The environmental science and ecology game offers students a chance to practice identifying key parts of nutrient cycles, the levels of organization, and soil horizons. The levels of organization part of the game is appropriate for a wide range of levels, while the nutrient cycles trend towards honors and AP. The carbon and nitrogen cycles include the identification of specific chemical compounds (for example: ammonia, nitrate, and nitrogen gas) that could present challenges to students who have not yet completed a chemistry class.
A key aspect missing from the cycles is the human factor. Humans have significant impacts on each of these nutrient cycles, and student knowledge of these impacts is an important part of biology and environmental science courses. For the purpose of this identification game, though, adding the human factors seemed to overload the images. To increase clarity the focus here is solely on the natural ecological processes. The goal is to give students a solid background that can then be applied to analyzing the human impact in a class setting.