Resource impacts and sustainability are the focus of this Grade 9 Science worksheet for Ontario Earth and Space Systems. Students examine how resource extraction changes habitats, landforms, water systems, and material cycles while evaluating environmental evidence and sustainability criteria.

Connecting Extraction to Environmental Change

This resource develops a systems-based view of resource use. Students trace how mining, drilling, and other extraction activities can remove vegetation, disturb soil, alter landforms, and increase erosion. They examine how sediment can enter streams and how nutrients and metals may move through runoff or groundwater. The lesson also addresses fossil fuel pollution, including air pollution from fuel use and contamination from leaks affecting soil and water.

Students investigate contaminant transport by considering how pollutants can dissolve in water, attach to sediment, or be taken up by organisms. The effects may extend beyond the original extraction site, making transport and cumulative environmental effects important considerations when evaluating resource projects. Water withdrawal is also examined through its effects on streamflow, aquatic habitat, wetland recharge, and nutrient movement through aquatic food webs.

Evaluating Sustainability and Trade-Offs

The worksheet moves students from identifying environmental impacts to evaluating whether resource use can be sustained. Key ideas include renewability, reclamation potential, pollution controls, careful siting, and ecosystem integrity. Students compare sustainability considerations for renewable and nonrenewable resources and consider why reclamation may restore land stability and native vegetation without necessarily eliminating every environmental trade-off.

Question types include multiple-choice questions, true/false assessment, short-answer responses, matching, a cloze passage, an extended-response scenario, and a Did You Know feature. Tasks require students to connect landform change with erosion, explain contaminant movement, evaluate water withdrawal, identify cumulative environmental effects, and apply sustainability criteria to a hypothetical open-pit mining proposal.

What Teachers Receive

• ✅ Student worksheet focused on resource extraction, environmental impacts, sustainability, reclamation, and trade-offs
• ✅ Separate answer key PDF for checking responses
• ✅ Student Notes & Lesson Summary supplement for review and reinforcement
• ✅ Separate Teacher Guide with Learning Objectives, Teaching Tips, Discussion Questions, and Common Mistakes

Built for Evidence-Based Classroom Reasoning

Use this Grade 9 Earth Science practice resource to introduce or reinforce resource sustainability concepts, support guided reading, assign independent practice, or prepare students for assessment. The extended-response scenario gives students a practical context for weighing societal needs against ecosystem integrity rather than treating resource use as a simple choice between development and conservation.

By linking extraction activities to erosion, pollution transport, water withdrawal, habitat change, and reclamation, the resource helps students reason through the environmental impacts of resource use and apply sustainability criteria to realistic decisions about Earth’s resources.