Chapter 1 Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability
I. Living in an Exponential Age: Life in the Fast Lane
a. Exponential growth is which a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as 2% per year.
b. Biologist estimate that human activities are causing premature extinction of the earth's life forms, or species at an exponential rate of 0.1-1% per year an irreversible loss of the earth’s incredible variety of life forms.
II. What is Environmental Science?
a. Environment is the sum total of all living and nonliving things that affect any living organism.
b. Environmental science is an interdisciplinary study that integrates information and ideas from the natural sciences that study the natural world.
c. Ecology is a biological science that studies the relationships between living organisms and their environment.
d. Fairly young science
III. Sustainability: The Integrative Theme of this book
a. Sustainability or durability is the ability of earth’s various systems, including human cultural system and economies.
b. Natural Capital is the natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support economies, hut it not fixed
Chapter 1 summary
In chapter one we learn about the environmental problems, their causes, and sustainability. Environment is the sum total of all living and nonliving organism. Sustainability is the ability of earth’s various systems, including human cultural systems and economies, to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely. The step we take to move toward sustainability is that first we need to understand the components and the importance of the natural capital, which natural resources and natural services that would keep us and other species alive. Human population growth is slow, but it still rapid and same as the economy.
Chapter 2 Science, system, matter and energy
I. What do scientists do?
a. Science is an attempt to discover order in the natural world and to use that knowledge to make predictions about what is likely to happen I nature
b. Scientific process is observation, hypothesis, result, new hypothesis, experiment, result, and conclusion.
II. Scientific theories and laws: the most important results of science
a. Scientific or natural, law is a description of what we find happening in nature over and over the same way.
III. Scientific reasoning and creativity
a. Inductive reasoning involves using specific observation and measurements to arrive at a general conclusion or hypothesis.
b. Deductive reasoning involves using logic to arrive at a specific conclusion based on a generalization or premise.
IV. Usefulness of Models
a. System is a set of components that function and interact in some regular and theoretically understandable manner.
V. Types and Structure of Matter
a. The four elements that make up 96.3% of our body weights are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen.
b. There are three types of atomic building block protons, neutrons, and electrons.
c. All living things are composed of cells.
d. The three major types of organic polymers are:
1. Complex carbohydrates such as cellulose and starch that consist of two or more monomers of simple sugar such as glucose linked together.
2. Proteins formed by linking together monomers of amino acids.
3. Nucleic acids formed by linking monomers called nucleotides.
VI. Changes in Matter
a. Sample of matter undergoes a physical change; its chemical composition does not change.
b. The law of conservation of matter means there is no “away” as in “to throw away”
c. We can reduce the concentration of a pollutant by dumping it into the air or into a large volume of water.
VII. Energy
a. Energy is the ability to do work and transfer heat.
b. One type of moving energy is heat is the total kinetic energy of all moving atoms, ions, or molecules within a given substances.
c. Energy can be classified as having high or low quality.
Chapter 2
In chapter two we learn about the science, system, matter and energy. In the Easter Island people have use island tree and soil resources, faster than they could renew. In an experiment we would use the scientific process with observation, question, hypothesis, result, data, and conclusion to carry out an experiment. Matter cannot be created or destroyed and one basic building block of matter is an atom. All living things are composed of cells. There are two energy laws the first law of thermodynamics and the second law of thermodynamics.
Chapter 3 Ecosystems: What are they and how do they work?
I. The Nature of Ecology
a. Ecology is the studies of how organism interacts with one another add with their nonliving environment.
b. The estimate range of species on earth is from4 million to 100 million species.
c. The area where we can find a species is called distribution or range.
d. Ecosystem is a community where populations of different species interact with one another and with their nonliving environment of matter and energy
II. The Earth’s Life- Support Systems
a. There are several spherical layers the, atmosphere, troposphere, stratosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere.
b. Energy from the sun, a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor, supports most life on the earth by lighting and warming the planet.
c. About 80% of the energy that gets through warms the troposphere and evaporates and cycles water through the biosphere.
