This video examines a family farm in Wisconsin and how it produces maple syrup, while the article discusses the importance of maple syrup to the economy in Wisconsin and how climate change could impact syrup production in the future.
Students will learn that maple syrup production is a time consuming process, maple syrup production has a multi-million dollar economic value, further climate change will reduce the number of cold days in Wisconsin, and a decrease in cold days could negatively impact syrup production in the state.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The video is engaging and well-produced.
The article features data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Additional Prerequisites
You can download the video as a WEBM file.
Students may need to understand how climate change can impact winter temperatures.
Differentiation
Students can use the article for a research project on how climate change impacts seasonal temperatures, annual precipitation, and other weather patterns.
Students can watch the video at home to prepare for an in-class discussion on how climate change could impact local economies in the future.
The article can be utilized in a media literacy lesson on the importance of expertise and credible sources.
The article can support a classroom discussion on how unchecked climate change will alter the way humans interact with their physical environment.
Scientist Notes
Climate change threatens many industries across the globe. Maple syrup production relies on the perfect weather conditions to produce the sugary sap necessary to make it. Climate change is shifting weather patterns and making extreme weather events more likely, which can have hugely adverse impacts on maple syrup production. This video and article explain why that is. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
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.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Economics
D2.Eco.3.9-12 Analyze the ways in which incentives influence what is produced and distributed in a market system.
Dimension 2: Geography
D2.Geo.4.9-12 Analyze relationships and interactions within and between human and physical systems to explain reciprocal influences that occur among them.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.2 Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
