Earth System Evolution Storylines– Climate Change

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Earthsystem Evolution book
It's About Time/AGI

Below are storylines that were designed by Cheryl Mosier, an Earth Science Teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

This unit is supplemented with:

  • time line construction and placement of major Earth events
  • different models of the geologic time line

Big Idea:

  1. Change through time produced Earth, the net result of constancy, gradual changes, and episodic changes over human, geological, and astronomical scales of times and space.
  1. Dynamic environments and ecosystems are produced by the interaction of all the geospheres at the Earth’s surface, and include many different environments, ecosystems, and communities that affect one another and change through time.

 

 

Activity 1 – The Fossil Record and Your Community

Activity 2 – North American Biomes

Activity 3 – Your Community and the Last Glacial Maximum

Activity 4 – The Mesozoic-Cenozoic Boundary Event

Activity 5 – How Different is Your Community Today from that of the Very Deep Past?

Key Evidence Learned

 

Connection to:

- process of fossilization

- why certain things become fossilized

- where fossils form

 

- our communities biome

- organisms have physical and chemical limits on where they can live

- most common plants/animals in our community

- how changes in physical and chemical conditions could change a biome

- predictable relationships between where biomes occur

- pollen and spore data

- forest coverage data

- how our community has changed in the last 18,000 years

- how climate change has affected plants/animals in our community

- how changes in climate have impacted organisms

- organisms of today are different than those of the past

- severe ecological conditions alter the history of life – extinction and recovery

- similar body features are evolved

- plants/animals of the Phanerozoic

- plants/animals of the deep past are very different from today

- plants/animals that once lived in our community

- geologic causes of population changes

- lines of fossil evidence that supports the theory of evolution

Big Idea

- how organisms have been preserved

- how ecosystems are formed and changed

- how a local ecosystem has changed

- how life has changed over time

- how life has changed over time

Real Life and Chapter Challenge

- how and which organisms have been preserved

- what our biome is

- how our biome has changed over time

- how our local ecosystem has changed

- how plants/animals have changed

- how life has changed over time

- how life has changed over time

Geosphere

- where/how fossils form

- how physical conditions change biomes

 

 

- geologic causes of population change

Hydrosphere

- water environments for fossil formation

 

 

 

 

Atmosphere

 

 

 

 

 

Cryosphere

 

 

 

 

 

Biosphere

- how organisms are preserved

- which parts of organisms are preserved

- biomes

- how biomes change

- which plants/animals live in each biome

- how plants/animals have changed over time

- how life has changed over time

- how life has changed over time

State Standard

4.1.c

 

 

 

 

Jeffco Standard

4.1.c

 

 

 

 

CSAP Framework

4.1.3.g

 

4.1.3.g

4.1.3.g

4.1.3.g

Jeffco PE