Hello and welcome to my first blog post of grade 9

This blog post will be about ecosystems and a deeper dive into them. 

First I will introduce the driving question: In what ways have human beings impacted the delicate cycles within our local ecosystems and how can we lessen our impact?

To start off the project we learned about microfibres and bioaccumulation. We learned that the microfibres from our clothes are getting washed into the ocean and we did a science experiment to watch the process. In the experiment we had a water bottle with marbles in it and red cloth. We filled up the bottle a quarter or the way and shook it for 2 minutes. The we filtered the water out with a paper towel and into a cipher that leaked onto another paper towel. Then we looked at the paper under a microscope and this is what I saw. 

 

 

 

The process of bioaccumulation is when small marine animals eat the fibres and then a bigger animal eats that animal and so on and so on until it gets to the top of the food chain. I made a gif showing bioaccumulation and here it is. The gif was the big animal creeping up and eating the smaller ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next thing we did was make a food web that explained everything that went on in it. I made my food web on scratch, the goal was to make all of the characters say some info about what they ate and if it was abiotic or biotic. Abiotic is all non living things and biotic is all living things. You had to at least have 10 things in your food web, mine were humans, cows, bears, fish, sharks, grass, beetles, rodents, owls, and trees. This is what it looks like.

 

 

 

 

For the next assignment you were split up into a group and instructed to make a video about a topic you were given. The topic my group had was pinnipeds which are all web footed marine animals. We made the video about pinnipeds eating all of the salmon population and the indigenous peoples asking the government for a permit to kill them. The indigenous peoples used pinnipeds for ceremonial purposes and for eating. I do not have the video unfortunately.

Next we had PSA, PSA was a assignment were you had to make 5 fake instagram posts on 5 different topics. The topics were, the earths spheres, and human impacts on each one; bioaccumulation/biomagnification, and human impacts on them; local, interconnected, food webs and how humans impact them; local wildlife practices, and how humans impact them; and nutrient cycles, and how humans impact them. I will show you 2 of mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was the last keystone of this project.

Now for the answer to the driving question: Humans have impact ecosystems by killing and polluting animals, air, and the ocean, we can lessen our impact by thinking everyday o ways we can save the environment.

That’s all for this blog post I’ll see you in the next one!