APES UNIT 1

Chapter 1: Sustainability

What are 3  principles of sustainability?  

• Dependence of solar energy: The sun;s energy warms the planet and provides energy that plants use to produce nutrients, the chemicals that plants and animals need to survive 

• Biodiversity: Variety of genes, species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes 

  • Interactions among species provide vital ecosystem services and keep any pops from growing too large 

  • Provides ways for species to adapt to changing environmental conditions and replace species wiped out by environmental changes w/ new species 

• Chemical Cycling: Circulation of chemicals or nutrients needed to sustain life from environment through organisms and back to the environment   

  • Interactions w/ living and nonliving environment, organisms developed ways to recycle the chemicals they need to survive  

→ Wastes and decayed bodies of organisms become nutrients of raw materials for other organisms 

What are some examples of natural capital?  Why is it important to think in terms of natural capital rather than just economic capital? 

• Natural Capital: the natural resources and ecosystem services that keep humans and other species alive and that support human economies  

  • Natural resources provided by nature; air, water, soil, nonrenewable minerals (iron, sand), etc 

  • Ecosystem services provided by healthy ecosystem that support life and human economies at no monetary cost to us; air purification, climate control, food production, soil renewal, etc 

• Important to think in terms of natural capital than economic capital b/c human activities degrade natural capital → using renewable resources faster than nature can restore them  

What does it mean to live sustainably?  

• The avoidance of depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance  

• Full-cost pricing: Find ways to include harmful environmental and health costs of producing and using goods and services in their market prices → give consumers info abt harmful environmental impacts of product  

• Win-win solutions: solutions to environmental problems based on cooperation and compromise that benefit the largest number of people and environment 

• Responsibility to future generations: We should leave the planet’s life-support systems in a condition that is good as than it is now as our responsibility for future generations

Why is it important to differentiate between point and nonpoint pollution?  

• Point pollution comes from a single place, Nonpoint pollution comes from many places all at once  

• Give perspective to effect that humans have on the landscape 

Why  is the tragedy of the commons a good example of the issues we face today? 

• Tragedy of the commons: situation in which individuals w/ access to public resource act in their own interest and deplete the resource 

What is an environmental footprint? Distinction between local and global? 

• Ecological footprint: amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population in an area w/ renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollutants 

• The measure of sustainability evaluates the ability or biocapacity of the easth;s productive ecosystem to regenerate the renewable resources used by a population, city, region, country or the world in a given year  

• Per capita ecological footprint: avg ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area 

How does IPAT reflect this footprint? Does it relate to cultural changes? 

• Shows the environmental impact (I) of human activities is the product of population size (P), affluence (A), and the beneficial and harmful effects of technology (T)  

  • I = P x A x T   

• Cultural changes gave us more energy and new reach to alter and control more of the planet’s resources to meet our basic needs and interesting wants

So if we know that we have environmental issues….how did we get in this pickle? How do the impacts of developed and developing countries differ? 

• Basic causes: population growth, wasteful and unsustainable resource use, poverty, omission of the harmful environmental and health costs in market prices, increasing isolation from nature, competing environmental worldviews 

• In highly developed country like US w/ smaller population, resource use per person and ability to develop environmentally beneficial technologies play key roles in country’s environmental impact

Why does full cost pricing lead to a more sustainable future?

• Helps create economic sustainability by establishing realistic prices, which enable customers to acquire product while vendor remains in business 

Chapter 2: Science, Matter, Energy, and Systems 

How do scientists know what they think they know? 

• Scientific method: general process that scientists use for discovering and testing ideas about how the natural world works 

• Scientific theory: well-tested and widely accepted scientific hypothesis or a group of related hypotheses

Difference between hypothesis/theory/law? 

• Hypothesis: researched and reasonable guess about why something happens 

• Law: mathematical statement that tells how something works 

Why are the laws of thermodynamics important to environmental science?  

• 1st law of thermodynamics: no energy is created nor destroyed 

• 2nd law: whenever energy is converted from one form to another in physical or chemical change, end up w/ lower-quality energy  

• Every living system is characterized w/ treatment function, namely can denature environment w/ entropy increase 

What are the limitations of science?

• 1st Limitation: Scientists can’t prove anything absolutely because there is always some degree of uncertainty in measurements, observations, models, and the resulting hypotheses and theories  

  • Scientists try to establish a particular scientific theory has a high probability of being useful for understanding some aspect of the natural world   

• 2nd: Scientists are human and not always free of bias abt their own results and hypotheses → high standards for evidence and peer review uncover reduce personal bias and falsified results  

• 3rd: Many systems in the natural worlds involve a big number of variables w/ complex interaction → difficult to test one variable at a time 

  • Mathematical models take into account the interactions of many variables  

• 4th: Involves the use of statistical tools 

What is matter?  What are its components? 

• Matter: anything that has mass and takes up space  

• Building block of matter is atom-smallest unit of matter

  • Atomic theory: elements are made up of atoms  

  • Has three types of subatomic particles; neutrons (no electric charge), protons (+ charge), electrons (- charge)  

  • Has small center called nucleus-has one or more protons and in most cases one or more neutrons  

  • Atomic number: number of protons  

  • Mass number: number of protons and neutrons in nucleus  

  • Isotopes: forms of element having the same atomic number but different mass  

• 2nd building block of matter is molecule-combination of two or more atoms of the same or different elements held together by chemical bonds 

• 3rd building block of matter is ion-atom or a group of atoms w/ one or more net positive or negative charges from losing or gaining negatively charged electrons 

How does an organic compound differ from an inorganic?  Relevance? 

• Organic compounds: contain at least two carbon atoms combines w/ atoms of one or more other elements  

Differences between chemical/physical/nuclear changes? 

• Physical change: no change in its chemical composition 

• Chemical change: change in the chemical composition of the substances involved  

• Nuclear change: element can change from one to another 

Examples of renewable/non renewable energy? 

• Renewable energy: gained from resources that are replenished by natural processes in a short time 

  • Solar energy, wind, moving water, firewood from trees, geothermal energy 

• Nonrenewable energy: from resources that can be depleted and not replenished by natural processes w/in human time scale 

  • Burning of oil, coal, and gas, and nuclear energy

Why is it important to distinguish between high and low quality matter? Example? 

• Energy quality is measure of capacity of energy to do useful work 

• High-quality energy: high capacity to do useful work 

  • High-temp heat, concentrated sunlight, high-speed wind, energy released when burn wood, gas, or coal 

• Low-quality energy: dispersed it has little capacity to do useful work 

Describe  “system” using an analogy? Is a system random and sporadic? 

• System: any set of components that function and interact in some regular way 

• Three components: inputs of matter, energy and info from environment, flows or throughputs of matter, energy, and info to the environment

What are the key differences between a negative and positive feedback loop? 

• Negative feedback loop: causes a system to change in the opposite direction 

• Positive feedback loop: Causes system to change further in the same direction

How does tipping point relate to the concept of a feedback loop? 

• When a natural system becomes locked into a positive feedback loop, can reach ecological tipping point 

  • System can change so drastically it suffers degradation or  collapse