This video explains biodiversity, its importance for life on Earth, and how it's being reduced by human activities and climate change, giving specific examples of ecosystem disruptions and decreases in biodiversity in the Colorado Rockies, Hawaii, and Australia.
To address biodiversity loss, the video suggests habitat restoration, habitat preservation, supporting Indigenous communities, and reducing global warming.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video features great graphic design and does a nice job of explaining biodiversity.
Additional Prerequisites
The video content ends at 7 minutes, 41 seconds. The rest of the video contains a message from the creator.
Differentiation
Science and biology classes could use this as a hook or introduction to the biodiversity of life, genetics, evolution, phylogenetic trees, ecosystems, population dynamics, or biogeochemical cycles.
Social studies classes could use this resource when discussing the rights of Indigenous peoples, the plight of island nations, or in consideration of the idea that nature and other species should also have rights.
This resource succinctly summarizes the importance of biodiversity and how climate change is affecting it in different locations. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-2 Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of different scales.
HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
