This activity walks students through identifying trees in their area, determining the amount of carbon dioxide they sequester, and assessing their environmental importance as habitat and flood mitigation "machines."
The activity includes a guided student action plan for increasing the number of trees in their local area.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This lesson plan is comprehensive and easy to follow.
The tree identification materials on the worksheet and online are easy to use and informative.
Additional Prerequisites
Students will need to have an understanding of the importance of trees and their climate benefits.
The information and links inside the project are only suited for those within the North American region.
Students will need to have access to both string and a measuring tape.
Students will benefit from having internet access and the ability to download applications to a phone or iPad.
Differentiation
Advanced students could use this activity as a starting point for a research project about the importance of wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and forests to address climate change.
This resource contains activities where one can assess tree species, biodiversity-specie- richness in different locations. It is a guide to enable one audit forest resources, wildlife, trees, and proffer solutions to improve green space in the community and urban areas. This 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.
4-ESS3-2 Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.9.9-12 Evaluate the influence of long-term climate variability on human migration and settlement patterns, resource use, and land uses at local-to-global scales.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
Common Core Math Standards (CCSS.MATH)
Measurement & Data (K-5)
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.MD.D.8 Solve real world and mathematical problems involving perimeters of polygons, including finding the perimeter given the side lengths, finding an unknown side length, and exhibiting rectangles with the same perimeter and different areas or with the same area and different perimeters.
Statistics & Probability: Interpreting Categorical & Quantitative Data (9-12)
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.ID.A.3 Interpret differences in shape, center, and spread in the context of the data sets, accounting for possible effects of extreme data points (outliers).
