Liberty Science Center 9^th Grade:

Ecosystem Design

New York State Standards Addressed:
Standard 1: Mathematical analysis, scientific inquiry, engineering design;
Standard 2: Using appropriate technology;
Standard 3: Mathematics: integration and application;
Standard 6: Interconnectedness, Patterns of Change: Identify patterns of changes to make predictions about future behavior and conditions.
Standard 7: Interdisciplinary Problem Solving: Combine the knowledge and skills of math, science and technology to make informed decisions and solve problems, especially those relating to issues of science/technology/society, consumer decision making, design, and inquiry into phenomena.
National Standards:
A: Science as Inquiry
B: Physical science
C: Life Science
E: Science and Technology
F: Science in social and historical perspectives
Science and Math background for material for Teacher:
Designing an Ecosystem:
In a special structure called a bio-dome, you and a team of scientists are going to create an ecosystem and study how it develops and changes over time. There are many things to consider. First, you have to agree upon what kind of environment it will be: dry, wet, temperate, hot or cold. Then you have to consider the animals, plants and microorganisms you will put in there. You must make sure that the food each of the plants and animals needs
is available. The bio-dome must have a source of water and sunlight. You begin to see that designing an ecosystem is a lot more complicated than just putting animals and plants in a sealed room.

Design Elements
• location: desert, woodland, ocean
• organisms: plants, animals, microorganisms
• food sources: plants, animals, microorganisms, decaying matter
• unnatural elements: pollution, buildings, structures
• water sources: rain, rivers, self-production
• natural disasters: floods, erosion, wind, lack of water
• relationships between species: prey/predator, symbiosis, parasitism
About Ecosystems
An ecosystem is defined by the animals, plants, weather, soil, and natural structures found in a particular area. New Jersey, where Liberty Science Center is located, has a variety of ecosystems, including marsh, seashore, pine and deciduous forest. Ecosystems do not stay the same. They change over time. Changes in weather patterns, in the kinds of animals and plants that live there or change in the land itself can affect the ecosystem. Understanding how ecosystems develop can help us understand how to care for and protect our ecosystems.
Instructional Objectives
At the end of this trip, the students will be able to:
design an ecosystem that can support all of the organisms that live within it.
use the exhibits such as the Green House, Soil Table and the Sandy Beach tank in the Estuary area that reinforce the concept of ecosystems and what is necessary for life within them.
Materials and Methods
Pre-visit and Advanced Preparations:
Read the Challenge to your students.
Print and distribute the challenge activities for the groups
Divide your class into groups of five students.
Each group is a team and should work together to complete the Challenge.
Do the Pre-Visit Activity. This activity is directly related to your Challenge and will help your students focus on their Challenge, preparing them for their LSC experience.
Prep your chaperones for the field trip to LSC. Give them the Challenge booklet ahead of time.
Assign each team of five students to a chaperone.
Some useful websites/links for students reference:
http://www.amfor.org/
http://www.conservation.org/
http://www.envirolink.org
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/2298/index.html
http://www.smbay.org/eco/70.htm
http://www.zone10.com/wsdocs/tech/NASA/fyh.htm
http://www.epa.gov/nep/nep.html
http://www.fi.edu/tfi/units/life/
http://headbone.com/derby/eco/
http://www.mobot.org/MBGnet/sets/index.htm
Pre-Visit Activity:
Weaving a Food Web : This activity demonstrates how components in an ecosystem are interdependent and simulates the interaction of organisms in a food web.
Materials
• name tags, approx. twenty
• tape or pins to attach nametags if not
self-stick
• ball of yarn or string
Preparation
• Label name tags with the name of one ecosystem component. Suggested items are: sun, soil, water, air, human,
beaver, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, chipmunk, grass, tree, clover, robin, berries, nuts, fox, squirrel, bacteria, fox,
clover,

