The rural environment
Explore soil microbes and emissions through experiments and decision-making tasks, learning how soil management impacts carbon release, sustainability, and environmental outcomes.
Soil mangement and emissions
Experimental investigation
This experiment can be integrated into soil, sustainability, or a livestock teaching unit. The focus is on soil microbes and their respiration of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The microbial population is an important indicator of soil health, but it also determines the amount of carbon dioxide release. The microbial population size and diversity is directly influenced by soil management practices that can be modelled in the classroom with this simple class experiment.
Canterbury Schools: Do not use if attending the Lincoln University Soils Revision Workshop.
Download the resource
Soil emissions classroom experiment [PDF 544KB]
Developed and designed by Roger McLenaghen from the Lincoln University Soils Department.
Soil careers pick-a-path task
Most of New Zealand’s land is either forest or the rural environment with approximately 2-3% in urban land use. So decisions that are made within the rural and forest environments have a big impact on the environmental, economic and social outcomes of New Zealand. There is high need for good decision makers that are able to make informed decisions.
The purpose of this exercise is to get students to be the decision makers and to use the information that they gather from the cards. Some cards have decision making points; good decisions have positive points, better decisions are worth more points, poor decisions have negative points and sometimes all options are either negative or positive outcomes and it is about which option is the best one. To make good decisions we often connect with other specialists within the field to gather information and use a range of soft and hard data.