse (except maybe the sun and the seagrass or algae).Discussion: Discuss how and why the food web changed and ultimately, collapsed. Depending on the yearlevel, this discussion can be as simple or complex as you like. You could ask students to think critically aboutwhat coral reef food webs will look like under climate change scenarios. For example, scientists arepredicting the following: less coral; more algae; fewer coral eating fish; perhaps more algae eating fish –although habitat and hiding places will be lost with the corals; less up-welling of cool, nutrient rich waterresulting in less plankton, less food for fish, less fish for sea birds and less birds; and fewer sea turtles due tonesting failures (ask students to think about what eats sea turtles and their hatchlings – e.g. sharks, seabirds, large predatory fish). Discuss how changes to the marine food web could impact humans and how itmay change our diet.Activity 2: Ocean circulation activityKey learning objective: In this activity students will understand that major ocean currents driveproductivity in the oceans. They will develop an understanding of the impacts climate change willhave on current circulation patterns and how resultant changes will impact fish, sea birds and themarine food web as a whole.Background: Explain that ocean circulation patterns are likely to be affected by climate change.Ocean currents are very important. They drive the Earth’s climate and they connect oceans toeach other. Fish and other animals rely on ocean currents to bring them food and disperse theireggs and larvae. Ocean currents can make the air around them warmer or colder (this drivestemperatures on land as well as in the sea).Ocean currents are caused by differences in temperature and salinity between oceans. Currentstravel from places where waters are very cold to places where waters are very warm. They alsotravel from very warm waters to very cold waters. Cold water from the deep ocean is full ofnutrients and is an important source of food for millions of marine organisms – from tiny fish tomassive whale sharks.Increasing ocean temperatures and the addition of significant amounts of fresh water from meltingice caps, glaciers and increased storm events could cause a disruption in the patterns of oceancirculation, which in turn could lead to a breakdown in oceanic food webs.17Reef Beat 2009 - Climate Change and the Reef
What you will need:1. the world map provided (you might wish to enlarge it and complete this as a groupactivity)2. coloured pencils, pens or textas3. access to a computer to research ocean circulationInstructions:• Have students research the temperatures of the world’s oceans and colour in a temperature gradienton the world map in the centre of this book (there is an answer key on Poster 8).• Ask students to keep in mind how currents move (e.g. from very warm waters to very cool waters andthe opposite) and use a pencil, pen or texta to draw arrows on the map showing which way they thinkthe ocean currents are going. When they are finished, they can check their answer on the key onPoster 8.• As a follow on activity students may add the location of significant fisheries around the world to theirmap.Discussion: You can conclude this activity with a range of discussionquestions such as: How will currents change with global warming? How willtemperatures on land change if ocean currents change? What will happen ifcold, nutrient rich water is no longer available to fish and other animals?What kinds of ecological impacts could occur if the base (phytoplankton) ofthe food chain is smaller? How does ENSO (the El Niño SouthernOscillation) affect these currents?Bright idea: Havestudents choose theirfavourite oceandwellinganimal andwrite from the firstperson (the animal’s perspective) anarrative about what is happeningto their home. This should be apersonal plight and include whatpeople (those who live on dry land)can do to help that animal’s future.18Reef Beat 2009 - Climate Change and the Reef
Page 3: Notes for TeachersReef Beat: Climat
Page 6: Reef Beat Poster 1 - What is climat
Page 9 and 10: Reef Beat Poster 2 - Coral Bleachin
Page 11 and 12: music (musical intelligence)Create
Page 13 and 14: 1mWhat you will need:1. topographic
Page 15 and 16: Reef Beat Poster 4 - Ocean acidific
Page 17 and 18: Instructions:1) Add lots of sugar t
Page 20: corers). You might ask students to
Page 25 and 26: adulthood. While the turtles are gr
Page 27 and 28: Reef Beat Poster 8 - Seabirds are f
Page 30 and 31: What you will need:1. rope or chalk
Page 33 and 34: taking to help combat these pressur
Page 35 and 36: Reef Beat Poster 10 - What you can
Page 37 and 38: environmental actions that have alr
Page 39 and 40: GLOSSARY OF TERMSacid - scientists
Page 41: sustainability - in an ecological c

ACTIVITIES BOOK - Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?