Environmental Inquiry- Sophomore Semester TEST 1

environmental studies

• Human-environment interactions

  • Including all human social institutions

• Interdisciplinary

• Ethics is central

  • Sustainability

  • Environmental justice

• Motivated to solve environmental problems

natural environment

• All living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) things that occur in a given area

  • How would the planet operate w/o humans involved?

    • doesn’t exist anywhere anymore

built environment

• Human-made infrastructure

  • Roads, cities, agricultural systems

  • Kind of like a continuum. Used to be natural, now leans more towards built

definitions of environmental studies

• Textbook: the study of human interactions with the environment

• Kirk #1: study of addressing environmental problems (about humans intersecting with the environment)

  1. otherwise it's just ecology (action oriented)

• Kirk #2: applied ethics for addressing environmental problems

discipline

• Study a topic from a specific perspective 

• What methods are you using?

multidisciplinary

Study a topic from multiple perspectives

interdisciplinary

Study of a topic from different perspectives to create a coherent whole that is more than the sum of its parts

transdisciplinary

Study of a topic from multiple disciplines but with a shared framework that integrates and transcends those disciplinary boundaries (integrative approach)

positive research

the study of how things ARE

normative research

the study of how things SHOULD be

environmental justice

• “No community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other” - Majora Carter (ENS department)

• The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (EPA?)

• The idea that everyone has the right to live in a healthy environment and have equal access to environmental protections

environmental problem

A challenge or problem facing earth and its natural systems, as well as humans

values

• Things we consider important

• Actions, objects, states of affairs, futures, etc for which we care, that matter to us, whose existence we want to promote and generalize

ethics

• System or set of guidelines for making decisions relative to those values

• Often defined relative to “others”

moral

Set of accepted norms, values, and rules within a social group that guide individual and collective behavior

environmental ethics

• Extends the consideration for “others” to non-human things

• Other living beings, the land, and the Earth as a whole have ethical value in their own right

• They have value not just for our (human) sakes, but for their own sake

instrumental valuation

• Value as a means, as an “instrument” for producing something else of value

• What purpose does it serve you?

intrinsic valuation

• Value in itself, for its own sake

• Value is independent of how it serves you

anthropocentrism

• Human- centeredness

• Making decisions about the environment that prioritize the needs of humans

enlightened anthropocentrism

• Human survival is dependent on nature in multiple ways, so that we have good self-interested reasons (i.e. good anthropocentric reasons) to pay some attention to the larger world

• We should better understand ecological processes to better serve human needs

sentientism

extending ethical consideration to organisms that have feeling, with or without a human sort of self-concept (ability to feel pain, be self-aware, etc)

biocentrism

extends ethical consideration to all living things (including plants and animals)

ecocentrism

extends ethical consideration to whole ecosystems, including microbes and abiotic elements (includes soil, bedrock, water, etc)

Leopold’s land ethic

• “A thing is right if it promotes the beauty, integrity, and stability of an ecosystem.”

• More ecocentric as opposed to anthropocentric

utilitarianism

• “greatest good for the greatest number”

• More anthropocentric

• A thing is right if it does the greatest good for the greatest number (of people)

conservation

• Conserve the land so we can make the most of its resources for the most people

• Emphasis on human use

• Guilford Pinchot

preservation

• Protecting the environment for its own intrinsic value

• “Nature is godly, so destroying those temples is ungodly” “natural beauty-hunger”- john muir

• Need to preserve the best and the most beautiful places

technoscience

• Practical application of knowledge and science (often natural science) for the common good

• Relationship between technology, science, and society

  • Science = process

  • Technology = application of that process

stakeholders

• People AND organizations

• Direct or indirect

stakeholder analysis

• A group of techniques

• Part of the planning process for a project or proposed activity 

• Assess the stakeholders and viewpoints/values

stakeholder table

• List of stakeholders

• Identify their stakes and values

• Assess how they fit into the bigger picture

  • Viewpoints 

  • Impacts

  • Benefits

  • Damages

  • Changes they might have to make

stakeholder grid

• Visualization of level of interest and influence/power

• X axis = low → high interest (how important in general- not for or against)

• Y axis = low → high influence

hidden stakeholders

• Those whose income and/or livelihoods depend on the use of a natural resource, but whose participation and public stakeholder decisions is not normally considered

• People you might not consider by default

land acknowledgement

• Formal statement that acknowledges indigenous peoples in an area

structural inequalities

• Social structures/institutions (education, family, religion, local govt, federal govt, economy, gender, media, human constructs of race and class, etc) treat different groups of people differently based on these criteria

cultural landscape

• The combined works of nature and humankind…[which] express a long and intimate relationship between people and their natural environment (UNESCO)

• Places impacted by humans that have both ecological and cultural contexts

intentional landscape

• a landscape that is clearly defined and intentionally built; modifying landscape for specific purposes

  • Ex: gardens, parks, religious sites, cemeteries, etc

organic landscape

• evolve organically after an initial human intervention

  • Ex: abandoned farmland, many modern forests

associative cultural landscape

•  imbued with religious, artistic or cultural associations rather than the material space itself

  • Ex: sacred spaces, areas associated with community beliefs, meditation garden, artistically cultivated gardens (ex: french, japanese, etc)

scientific method

• process of defining, assessing, modifying hypotheses

  • Objective

  • Observable- empirical

  • Repeatable 

  • Accumulable

hypothetico-deductive method

• Hypothesis-driven

  • Testable statement

  • Falsifiable 

• Uses deductive reasoning

falsifiability

The idea that a statement or theory can be proven false

inductive

• Make observations and look for generalizations

• Bottom-up approach

deductive

• Start with general statement

• Make observations to see if they support

• Can confirm or deny

• Top-down

abductive

• Select hypothesis that best fits the evidence

• Inference-based conclusions

truthiness

• Intuition-based conclusions

• If it feels right, then it must be right 

  • Regardless of the evidence

variables

• Specific attribute that is measured on a person, place, thing, or idea

• Subject to change

univariate

 measuring one attribute for the entity

bivariate

measuring two attributes for the entity

multivariate

measuring two or more attributes for the entity

nominal scale

named categories; no inferred order or rank between categories

ordinal scale

ordered categories; ranked; can infer relative difference, but not absolute difference

interval scale

arbitrary zero point; order and relative difference can be inferred, BUT ratios do not hold across range (ex: Celsius and Fahrenheit, calendar time)

ratio scale

fixed zero point that you cannot go below; order and relative difference can be inferred, AND ratios hold across the range (ex: Kelvin scale, stopwatch time)

discrete data

• fixed options of values within the range

  • Ex: counting number of ppl in a room (can’t count half a person)

  • Ex: measuring soil depth by range

continuous data

• can be any number within the range

  • Ex: measuring soil depth with a tool (bc you can get as small as you want)