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Investigate: cane toads

This unit of work is designed to help students understand cane toads and their threat to the Australian environment and agricultural production. Why some animals are to be protected and others need to be eradicated. The resource includes a teacher guide, student learning journal and a PowerPoint presentation.

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Making a difference: development for a better future

This series of project-based resources use real world contemporary contexts to highlight opportunities and challenges in international food and nutrition security, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Resources focus on international agricultural practices and Australia's role as a member of the global community. The ...

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The Australian Coast - Teacher notes and student activities

This 100 page booklet explores the major physical environmental characteristics of the Australian coast. It also provides an outline of the major physical processes which shape the coast and introduces the human-induced processes which impact upon Australia’s coast. The booklet contains a glossary, links to online resources, ...

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Explaining our catchment

In this lesson sequence students use conceptual diagrams to identify features and relationships between features in the local waterway. Students create a conceptual diagram, using a hypothetical waterway from 'The story of a river'. They then create a digital conceptual diagram online using data collected from their local ...

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Story of a river

In this activity, students use a story of a fictional river to explore the impacts of various land uses on the ecological health of a river. This demonstration can be used to introduce science or geography concepts related to your local catchment e.g. land uses, water cycle, human impacts and contaminants or waste in river ...

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Visualising water quality

This lesson sequence provides a rich opportunity to discuss sustainable water management issues, particularly those related to a local catchment. Students gather and map data which allows them to answer questions and add simple environmental data such as water quality parameters to maps using Google Maps.

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Landline: Feeding soils to grow hungry crops

How do today's farmers improve their crop yields? One school of thought is to go high-tech and use agricultural technologies designed to improve efficiencies and yields. See the role that soil condition plays in gaining those high yields.

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Landline: Food shortage: Please, Sir, can I have some more?

Are we headed for food shortages in the future? Many scientists say that food production is becoming a critical issue and that Australia has a part to play in securing food for the world's future. As you watch this clip from 2013, find out how past strategies dealt with the food security issue, and learn about our plans ...

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Foreign Correspondent: Damming the free and mighty Mekong

The Mekong has been a rare thing: a largely untouched and free-flowing river. Stretching for nearly 5,000 km from the mountains of Tibet to Vietnam's Mekong Delta, it has provided a way of life for millions of people and been an important trading route between south-western China and south-eastern Asia. In this clip from ...

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Catalyst: How high will sea levels rise?

Much of the world’s population will eventually have to deal with the consequences of sea-level rise, but the question is: how high will the water get? Dr Graham Phillips investigates how scientists are turning to the distant past to predict the impact of rising sea levels. Watch scientists explore 120,000-year-old coastlines, ...

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Catalyst: Why plants are good for liveable cities

Central Park in Sydney was voted the world's best tall building. It is known for the plants in its beautiful vertical gardens which cover its surfaces, but did you know that the garden is not purely decorative? Watch this video to find out what other purpose the vertical garden has.

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Understanding the causes of climate change

Did you know that climate change is not a recent phenomenon? In the past, natural events led to changes in the climate. Although natural events still affect climate, they're not enough to explain the big changes we've been seeing in the last 150 years. What changes on earth can account for such dramatic changes to our climate? ...

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Landline: Feeding the hungry in Timor-Leste

It is often hard for a developing country to grow enough food to feed its population. In this clip you'll see the challenges encountered by the growing nation of Timor-Leste (East Timor). Listen to an AusAID organiser and the East Timorese president describe the importance of food, and the heartbreak of a hungry nation.

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Foreign Correspondent: Sustainable tourism

The Yucatán Peninsula in south-eastern Mexico is a popular tourist destination. This clip focuses on examples of sustainable tourism - tourism that aims to have a low environmental impact. View Tulum, a town under threat of being developed similarly to Cancún, a major tourist resort destination.

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Foreign Correspondent: New dam, new house: The Mekong

The mighty Mekong river provides a way of life for millions of people, and is arguably the most important resource in the developing country of Laos. Discover how villagers are being relocated to make way for hydropower dams on this river, which stretches for nearly 5,000 kilometres from the mountains of Tibet to Vietnam. ...

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Foreign Correspondent: Bali - tourism and development

Bali, a world-renowned slice of paradise in Indonesia, is undergoing rapid development to accommodate the increase in foreign tourism. Tourism brings money but it also drives up prices and affects the environment. View this clip to explore the issues experienced by those living in paradise.

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Catalyst: E-waste, recycling, and sustainability

What happens to electronic waste (e-waste)? Watch this clip about the physics of recycling to find out the way that useful materials are captured from waste at a local materials recovery facility. Presenter Tanya Ha investigates e-waste, the products it comes from, and the sustainability challenges it poses.

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Measuring gravity

Did you know you can measure gravity? The more mass an object has, the more gravity it has, so by measuring the mass of something, you can figure out its gravity. Why do you think climate scientists may want these measurements? Watch this NASA animation to find out.

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How did change accelerate?

This 12 minute video is divided into two parts and presents an overview of the rapid development of the modern world. Part 1 presents reasons for the exponential growth in the world's population over the last 500 years including the development of global networks and commerce and the discovery of fossil fuel energy, which ...

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Sustainable table: the coming famine

This is a website about the key issues related to global food insecurity. It contains sections on the scarcity of primary resources; land degradation; land scarcity; waste; climate change; consequences of inaction; and proposed solutions. Photographs, statistics, graphs, maps and figures support the information. This resource ...