AP Environmental Science

2016- 2017

Teacher: Neil Cyphert

Email:

Website:

Course Description

The goal of the course is to provide students with scientific principles needed to understand the interrelationships of the natural world and draws upon various scientific disciplines. Students will be taught how to identify, interpret, and analyze environmental problems, to evaluate the ecological and human health risks associated with these problems, and to examine alternative solutions to prevent or resolve these problems. The course includes methods for analyzing and interpreting information and experimental data, including mathematical calculations.The course also emphasizes that science is a process, a method of learning more about the world, and that science is constantly changing the way we understand the world.

This course is designed to prepare students for the AP Environmental Science exam. The class will be held five periods a week, with at least one period a week dedicated to laboratory investigations. Daily instruction includes lectures, discussions, and demonstrations, written research projects, homework, and other in-class assignments. Students are encouraged throughout the course to consider scientific principles and disciplines when completing activities, and laboratory or fieldwork.

The laboratory and field investigations complement the classroom portion of the course by allowing students to learn about the environment through firsthand observation. All laboratory investigations include a written report, including analysis and interpretation component. The experiences in the lab and field will allow students to test concepts, explore specific problems in depth, and gain an awareness of confounding variables in the “real world.” Students will have direct experiences with organisms and systems in the environment that involve observation, collection and analysis of data, and the communication of observations and results. The lab and field investigations will challenge students to:

  • Critically observe environmental systems
  • Develop and conduct well-designed experiments
  • Use appropriate laboratory and field techniques and instruments
  • Analyze and interpret data, including statistical and graphical presentations
  • Apply concepts to the solution of environmental problems
  • Make conclusions and evaluate quality and validity
  • Propose further questions for study
  • Communicate accurately and meaningfully about observations and conclusions

Course Prerequisites

This course is for interested junior and senior students who have completed at least 2-3 years of high school laboratory life and physical sciences. Students should also have taken at least one year of algebra.

Text

Friedland, Andrew and Rick Relyea. Environmental Science for AP, 2nd ed. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2015.

Grading

Unit Exams - 40%

Exams will be at the end of each unit. If you miss an exam you need to immediately come and see me when you return to schedule a make-up.

Quizzes – 15%

Quizzes may be given at any time. Some quizzes will be graded and some will act as only an assessment to inform the teacher’s instruction.

Labs – 15%

If you are absent on a day that we do a lab in class, it is your responsibility to make an appointment after or before school to make-up the lab with Mr. Cyphert. Special lab makeup days will be announced periodically throughout the year.

Classwork & Projects – 10%

All students are required to keep all classwork and notes in a binder. Please put everything in chronological order (by date).

Homework – 10%

All assignments are due at the beginning of class. Any homework missed due to absence must be made up the next day. One homework grade will be dropped per marking period. Therefore, you may only miss 1 homework without penalty. Homework is graded on effort more than total accuracy.

Participation – 10%

This grade will be determined by class participation and how you conduct yourself in the classroom. (See Classroom Policies section)

Extra Credit & Late work – As this is a college level course, late work is not accepted without a doctor’s note, and there is no typical extra credit offered.

However, the unit exam scores are curved which act like an extra bonus if you do well. A perfect raw score on a unit exam would result in a 150% as your curved score. Any curved score over 100% on a unit exam would be equivalent to a score of 4 or 5 on the AP exam. Any curved score between 90-100% would be equivalent to a 3 on the AP exam. Any curved score below 90% would be equivalent to a 2 or 1 on the AP exam.

60-50 Rule: The general rule to earn a 3 on the AP Environmental Science exam is to obtain at least 60% of the multiple choice points, and at least 50% of the free-response points.

Extra Help

I am available for extra help by appointment during, before, and after school. Students interested in extra help should just ask me.

Classroom Policies

Entering the Classroom:

1)Enter and sit down quietly.

2)Place homework visibly on desk.

3)Begin the Do Now.

Students in my class are expected to:

1)Be on time to class in your seat with your notebook open before the bell.

2)Be prepared to actively participate in class. This includes using your notebook for brainstorming and notes, sharing ideas with your classmates, and following lab procedures correctly.

