The Horse 2020/21

We have created a crossword to test the knowledge from the Chemistry workshop.

Test your knowledge right here

created by Alexa and David 

Hello everybody

Here you will find our survey about glacier melt.

Thank you very much for filling it in and for sharing it.

Genti and Tiziano

Hello Everyone!

We have just finished our suvrey. It would be really great if you could fill out the form.
Here is the link to our survey: Survey Medical Plants

Thank you very much!

Anabel & Karla

Links:More...

Reached so far(20.Mai.2021):

• communication with Bask country
• try to talk with some ukrainian about my design of the project
• a lot ideas for my final work

Content:

• produce water
• produce oxygen
• Animals, that I`m going to have in my closed room to eat

Next steps:

• produce electricity 
• combine the whole things to an ecosystem 
• make some designs for my room 

In my spring holidays, I met a beekeeper. He's the father of a friend of mine and has a lot of experience with bee's. I interviewed him and watched him observating the bee's during their work in the beehive. I was very impressed, how his passion works and what are the dangers especially during this time in climate change. My further steps are now, to take the material together, sort out the most important informations and also check the connection to Basque Country and go further in collaboration work.

Wem gehört die Welt?
>Scobel talk (3sat.de)

Is inequality the price of growing prosperity ? Is a fairer world possible? Gert Scobel discusses global capitalism and approaches to changing our economic system with climate activist Luisa Neubauer and economic sociologist Stefan Brunnhuber.

My project aim is to compare 3 countries ; Swiss, Bask country and India

I did a mindmap

I want different survey from their country and I already communicated it to them

Soil organisms both serve as a source of nutrients for plant growth and drive the transformations of nutrients that make them available to plants. The collective carbon content of all soil bacterial cells is comparable to that of all plants on earth, and their total nitrogen and phosphorous contents are far greater than that of all vegetation, making these microorganisms the primary source of indispensable nutrients for life. Plants fix carbon from the atmosphere, but they require macro and micronutrients that are absorbed from the soil to create biomass and transfer nutrients and energy. Soil microbes and microfauna interact with abiotic factors – temperature, pH, moisture content- and drive these transformation processes. Soil micro, meso and macrofauna play a key role in the physical breakdown of plant residues, allowing the soil microorganisms to liberate the nutrients and energy bound up in the plant material. The role of soil organisms in agriculture has many beneficial effects beyond plant nutrition. For example, soil microbiota such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen fixing bacteria can minimise cost and dependence on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture, and enhance soil fertility and environmental sustainability, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-intensive manufacture of nitrogen fertilizer.

The role of soil biodiversity in addressing global climate change cannot be understated: the soil community’s activities can contribute either to the emission of greenhouse gases or to absorbing carbon into soils from the atmosphere. As part of the natural functions and ecosystem services provided by soils, a healthy soil stores more carbon than that stored in the atmosphere and vegetation combined. Carbon is either fixed or released from soils, depending the activity of the soil organisms and driven by soil conditions. Carbon is fixed into soils through the transformation of plant and animal detritus, and also some bacteria and archaea can fix carbon by using atmospheric CO2 as their energy source. Beyond their direct role in the carbon cycle, soil organisms are also critical for efforts to reduce overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. Globally, agricultural ecosystems contribute 10 to 12 percent of all direct anthropogenic GHG emissions each year, with an estimated 38 percent resulting from soil nitrous oxide emissions and 11 percent from methane in rice cultivation. Soil microorganisms are involved in every step of nitrogen and carbon transformations that yield these greenhouse gases, and managing the soil environment to minimise emissions is a key objective in sustainable soil management.

[Teacher's note: please upload your image correctly >https://2021.the-horse.education/post/how-to-insert-an-image-or-photo]

Sources:
learning.edx.org

http://www.fao.org/

EDX 4.3 Soil Biodiversity Characteristics

Soil biodiversity is the variety of life that exists within the soil, including bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and termites. A teaspoon of topsoil typically contains a vast range of different species and up to 6 billion microorganisms.

The group of large organisms in the soil is visible to the human eye. (Macroscopic)
For example:

• Plants
• soil fauna
• worms (earthworms, pot worms)
• isopods, millipedes, centipedes

The group of small organisms in the soil isn't visible to the human eye. (Microscopic)
For example:

• Soil microbes - bacteria, fungi
• microfauna (nematodes)

If we take a look at an arable field or a grassland then we see, aboveground, a few plant species: one plant species in a monocrop and up to 50 species per square meter in species-rich grassland.

Now if we look at the number of different species or the diversity, we can see the smaller the organisms the more different species there are, ranging from 10 species of earthworms to thousands of species of bacteria and fungi.

Soil life is sensitive to disturbance and compaction of soil because that affects the amount of space and air available for plant roots and other soil biotas.

It is also sensitive to chemicals that end up in the soil water, or pollution like oil spills that block access to food, air, and water. Life in soil is also sensitive to temperature and soil acidity.
Soil organisms feed directly or indirectly on plant inputs and not all species like to eat the same thing. So the type of plant you grow, like the type of crop or green manure that you add to the soil, can all influence the abundance and diversity of the soil life.

A vital part of life on earth is the continuous hydrologic cycle; Water cycles from the atmosphere to and through the earth and back  the atmosphere.

Once water has entered the soil, it will spread out in all directions. The water either gets stored for reusing by plants for example or it drains downward. 
Because of soil water air and nutriens can get in the ground which is very imiportant.