Summary:

For the next few units, we’ll be studying different scientific fields that are related to the challenges we face as a society living in a changing climate. As I mentioned before, climate change is the over-arching challenge for our society and you’ll see that it is an important factor in each of the next few weeks (Agriculture, Water, Energy). For this unit, the specific challenge we’ll focus on is feeding what is projected to be 9 billion people on this planet by the year 2050. Agricultural science is another very interdisciplinary field that includes climate science, geology, evolution, ecology, soil science, and many other fields. In fact, your activity last week about antibiotic resistance in livestock shows this connection between fields. We’ll also be looking at genetic modification and our agricultural system this week while we explore correlations and experimental design.

Learning Objectives:

  • be able to distinguish the scientific issues regarding GM crops from the non-scientific issues
  • understand why correlation does not equal causation
  • design experiments to investigate causal mechanisms
  • understand the importance of evidence-based arguments

Unit 7, Class 12, [day/date] Required Readings/Videos:

  • SF video: The Challenge of Food
  • Reading: Godfray et al. 2010. The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People. Scientific American

Unit 7, Class 12 [day/date]Self-Assessment

[insert form]

Unit 7, Class 13, [day/date] Required Readings/ Videos

Unit 7, Class 13 [day/date] Self-Assessment

[insert form]

Unit 7 Major Assignments

Video Topic/Skills due in project folder at [time/date]