Topic 3 - Biodiversity and Conservation Skills Project

This resources is designed for Topic 3: Biodiversity and conservation of the IB Diploma Environmental Systems and Societies Course. In particular it is designed to give practical application to 2.5: Investigating ecosystems (measuring biodiversity) and 3.4: Conservation of biodiversity.

It cast the student in the role of conservation manager who has to report on the biodiversity of three sites and make a recommendation of which site should be the conservation priority. It includes sample site data for students to manipulate using Simpson’s Index and an opportunity to create Graphs using Standard deviation error bars on mean data.

The resource also asks students to:
Explain the criteria you used to select which should be protected areas.
Evaluate different approaches to protecting biodiversity guides your choice of area.

The resource includes a full worked example data sheet for educators as well as notes for educators on how students might respond. There is no marking scheme as this is designed to give students an opportunity to undertake a task which could resemble parts of an Ecological based Survey type IA, very similar to those that Ecologists have to complete in the field every week.