3)Take responsibility for your work – complete homework, take careful notes, and make up any work you missed if absent.

4)Have all materials needed for class activities, including pens, pencils, paper, and notebook.

5)No food or drink allowed in room. (water is ok on non-lab days)

6)No phones, electronic devices, headphones, etc. allowed.

7)Follow directions the first time given.

Course Planner

Unit 1: Science, Energy Resources, & Energy Consumption (4 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 1: Key Themes in Environmental Sciences
  • Human population growth
  • Sustainability and Carrying Capacity
  • Global Perspective
  • People and Nature
  • Science and Values
  • The Scientific Method
  • Botkin Chapter 14: Energy Basics
  • Energy Concepts: forms of energy, power, units, conversions, Laws of Thermodynamics
  • History of Energy: From ancient Greek and Rome to Today and Tomorrow
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Energy Sources and Consumption
  • Energy Conservation
  • Sustainable-Energy Policy
  • Botkin Chapter 15: Fossil Fuels and the Environment
  • Formation of coal, oil, and natural gas
  • Fossil fuel extraction and purification
  • World Reserves and global demand
  • Advantages and disadvantages of fossil fuels
  • Botkin Chapter 16: Alternative Energy and the Environment
  • Solar Energy, Solar Electricity, Water Power, Ocean Energy, Wind Power, Biofuels, Geothermal Energy, Hydrogen Fuel Cells
  • Advantages and disadvantages of alternative energies
  • Botkin Chapter 17: Nuclear Energy and the Environment
  • Current Role of Nuclear Power Plants in World Energy Production
  • Process of nuclear fission, electricity production, and nuclear reactors
  • Nuclear radiation in the environment and its effects on human health
  • Nuclear power plant accidents: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl
  • Lab: “Coal Lab” – Students determine the different types of coal.
  • Lab: Fossil Fuels & Personal Carbon Dioxide Audit Lab
  • Project: “Alternative Energy Project” – Students research and present the pros, cons, and science behind various alternative energies
  • Activity: Online unit conversion tutorial for mathematical energy conversion problems
  • Activity: Online Earth Day footprint calculator - Students calculate their ecological footprint and relate it to their lifestyle
  • Reading: “The Lorax”by Dr. Seuss
  • Exam #1: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 1.

Unit 2: Earth Systems & Earth Resources(3 weeks)

  • Teacher-Created Readings: Earth, Rocks, Soils, and Hydrosphere
  • Earth Science Concepts
  • Geologic Time Scale
  • Plate tectonics
  • Earthquakes, Volcanoes
  • Seasons, Solar intensity and latitude
  • Rock cycle, formation, composition
  • Physical and chemical properties of soil and rocks
  • Soil Types, soil erosion, soil problems, soil conservation
  • Global water resources and use
  • Freshwater, saltwater, ocean circulation
  • Agricultural, industrial and domestic water use
  • Global water problems
  • Water conservation
  • Lab: “Soil & Acid Precipitation”– Students apply knowledge to identify and solve problems related to soil quality and acid rain.
  • Lab: “Soil Texture and Nutrients” – Students calculate the percent of sand, silt, and clay in soil samples and use the soil pyramid to determine the soil texture. Students measure the amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and determine the pH of soil samples. Students use the soil texture and soil nutrients to determine which crops could flourish in the soil samples.
  • Activity: “Analyzing the Geologic Time Scale”
  • Activity: “Calculating Half Life”
  • Video: “The Dust Bowl”– Students watch clips of The Dust Bowl, analyze the causes and determine how it could have been prevented.
  • Exam #2: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 2.

