Introduction to AP

Environmental

Science

Focusing on Chapter 1 in Miller

textbook

Environment :All the things around us with which we interact:

• Living things

• Animals, plants, forests, fungi, etc.

• Nonliving things

• Continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks

• Our built environment

• Buildings, human-created living centers

• Social relationships and institutions

Includes the relationships between these components of the environment

What is Environmental Science?

Definition of environmental science:

the interdisciplinary study of

(1) how the earth works,

(2) how we interact with the earth, and

(3) how to deal with environmental

problems

Let’s break that down…

Definition of Environmental Science

Environmental Science is a broad, interdisciplinaryfield

ES includes many fields of study, including the natural sciences and the social sciences

Definition of Environmental Science

ES studies how the earth works

What are the four “spheres” of our planet?

• atmosphere

• biosphere

• lithosphere

• hydrosphere

These are interconnected

and influence each other

Definition of Environmental Science

ES studies how humans impact the earthHow do we upset the natural balance?

• We use resources (consumption)

• We produce waste

Notice how our economic

systems of production and

consumption depend on natural

resources (input) and produce

waste, pollution and ecosystem

damage (output)

Definition of Environmental ScienceES studies how to deal with man-made environmental

problems

To reduce or eliminate our unbalancing effect we can use:

• Decision making models

• Problem solving skills

The Earth is constantly changing -- and always has

There have been major changes in earth – ice ages come and go, volcanic eruptions change the climate, development of life on earth changed the atmosphere, etc.

Humans haven’t

been around that

long relative to

earth age and

even life on earth

But Humans profoundly affect the environmentHistory of human impact –

• humans have been affecting the planet since their beginning

• even early humans with limited weapons may have contributed to the extinction of some of the large mammals, such as the woolly mammoth

Agricultural Revolution

Gradual move from nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers to the farming of domesticated animals and plants

Started about 10,000 years ago

How did this impact the environment? Brainstorm then discuss

What does this quote mean? Read and then discuss

“The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Industrial Revolution

Development of machines to do manual/animal labor has led to big impacts on the earth

Late 1700s- early 1800sWhat are some of these impacts?

Impacts of Industrial Revolution

Positive:

Get more work done, get it done faster and easier

Negative:

Requires burning fossil fuels → air pollution

Extracting fossil fuels from the earth is damaging

Allows very rapid destruction of habitat by machines

(Ex: logging)

Pennsylvania, 1948Virginia coal mining, present day

The Human Population Over Time:Locate agricultural and industrial revolutions….

1880

1930

1960

1974

1987

1999

2015*

Yr. each billion was reached

* projected

Scale of Environmental Problems

Environmental problems are

typically categorized by the

affected population.

•Global problems, like global

warming and the hole in the

ozone layer affect the entire

world population.

•Local problems, such as

deforestation or pollution, can

occur on a local scale

“Anthropocene”Some scientists have suggested that the man-made changes

to the earth have led us into a new geologic time period

called the Anthropocene (anthro- means “human” and

cene- means “new”)

This has not been formally accepted by geologists but is

being used more and more in scientific literature related to

environmental science

What Keeps Us Alive?

➢ Solar energy – all life and economies

depend on energy provided by the sun

➢ Natural capital – the earth’s resources and

ecological services

So what resources are we using?

RESOURCES

Air

Water Energy

Soil Minerals

NATURAL CAPITAL

Climate

Control

Waste

Treatment

Pest &

Disease

Control

Population

Control

Pollution

Control

BiodiversityNutrient

Recycling

SERVICES

Aka “ecosystem or natural

services”

Aka “natural resources”

Note two categories:

resources (matter and energy)

services (processes) -

also called ecological or

ecosystem services

⬜ Renewable resources:◼ Perpetually available: sunlight, wind, wave energy◼ Renew themselves over short periods: timber, water, soil

