Science / Year 9 / Science Understanding / Biological sciences

Curriculum content descriptions

Ecosystems consist of communities of interdependent organisms and abiotic components of the environment; matter and energy flow through these systems (ACSSU176)

Elaborations
  • exploring interactions between organisms such as predator/prey, parasites, competitors, pollinators and disease
  • examining factors that affect population sizes such as seasonal changes, destruction of habitats, introduced species
  • considering how energy flows into and out of an ecosystem via the pathways of food webs, and how it must be replaced to maintain the sustainability of the system
  • investigating how ecosystems change as a result of events such as bushfires, drought and flooding
Cross-curriculum priorities
ScOT terms

Ecosystems

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Greener farming: protecting the environment

This study guide examines ways Australian cattle and sheep farmers are monitoring and researching how greenhouse gas emissions are being produced by farms and steps farmers use to reduce them. This includes selective breeding programs to produce cattle and sheep whose digestive processes emit less methane, research into ...

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Animal Health: the science of healthy animals

This study guide considers the science behind breeding, genetics, health and animal welfare in the cattle and sheep industries - keeping animals free of disease and parasites, improving biodiversity and protecting against feral animals. A range of articles and student activities explores how farmers and scientists are working ...

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Exploring the production and marketing of seafood

This is a teacher resource containing a series of inquiry teaching sequences relating to seafood production and marketing in Australia. It contains material to assist planning, implementing and assessing a research task about the technologies and methods used in the fishing and aquaculture industries to catch and farm seafood, ...

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Sciencey: Will Australia have the last bees on Earth?

Bee populations around the world have started vanishing, in a process known as colony collapse disorder. Scientists have many ideas about what causes colony collapse, including one possible culprit: the varroa mite. Australia is one of the last places on Earth unaffected by varroa. Could this mean that Australia could have ...

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Engineering clean rivers

Figuring out how to clean up contaminated rivers is a big challenge. It's also tricky to work out where the most contaminated parts of a river system are and whether its fish are safe to eat. Watch this video and learn how engineering has helped to solve these problems. Why do you think engineers looked to the bottom of ...

Interactive

Biodiversity – sustainability action process (Years 7–10)

This biodiversity learning resource guides students through an extended school based investigation. Students develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate and reflect on their success and their learning.

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Daisies describe an ecosystem

Ecosystems are affected by many factors including increasing temperatures, which many scientists believe threaten natural systems on Earth today. This creative clip uses a theoretical world of black and white daisies to show how changes to the natural reflectivity of a planet's surface impacts temperatures and populations. ...

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Dengue Mozzie

This nine and a half minute video segment from Catalyst is an excellent example of current Australian science, the use of biological controls on a pest and modern techniques and approaches to fighting the spread of human disease.

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Rabbit immunity

This 6 minute video segment from Catalyst covers a range of biological concepts associated with the history, impacts and methods of control of the introduced rabbit in Australia.

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Ibis Invasion

This ABC In Depth feature article describes research on Australian white ibis - or 'tip turkeys' as many call them. They are regarded as a nuisance in cities, especially in the spring breeding season. But scientists fear they may become extinct as more pressure is put on the wetlands that are their native and adopted environments. ...

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Water recycling

This 11 minute video segment from Catalyst provides an excellent explanation of the processes involved in recycling sewage for an urban water supply. It also provides a range of opinions and concerns in an excellent debate on the topic.

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Cloud seeding

This nine and a half minute video segment from Catalyst describes how researchers from Monash University have hard evidence that cloud seeding can produce good amounts of extra rainfall. Data collected over a long period of time has give hope to scientists and environmentalists who are trying to reduce the impacts of droughts ...

Interactive

Science Talk 2007: Martina Doblin

An interview and lab tour with Dr Martina Doblin, a phytoplankton ecologist at UTS. Martina talks to students and their teacher from Concord High School about her work studying microscopic organisms such as the toxic algae that make up harmful algal blooms.

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Turtles

This 7 minute video segment from Catalyst describes the risk factors that impact on turtle survival. Protecting the future of turtle populations on the Queensland coast has been the life's work of Col Limpus for the past 40 years. His efforts have included research and reducing predation from foxes and entrapment in trawler nets.

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Carbon country update

This five and a half minute video segment from Catalyst discusses the potential to manage controlled burning in Arnhem that reduces frequency of wildfires to provide other benefits. The potential to turn this into economic benefits from carbon trading is explored and the science investigations that will first be essential.

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Borneo Live Reef Fish Trade

This nearly 13 minute video segment from Catalyst explains how Fisheries scientists warn that if fishing around the world continues at its current pace, more and more species will vanish. The coral triangle is one particular area where biodiversity is at risk, and the top predator appears to be humans.

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Dingo secrets

This 9 minute video segment from Catalyst shows a biologist is finding out about how a family of multi-coloured dingoes is challenging our very idea of these animals. Technology has been invaluable in learning how young dingoes are taught adult behaviour and survival behaviours of the pack.

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Chemicals on the Great Barrier Reef

This program deals with a range of human impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. Herbicides from land runoff have been traced to algae and sea grasses in river mouths and coastal zones along the Great Barrier Reef. Effects include retardation of photosynthesis and growth of corals. Other pressures on the reef include high water ...

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Aerial Orang Utans

This 11 minute video segment form Catalyst shows that although the orang-utans of Borneo are threatened with extinction, we don't know exactly how many are left or where they are. The use of helicopters to locate their nests and estimate population size has helped to challenge our thinking about the requirements of this ...

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Atoms Alive: Cells and energy

Cells are like chemical factories. Discover the different ways cells get energy to carry out their daily operations. Learn about the different types of metabolic processes inside cells, such as those that break down molecules to release energy and those that assemble building blocks to make more complex components.