Biology Ecology Lab

Last Wednesday my Biology students performed an ecology lab.  They went to the breezeway and selected their own ecological site.  While in this selected site, they observed ecology happen, literally, right under their feet! With these observations they used the biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) parts of the ecosystem and created from it the 5 levels of ecological organization (organism, population, community, ecosystem, biosphere) food chains, and predicted how changes in abiotic factors can have major impacts on the biotic.  Then they took their ecological site and incorporated it into the 4 biogeochemical cycles we learned in class (Water, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorous Cycles).  I am including pictures of them thinking hard and putting all the pieces of ecology together.

Ms. Gardner