The Use & Value of Mangrove Areas
Main Idea
This unit provides students with opportunities to refine their understanding of the mangrove environments and their distinctive characteristics that make them interesting and valuable as a natural system and for human use. This unit encourages observation and understanding of some of the features of the area with particular emphasis on current use, distribution, biodiversity, continued uses and management.
Students explore the mangrove areas of their local regions as a specific coastal area with enormous ecological, economic and social significance.
Students explore natural processes that are a natural part of the ecosystem, and identify issues, which are affecting or likely to affect, the long-term survival of these fragile and important natural environments.
This unit also provides opportunities for students to identify a site and undertake a range of activities to find out about the nature of the chosen site and the issues or opportunities associated with it.
Key Understandings
Mangroves and saltmarshes are wetland communities that are found in the intertidal zone of estuaries, bays, inlets and gulfs. They link the land with the sea through tidal movement, receiving water from both the ocean and freshwater rivers. Mangroves provide a sheltered shallow and ever changing intertidal zone that provides an essential nursery area for many fish and crustaceans including commercially important species such as barramundi. Together with other wetlands such as seagrasses and salt marshes, mangrove forests function as a buffer zone between the land and the sea. Sediments trapped by mangrove roots prevent silting of adjacent marine habitats where cloudy water might cause corals to die. In addition, mangrove plants and sediments have been shown to absorb pollution, including heavy metals.
Mangroves and saltmarsh wetlands are considered important because they:
- support recreational and commercial fisheries by providing essential nursery, feeding and breeding areas for many species of fish and crustaceans
- support an abundance and diversity of birdlife
- provide important physical protection of the coast from erosion and storms
- facilitate biologically productive natural systems contributing organic matter to estuaries;
- act as a filter of sediments and other substances that may accumulate from land runoff
- provide key areas for educating the community and the general public on the nature and significance of coastal wetlands
- Provide significant areas for scientific investigation and environmental education.
It is important that we look after these areas and protect them. Not only because they are vital to the continued health of many of our fish stocks but also because we have a moral and social responsibility to look after our environment and to leave it in a healthy condition for future generations.
In Queensland, mangroves and all other marine plants are completely protected under the Fisheries Act 1994 . The protection extends to seagrasses, saltcouch and those plants such as Melaleuca growing adjacent to tidal lands. Any disturbance (such as trimming, mowing or removal) of marine plants requires an approval from the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries.
Focus Questions
- What are mangrove forests?
- What are the characteristics of mangroves in the local area?
- What types of animals and other plants live in and around the mangroves in the area?
- Why and how are these areas important?
- How are these areas managed?
- What areas or sites need support and action?
- What can we do to help protect mangrove forests and why is it important to get involved?
- Why are mangroves important to the GBR?
Key Words
Adaptation, algae bacteria, biodiversity, boardwalk, buffer, carnivores, coast, creatures, detritus, estuary, fishing, food chains, fungi, habitats, herbivores, intertidal zone, management, mangroves, mud, omnivores, organic matter, pneumatophores, recreation, research, sediment, survival, sustainable balance, swamp, tides, tourism, wetlands, water quality.
Learning Areas
- Society and Environment
- Science
Key Competencies
- Collecting, analysing and organising information
- Communicating ideas and information
- Planning and organising activities
- Working with others and in teams
- Using mathematical ideas and techniques
- Solving problems
- Using technology.
Outcomes
This unit focuses on the following core learning outcomes.
In Place and Space
3.1 Students cooperatively collect and anaylse data obtained through a field study instruments and surveys, to influence care of a local place.
3.2 Students use and make maps to identify coastal and land features.
3.3 Students describe the values underlying personal and people's actions regarding familiar places.
3.4 Students cooperatively identify an environmental issue of concern and contribute to its resolution.
3.5 Students describe how natural and built elements give character and importance to local and international places.
3.6 Students articulate a code of environmental conduct for personal use of resources.
3.7 Students make justifiable links between ecological and economic factors and the production and consumption of a familiar resource.???
3.8 Students participate in a field study to recommend the most effective ways to care for a place.
3.9 Students explain whether personal, family and school decisions about resource use and management balance local and global considerations.
3.10 Students participate in geographical inquiries to evaluate impacts on ecosystems in different global locations.
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The Use and Value of Mangrove Areas - Teaching Unit
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