In todays lesson we were investigating populations, habitat and carrying capacity. We talked about how human populations have increased rapidly in the past 200 years. We discussed how the earth won’t be able to hold more than 10 billion people because we are limited by the resources available to us. Students experienced this in an interactive fishing game exploring the idea of Tragedy of Commons. When the fishermen were too greedy and caught more fish than they needed to survive, the fish in the fishing hole were over fished and the fishing village starved.
We also played a game called “Oh Deer” where we were looking at how populations fluctuate given the amount of resources available to them. When there is a year where there are lots of resources, deer populations increase. When there are too many deer, they starve because there aren’t enough resources to go around.
The next time you are talking with your student about resources and the earth, ask them what type of resources we use. Ask them where that resource comes from and if it is renewable. What would happen if we ran out of it?
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