Surface Mining Environmental Impacts by Voyageurs National Park Guided Video Worksheet

Engage your middle and high school students with this comprehensive video question guide exploring Voyageurs National Park and surface mining practices. Students watch an informative YouTube video about local ecosystems, economic impacts, and mining procedures, while filling out structured guided questions to reinforce comprehension and critical thinking. Perfect for environmental science, earth science, social studies, or geography classes. Includes printable/digital worksheet pages ready for immediate classroom or remote learning use.

Voyageurs National Park is located in northern Minnesota. There have been several proposals to build sulfide mines in the area. Mines are important in our society because they extract resources (such as nickel, copper, platinum, etc.) that we use for many different products. However, it is also important to weigh the environmental impact that mines may have as well as how we can reduce our ecological footprint.

This video teaches about transitional ecosystems, sulfide ore deposits, history of mining in the area, economic benefits of mining, resources that mining extracts and what they are used for, how surface mining works, overburden, negative impacts of mining, sulfuric acid pollution, pH, range of tolerance, sustainable mining practices and more!

This video would work well in an AP Environmental Science class (APES), when talking about Topics 2.4 (Ecological Tolerance), 5.9 (Impacts of Mining), 5.11 (Ecological Footprint) and 8.2 (Human Impacts on Ecosystems).

To use this product, students will watch this video about Mining near Voyageurs National Park. Then, students will answer the provided questions which follow along with the video.

There are also several provided discussion questions for the class after the video, if you want to further the discussion.

This product includes:

1. Teacher Directions-including prep info and materials needed  

2. Teacher Procedure

3. Student Worksheet

4. Student Worksheet Answers

5. Teacher Tips

To do this activity, you will need:

• Pencil

• Copy of Voyageurs National Park Guided Video Questions (INCLUDED)

• Ability to project a YouTube video to the class

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Thank you!