III. Ecosystem Components
a. Biomes are the large regions such as forest, deserts, and grasslands with distinct climates and specific species adapted to them.
b. The two types of components make up the biosphere and the ecosystem is abiotic and biotic.
c. Different species and their populations thrive under different physical and chemical condition.
d. Variety of factor can affect the number of organisms on a population.
e. The primary consumer is herbivores and secondary consumer is carnivores.
f. Omnivores play dual roles by feeding on both plants and animals.
IV. Biodiversity
a. Biodiversity is one of the earth’s most important renewable resources.
b. We use HIPPO or help us remember five major cause of species decline and premature extinction:
1. H for habitat destruction and degradation the leading cause
2. I for invasive species that we deliberately or accidentally introduce into ecosystem the second most important cause
3. P for pollution including human induces changes in global and regional climates
4. P is for human population growth and accompanying resource consumption that are crowding out wild species and degrading the place where they live.
5. O for overexploitation includes overhunting of species with valuable parts.
V. Energy Flow in Ecosystem
a. The food chain determines how energy and nutrients move from one organism to another through ecosystem.
b. Trophic level depends on the producer or a consumer and on what it eats or decomposer.
c. There is gross primary productivity and net primary productivity.
VI. Soil A Renewable Resource
a. Soil is a thin covering over most land that is a complex mixture of eroded rock, mineral nutrients, decaying organic matter, water, air and billion of living organism, most of them microscopic decomposers.
b. Soil horizons contain o horizon, a horizon, b horizon, and c horizon
c. The hydrologic cycle or water cycle collects, purifies distributes and recycles the earth fixed supply of water.
d. There are also the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, phosphorus cycle, and sulfur cycle.
Chapter 3
In chapter three we learn about the ecosystems what are they and how do they work. In the ecosystem there are many different types of organisms and species. Biodiversity provides us with natural resources and natural service. Soil is important to use because it provided nutrients for our food that we grow. The water cycle collect, purifies, distributes, and recycles the earth fixed supply of water.
Chapter 4 Evolution and Biodiversity
I. Origins of Life
a. Natural Selection is process by which a particular beneficial gene reproduced in succeeding generations more than other gene.
b. Most of the history comes from the fossils.
c. Mutation is randomly change in structure or number of DNA molecules in a cell that can be inherited by offspring.
II. Geologic Processes, Climate change, Catastrophes, and Evolution
a. Climate has change drastically
b. Mass extinction opened up opportunities for the evolution by natural selection of species for the evolution by wiping out large numbers of existing species.
III. Ecological niches and Adaptation
a. Niche is a species way of life or role in a community or ecosystem and includes everything that affects survival and reproduction.
b. Natural selection can lead to an increase in specialized species when several species must compete intensely for scarce resources.
IV. Speciation, Extinction, and Biodiversity
a. Speciation is two species arise from one.
b. In a reproductive isolation mutation and change by natural selection operate independently in the gene pools of geographically isolated population.
c. Extinction is an entire species ceases to exist.
V. Genetic Engineering and the Future of Evolution
a. Artificial selection has yielded food crops with higher yield, cows that give more milk, trees that grow faster, and many different types of dogs and cats.
Chapter 4
In chapter four we learn about evolution and biodiversity. Natural selections occur when some individuals of the population have genetically based traits that increase their chances of survival and their ability to produce offspring with the same traits. The earth climate has changed drastically. Mass depletion is when extinction rates are higher than the normal. Volcanic eruptions can also affect biological evolution by destroying the habitat and reducing or wiping out population.
Chapter 5 Climate and Terrestrial Biodiversity
I. Climate: A Brief Introduction
a. Weather is an area temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, cloud cover, and other physical conditions of the lower atmosphere over hours or days.
b. Climate is a region general pattern of atmospheric or weather conditions over a long time period.
c. There are four major factors determine global air circulation patterns
1. Uneven heating of the earth surface by the sun
2. Seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation
3. Rotation of the earth on it axis
4. Properties of air, water, and land
II. Biomes: Climate and Life on Land
a. The world is divided into several major biomes.
