In the New York State Learning Standards, statements are arranged within standard areas from the very broad standard statements to the less general key ideas down to more specific performance indicators. Printer Friendly Version|Send to a Friend Curriculum  >  Standard Areas  > Standards  > Key Ideas  > Performance Indicators  > Major Understandings  >  Standard Area MST: Math, Science & Technology Standard MST4: Science Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science. The Living Environment Key Idea MST4.LE7: Human decisions and activities have had a profound impact on the physical and living environment. Elementary Performance Indicator  MST4.E.LE7A: Students identify ways in which humans have changed their environments and the effects of those changes. Major Understandings 7.1a Humans depend on their natural and constructed environments. Major Understandings 7.1b Over time humans have changed their environment by cultivating crops and raising animals, creating shelter, using energy, manufacturing goods, developing means of transportation, changing populations, and carrying out other activities. Major Understandings 7.1c Humans, as individuals or communities, change environments in ways that can be either helpful or harmful for themselves and other organisms. Intermediate Performance Indicator  MST4.I.LE7A: Students describe how living things, including humans, depend upon the living and nonliving environment for their survival. Major Understandings 7.1a A population consists of all individuals of a species that are found together at a given place and time. Populations living in one place form a community. The community and the physical factors with which it interacts compose an ecosystem. Major Understandings 7.1b Given adequate resources and no disease or predators, populations (including humans) increase. Lack of resources, habitat destruction, and other factors such as predation and climate limit the growth of certain populations in the ecosystem. Major Understandings 7.1c In all environments, organisms interact with one another in many ways. Relationships among organisms may be competitive, harmful, or beneficial. Some species have adapted to be dependent upon each other with the result that neither could survive without the other. Major Understandings 7.1d Some microorganisms are essential to the survival of other living things. Major Understandings 7.1e The environment may contain dangerous levels of substances (pollutants) that are harmful to organisms. Therefore, the good health of environments and individuals requires the monitoring of soil, air, and water, and taking steps to keep them safe. Performance Indicator  MST4.I.LE7B: Students describe the effects of environmental changes on humans and other populations. Major Understandings 7.2a In ecosystems, balance is the result of interactions between community members and their environment. Major Understandings 7.2b The environment may be altered through the activities of organisms. Alterations are sometimes abrupt. Some species may replace others over time, resulting in long- term gradual changes (ecological succession). Major Understandings 7.2c Overpopulation by any species impacts the environment due to the increased use of resources. Human activities can bring about environmental degradation through resource acquisition, urban growth, land-use decisions, waste disposal, etc. Major Understandings 7.2d Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have resulted in major pollution of air, water, and soil. Pollution has cumulative ecological effects such as acid rain, global warming, or ozone depletion. The survival of living things on our planet depends on the conservation and protection of Earth's resources. Commencement Performance Indicator  MST4.C.LE7A: Students describe the range of interrelationships of humans with the living and nonliving environment. Major Understandings 7.1a The Earth has finite resources; increasing human consumption of resources places stress on the natural processes that renew some resources and deplete those resources that cannot be renewed. Major Understandings 7.1b Natural ecosystems provide an array of basic processes that affect humans. Those processes include but are not limited to: maintenance of the quality of the atmosphere, generation of soils, control of the water cycle, removal of wastes, energy flow, and recycling of nutrients. Humans are changing many of these basic processes and the changes may be detrimental. Major Understandings 7.1c Human beings are part of the Earth's ecosystems. Human activities can, deliberately or inadvertently, alter the equilibrium in ecosystems. Humans modify ecosystems as a result of population growth, consumption, and technology. Human destruction of habitats through direct harvesting, pollution, atmospheric changes, and other factors is threatening current global stability, and if not addressed, ecosystems may be irreversibly affected. Performance Indicator  MST4.C.LE7B: Students explain the impact of technological development and growth in the human population on the living and nonliving environment. Major Understandings 7.2b When humans alter ecosystems either by adding or removing specific organisms, serious consequences may result. For example, planting large expanses of one crop reduces the biodiversity of the area. Major Understandings 7.2c Industrialization brings an increased demand for and use of energy and other resources including fossil and nuclear fuels. This usage can have positive and negative effects on humans and ecosystems. Major Understandings 7.2a Human activities that degrade ecosystems result in a loss of diversity of the living and nonliving environment. For example, the influence of humans on other organisms occurs through land use and pollution. Land use decreases the space and resources available to other species, and pollution changes the chemical composition of air, soil, and water. Performance Indicator  MST4.C.LE7C: Students explain how individual choices and societal actions can contribute to improving the environment. Major Understandings 7.3a Societies must decide on proposals which involve the introduction of new technologies. Individuals need to make decisions which will assess risks, costs, benefits, and trade-offs. Major Understandings 7.3b The decisions of one generation both provide and limit the range of possibilities open to the next generation.

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