Palm Oil & Ecosystems
This ingredient links our candy consumption to orangutan population decline through deforestation-driven habitat loss.
What is palm oil?
In the class model, palm fruit increasing leads to more rats. Rats increasing then affects snakes through this type of interaction.
What is predator–prey interaction?
One challenge of replacing palm oil with soybean or canola oil is that these crops require much more of this resource.
What is land?
Palm oil trees only grow in areas with high rainfall, warm temperatures, and strong sunlight—conditions typical of this global band.
What is the equator?
Farmers choose to grow oil palms even if it harms animals because the income helps meet these basic human needs.
What are survival needs (food, shelter, stability)?
Increasing the number of oil palm trees alters the balance of species by increasing rats, pigs, and snakes. This type of ecological relationship explains why.
What is a cause and effect relationship?
A population that increases due to more available food is experiencing a change in this factor within a system.
What is a resource availability factor?
Palm oil produces more oil per hectare than alternatives because of its high yield. This makes it efficient in terms of this scientific ratio.
What is output per unit area?
Students shaded rainforest regions separately on their maps because not all areas with correct climate conditions meet this additional requirement.
What is being an existing rainforest biome?
Oil palm farming provides income over 10 times higher than rice farming, illustrating this economic principle of choosing the most beneficial option.
What is opportunity cost?
When tropical rainforests are replaced by oil palm plantations, this limiting factor becomes the primary driver of orangutan decline.
What is loss of habitat (or food resources)?
A model explaining how candy buying affects wildlife must include components, interactions, and this final element that connects them.
What is an connection chart?
Even if substitutes exist, they may not be “good” substitutes if they increase this environmental impact elsewhere.
What is habitat destruction?
To locate areas outside rainforests that could grow palm oil, students needed to evaluate maps using this three-factor comparison.
What is climate suitability?
50 million people depend on forests for their livelihoods. This makes rainforest conservation challenging because of these community-level consequences.
What are social or economic impacts?
The data from Lesson 1 show oil palm land increasing while orangutan numbers decrease. This type of correlation—positive or negative—is shown.
What is a negative correlation?
When one change in an ecosystem causes multiple other changes to ripple outward, it demonstrates this concept from Competency 3.
What is a causal chain (or cascading cause-and-effect)?
If canola and soybean oil require more land to produce the same amount of oil, using them could worsen this global environmental issue.
What is deforestation?
A region that has the right climate but is not a rainforest represents this type of opportunity for more sustainable palm oil.
What is an alternative growing region?
Increased global demand for products containing palm oil creates economic pressure for more plantations through this type of market force.
What is demand-driven production?
Orangutans, tigers, and leopards all decline when oil palm plantations expand because they rely on this type of ecosystem with high biodiversity.
What is a tropical rainforest?
If a population is decreasing due to two unrelated factors—such as habitat loss and hunting—these relationships are considered this type.
What are correlational relationships?
Scientists compare oils using both production and land use data. When both factors are considered together, the most sustainable option is the one with the best value for this two-part metric.
What is high yield and low land use?
Identifying potential regions for palm oil growth requires overlapping multiple data layers such as rainfall, temperature, and biomes. This mapping practice is known as this.
What is geographic information system analysis (GIS)?
(accept: overlay mapping or multi-layer mapping)
Farmers, transporters, and processors all benefit from palm oil. This interconnected group of roles is known as this.
What is a supply chain?