This video explains how fast-growing kelp combats climate change by capturing and storing large amounts of carbon, but that ocean acidification, pollution, and warmer waters are making it harder for kelp to grow.
It also highlights that seaweed farms can produce kelp for biofuels, plant-based plastics, animal feed, and biomaterials.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video offers an innovative and hopeful solution to the complex issue of climate change.
The video uses interesting visuals that will keep students engaged.
Additional Prerequisites
The article misquotes the video saying, "...even just a 0% replacement of seaweed in wheat production or meat production in foods would have a major impact." It should say, "a 10% replacement."
Students should be familiar with the concept of carbon sinks and carbon capture.
Differentiation
Engineering students could research a kelp product from the video and present their findings to the class.
Biology classes could use this lesson plan and experiment to learn more about how plants absorb carbon in water.
Other resources on this topic include this video on biofuels, this video and lesson plan on ocean acidification, and this interactive lesson about climate change and the ocean.
Scientist Notes
This 7-minute video from the BBC showcases the importance of seaweed. The oceans are absorbing most of the excess heat caused by global warming, and it is having tangible effects on ocean life. Kelp offers many potential uses, such as protein sources and plastic replacements, but climate change is threatening the kelp forests in the ocean. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
HS-ESS3-3 Create a computational simulation to illustrate the relationships among management of natural resources, the sustainability of human populations, and biodiversity.
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
MS-LS1-6 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
MS-LS2-5 Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.
