Simulating Fire Impacts on Soil

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Description: Wildfires have a variety of impacts on soils, altering physical, chemical, and biological properties. In this activity, the impact of fire is simulated by heating soil in an oven, and the fungal community in the soil is observed based on growth of visible structures in the presence of a microbial food source.
Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12
Keywords: Fire, soil organisms, fungi
Lesson Area: Soil Chemistry, Soils and Plant Growth
Resource Type: Lab Experiment

Next Generation Science Standards

Grade Discipline Core Idea
3-5 ESS3.C: Human impacts on Earth systems Societal activities have had major effects on the land, ocean, atmosphere, and even outer space. Societal activities can also help protect Earth's resources and environments.
6-8 ESS3.C: Human impacts on Earth systems Human activities have altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging it, although changes to environments can have different impacts for different living things. Activities and technologies can be engineered to reduce people's impacts on Earth.
9-12 ESS3.C: Human impacts on Earth systems Sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources, including the development of technologies.
3-5 LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience When the environment changes some organisms survive and reproduce, some move to new locations, some move into the transformed environment, and some die.
6-8 LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience N/A
9-12 LS2.C: Ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience If a biological or physical disturbance to an ecosystem occurs, including one induced by human activity, the ecosystem may return to its more or less original state or become a very different ecosystem, depending on the complex set of interactions within the ecosystem.