8.E.1: Understand the hydrosphere and the impact of humans on local systems and the effects of the hydrosphere on humans.
Essential Understanding: The hydrosphere affects humans and humans affect the hydrosphere.
Essential Questions: What is the structure and function of the hydrosphere?
How does the hydrosphere affect humans?
How do humans; affect the hydrosphere
Essential Understanding: The hydrosphere affects humans and humans affect the hydrosphere.
Essential Questions: What is the structure and function of the hydrosphere?
How does the hydrosphere affect humans?
How do humans; affect the hydrosphere
8E1.1: Explain the structure of the hydrosphere including:
Essential Understanding: The students will understand:
Essential Questions:
- Water distribution on Earth
- local river basins and water availability
Essential Understanding: The students will understand:
- that the water is one of the most common substances on the surface of the Earth
- that the ocean is an integral component of the world's climate due to its capacity to collect, drive and mix water, heat, and carbon dioxide.
- that the water cycle is the continuous movement of water in and around the Earth.
- that a river basin is the portion of land drained by a river and its tributaries
- that for land-dwellers, everyone lives in a river basin
Essential Questions:
- how do factors interact to determine the distribution of water in the hydrosphere?
- How does the water cycle affect water distribution on Earth?
- Hoe do river basins affect availability?
8.E.1.2: Summarize evidence that Earth's oceans are a reservoir of nutrients, minerals, dissolved gases, an life forms: estuaries, marine ecosystems, upwelling, and behavior of gases in the marine environment, and deep ocean technology and understandings gained.
Essential Understandings: The students will understand:
- That the ocean is a dynamic system in which many chemical, biological, and physical changes are taking place.
- That estuaries are areas where fresh and salt water mix, producing variations in salinity and high biological activity
- That from the seashore to the deepest depths, oceans are hoe to some of the most diverse life on Earth
- That in the ocean there are innumerable individual food chains overlapping and intersecting to form complex food webs.
- How winds have a powerful effect on the oceans and are an important force in creating ocean currents
- That seawater has many different gases dissolved in it, especially nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide
- That carbon dioxide is one the most important gases that dissolve in the ocean.
- That the ocean is one of Earth's most valuable natural resources
- How do we know what the oceans are made of?
- How do Earth's oceans affect other ecosystems?
8.E.1.3: Predict the safety and potability of water supplies in North Carolina based on physical and biological factors, including: temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, nitrates and phosphates, turbidity, bio-indicators.
Essential Understanding: The student will understand:
Essential Questions:
Essential Understanding: The student will understand:
- That the health of a water system in determined by the balance between physical, chemical and biological variables
- That the temperature of water in rivers and lakes determines the kinds of organisms that can survive there.
- That measuring dissolved oxygen is an important factor in determining water quality
- That pH is a measure of how acidic or basic water is
- That nitrogen and phosphorous are essential plant nutrients
- That turbidity is a measure of how clear water is.
- That the water quality of a body of water can also be assessed by using bio indicators (macro invertebrates)
Essential Questions:
- How safe and drinkable is the water around North Carolina?
- How are physical and biological factors used to determine the quality of water?
8.E.1.4: conclude that the good health of humans requires:
Monitoring of the hydrosphere
Water quality standards
Methods of water treatment
Maintaining safe water quality
Stewardship
Essential Understandings: The students will understand:
Essential Questions:
Monitoring of the hydrosphere
Water quality standards
Methods of water treatment
Maintaining safe water quality
Stewardship
Essential Understandings: The students will understand:
- That water quality is a term used to describe the chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of water
- That water quality standards outline the water quality pollution control program that is mandated and regulated by local, regional and federal agencies
- Clear water many contain odorless, tasteless, and colorless harmful contaminants
Essential Questions:
- What can we do to protect our water supply?
8.L.3: Understand how organisms interact with and respond to the biotic and abiotic component of their environment.
Essential Understanding: the students will understand:
Living things and non living things in and environment can affect organisms.
Essential Questions:
1) How do living things obtain and use energy?
2) How do organisms survive in harsh or changing environments?
Essential Understanding: the students will understand:
Living things and non living things in and environment can affect organisms.
Essential Questions:
1) How do living things obtain and use energy?
2) How do organisms survive in harsh or changing environments?
8.L.3.1: Explain how factors such as food, water, shelter, and space affect population in an ecosystem.
Essential Understandings: The students will understand that:
Essential Questions:
Essential Understandings: The students will understand that:
- ecosystems are complex, interactive systems that include both biological communities (biotic) and physical (abiotic) components of the environment
- ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time.
- a population is a group of organisms belonging to the same species that live in a particular area
- population density measures the number of individual organisms living in a defined space.
Essential Questions:
- How do factors such as food, water, shelter and space affect population in an ecosystem?
- How do these factors interact to affect populations in an ecosystem?
8.L.3.2: Summarize teh relationship among producers, consumers, and decomposers including the positive and negative consequences of such interaction including:
Essential Understandings: The students will understand:
Essential Question:
- coexistence and cooperation
- competition
- parasitism
- mutualism
Essential Understandings: The students will understand:
- that organisms in an ecosystem constantly interact
- that an ecosystem is defined as a community (all the organisms in a given area) and the abiotic factors (such as water, soil, or climate) that affect them.
- that in any ecosystem, organisms and population with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources.
Essential Question:
- How and why do organisms interact with one another?
8.L.3.3: Explain how the flow of energy within food webs is interconnected with the cycling of matte (including water, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen)
Essential Understandings: The students will understand that:
Essential Questions:
Essential Understandings: The students will understand that:
- the sun is the ultimate source of energy
- food provides molecules that serve as fuel and building material for all organisms
- over a long time, matter is transferred fro one organism to another repeatedly and between organisms and their physical environment
- the flow of energy through ecosystems can be described and illustrated in food chains, food webs and pyramids (energy, number, and biomass)
- the flow of energy is interconnected with the cycling of matter
Essential Questions:
- How do food webs model the distribution of energy in an ecosystem?
- In what ways do matter and energy connect?