Activity 4

Ecosystems in The Basque Country

We have seen ecosystems through diagrams and drawings but what are real environments like?

The Basque Country has many different ecosystems. It is situated between the sea and the mountains so we can find aquatic ecosystems, terrestrial ecosystems and mixtures of salt and fresh water in the marsh and wetlands.

Let’s investigate some ecosystems in the Urkiola National Park and identify some of its elements.

Location of the Urkiola National Park

Source: http://www.bizkaia.net/Nekazaritza/urkiola/introduccion/llegar.asp?Idioma=CA&Tem_Codigo=2915

Activity

Form 4 groups of 4 or 5 pupils. Each group will look at one of these ecosystems found in the Urkiola National Park:

Group 1	The Beech Forest beech_forest.zip (.odt)
Group 2	The Holm Oak Forest holm_oak_forest.zip (.odt)
Group 3	The pastures: pastures.zip (.odt)
Group 4	The rocky area: rocky_area.zip (.odt)

Look at the illustration and carefully read the description of your group’s ecosystem. Use the highlighter in the word processor to mark, at least, 5 biotic elements and 3 abiotic elements mentioned and their relationships. For example:

Which colours are used here to highlight the biotic, abiotic factors and the relationships? Now, do the same with your text.

In Activity 2, you made a chart to describe an aquatic ecosystem. Now you are going to organize this information in a concept map to represent all the elements you found and their relationships.

What is a concept map?

It is a way of organizing concepts or key words in a scheme and connecting them. For example, the sentence “Owls make their nests in the branches of oak trees” can be shown on a concept map as:

Note that the key words ‘owls’ and ‘oak trees’ are written in different boxes. An arrow connects the two words. The text “make nests” in the middle of the arrow explains the connection.

Concept maps are a useful tool to graphically explain important concepts and how they are related.

Would you like to make your own concept map? Let’s go!

Use the program Cmap Tool , designed specially to make concept maps.

If it is not installed in your computer or you need help to use it, follow the instructions in this tutorial: Cmap for pupils.

When you finish, project your concept maps on the digital board and compare them. Do they have things in common? Are the relationships similar? What elements are different?

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Activity 4

Ecosystems in The Basque Country

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