1. Desert biome is an area where evaporation exceeds precipitation.
2. Grassland biomes contain grass and three type of grassland are tropical, temperate, and polar.
3. Forest biomes which contains various species of trees and smaller forms of vegetation.
4. Mountain Biomes are places where dramatic change in altitude, climate, soil, and vegetation take place over very short distance.
III. Human Impacts on Terrestrial Biomes
a. Human species dominates most of the planet.
Chapter 5
In chapter five we learn about climate and terrestrial biodiversity. Climate is a region general pattern of the atmospheric or weather conditions over a long time years and decades, and centuries. The ocean currents can influence climate by distributing heat from one place to another place. Greenhouse gases allow mostly visible light and some infrared radiation and ultraviolet radiation from the sun to pass through the troposphere. The world has divided into several major biomes. There are grassland, chaparral, forest, and mountains biomes.
Chapter 6 Aquatic Biodiversity
I. Aquatic Environments
a. The major types of organism found in aquatic environments are determined by the water’s salinity.
b. The organisms that live in aquatic life zones are planktons, zooplanktons, ultra plankton, nekton, benthos, and decomposers.
c. The most aquatic life zones can be divided into three layer surface, middle, and bottom.
II. Saltwater Life Zones
a. The coastal zone makes up less than 10% of the world ocean are, the costal zones contains 90% of all marine species and is the site of most large commercial marine fisheries.
b. Estuary is where river meets the sea.
c. The gravitational pull of the moon and sun causes tides to rise and fall about every 6 hours in specific coastal area.
d. Coral Reef are form in clear, warm coastal waters of the tropics and subtropics
III. Freshwater Life Zones
a. Freshwater life zones include standing bodies of freshwater such as lakes, ponds, and inland wetlands and flowing system such as streams and rivers.
b. Lakes are natural bodies of standing freshwater formed when precipitation, runoff, and groundwater seepage fill depression’s in the earth’s surface.
c. Most streams are not very productive because of a lack of nutrients and phytoplankton.
Chapter 6
In chapter six we learn about aquatic biodiversity. In the water planet there is saltwater and freshwater. The organisms that live in the aquatic life zones are planktons, zooplankton, ultra plankton, nekton, benthos, and decomposer. Coral reefs are form in clear, warm coastal waters of the tropics and subtropics.
Chapter 7 Community Ecology
I. Community Structure and Species Diversity
a. Most large terrestrial communities and ecosystems consist of a mosaic of different sized vegetation patches that change in response to changing the environmental conditions
b. Species diversity is the number of different species that contains species richness and species evenness.
II. Type of Species
a. Native species are those species that normally live and thrive on a particular community
b. Indicator species are the species that serve as early warning of damage to community or an ecosystem
c. Keystone species have a much larger effect in the types and abundance of other species in a community than their numbers would suggest
d. Foundation species plays a major role in shaping communities by creating and enchaining their habitats in way that benefit other species.
III. Species Interactions: Competition and Predation
a. There are five basic types of inter actions between species: interpecfic competition, predation, parasitism, mutualisms, and commensalism
Chapter 7
In chapter seven we learn about community ecology. One of the most important characteristic of a community’s structure is species diversity. It is the number of different species it contains species richness combined with the abundance of individuals within each of those species evenness. There are different types of species, for example native species are the species that normally live and thrice in particular community. Keystone species is a major player because they help sustain a community.
