Students will launch the ecosystem investigation by testing a shared-resource population simulation, graphing the resulting population changes, and drafting an evidence-based claim in their binder portfolio about how biotic and abiotic factors shape carrying capacity, competition, predation, and tragedy of the commons patterns.

Students will analyze ecosystem case data, frame a testable question and hypothesis about carrying capacity, and produce a peer-reviewed investigation plan with variables, controls, data structures, and revision notes for their binder portfolio.

Students will present and defend their ecosystem population dynamics findings through a science briefing built from their binder portfolio, using graphs, calculations, and model outputs to explain carrying capacity, limiting factors, competition, predation, and tragedy-of-the-commons patterns. They will complete a structured peer-feedback cycle, revise a key claim in real time, and finish with a summative test that checks whether they can interpret mathematical or computational evidence about ecosystem change.