Our Valuable Estuaries - Coasts and Marine Environs - Making Connections
OceanWatch Australia’s Year 10 Geography Resource
OceanWatch Australia (OWA), in partnership with the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET), the NSW Fishermen’s Cooperative Association and the Geography Teachers Association of NSW (GTANSW) have developed an innovative environmental education resource for Year 10 Geography teachers and students, the first to addresses the issue of coastal-marine management in a holistic manner.
The resource is an initiative of the fishing industry and is based upon the idea that:
“all activities within a catchment cumulatively impact on coastal aquatic freshwater, estuarine and ultimately marine habitats and the fisheries they support (catchment-coast marine continuum)”.
It focuses on:
- key physical and ecological processes that operate in coastal/marine environments;
- interaction of human activities and coastal catchments,
- importance of protecting our coastal/marine environments especially for sustainable fisheries,
- threats to sustainability of these environments; and
- individual, group and government responses to these threats and evaluation of their effectiveness, particularly regarding the protection of water quality and fish habitat.
The resource fits tightly with the NSW Geography Syllabus Stage 5, Focus Area 5A3; Issues in Australian Environments: Land and Water Management and Waste Management. These issues are explored through the use of case studies in coastal catchments, the first case study, the Lower Clarence River Catchment.
The resource has been trialled (in a draft stage) and exceptionally well received by high school geography teachers and has recently been featured at combined DET/GTANSW Professional Development Workshops in NSW. Much positive feedback has been received on its appeal as a user friendly, stand alone resource which examines issues from a unique perspective.
The complete resource consists of:
1) a Teaching Program;
2) a Teaching Support Document;
3) full colour double sided A3 broadsheets for each case study;
4) OWA’s poster, “A Vision for Sustainable Coastal Environments“;
5) fact sheets on Land and Water Management Issues, Waste Management Issues (7 generic fact sheets for NSW and 4 case study specific fact sheets).
For further information on this resource or to enquire about the poster or broadsheets, please call 02 9660 2262.
This project has been assisted by the New South Wales Government through its Environmental Trust
Project Partners and Sponsors
|