Chapter 8 Population Ecology
I. Population Dynamics and Carrying Capacity
a. Three general patterns of population are distribution or dispersion in a habitat are clumping, uniform dispersion, and random dispersion
b. Over time the number of individuals in a population may increase, decrease, remains about the same or go up and down in cycles in response to change in environmental conditions.
c. Population change = (Birth + Immigration) – (Deaths + Emigration)
d. No population can grow indefinitely.
e. Logistic growth involves rapid exponential population growth followed by a steady decrease in population growth with time until the population size levels off.
f. For some species population growth may occasionally explode or irrupt , to high peak and then crash to a more stable lower level or in some case to a very low level.
II. Reproductive Patterns
a. There are two types of reproduction pass genes on to offspring is asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction.
b. Most organisms have reproductive patterns between the extremes of r-selected species and k-selected species.
c. Survivorship curve which show the percentages of the members of a population surviving at different age.
d. Three generalized types of survivorship curves: late loss, early loss, and constant loss
Chapter 8
In chapter eight we learn about population ecology. Age structures describe the proportions of individuals at various ages that can have a strong affect on how rapidly its size increase and decrease. Population density is the number of individuals in population found in a particularity area.
Chapter 9 Applying Population Ecology: The Human Population and It Impact
I. Human Population growth: A Brief History
a. For the most of history population grew slowly
b. For the past 200 years the human population has experienced rapid exponential growth reflected in the characteristic j-curve
c. Three major factors explain this population increase
1. Human developed the ability to expand into diverse new habitats and different climate zones
2. The emergence of early and modern agriculture slowed more people to be fed per unit of land areas.
3. We developed sanitation systems, antibiotics, and vaccines to help control infectious disease agents
d. Population growth in recent decades us a result if keeping more people alive by increasing life expectancy and reducing death rates.
II. Factors Affecting Human Population Size
a. Human population grows or decline through the interplay of three factors: birth (fertility), death (mortality), and migration.
b. Population experts use the birth rate, or crude birth rate and death rate, or crude death rate.
c. Fertility is the number of children born to a woman during her lifetime.
d. The first type replacement-level fertility is the number of children a couple must bear to replace them.
e. The second type of fertility rate, the total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman typically has during her reproductive years.
III. Population Age Structure
a. Age structure: the distribution of males and females in each group in the world’s population.
Chapter 9
In chapter nine we learn about applying population ecology: the human population and it impact. The world now contains about 7 billion people. There are major factors that explain why population increases. Humans developed the ability to expand into diverse new habitats and different climate zones.
Chapter 11 Sustaining Biodiversity: The Species Approach
I. Species Extinction
a. Local extinction occurs when species extinction is no longer found in an area it once inhabited but is still found elsewhere in the world.
b. Ecological extinction occurs when so few members of a species are left that it cans no longer play its ecological riles in the biological communities where it is found.
c. In biological extinction a species is no longer found anywhere on the earth.
d. Endangered Species has so few individual survivors that the species could soon become extinct over all or most of its natural range.
e. One study in 2000 found that human activities threaten several types of species with premature extinction.
f. The extinction of species typically takes such a long time that it is not easy to document.
II. Importance of Wild Species
a. New species eventually evolve to take the place of those lost through extinction spasms, mass depletions, or mass extinctions.
b. Wild species also provide a way for us to learn how nature works and sustains itself.
c. Wildlife tourism or ecotourism generates at least $500 billion per year worldwide, and perhaps twice that much.
III. Habitat Loss, Degradation and Fragmentation
a. HIPPO : Habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation, Invasive (nonnative) species, population growth, pollution, and overharvesting.
b. Deforestation of tropical forests is the greatest eliminator of species, followed by the greatest eliminator of species, followed by the destruction and degradation of coral reefs and wetlands, plowing of grassland, and pollution of streams, lakes, and oceans.
