Activity: Coming Soon: The Australian tropical savanna – Upper Primary

Teacher Preparation

Learning intentions: Student will...

Success criteria: Students can…

• ... interpret research data and other information to identify and compare spatial distributions, patterns and trends, infer relationships and draw conclusions.

Teacher content information: In Australia, 23-25% of the land is covered in tropical savanna. Each year in the late dry season, hot fires sweep through a large proportion of this area. Hot burns result in about 25% of the landscape being burnt, which contributes between 1% and 3% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (Note: this figure just accounts for nitrous oxide and methane rather than the total emissions that includes any carbon dioxide not absorbed by new growth). Before European contact, Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander peoples people of the tropical savanna managed Country using fire during the early dry season. Over the past ten years Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander land managers, scientists and policy mak

Thought starter: close your eyes and imagine that you are standing in an Australian tropical savanna. What do you see, hear and feel?

Investigating the savanna

Part 2: Investigation activity

In your groups conduct an investigation of a specific region of the Australian savanna (your teacher will assign you a region). Research interesting information regarding the region’s climate, plants (flora), animals (fauna), fire regimes and human interactions.

Some suggested questions have been provided to guide you, but why not use your own investigation questions? Use this factsheet to investigate your region further.

The region of tropical savanna we are investigating is called:

Climate

You can get monthly rainfall figures for a location by navigating to the URL, www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/. Once on the website, select monthly rainfall under the first point and then type in the name of a town or location.

Examples of questions to investigate are:

• How does the rainfall vary ov