▫ These can be destroyed⬜ Nonrenewable resources: fixed quantity; renewable only by

geological processes that take millions of year◼ Oil, coal, minerals

Natural resources = substances and energy sources needed for

survival

Sustainable Yield – the highest rate at which a

renewable resource can be used indefinitely without

reducing its available supply

Environmental Degradation – occurs

when the use of resources exceeds the rate

of replacement

The rate at which we use

resources is important

Notice the erosion resulting from

extensive deforestation in

Madagascar

Energy Resources – coal, oil, natural gas

Metallic Resources –copper, iron, nickel,

aluminum

Non-Metallic

Resources-salt, clay, sand,

phosphates

Economic DepletionWhen the cost of extracting and using what is left exceed its

economic value

Important to reuse and recycle these resources

Nonrenewable resources cannot be

regenerated

Ecosystem services: natural processes that

support life on earth and provide a benefit

to humans in our quality of life and in our

economic systems

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2whW

WYSh6M&feature=related

We not only depend on nature’s

physical resources but also its

processes

Estimates of various Ecosystem Services

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES VALUE (trillion $US)

Soil formation 17.1

Recreation 3.0

Nutrient cycling 2.3

Water regulation and supply 2.3

Climate regulation (temperature and

precipitation)

1.8

Habitat 1.4

Flood and storm protection 1.1

Food and raw materials production 0.8

Genetic resources 0.8

Atmospheric gas balance 0.7

Pollination 0.4

All other services 1.6

Total value of ecosystem

services

33.3

Source: Adapted from R. Costanza et al., "The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services

and Natural Capital," Nature, Vol. 387 (1997), p. 256, Table 2.

Ecological footprint - the environmental impact of a person or population

Amount of biologically productive land + water for raw materials and to dispose/recycle waste

Overshoot: humans have surpassed the Earth’s capacity

• Affluenza: an unsustainable lifestyle that results in

overconsumption and materialism

• Often associated with stress, anxiety, lack of satisfaction with

life, overwork, feeling that one never has enough stuff

• Already prevalent in developed countries, but is also

spreading to the rest of the developing world

Globalization: the process of social, economic and environmental global changes that lead to an increasingly interconnected world

Has led to the democratization of learning and communication

How does globalization lead to a bigger human

impact?

Could it reduce our environmental impact?

Essay written by Garrett Hardin in 1969

Main idea: When people have free access

to unregulated use of shared resources,

they tend to overuse them, even deplete

them, in order to further their own self-

interest

Example from Hardin: People who share a

grazing field will put more and more of

their cattle on it; each additional cow

benefits the person, but the damage is

shared by everyone

Real-life example: open ocean fish stocks

have declined dramatically in many areas

“Spaceship Earth”Earth - a closed system,

meaning materials do not enter or leave, only energy does

Damage that occurs stays in the system

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?

Easter Island is a relatively small, isolated Pacific island on which there are hundreds of large stone sculptures, indicating that a complex society once lived there

Reference on Easter Island, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or

Succeed, by Jared Diamond

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?When European explorers

arrived in the 1700’s they found a mostly barren landscape, with no trees over 10 feet tall, yet there were hundreds of toppled statues all over the island.

The few people living on the island had no horses or oxen, were using grass to build fires and lived a primitive lifestyle.

The mystery: How did the Easter Islanders build and erect the statues, why did they do it and what happened to the civilization that accomplished this?

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?

Evidence has been pieced together to provide the following explanation:

The island was settled by Polynesians from other islands around 400 CE.

At that time there were trees, including palms, on the island as shown by pollen studies. There is evidence that land and sea birds were abundant.

The human population grew as high as 30,000 as the islanders harvested dolphins and fish for food using wooden canoes. They also ate native island birds and rats. Farms were started to provide more food.

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?

Like other Polynesian cultures, society was divided into chiefs and commoners, which were established into clans.

