Sonoran Desert Knowledge Exchange (SDKE)

Learning About Sonoran Desert Biodiversity

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Initial Exploration

Choose a few spots to observe and see what you find. How do you want to organize your observations? We suggest you draw and take notes in a notebook. View this video that shows some students observing ants in their backyard. (MEDIA)

As you make your observations try to note the different microhabitats within your schoolyard or backyard. It will be important to understand the microhabitat within your schoolyard when we design our study. What is a microhabitat? For that matter, what is a habitat? A habitat is simply the place in which an organisms lives. Smaller habitats can be found within larger habitats, and a microhabitat is simply a smaller specialized habitat contained within a larger habitat. For example, we might speak of a grassland as a habitat and an individual clump of grass as a microhabitat within the grassland. A different suite of species can be found in each type of microhabitat within an environment. This means that if want to estimate the total diversity of the schoolyard environment we must make sure to sample from each microhabitat within the schoolyard.

Offline: Collaborate/Talk about it/Contribute:

• Science notebook (tips on how to keep sci notebook): keep notes and drawings in your notebook. Here is an example.
• As a class, make a map of the different locations and then add your observations on a daily basis.

Online: Collaborate/Talk about it/Contribute:

• Blog (add link to how to) share your schoolyard observations
• Forums
• Use a class wiki (view example)
• Add photos (link to page with instructions)

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