IV. Invasive Species
a. Habitat loss and degradation, the deliberate or accidental introduction of harmful invasive species into ecosystems is the biggest cause of animal and plant extinction.
b. Nonnative species threaten almost half of the more than 1,260 endangered and threatened species in the United States and 95% of those in the state of Hawaii
Chapter 11
In chapter eleven we learn about sustaining biodiversity: the species approach. There are three types of species extinction. There is local extinction, ecological extinction, and biological extinction. Endanger species has few individual survivors that the species could soon extinct over all or most of its natural range. Edward O. Wilson predicted that since now it at 1% extinction rate, at least one-fifth of the world’s current animal and plant species could be gone by 2030. Wild species provide a way for us to learn how nature works and sustains itself.
Chapter 20 Climate Change and Ozone Depletion
I. Past Climate Change and the Greenhouse Effect
a. Over the past 4.7 billion years, the planet’s climate has been altered by volcanic emissions, changes in solar input, continents moving slowly as a result of shifting tectonic plates, strikes by large meteors, and other factors.
b. Over the past 900,000 years, the troposphere has experience prolonged periods of global cooling and global warming
c. The last ice age ended about 13,000 years ago.
d. Three major factors shape the earth’s climate:
1. The sun
2. Natural Process called the greenhouse effect that warms the earth lower troposphere and surface because of the presence of several gases called greenhouse gas
3. Is the ocean that cover most of the planet and influence climate by storing carbon dioxide and heat, evaporating and receiving water as part of the hydrologic cycle, and moving stored heat from one place to another in currents
e. Four natural greenhouse gases in the troposphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide
II. Climate Change and Human Activities
a. Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are not new: Small emission of Co2 andCH4 began about 11,000 years ago when our ancestor invented agriculture and began clearing and burning small plots of forest
b. The IPCC and a 2006 repot by the U.S. National Academy of Science said it is very likely that the earth is the hottest it has been in 400 years and likely that it is hotter than it has been in 1,000 years.
Chapter 20
In chapter twenty we learn about climate change and ozone depletion. Over the past 4.7 billion years, the planet’s climate has been altered by volcanic emissions. There are four major natural greenhouse gases in the troposphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. There is a major unknown in global climate models are effecting the changes in the global distribution of could that might have an effect in the temperature of the troposphere. Global warming will upset this stability by shifting climates and speeding up the hydrological cycle.
Chapter 25 Politics, Environment, and Sustainability
I. Environmental Policy
a. Environmental Policy consists of laws, rules, and regulation related to an environmental problem that are developed, implemented, and enforced by one or more government agencies.
b. Policy life cycle consisting of four stages:
1. Recognition: identify a problem
2. Formulation: identify specific causes of the problem and develop a solution such as passing a law to help deal with it
3. Implementation: put the solution into effect
4. Control: monitor progress and make adaptations needed
c. Democracy is government by the people through elected officials and representatives
d. The humility principle: Our understanding of nature and of the consequence of our actions is quite limited.
e. We can lead by example, using our own lifestyles and values to show others that environmental change is possible and beneficial.
f. We can work within existing economic and political systems to bring about environmental improvement
II. Environmental Law and Laws
a. Environmental law is a body of statements defining what reasonable environmental behavior is for individuals and groups, according to the larger community and attempting to balance competing social and private interests.
b. Common law is a body of unwritten rules and principles derived from thousand of past legal decision along with commonly and consist of case law.
Chapter 25
In chapter twenty five we learn about politics, environment, and sustainability. Environmental policy consist of laws, rules, and regulation related to an environment problem that are developed, implemented, and enforced by one more than one government agencies. Environmental law is a body of statement that defines what a reasonable environmental behavior for individuals and groups is.
Chapter 24 Economics, Environment, and Sustainability
I. Economic Systems and Sustainability
a. Economic system is the social institution through which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed to satisfy people’s wants in the most efficient possible way.
b. Natural resource or natural capital includes goods and service produced by the earth’s natural processes, which support all economies and all life.
c. Human resource or human capital includes people’s physical and mental talents that provide labor, innovation, culture, and organization.
d. Manufactured resources or manufactured capital are items such as machinery, equipment, and factories which are made from natural resources with the help of human resource.
e. In practice pure free markets do not exist in today’s capitalist market system.
