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Soils in the Amazon

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Description: In this lesson, students will study plant growth in soils with different nutrients and physical compositions. By examining data, students will come to understand the effects of nutrient depletion in the Amazon and the impact of tree and plant removal from Amazon soils.
Grade Levels: 6-8, 9-12
Keywords: Amazon, nutrient depletion, nutrient, soil erosion, slash and burn, Soils and Climate, Soils and Agriculture
Lesson Area:
Resource Type: Lab Experiment

Next Generation Science Standards

Grade	Discipline	Core Idea
PreK-2	ESS2.A: Earth materials and systems	Wind and water change the shape of the land.
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	ESS3.A: Natural resources	Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. Humans use natural resources for everything they do.
3-5	ESS3.A: Natural resources	Energy and fuels humans use are derived from natural sources and their use affects the environment. Some resources are renewable over time, others are not.
6-8	ESS3.A: Natural resources	Humans depend on Earth's land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for different resources, many of which are limited or not renewable. Resources are distributed unevenly around the planet as a result of past geologic processes.
9-12	ESS3.A: Natural resources	Resource availability has guided the development of human society and use of natural resources has associated costs, risks, and benefits.
6-8	ESS3.C: Human impacts on Earth systems	Human activities have altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging it, although changes to environments can have different impacts for different living things. Activities and technologies can be engineered to reduce people's impacts on Earth.
9-12	ESS3.C: Human impacts on Earth systems	Sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources, including the development of technologies.
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.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience	N/A
3-5	LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience	When the environment changes some organisms survive and reproduce, some move to new locations, some move into the transformed environment, and some die.
6-8	LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience	N/A
9-12	LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience	If a biological or physical disturbance to an ecosystem occurs, including one induced by human activity, the ecosystem may return to its more or less original state or become a very different ecosystem, depending on the complex set of interactions within the ecosystem.