Unit 07 · Land, Agriculture & Waste
Land feeds us, holds our waste, and wears out when we mismanage it. This unit starts in the soil — how it forms, its horizons, and why it’s a slow-built resource — then weighs industrial agriculture against sustainable practice, follows deforestation and desertification, and works down the waste hierarchy from reduce and reuse to landfills, incineration, and the scars of mining. Mastery means you can sample a patch of ground and judge how the way it’s used is changing it.
| Criterion | Not yet | Approaching | Mastered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soil formation & horizons | Treats soil as inert dirt with no structure. | Names soil horizons but not how they form. | Explains how soil forms from weathering and organic matter and reads its horizons as a record of that process. |
| Industrial vs sustainable agriculture | Cannot contrast farming methods. | Lists practices but cannot weigh their trade-offs. | Compares industrial and sustainable agriculture on yield, soil health, and inputs, and defends the trade-offs. |
| Deforestation & desertification | Confuses the two or their causes. | Defines each but cannot link cause to consequence. | Explains how deforestation and desertification arise from land use and what they cost soil, water, and biodiversity. |
| The waste hierarchy & disposal | Treats all disposal as the same. | Recites reduce–reuse–recycle but ranks disposal options loosely. | Orders the waste hierarchy and compares landfills, incineration, and recycling on cost and impact. |
| Field technique (soil & land-use sampling) | Samples carelessly or without a plan. | Collects soil or land-use data but records it inconsistently. | Samples soil and land use systematically and reads the data as evidence of how the land is being changed. |
| Integration (cross-domain) | Treats the science as isolated facts; makes no cross-domain connection. | Names a link to history, reading, or writing but cannot defend why it matters. | Connects the unit to its anchor across History · Reading · Writing (plus chosen electives) and defends why the connection matters. |
“The tilled field’s topsoil was thin and pale — the dark, organic A horizon had eroded, which is what happens when industrial monocropping strips cover year after year. The woodlot beside it still had a deep horizon. Same starting soil; different land use wrote two different profiles.”
“Soil is just dirt. Farming is farming. Recycling is good and landfills are bad, that’s about it.”
You demonstrate this unit through soil and land-use sampling — reading horizons and comparing plots under different management — and defending your conclusions aloud, not on a multiple-choice test. A criterion counts as mastered only when your samples support a claim about how the land is being used and changed. Mastery is demonstrated, not awarded.
A 5-page clipboard packet — unit overview, key terms, the mastery rubric, anchor examples, and a score sheet you can print and grade against.