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The Living Soil Beneath Our Feet

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Description: Travel underground for an up-close look at the ants, amoebas, and bacteria that maintain healthy soil. Glimpse this microscopic world and learn about the symbiotic relationship between fungi and tree roots.
Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
Keywords: soil microorganisms, decomposers, fungus, bacteria, Soil Basics, Soil Biology
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Resource Type: Video

Next Generation Science Standards

Grade	Discipline	Core Idea
3-5	ESS2.A: Earth materials and systems	Four major Earth systems interact. Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller pieces and move them around.
6-8	ESS2.A: Earth materials and systems	Energy flows and matter cycles within and among Earth's systems, including the sun and Earth's interior as primary energy sources. Plate tectonics is one result of these processes.
9-12	ESS2.A: Earth materials and systems	Feedback effects exist within and among Earth's systems.
PreK-2	LS1.C: Organization for matter and energy flow in organisms	Animals obtain food they need from plants or other animals. Plants need water and light.
3-5	LS1.C: Organization for matter and energy flow in organisms	Food provides animals with the materials and energy they need for body repair, growth, warmth, and motion. Plants acquire material for growth chiefly from air, water, and process matter and obtain energy from sunlight, which is used to maintain conditions necessary for survival.
6-8	LS1.C: Organization for matter and energy flow in organisms	Plants use the energy from light to make sugars through photosynthesis. Within individual organisms, food is broken down through a series of chemical reactions that rearrange molecules and release energy.
9-12	LS1.C: Organization for matter and energy flow in organisms	The hydrocarbon backbones of sugars produced through photosynthesis are used to make amino acids and other molecules that can be assembled into proteins or DNA. Through cellular respiration, matter and energy flow through different organizational levels of an organism as elements are recombined to form different products and transfer energy.
PreK-2	LS2.A: Interdependent relationships in ecosystems	Plants depend on water and light to grow, and also depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around.
3-5	LS2.A: Interdependent relationships in ecosystems	The food of almost any animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants, while decomposers restore some materials back to the soil.
6-8	LS2.A: Interdependent relationships in ecosystems	Organisms and populations are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors, any of which can limit their growth. Competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems but the patterns are shared.
9-12	LS2.A: Interdependent relationships in ecosystems	Ecosystems have carrying capacities resulting from biotic and abiotic factors. The fundamental tension between resource availability and organism populations affects the abundance of species in any given ecosystem.
PreK-2	LS2.B: Cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems	[Content found in LS1.C and ESS3.A]
3-5	LS2.B: Cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems	Matter cycles between the air and soil and among organisms as they live and die.
6-8	LS2.B: Cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems	The atoms that make up the organisms in an ecosystem are cycled repeatedly between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem. Food webs model how matter and energy are transferred among producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem.
9-12	LS2.B: Cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems	Photosynthesis and cellular respiration provide most of the energy for life processes. Only a fraction of matter consumed at the lower level of a food web is transferred up, resulting in fewer organisms at higher levels. At each link in an ecosystem elements are combined in different ways and matter and energy are conserved. Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are key components of the global carbon cycle.