General Education Elective 1

1.2 TLA - Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability | 2.2 TLA - Ecosystem: What are they and How do they work? | QUIZ 1 PRELIM

Sustainability

The ability of ecosystems and human cultural systems to survive, flourish, and adapt together to constantly changing environments over long periods of time

Environment

Everything around us, living and nonliving

Ecosystem

Group of organisms in a defined geographic

area (terrestrial or marine) that interact with

each other and their environment

Environmentalism

social movement dedicated to sustaining

the earth’s life-support system

Biodiversity

Provides ecosystem services and adaptability

Chemical, nutrient cycling

In nature, waste = useful resources

Resource

A resource is anything we obtain from the environment
– Can be readily available for use

– Or – can require technology to acquir

reduce, reuse, recycle

Sustainable solutions for resource use

Inexhaustible resources

Perpetually available and expected to last

Renewable resources

– Replenished by natural processes within their

sustainable yield

Nonrenewable

Available in fixed quantities that can be

renewed, but only through long-term geologic

processes

Industrialized countries

– 17% of world’s population (United States,

Canada, Western Europe)

Developing countries

– 83% of world’s population

• Middle income, moderately developed countries

(China, India, Brazil)

• Low income, least developed countries (Nigeria,

Bangladesh, Haiti)

Pollution

contamination of the

environment by polluting substances

(pollutants) such as chemicals, noise, and

heat

Point Sources

Single, identifiable origins (e.g.,

smokestacks)

Nonpoint Sources

Dispersed and difficult to identify sources

(e.g., pesticides, trash in streams)

Pollution cleanup

Cleanup: dilution/reduction of pollutants

Pollution prevention

Reduces or eliminates the production of

pollutants

tragedy of the commons

The individual (incorrectly) believes that:

• “The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to

matter, and anyway, it’s a renewable resource”

ecological footprint

The amount of land and water needed to

supply a population or geographic area with

renewable resources, as well as the ability to

absorb/recycle wastes and pollution produced

by resource usage

ecological deficit

Occurs when the ecological footprint is larger

than the biological capacity to replenish

resources and absorb wastes/pollution

impact, population, affluence, technology

n the early 1970s, a new environmental

model called the _______ model was

developed to determine the environmental

impact of human activities

Impact I = Population P × Affluence A × Technology (T)

Harmful effects

Short term requirements for survival can lead

to degraded forests, topsoil, grasslands,

fisheries, and wildlife populations

Health effects

Malnutrition, limited access to sanitation/clean

drinking water, outdoor and indoor air

pollution

human, life, earth centered

Three major types of world views

preservationist school

(John Muir)

– Leave wilderness areas on some public lands

untouched

conservationist school

(Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot)

– Manage all public lands wisely and

scientifically, primarily to provide resources for

people

Atmosphere

composed of the troposphere and the stratosphere

Hydrosphere

water at or near the earth’s surface (ice, water, and water vapor)

Geosphere

composed of a hot core, a thick, mostly rocky mantle and a thin outer crust

Biosphere

wherever life is found within the other three spheres

organisms, ecology, biotic and abiotic

Major Components of an Ecosystem?

Organisms

Produce their own nutrition

– Satisfy nutritional requirements by consuming

other organisms

– Decompose waste and remains of organisms

thereby recycling nutrients

Ecology

organisms interact with each other

and with their non-living environment

Biotic and abiotic

parts of

the environment exhibit sequential levels of

organization

– Five of these levels: organisms, populations,

communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere

biosphere

parts of the earths air, water, and soil, where life is foud

ecosystem

a community of dufferent species interacting with one another and tith their non living environment of matter and energy

community

populations of different species living in a particualr place, and potentially interacting with each ither

population

a group of indicviduals of the species living in a paricular place

organism

an individual living being

cell

the fundamental structural and fuctional unit of life

molecule

chemical combination of two or more atoms of the same different elements

atom

smallest unit of the a chemical element that exhibits its chemical properties

Food chains

A sequence of organisms, each of which serves

as a nutritional source for the next (big fish eat

little fish)

Food webs

A complex network of interconnected food chains

Pyramid of energy flow

Energy flow through various trophic levels

gross primary productivity

GPP - The rate that an ecosystem’s producers convert

energy into biomass

net primary productivity

NPP - The rate that producers use photosynthesis to

produce and store chemical energy minus the

rate at which they use energy for aerobic

respiration