Explore human impacts on forests and ecosystems with a Grade 6 science resource focused on how land development, forestry, roads, pollution, and invasive species change natural landscapes. Students investigate how human activities affect wildlife habitats, soil and water quality, and biodiversity while connecting environmental science concepts to examples from Alberta.

🌲 Explore the Connections Between People and Forests

Forests provide shelter for wildlife, protect soil, and help maintain healthy waterways. However, expanding communities, agriculture, forestry operations, and energy development can change these environments. This resource introduces students to habitat fragmentation and explains why roads and other infrastructure can make it harder for animals to move between feeding and breeding areas.

Students also examine how pollution can affect streams, how disturbed ground can increase erosion, and how invasive species may compete with native plants and animals. The reading connects these individual changes to cumulative environmental effects, showing why scientists consider multiple activities when assessing a landscape.

What Students Practise

• Identify human activities that change forest habitats through land clearing, urban expansion, forestry, and infrastructure development.
• Explain how habitat fragmentation affects wildlife movement and connections between forest patches.
• Describe how pollution, soil disturbance, and erosion can affect water and soil quality.
• Recognize how invasive species can change species composition and compete with native organisms.
• Evaluate why scientists assess cumulative impacts when planning development and protecting ecosystems.

What Is Included

• ✔️ An informational reading passage introducing human impacts on forests, with examples from Alberta, including river-valley development and forestry near Hinton.
• ✔️ Multiple-choice questions that reinforce key vocabulary, environmental processes, and practical conservation decisions.
• ✔️ True-or-false statements and short-answer prompts that check factual understanding and encourage scientific explanations.
• ✔️ A forest landscape diagram activity for interpreting visible environmental changes and their possible effects.
• ✔️ A categorization activity distinguishing human impacts from protective actions.
• ✔️ Student Notes lines at the bottom of the worksheet for recording key ideas.
• ✔️ A separate Answer Key PDF that includes a Teacher Guide with learning objectives, teaching tips, discussion questions, and common mistakes.

Practical Classroom Uses

Use this Grade 6 environmental science worksheet during a unit on trees and forests, as guided reading and comprehension practice, or as an independent review of human activities and ecosystem change. The passage establishes the key concepts before students apply them through different question and diagram formats.

The Alberta examples provide a local context for discussing how development decisions can affect natural habitats. Teachers can extend the lesson through class discussion about keeping forest patches connected, reducing disturbance near streams, and gathering evidence before recommending changes to a landscape.

Support Scientific Thinking

Rather than treating each environmental problem in isolation, students consider how several activities can interact over time. The combination of reading, knowledge checks, written explanations, diagram interpretation, and categorization gives learners opportunities to identify impacts and connect causes with possible consequences. The included Teacher Guide supports lesson preparation and discussion while highlighting common misconceptions about habitat fragmentation, invasive species, erosion, and cumulative effects.

This resource is a practical choice for teachers introducing forest ecosystem change and human environmental impacts within Grade 6 science and Alberta-focused learning.