This video outlines three nature-based solutions that are imperative to fight climate change, slow the sixth mass extinction event, and protect the planet for future generations: restore and protect forests, protect wildlife, and rebuild wild coastal habitats.
It details the many ways that animals, forests, coastal marshes, and ecosystems all over the planet help regulate global systems and protect the planet for all life on Earth.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video provides students with many ways that they can take action to make a difference.
The video emphasizes that rapid decarbonization and large-scale policies are also necessary to stop climate change.
Additional Prerequisites
This resource about ecosystem dynamics and this one about biodiversity could be introduced to provide background for younger students.
Differentiation
After the video, groups of students could conduct research on each of the three topics: forests, wildlife, and coastal habitats. Students could present their findings to the class after their research is complete.
Students who want to learn more about deforestation could explore this amazing interactive map from Global Forest Watch.
Scientist Notes
This 4-minute video highlights three major strategies focused on ecosystem restoration to address climate change: restoring forests, protecting wildlife, and restoring coastline habitats. Other organizations to support and individual actions that can be taken are also presented. Citations are provided in the video description. 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.
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-2 Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
HS-LS2-5 Develop a model to illustrate the role of photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the cycling of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.
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.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
