Investigating the Shore
The students develop a list of values and ideas about beaches and other coastal areas. What makes the areas special to
them? Compare the different views and discuss how these
might result in common agreement or conflict in the use
of the area.
Investigate
the history of marine reserves
in New Zealand and become a time detective to find out how
well New Zealand can attain its visions of the future.
Use
a field guide to identify birds, plants, or insects from
your neighbourhood, river, or coastal area. Draw or photograph
the most common or important ones and record their common
English name, Maori name, and scientific name. Discuss why
the different names reflect different cultural ways of thinking
about the creature.
Select
one creature - plant or animal - how many different ways
can you think about the same creature? A tree, for example,
can be seen as something to provide shade, or timber, or
a fire, or a place for a bird to nest, or food for a termite,
possum, or caterpillar, a hunting place for a cat, a fountain
of water, a way of preventing soil erosion, a sexual partner
of another tree, a place for bees to find pollen, something
to hug, a lightning rod, something to climb, a place to
hang a swing.
Go
on a field trip to a Natural History or University museum
and ask to see their reference collection of specimens.
You can only be sure of an identification by checking it
against a named specimen in a museum.
Go
through an identification guide of birds, sea shore creatures,
or plants and look at the common and scientific names. Look
up the meaning of the Latin and Greek names (many of the
words will have a close English equivalent and a big dictionary
will often give the Latin or Greek definitions these words
came from).
Compare
the definitions of the names to the creatures. Can you discover
why they were given their name? Sometimes the name indicates
the geographic area or country where the creature was found,
sometimes the name reflects some feature of the animal.
Examine
the parts of the animal. Specialised body parts have names,
too, and are often used to describe the differences between
species. These specialised body parts are adaptations to
a particular habitat or style of eating. Write a report
showing how the function of body parts relate to a creature's
lifestyle and habitat.
Plan
a field project to integrate observing, mapping, and identifying
to learn about a particular creature, such as a shellfish,
or a bird that lives on the edge
of the sea, estuary, or river.
Decide:
Will the study be short-term, lasting a few hours of one
day? Will you go back to the same spot again in the future
to see if you can find longer cycles?
Discuss:
What kinds of cycles can you see by observing a creature once for a few minutes? What else could you learn by watching
it for a few minutes every three hours? Watching for a few
minutes every two weeks? Every six months?
Plan:
How will you select a particular creature to study? What
difference does this make if you plan to study it once for
a few minutes versus one you plan to study again in the
future?
Select
the tools: What materials will you need to be able to do
the study? What instruments? If you intend to find the study
plant or animal again in the future, is there some way to
tag it (mark it) so you can be sure you have found the same
one again? This is necessary if you plan to discover how
fast it grows. How will you record your observations? A
good field data sheet is often the key to a good field study.
Do you have a map of the area to start with?
Make
a hypothesis about the creature or its habits based on initial
observations. For example, guess what a particular body
part is used for or how and when the creature reproduces,
or what it eats. Or you might form a hypothesis on the relationship
between the amount of variability in a body feature (such
as coloration) and the degree of specialisation of that
feature. (the greater the variability, the less specialised
the feature). Design a study to prove or disprove your hypothesis.
Finally, produce a report that shows if your study found
the hypothesis to be valid or not. Working as a group, the
students evaluate the projects and decide if they were fair
tests.
Go
through the steps above but consider what cyclic events
you would like to investigate for a habitat, such as a beach,
tide pool on a rocky shore, pilings on a wharf, a wetlands
area, a river bank or a special place in a mountain creek.
How
will you find exactly the same
place again in the future so you can see longer term cycles?
What
sorts of creatures normally live in that place? Do they
stay there or come and go? What creatures visit the habitat
and how often? Knowing this will help determine how often
to survey the site.
How
do the various creatures interact with each other? How do
the creatures get food? Draw a food web showing the flow
of energy and nutrients through the system.
Ask
older people who have lived nearby a long time if they have
seen any changes in the habitat. What are the different
cultural views and uses of the habitat?
Look
in picture books of the area for older photographs showing
the habitat you wish to study. Try and relocate exactly
the same place the old photograph was taken and take a modern
one from the same position and the same angle. What changes
can you detect between the two images?
Look
for changes in aerial photographs of the area. Photocopy
the images and trace the outlines of the habitat to show
changes. Is the habitat getting larger or smaller? Are homes
or roads or other developments reducing the size of the
habitat?
Look
for changes in old survey maps or other maps that show changes
in the area.
List
the various threats to the habitat based on your observations.
Make
projections on the future of the habitat. What will it be like in 25, 50, 100
years? What are the implications for the various species that live there? What
can be done to protect the habitat?