Unit 3: Ecology and the Living World(3 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 5: Ecosystems: Concepts and Fundamentals
  • Ecological Structure: Populations, Communities, Keystone species, species diversity, biomes
  • Ecosystems as Systems and Energy Flow: photosynthesis, cellular respiration, Food chains, Food webs, trophic levels, ecological pyramids
  • Biological production and biomass
  • Ecological stability and succession, climate shifts, species movement
  • Botkin Chapter 8: Biological Diversity and Biological Invasions
  • Biological diversity, evolution, natural selection
  • Competition and Ecological Niches
  • Symbiosis, Predation and Parasitism
  • How Geography and geology affect biological diversity
  • Invasive species and island biogeography
  • Botkin Chapter 13: Wildlife, Fisheries, and Endangered Species
  • Single-Species wildlife management, carrying capacity and sustainable yields
  • Problems with the logistic curve
  • Improved approaches to wildlife management
  • Fisheries – decline of fish populations
  • Fishing techniques, overfishing, aquaculture, fishing laws and treaties
  • How a species becomes endangered and extinct
  • How people cause extinctions and affect biological diversity
  • Lab: “Survival of the Sweetest” – Students use candy and dice to simulate the events of natural selection for a population of mussels and the effects of a predator on the diversity of a community.
  • Activity: “Food Webbing” – Students create a food web given a list of organisms from the Mojave Desert
  • Video: “How Evolution Works”
  • Article/Video: “Wise Old Whooping Cranes Keep Captive-Bred Fledglings On Track” by NPR.
  • Article/Activity: “Lessons from the Wolf” by Scientific American, 2005. Students create food chains based on the article and analyze and describe the role keystone species in Yellowstone.
  • Reading: “r and K selection” (
  • Project: “Invasive, Keystone, Indicator, Extinct, Endangered, and Threatened Species Book” – Students choose six different species from each of the pre-described categories, research the species, giving background, reasons for status, solutions/successes, a map of current distribution, and a picture.
  • Exam #3: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 3.

Unit 4: Cycles and Climate Change(3 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 20: The Atmosphere, Climate, and Global Warming
  • Weather and Climate
  • The Atmosphere: Structure, temperature, pressure, global zones of pressure
  • What Makes the Earth Warm
  • Studying Climate: instrumental record, historical record, paleo-proxy record
  • The Greenhouse Effect – how it works
  • The Major Greenhouse Gases – carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide
  • Climate Change and Feedback Loops – Positive and negative feedback loops
  • Causes of Climate Change
  • Oceans and Climate Change – El Nino
  • Forecasting Climate Change
  • Potential Environmental, Ecological, and Human Effects of Global Warming – Changes in river flow, rise in sea level, glaciers and sea ice, changes in biological diversity, agricultural production, human health effects
  • Botkin Chapter 6: The Biogeochemical Cycles
  • Carbon cycle, carbon-silicate cycle
  • Nitrogen cycle
  • Phosphorous cycle
  • Sulfur cycle
  • Project: “Wedge Challenge” –Students learn the technologies currently available that can substantially cut carbon emissions, develop critical thinking reasoning skills as they create their own portfolio of strategies to cut emissions, and verbally communicate the rationale for their selections. Working in teams, students will develop the skills to negotiate a solution that is both physically plausible and politically acceptable, and defend their solution to a larger group.
  • Lab: “Understanding Climate Change” – Students test the difference in the ability of air and carbon dioxide to retain heat energy radiated from black sand. Students will graph and analyze their own experimental data between temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations.
  • Lab: “Carbon Cycle”
  • Reading: “Exploring Climate Change” –
  • Activity: Molecular Modeling – Students build molecules of the most common greenhouse gases
  • Reading: “Nitrogen Cycling in Ecosystems” – College Board
  • Activity: “The Nitrogen Cycle Game” – College Board
  • Exam #4: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 4.

