This article looks at the damage tropical forests have suffered in recent years, the benefits of forest regeneration, and the carbon sequestration that could occur if tropical forests are restored at a large scale.
Students learn that tropical forests are being cleared and degraded extensively, forest regeneration can provide food, medicine, and places to adventure, and widespread forest restoration could sequester multiple gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This article acknowledges that the economic impacts of forest restoration should be studied in the future.
This article makes a connection between tropical forests and biodiversity.
Additional Prerequisites
The link in the References section does not work, but it's not necessary for analyzing the article.
Students need to understand the importance of carbon sequestration.
This article could support a classroom discussion on the importance of tropical forests as a source of biodiversity.
Teachers could create a formative assessment based on the main concepts of this article.
This article could enhance a classroom discussion on the general public's perception of how important forests are, and how that perception contrasts with ecological reality.
Scientist Notes
This article discusses a study that examines how restoring tropical forests will impact carbon sequestration from the atmosphere and the climate. The article is organized similarly to a scientific paper in the way it breaks down this climate solution into an introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections. These make this resource a good example of how scientific articles are often structured. Resources are included. The information presented is accurate and this resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
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.
National Health Education Standards
Standard 1: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.
1.12.3 Analyze how environment and personal health are interrelated.
