Year 11 - Science
Benefits and challenges of maintaining biodiversity
Maintaining biodiversity and human impacts
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit explores trophic levels, biomass pyramids, and the efficiency of biomass transfers in ecosystems. It examines human impacts on biodiversity, factors affecting food security, and biotechnological solutions. Emphasis is on evaluating environmental changes and ethical considerations.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to describe benefits of maintaining biodiversity, and ways in which humans can work to conserve biodiversity.
Key Notes
- Benefits of high biodiversity, including ecosystem services and food security.
- Humans can interact positively with ecosystems to prevent and reduce biodiversity loss.
- Resources can be used sustainably (e.g. at a rate at which they can be replaced).
- A range of conservation measures can be taken to protect biodiversity at the species, ecosystem and genetic levels.
- Conservation efforts range from very local actions to international ones.
Vocabulary To Learn
- biodiversity: the range of different living organisms that live in a place
- ecosystem services: the benefits that nature provides to human wellbeing and quality of life
- food security: having enough food to feed the human population
- sustainability: when a resource is produced as quickly as it is removed from the environment so that it does not run out
- conservation: the process of protecting biodiversity and the environment
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- The conservation of biodiversity can only happen on a large scale, e.g. through protecting large areas of habitat.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the scientific idea in this lesson using two key points.
Benefits of high biodiversity, including ecosystem services and food security. Humans can interact positively with ecosystems to prevent and reduce biodiversity loss.
2. Define this scientific word and use it in context. 'biodiversity'
the range of different living organisms that live in a place. Include the word in a full scientific explanation, not as a single label.
3. Correct this common scientific misunderstanding.
Mistake: The conservation of biodiversity can only happen on a large scale, e.g. through protecting large areas of habitat. Correction: Biodiversity conservation can take place on a small scale, for example, by providing habitats in gardens and in urban areas.
More Lessons In This Unit
- Climate change and biodiversity: changes in the distribution of organisms Study Guide
- Climate change and biodiversity: forests and oceans Study Guide
- Examples of human interactions with ecosystems, including fish farming Study Guide
- Examples of human interactions with ecosystems, including use of peat Study Guide
- Factors affecting human food security, and possible solutions Study Guide
- Negative human interactions with ecosystems and impacts on biodiversity Study Guide
- Transfers of biomass between trophic levels Study Guide
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