KS3 & KS4 science curriculum

The thread through this unit is agriculture, including deforestation, and its impact on biodiversity. The examples used draw on pupils’ knowledge of greenhouse gases and global warming and explore some effects of climate change in a range of contexts and in particular their impact on biodiversity and on food production. This prepares pupils for thinking about strategies to maintain biodiversity and achieve food security.

1. Agriculture and habitat loss
2. Deforestation affects the carbon and water cycles
3. Impacts of climate change on biodiversity
4. Climate change and food production
5. Advantages and disadvantages of plastic food packaging

• Increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is leading to global warming and climate change.
• Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, released by living organisms and produced when burning fuels.
• Methane is a greenhouse gas, released by living organisms and from the ground.
• Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can reduce the rate of global warming and may even help to reverse it.
• Since the industrial revolution, in the 1850s, overall global surface temperatures have been increasing.
• Scientists can explain how increased levels of greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.
• Burning fuels produces greenhouse gases, other pollutant gases, and particulates.
• Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by using less energy and switching to renewable energy sources.
• Renewable energy resources will not run out because they are replenished more quickly than we use them up.