Grade 12 · printable course

Environmental Science: Systems, Evidence, and Choices (Part 2)

Grade 12, Units 5-8 · 320 pages · 36 lessons · PDF, print at home

A full-year, systems-based environmental science course for seniors who bring biology and chemistry into a discipline that fuses ecology, earth science, chemistry, and policy analysis. Students investigate matter and energy flow through ecosystems, human population and resource demand, climate mechanism and evidence, biodiversity loss, pollution, and energy systems, using field investigations doable in a backyard, park, or window and household-scale equipment. Every unit separates what is established by scientific consensus from what is a contested policy tradeoff, and students practice arguing from evidence rather than being told a conclusion. The course culminates in a resource-management case study requiring students to weigh competing evidence and values, not to select a "correct" policy. This volume holds units 5 to 8: Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Stability; Water and Land: Pollution Pathways; Air Quality, Toxicology, and Distributed Harm; Capstone: Energy Systems and Tradeoff Analysis.

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Every unit and lesson in this book, in order. The same lessons are taught online at lettersanddevotion.com, so a family can move between paper and screen.

Environmental Science: Systems, Evidence, and Choices

36 lessons · try a lesson online free

Unit 5: Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Stability9 lessons
  1. 36.Trophic cascades following keystone species removal
  2. 37.Structural basis of keystone status (connectivity and functional uniqueness)
  3. 38.Resilience thresholds and tipping points in ecosystem stress-response graphs
  4. 39.Habitat fragmentation vs. climate stress vs. invasive species as competing stressor explanations
  5. 40.Quadrat sampling and point-count field survey procedures
  6. 41.Attribution of a specific biodiversity change to one of several competing stressors
  7. 42.Comparison of local survey data against regional historical baseline data
  8. 43.Applying trophic cascade and threshold concepts to evaluate an untaught conservation intervention
  9. 44.Background extinction rate as a comparison baseline for current extinction rates
Unit 6: Water and Land: Pollution Pathways9 lessons
  1. 45.The nitrogen cycle stages (fixation, nitrification, runoff, denitrification) as they appear in a watershed diagram
  2. 46.Point source vs. nonpoint source pollution classification criteria
  3. 47.The source-pathway-receptor model applied to an untaught contamination scenario
  4. 48.The lag between rising nutrient loading and the visible onset of eutrophication as a threshold phenomenon
  5. 49.The distinction between bioaccumulation (within-organism, over time) and biomagnification (across trophic levels, at one time)
  6. 50.Dose-response thresholds as receptor-dependent reference values, not intrinsic pass/fail properties of a number
  7. 51.PH, turbidity, and nitrate test-strip procedure and reading technique
  8. 52.An original source-pathway-receptor causal argument and remediation tradeoff for a self-collected local water sample
  9. 53.The structural difference between a connected causal chain and a list of disconnected facts in a source-pathway-receptor argument
Unit 7: Air Quality, Toxicology, and Distributed Harm8 lessons
  1. 54.Primary vs. secondary air pollutants (e.g., soot vs. ground-level ozone)
  2. 55.Inversion layers and atmospheric transport of pollutants
  3. 56.Dose-response curves; threshold vs. no-threshold models
  4. 57.Comparative shape of dose-response curves across pollutants
  5. 58.Source-pathway-receptor model applied to a new air-quality dataset
  6. 59.Causal sufficiency of dose-response evidence for a specific health claim
  7. 60.Empirical distribution of exposure across demographic groups (environmental justice as a data question)
  8. 61.Integrated causal argument linking pathway, dose-response, and distributional exposure for a novel location pair
Unit 8: Capstone: Energy Systems and Tradeoff Analysis10 lessons
  1. 62.Energy return on energy invested (EROEI) as a ratio of output energy to invested energy
  2. 63.Conversion from nameplate capacity to expected output using capacity factor
  3. 64.The non-dominance of any single metric (EROEI, carbon intensity, LCOE) across competing energy sources
  4. 65.The distinction between evidence claims and value judgments in energy-policy argument
  5. 66.Demand forecasting applied to grid capacity planning
  6. 67.An original multi-source energy tradeoff analysis for a self-selected real scenario
  7. 68.Diagnosing the source of disagreement between competing energy-policy recommendations
  8. 69.The physical constraint linking energy inputs, conversion losses, and deliverable output in an energy system
  9. 70.The definition and units of carbon intensity
  10. 71.Oral presentation of an original energy tradeoff analysis with explicit evidence/value separation

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