Environmental Science 20

Unit 1: Career Exploration

Environmental-science career paths in Saskatchewan and beyond: the range of occupations, the qualifications they require, and how they connect to work students care about.

• Environmental-science career paths and qualifications

Unit 2: Student-Directed Study

A staged, self-directed environmental-science investigation: designing a testable inquiry or policy, carrying it out and analysing it, and presenting the findings.

• Designing the investigation or policy
• Carrying out and analysing
• Presenting and reflecting

Unit 3: The Nature of Environmental Science

What environmental science is and how it thinks: worldviews and mindsets, including First Nations and Metis perspectives on the environment, and the systems thinking, sustainability, and impact assessment that ground the field.

• Worldviews and mindsets in environmental science
• The field, systems thinking, and sustainability

Unit 4: Atmosphere and Human Health

Air and climate as human-health issues: the sources and regulation of indoor and outdoor air pollution and the technologies that clean it, and the geoscience data behind a changing climate and its effects on Saskatchewan.

• Air pollutants and their sources
• Air-quality regulations and mitigating technologies

• Sources and reliability of climate data
• Climate change impacts on Saskatchewan
• The Arctic, Indigenous knowledge, and climate consensus

Unit 5: Human Population and Pollution

How a growing human population strains the environment and how technology and policy respond: population growth and its resource impact, and the technologies and processes that manage waste and pollution.

• Population growth and environmental impact
• Managing waste and pollution
• Feeding a growing population sustainably

Unit 6: Aquatic Systems

Freshwater systems and their health: measuring the condition of rivers, lakes, and wetlands and managing them at the watershed scale, and why maintaining healthy water matters for humans and the environment.

• Measuring the condition of aquatic ecosystems
• Watersheds, wetlands, and riparian zones
• Bacterial testing and lake eutrophication

• Threats to water quality and standards
• Protecting drinking water and stewardship
• Irrigation, water use, and human impact on aquatic systems

Unit 7: Terrestrial Ecosystems

Life on land: soil as the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems, the roles of plants and how humans use them, and the intact habitat needed to support animal populations and biodiversity across Saskatchewan's ecozones.

• Soil formation and characteristics
• Soil quality, life, and degradation
• Composting and building soil in urban ecosystems

• The roles of plants in ecosystems
• Human use of plants: agriculture and forestry
• Intact habitat and biodiversity