Middle and high school students
2 class periods, plus additional time for data collection
Everyone around the world relies on agriculture, whether they live in cities or rural areas. Many of us don’t think about where our food comes from or the impacts of agriculture on local ecosystems. You can explore these ideas with your students through the Natural Inquirer “Cream of the Crop” monograph and GLOBE data collection protocols and learning activities.
In the Natural Inquirer monograph “Cream of the Crop,” your students will read about research that a soil scientist and ecologist conducted on agricultural lands in the native prairies of the Midwestern United States. It’s often necessary to convert land from its original form in order to grow crops in a large agricultural system. In the Midwest, much of the land that is now used for growing crops was originally covered in prairies that supported native insects and birds. The agricultural land doesn’t usually provide the same benefits to wildlife.
The scientists in this monograph wanted to find out if planting strips of prairie among the crops would improve the ecosystem for insects and birds and prevent soil erosion and water quality problems.
Your students learned that sometimes agriculture results in soil erosion and impacts on the health of local waters. In the activity “Just Passing Through” (pdf) they will learn about the relationship between soil and water. Students will design experiments to measure the flow of water through different soil types.
The GLOBE community developed a series of protocol bundles to show how the different systems of Earth are interconnected. The Agriculture Protocol Bundle combines protocols from the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Hydrosphere, and Pedosphere to explore the impacts of agriculture on local ecosystems.
Help your students decide where they want to focus their attention when collecting data using the Agriculture Protocol Bundle. You likely will not have time (or resources) to use all of the related protocols (there 19 listed on the bundle webpage!). If they need help deciding on an area of focus, review the list of student research questions on the bundle webpage to get their ideas flowing.
They can also search the GLOBE Student Research Reports to find examples of projects that GLOBE students from around the world have shared with the community.
If you’re not familiar with the GLOBE data collection protocols, I recommend you take the eTrainings for any of the protocols mentioned on the Agriculture Protocol Bundle webpage. Trainings are accessible through GLOBE’s Protocol eTraining webpages.
The GLOBE resources listed in this blog relate to the following Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Student Performance Expectations:
Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by USDA Forest Service Eastern Region (Agreement no. 20-PA-11090100-026). Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDA Forest Service.
This blog post is part of the GLOBE and the Natural Inquirer Crosswalk Project . Other blog posts are available on the U.S. GLOBE Teacher Resources page .
Natural Inquirer issues can be downloaded, and classroom sets of many issues can be ordered from their website. Find the complete list of issues available and instructions for ordering on the Natural Inquirer website .