• Give each student a nametag to put on his/her clothing.
• Have students sit or stand in a circle so that they all face each other.
What to Do:
Starting with any one component, use the ball of yarn or string to connect that component to another component. The relationship may be that the second component eats the first component (plant connected to rabbit) or the first component needs the second to survive (plant connected to soil).
Continue in this way until each student is connected to several other students in several ways. As you proceed, discuss what each connection or relationship is, and how there may be interdependence.
Once all students are connected, remove a component in the web. For example, there is a drought and all the water dried up. The water person pulls in his/her strings. Continue until each component is affected, discussing the
ways in which each component is affected.
Review with students the ways in which the components in the simulated ecosystem were dependent on each other.
Review the implications for the entire ecosystem when one component was affected, such as the drought resulting in loss of water.
All the components of an ecosystem are interrelated, though it may not seem like when we think of an individual organism. It is possible to relate all the components together by the concept of a food web, where energy (food) is
translated from sun to plants to animals to decay to air and so on. Pressure on any one component in an ecosystem will affect many other organisms. If the pressure is mild, the ecosystem can survive. But if the pressure becomes too
great, the ecosystem will become overwhelmed and crash.
On site:
Visit at least the third floor (Environment) of the Center and the other sites in the challenge
Post visit:
Read the Post-Visit page to your students.
Go over the rubric that you will use to grade their work.
Each student group should present the results of its in-depth studies to the class. This should occur as soon as possible after your return, while the visit is still fresh. Using open-ended questions to promote debate, let
the individual presentation give rise to a class discussion with the students sharing their understanding and their observations.
Post-Visit Activity and Assessment
When you return to the classroom, everyone can share what they experienced LSC. Since each team may have explored different exhibits, we suggest the share their information and ideas for completing the Challenge.
After the Challenge is completed, each group can present their project and discuss how they used what they learned at LSC.
The ecosystem design could range from a small, contained environment (in a box or a tank,) to an environment that occupies an entire planet (real or imagined).If the students want to actually build an ecosystem they should choose something smaller and contained
Here are some terms for contained ecosystems which might be helpful:
Aquarium - A glass bowl, tank, artificial pond, or other human-made body of water in which living aquatic plants and animals are kept, for cultivation or observation.
Vivarium - A contained environment filled with live plants and animals, both aquatic(live in water) and terrestrial (live on land) for keeping and often observation.
Terrarium - Like a vivarium, but exclusively for land plants and animals.
If the students are more interested in planets or science fiction, they would probably won't be able to actually build your ecosystem, but they can design it on paper with drawings or stories or build pieces or models of the ecosystem.
Each living thing in the ecosystem needs water, sunlight, air, and nutrition. Consider location and climate in designing the ecosystem.
Pose open-ended questions such as: What types of organisms will live in your ecosystem? How will they adapt to the environment?

Related Exhibits
Exhibit 1: Capillary Racer ( Health floor, second level, Your Heart area, next to EKG exhibit)
What to Do : Reset the video and follow the directions to run in the capillary race. What food webs will exist in your ecosystem? Capillaries are the pathways through which blood in the body moves from arteries to veins. From the capillaries, oxygen leaves the blood and goes to the body tissues. At the same time, carbon dioxide and other waste materials from the body tissues are removed for excretion. Like capillaries, food webs are examples of energy pathways in an ecosystem. Nutrients and energy move along the food chain, from prey to predator, from plant to animal, from microorganism to plant. Ecosystems could not exist without such pathways, as energy would be locked at one level and would not be used to support other organisms in the ecosystem.

Exhibit 2: Turbulent Orb ( Environment floor, third level, Atmosphere area, blue sphere by the windows)
What to Do: Spin the glass sphere and observe the patterns the crystals make suspended in the colored liquid.
Does the fluid in motion remind you of a certain type of weather? What types of weather will occur in your ecosystem? Weather occurs in the troposphere, the bottom layer of the atmosphere that extends 6 miles over the surface of the earth. Wind currents are created from the rotation of the Earth and the unequal heating of the troposphere at the equator and other latitudes. Wind plays an important role in our world. The wind brings us weather such as rain to soak crops and tornadoes, which can damage structures.

Exhibit 3: Freshwater Marsh (Environment floor, third level, Estuary area, fish tank along the windows across from Touch Tank.) What to Do : Observe the plant and animal life and how they coexist. Notice the fresh water environment and how the life forms have adapted to its unique characteristics. What types of plant and animal life will you have in your ecosystem? How will they be interdependent?

