Biodiversity Debate
Lesson Parts
PDF of This Lesson
Purpose:
To evaluate the biological, aesthetic, ethical, social, and economic arguments with regard to maintaining biodiversity.
Summary:
In this lesson, students will hold a debate about the construction of a dam in terms of the biological, aesthetic, ethical, social, and economic arguments with regard to maintaining biodiversity. Students will be assigned different roles to argue either for or against the construction of the dam.
See discussion questions for background information and leading questions to help guide discussion.
The lesson is designed in four parts:
- A classroom activity that helps students understand water management;
- a classroom debate where the students will take on a role in the community and discuss the construction of a dam on a nearby waterbody;
- follow up STEM activities, discussion, data analysis and presentation of results;
- and watershed connections.
Materials Needed:
- What's in the Water
- Riparian Review
- Who Lives in the Water
- Missing Macroinvertebrates
- That's Predictable
Classroom Activity:
1. Ask the students to define the term biodiversity, (biological diversity in an environment is indicated by numbers of different species
of plants and animals). Ask the students to give a biological, aesthetic, ethical, social, and economic
reason to maintain biodiversity.
2. Discuss with the students how biodiversity may change due to a change in the ecosystem.
Ask the students if a change in biodiversity is always negative. Specifically, discuss
with the students the different impacts of a dam on the biodiversity of the river
system and surrounding plant community.
3. Divide the students into eight groups. Tell the groups they will be assigned different
roles as community members in a community that is proposing the construction of a
dam on the river in their area.
4. Tell the students that they will be holding a debate on whether the dam should
be constructed or not. The students will need to discuss their role in the community
and, based on their assigned role, debate on whether or not they support the construction.
Remind the students to keep in mind the idea of maintaining biodiversity when preparing their debate (e.g., is biodiversity something they value or not?).
Classroom Debate:
1. To help this activity run smoothly, assign one student the role of facilitator.
They would be in charge of coming up with a list of questions to keep the dialog moving.
Alternatively, the teacher may play this role.
2. You may want the students to come up with their positions in a short amount of
time, or have them research their positions further as an assignment and hold the
debate another day.
Follow-up STEM Activity:
• Have the students research actual case studies (or follow a local situation in the news) where two parties have had conflicting views about a natural resource/biodiversity issue.
• Have the students interview people in their community about their thoughts on dams
in relation to biodiversity.
• After the debate, have the students write a brief summary of the arguments presented.
• Have the town vote on whether the dam should be constructed.
• Have the town consider alternatives or strategies for reducing negative impacts
of a dam.
Watershed connections
What watershed do you live in?
Utah Watersheds
You can find information for each watershed here:
Curriculum and Teacher Materials
Core Alignments by Grade:
6th Grade:
7th Grade:
8th Grade:
High School:
Materials and Worksheets:
- Printable PDF Version of Lesson (some text may be different)