Unit 5: Populations(3 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 4: The Human Population and the Environment
  • Concepts of Population Dynamics – distribution, fertility rates, growth rates, demographic transition
  • History of Human population growth
  • Projecting future population growth
  • Exponential growth and doubling time
  • Human population as logistic growth curve
  • Age structure diagrams
  • Effects of medical advances on demographic transition
  • Human death rates and rise of industrial societies
  • Human population’s effects on Earth – hunger, disease, economic effects, resource use, habitat destruction
  • Human carrying capacity of Earth
  • Achieving Zero Population Growth – Strategies for sustainability, birth control, national programs to reduce birth rates
  • Lab: “Call of the Wild” – This lab introduces the concept of predator/prey population cycles. Students will investigate how a wolf and an elk population change of time in response to the other’s presence and how each population relates to the other. Students will participate in a guided-inquiry activity using a computer simulation that is used to test student-created questions about the population cycles of sheep and wolves under several population limiting factors.
  • Lab: “Bubble Survivorship Lab” – Students study two populations of soap bubbles, using them as models of real populations to construct survivorship curves. Students subject the populations to differing amounts of stress to determine the effects upon survivorship.
  • Online Readings – “Population Ecology”
  • Reproductive strategies – r versus K
  • Survivorship
  • Carrying capacity
  • Case Study: “The Glorious, Golden, and Gigantic Quaking Aspen” -
  • Project: “Making an Age Pyramid” – Students will collect data from their own families to construct a personal family age structure diagram on graph paper. Students will collaborate to make a class-wide age structure diagram. Students will analyze trends, patterns, and compare it the United States’ age structure.
  • Activity: Doubling Time Problems – Students will analyze the growth of various given populations through time using the doubling time formula.
  • Reading: “Moral Implications of Cultural Carrying Capacity” by Garrett Hardin
  • Video: “Religions and Babies” by Hans Rosling
  • Article: “Human Population Growth Up” by Joel E. Cohen, Scientific American, Sept. 2005.
  • Exam #5: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 5.

Unit 6: Land and Water Use(4 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 11: Agriculture, Aquaculture, and the Environment
  • Botkin Chapter 12: Landscapes: Forests, Parks and Wilderness
  • Forests and Forestry – How forests affect the whole Earth, Ecology of forests, How people have viewed forests, Modern conflicts over forestland and forest resources, World forest area and Global production and consumption of forest resources
  • Forest Management – Achieving sustainable forestry, deforestation
  • The Difference between Parks, Nature Preserves, and Wilderness
  • Botkin Chapter 9: Ecological Restoration
  • Restoration of rivers, streams, wetlands
  • Prairie restoration
  • How to restore heavily damaged lands and ecosystems
  • Criteria used to judge the success of restoration
  • Botkin Chapter 18: Water Supply, Use, and Management
  • Water – A global perspective, interactions between groundwater and streams
  • Water Supply – United States precipitation, runoff patterns, droughts, groundwater use and problems, desalination
  • Water Use – How water is transported and trends in water use
  • Water Conservation – Agricultural use, public supply, domestic use, industrial use, manufacturing use
  • Sustainability and Water Management – Sustainable water use, groundwater sustainability, water management, water footprint
  • Wetlands – Restoration of wetlands, natural service functions of wetlands
  • Dams and the Environment – effects of building and removing dams
  • Botkin Chapter 22: Urban Environments
  • City Life – The city as a system
  • Environmental History of Cities – Rise of towns, urban centers, industrial metropolis, center of civilization
  • City Planning - City Planning for defense and beauty, the city park
  • The City as an Environment – Energy budget of a city, Urban atmosphere and climate, Solar energy in cities, Water in cities, Soils in cities, Pollution in cities
  • Lab: “Dragonfly Pond” – Students will evaluate effects of different kinds of land use on wetland habitats and discuss and evaluate lifestyle changes to minimize damaging effects on wetlands.
  • Lab: “Shell Island Dilemma”
  • Case Study: “Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge”
  • Case Study: “The Florida Everglades”
  • Exam #6: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 6.

Unit 7: Atmosphere and Air Pollution(3 weeks)

  • Botkin Chapter 21: Air Pollution
  • Air pollution in lower atmosphere – Major air pollutants and effects
  • Acid rain
  • How to control pollutants in lower atmosphere
  • Stratospheric ozone depletion
  • Air pollution indoors and how to control indoor air pollution
  • Lab: “Measuring Particulates” - parts per million and mathematical calculations
  • Lab: “Microscale Acid Rain”
  • Lab: “Air Quality and Automobiles”
  • Case Study: “Sustainable Skylines: Dallas and Kansas City”
  • Activity: “Investigating Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuel Burning” - Students will graph and analyze worldwide energy production historically and its effect on the accumulation of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Students will access statistics from 1751 to near present.
  • Exam #7: Students take a 45 min. multiple choice and 45 min. free-response exam on all material in unit 7.

Unit 8: Pollution & Toxicity(3 weeks)