Pond-dipping – aquatic ecosystems & indicator species

What affects the health of our aquatic ecosystems?

Survey two of the Gardens’ freshwater ponds to identify factors that influence the health of their biological communities.

Students will:

• sample water
• complete a vegetation assessment
• use a key to identify macroinvertebrates and aquatic plant life
• learn how to identify indicator species.

Australian Curriculum connections

Year 7

• AC9S7U01: Investigate the role of classification in ordering and organising the diversity of life on Earth and use and develop classification tools including dichotomous keys.
• AC9S7U02: Use models, including food webs, to represent matter and energy flow in ecosystems and predict the impact of changing abiotic and biotic factors on populations.

Year 9

• AC9S9U03: Represent the carbon cycle and examine how key processes including combustion, photosynthesis and respiration rely on interactions between Earth’s spheres (the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere).

Year 10

• AC9S10U04: Use models of energy flow between the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere to explain patterns of global climate change.

Year 11 (Unit 1 & 2)

• ACSBL015: Biodiversity includes the diversity of species and ecosystems; measures of biodiversity rely on classification and are used to make comparisons across spatial and temporal scales.
• ACSBL016: Biological classification is hierarchical and based on different levels of similarity of physical features, methods of reproduction and molecular sequences.
• ACSBL017: Biological classification systems reflect evolutionary relatedness between groups of organisms.
• ACSBL019: Ecosystems are diverse, composed of varied habitats and can be described in terms of their component species, species interactions and the abiotic factors that make up the environment.
• ACSBL020: Relationships and interactions between species in ecosystems include predation, competition, symbiosis and disease.
• ACSBL021: In addition to biotic factors, abiotic factors including climate and substrate can be used to describe and classify environments.
• ACSBL022: The biotic components of an ecosystem transfer and transform energy originating primarily from the sun to produce biomass, and interact with abiotic components to facilitate biogeochemical cycling, including carbon and nitrogen cycling; these interactions can be represented using food webs, biomass pyramids, water and nutrient cycles.
• ACSBL027: Ecosystems can change dramatically over time; the fossil record and sedimentary rock characteristics provide evidence of past ecosystems and changes in biotic and abiotic components.
• ACSBL028: Human activities (for example, over-exploitation, habitat destruction, monocultures, pollution) can reduce biodiversity and can impact on the magnitude, duration and speed of ecosystem change.
• ACSBL041: Photosynthesis is one of the most important biological processes on Earth but it is quite inefficient; researchers report that natural trade-offs result in very low efficiency in many important food crops. Research is currently underway to engineer or enhance photosynthesis to improve food and fuel production. This includes the development of artificial leaves that convert solar energy to a liquid fuel via a process similar to photosynthesis, and investigation of combining more efficient algal photosynthesis with plant photosynthesis to improve crop productivity.
• ACSBL052: Photosynthesis is a biochemical process that in plant cells occurs in the chloroplast and that uses light energy to synthesise organic compounds; the overall process can be represented as a balanced chemical equation.

Year 12 (unit 3 & 4)

• ACSBL069: Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection to refute Lamarck’s theory. He provided evidence for descent with modification (branching evolution) based on patterns in variation of domesticated and wild species, and patterns of species distributions in time and space.