7th Grade: Ecology and Ecosystems

For our unit on ecosystems, we are studying biodiversity. Our question last week was: are trees an indicator for overall ecosystem biodiversity? To find out, we looked at the biodiversity of various forests and how they match with overall ecosystem biodiversity.

For example: Borneo, one of the most biodiverse places on Planet Earth, hosts 700 individual species of tree in its forests! (Mind you, that's trees alone, not including all other types of plants.) To see how we compare, we ventured into the Deep Dark Forests of Tok to collect as many different species of tree as we could find.

Well... It wasn't very hard. Four to five species later, we were back in the lab noting differences between white spruce, aspen, birch, and possibly two types of willow.

That's right... About four total species. So why - what factors affect biodiversity? (Hint: sunlight and water sure do help!) See the pictures below from Kaitlyn, our class photographer last week.

Will and Jazlyn making observations about their tree species
Daniel, Cody, Gabriel, and Willy recording what they see



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