On Easter Island, there was collaboration between the clans, but also competition that resulted in building the large stone heads using rock from an island quarry and moving them into place on their territory. One theory is that this process required many workers to move them by pulling them along wooden tracks, possibly on a wooden sled. All of this required a huge expenditure of resources to support the structures and feeding the workers.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=easter+island&view=detail&mid=1040FBF74FAFE3D5A6581040FBF74FAFE3D5A658&first=0

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?Eventually, the island was completely deforested, leading

to local extinction of many species on which the islanders depended, as well as the loss of the raw materials to sustain their standard of living. Deforestation also led to soil erosion and a decrease in crop yield from farms. Climate change may have contributed to deforestation.

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?By 1680, civil war replaced the organized clans. People

survived as best they could, raising more domesticated chickens for food. The statues that had once been erected as a sign of superiority between clans were then toppled over by rival clans, and remained as evidence of the societal collapse when the Europeans arrived.

A tragic metaphor for “Spaceship Earth” ?

Is this a small scale model of what could happen to our planet?

Similarities: overexploitation of resources in a fragile, closed system, with no where to escape, no place to get more resources

The Good News

Jared Diamond writes in Collapse,“While we do face big risks, the most serious

ones are not ones beyond our control, …. Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them.”

What can we do differently?

SustainabilityDefinition: "development that meets the

needs of the present without compromising the ability of further generations to meet their own needs."Bruntland Commission, 1987

Think of it as “Living within an ecological budget”

What is the difference between living off the capital and living off the

income provided by this capital?

Example: $1 million dollar lottery – How could you live off of it without

depleting the original $1 million?

Relate this back to natural capital….

Why is this so important???

Have you heard of some of these sustainable practices?

Economic development –

improvement of living standards by

economic growth, measured by per

capita GDP

per capita GDP – the GDP divided by

the total population

Economic Growth – increase in the capacity of a country to provide people with goods and services, measured by increase in GDP

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)the annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating within a country (increase in GDP indicates economic growth)

Sustainability is tied to economies

Two categories:

Developed countries

Developing countries

Can you give characteristics and examples of

each?

Characteristic Developed countries Developing countries

Affluence More wealth More poverty

Per capita GDP High Low

Population growth Slow or none High

Education High levels Low levels

Industrialization High Low

Consumption of world’s

resources

High Low

Production of world’s

waste

High Low

Examples U.S., Japan, western

European countries

Most of Africa, parts of

India and China, much of

Latin America

Percent of

World’s:

Developing

countries

Developed

countries

Population

Population

growth

Wealth and

income

Resource

use

Pollution

and waste

19

81

0.1

1.6

85

15

88

12

75

25

Fig. 1-13 p. 15

Triple Bottom Line of Sustainability -

Three P’s have to be included:

Achieving true sustainability will require

business, government, citizens, nations,

engineers, inventors, etc. working together

➢ Current Emphasis: Reactive

➢ Sustainability Emphasis: Proactive

Current

Emphasis

Sustainabilit

y

EmphasisPollution cleanup

Waste disposal

(bury or burn)

Protecting species

Environmental

degradation

Increased resource

use

Population growth

Depleting and

degrading natural

capital)

Pollution prevention

(cleaner production)

Waste prevention

& reduction

Protecting where

species live

(habitat protection)

Environmental

restoration

Less wasteful

(more efficient)

resource use

Population stabilization by

decreasing birth rates

Protecting natural capital

and living off the biological

interest it provides

Increase in awareness and action toward sustainability is

happening, so that some people think we are in a “Sustainability

Revolution” leading to another phase of human history. What do

you think???

Summary

What’s the situation?

• We depend completely on the environment for survival

• We are experiencing increased wealth, health, mobility, leisure time

• Humans change the environment, often in ways not fully understood – unintended consequences

• Natural systems have been degraded i.e., pollution, erosion and species extinction

• Environmental changes threaten long-term health and survival

BUT...Awareness and action toward sustainability is increasing. We will learn more details about this as the year goes on.