• Freshwater marshes are areas where water is present at, near or above the surface of the land. They provide a bountiful home for many kinds of organisms. Marshes are essential in natural flood control, water storage and water
table maintenance and recharging.

• In many areas, wetlands filter pollution from the water table, as wetland plants remove excess nitrogen and phosphorus, which are associated with sewage effluent.
• Today, there are less than half the original 215 million acres of wetlands still remaining in the United States.

Exhibit 4: A Year of Cigarette Butts ( Health floor, second level, next to Lungs display, across from windows)
What to Do : Look carefully at the cigarette butts exhibited in the case. Is cigarette smoke harmful to living organisms? How are you going to design your ecosystem's air supply? What factors would affect the quality of air in
your ecosystem?

• Cigarette smoke has more than 4,700 chemical compounds and is associated with lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and cardiovascular disease. Initially, the lungs are able to reverse the effects of cigarette smoke, but
eventually, irreversible damage occurs.

• Pollutants over time can affect ecosystems. Just like the lungs, ecosystem mechanisms to deal with small quantities of pollutants.
• Certain plants in rivers are able to pull pollutants from the water. However, large quantities of pollutants can overwhelm the ability of the ecosystem to keep itself "clean".

Exhibit 5: Insect Zoo ( Environment floor, third level, Viewpoints: Micro area, various display cases)
What to Do :Observe each of the animals in their environments. Notice the components of their habitat.
What types of insects will inhabit your ecosystem? What will they need to live there? Why are insects important in an ecosystem?

• Seventy percent of all the animals on Earth are insects. Insects belong to the phylum Arthropod.
• Ecosystems are dependent on insects for pollination of plants, such as apple trees, which also produce food for other organisms. Insects are a food source for many organisms.

• Tarantulas trap and eat insects like mosquitoes, gnats and biting black flies.
• Giant Prickly Stick Insects often feed on the leaves of eucalyptus plants.
• Central American Cave Cockroaches live on bat droppings inside of caves.

Exhibit 6: Stream Table ( Environment floor, third level, Estuary area, platform table with granulated plastic and water faucets.) What to Do : Turn the knobs to create streams. Notice how the water creates streams in, carries sediment and causes erosion. Try building your own waterways. Why is water important in an ecosystem? Will your ecosystem include streams or ponds?

• The patterns in the stream table are created the type of material that the water through and the velocity (speed) of the water.
• Seventy five percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water.
• Water is required by all organisms in order to carry out the chemical processes life, such as the metabolism of food, respiration or photosynthesis.

• Some organisms use water as a source of oxygen for breathing (such as fish), others as a place to find food and others as a place to reproduce.

Exhibit 7: Green House (Environment floor, third level, left at top of escalator, next to Viewpoints: Global area.
What to Do: Look at the animals that are different but living together. Observe the environments(desert, rainforest, etc.) represented in the tanks. Note the varying vegetation and soil from tank to tank. How will the plants and animals exist in your ecosystem? Will they compete or coexist peacefully?

• Greenhouses are "microcosms," or miniature models of a specific ecosystem. In greenhouse, you can raise animals and grow plants in a place where they might not survive, for example, tropical plants thriving in a greenhouse here
in New York.

• In LSC's Green House, you can see Arizona Tarantulas or Scorpions - Arthropod that you would normally find only in a desert. Notice that the environments these creatures live in look like deserts! You can guess the type of ecosystem the organisms are from by looking at the plants and structures around them.

Exhibit 8: Globe of the Earth (Environment floor, third level, Viewpoints: Global area, in front of the Green House.)
What to Do: Move your hands over the globe to feel the mountains and valleys. Look for the mountain range that extends from the North Pole to the South Pole. What geophysical formations will you have in your ecosystem? Will your ecosystem be on Earth? Where on the planet will your ecosystem be located?

• On a relief globe, tall mountains feel bumpy, flat plains feel smooth and valleys are depressions the globe.
• The different colors represent different ecosystems next to each other. Each ecosystem affects other ecosystems.
• Organisms live in different environments all over the world - mountains, grasslands, temperate forests, tropical forests, deserts, polar regions and oceans.

MSTEP Webmaster | NYU home page | School of Education | School of Education Webmaster