How do hurricanes impact forest ecosystems?

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology and geography.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource introduces the work of ecologists at the Luquillo Long Term Ecological Research Program in Puerto Rico. They are investigating how the forests of Puerto Rico respond to disturbances such as hurricanes, droughts and human activity.

• This resource also contains interviews with team members and offers an insight into careers in ecology. If your students have questions for name, they can send them through the Futurum Careers website.

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research and challenges them to analyse long term hydrology data from Luquillo to explore changes in rainfall and river flow rate.

• The article and activity sheet are also available in Spanish from the Futurum website.

This resource was first published by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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