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Farming – Maths

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Exploring ideas

Good advice

This task will enable students to share their current knowledge about how farming relates to the environment.

A farming family needs advice about wildlife and wildlife habitat. They want to know if keeping a small remnant forest and growing more trees and shrubs will improve their farm or will it reduce their profits and the value of their land? Put yourself in the place of the following people to advise the farming family using mathematical language:

• the family accountant advising on profit and loss
• a local park ranger – on the benefits of wildlife
• a pest controller – on feral animals, weeds and invertebrates that destroy crops
• a local real-estate agent – on land values
• a tourist operator who organises farm holidays

Brainstorm ideas as a class. Record and link ideas using bubble maps or another thinking tool. Using value judgements and an agreed method of concensus, rank the ideas from the most to the least important.

Resources

Measuring biodiversity

The task will enable students to explore the correlation between ecosystem diversity and species diversity.

Students will attempt to measure how ecosystem diversity affects species diversity using the following:

• Develop a method for catching and visually sorting invertebrates into separate species.
• Catch (or observe), sort and record the first 100 species record these on a datasheet.
• Estimate the diversity of each ecosystem. List the physical features and structures to compare ecosystems, e.g.
  • Ground cover: soil, leaves, sticks, native grass, native creepers, rocks, logs.
  • Shrubs: what kind, how many, density.
  • Trees: what kind, native or non-native, old with hollows, shredding bark.
  • Other: surface water, cracks in the ground, etc.
• Develop simple visual criteria to produce a scale of the simplest ecosystems to the most diverse.
• Investigate and compare different ecosystems equivalent to those on farms, e.g. an oval is equivalent to a paddock. Use the same method and compare findings between ecosystems.

Plot the ecosystem diversity against the species diversity on a graph. Interpret the graph to find out if there is a relationship between the two.

Resources

Profit, loss and biodiversity

Can profits and biodiversity work together?

This task will enable students to investigate the most effective way to make a profit while simultaneously improving biodiversity.

Students need access to Eco farm supplied on CD-ROM. Test the program and make a list of all the variables. The challenge is to develop formulae describing how one variable affects others. This will show how best to balance profitability and biodiversity. Students compare their findings and develop a set of recommendations.

Resources

Using water resources sustainably. Can you figure it out?

In this task, students evaluate the available data on water resources in the Murray Darling Basin.

When people talk about hard facts, they are often referring to analysed data. What data on water resources would a decision maker need when looking at the Murray Darling Basin? Is adequate information available? What kind of information should be available?

Students take the role of a water resource manager and:

• Identify what data they need to plan for future water use. Consider the many uses for which the water is required. Consider water loss via evaporation, irrigation and theft.
• Collect data about the quantity of water used by different segments of agriculture, and by towns and cities. How much water needs to flow down the system for it to stay healthy?
• Collect data on water loss.

Students can:

• Use the Murray Darling Basin Commission and other websites to locate available data.
• Examine how useful the data is for making water management decisions.
• Report on the quality of data, highlighting what is useful and what is missing.

Resources

On Borrowed Time – Problem 8: Australia's growing population, and levels of consumption and resource use, pp. 108 – 110

Murray-Darling Basin Commission
www.mdbc.gov.au

CSIRO
Sustainable Farming
www.csiro.au/science/SustainableFarming.html

CRC Irrigation Futures
www.irrigationfutures.org.au

Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
Murray-Darling Basin
www.environment.gov.au/water/mdb/index.html