II. Valuing Ecological Service and Monitoring Environmental Progress
a. Nonuse values not represent in market transactions.
b. Discount rate is an estimate of a resource’s future economic values compared to its present value.
c. Making, distributing, and using any economic good or service also involve indirect or external costs that are not included in their market prices
d. Direct cost involving land, labor, materials, and pollution- control technologies are often fairly easy to estimate.
e. Gross domestic product (GDP), and per capita GCP indicators provide a standardized and useful method for measuring and comparing the economic outputs of nation.
Chapter 24
In chapter twenty four we learn about economics, environment, and sustainability. Economic system is the social institution through which goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed to satisfy people’s wants in the most efficient possible way. Environmental economics is that of optimum levels for pollution control and resource use. Proverty usually is defined as the inability to meet one’s basic economic needs.
Chapter 26 Environmental Worldviews, Ethics, and Sustainability
I. Environmental Worldviews and Values
a. Environmental Worldviews: how people think the world works, what they believe their role in the world should be and what they believe is right and wrong environmental behaviors.
II. Human Centered and Life- Centered Environmental Worldviews
a. We are the planets most important and dominant species, and we can and should manage the earth mostly for our own benefit
b. There are three variation of this environmental worldviews:
1. The no-problem school
2. The free market school
3. The spaceship-earth school
c. Stewardship view, as we use earth’s natural capital, we are borrowing form the earth and from future generations
III. Living More Sustainably
a. Develop respect or reverence for all life
b. Climate change and ozone depletion
c. We spend much of our lives searching for roots
d. We all make some direct and indirect contributions to the environmental problems we face
e. Gloom and doom pessimism
f. Water, we can reduce our monthly water use by at least 10%
g. Transportation, we can walk or bike.
Chapter 26
In chapter twenty six we learn about environmental worldviews, ethics, and sustainability. An environmental world view is how people believe how the world work and what their views about the world. Agriculture, transportation, home energy use, water use, over all resource consumption and waste are the aspects of our lifestyle that have the greatest harmful impact on the environment.
Second Semester Outline:
Chapter 12 Sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity
I. What do we know about aquatic biodiversity?
a. We have explored only about 5% of the earth’s global ocean and know fairly little about its biodiversity and how it works
b. The greatest marine biodiversity occurs in coral reefs, estuaries, and the deep ocean floor
c. Biodiversity is higher near coasts than in the open sea because of the greater variety of producers and habitats in coastal area.
d. Biodiversity is higher in the bottom region of the ocean than in the surface region because of greater variety of habitats and food source on the ocean bottom.
II. Values of Aquatic Biodiversity
a. It help keep us alive and supports our economies
b. At least 3.5 billion people more than half of the world’s population depend on the seas for their primary source of food
III. Loss and Degradation of Aquatic Habitat: Our large Aquatic Footprints
a. 90% of fish living in the ocean spawn in coral reefs, mangrove swamps, coastal wetlands, or rivers
b. Approximately 20% of the world’s diverse coral reefs have been destroyed
IV. Invasive Species: Aliens in the Water
a. The Asian swamp eel has invaded the waterways of south Florida, probably from the dumping of a home aquarium.
b. The purple loose strife is a perennial plant that grows in wetlands in parts of Europe.
c. Prevention and rapid action are the best way to deal with invasive species.
V. Protecting Endangered and Threatened Marine Species: Legal and Economic Approaches
a. 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the 1979 Global Treaty on Migratory Species, the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the U.S. Endangered Species Act of 1973, the U.S. Whale Conservation and Protection Act of 1976, and the 1995 International Convention on Biological Diversity.
b. U.S. government has required offshore shrimp trawlers to use turtle from being caught in their net
c. Sea turtles are worth more to local communities alive than they are dead.
VI. Marine Sanctuaries
a. Foreign fishing vessels can take certain quotas of fish within such zones, called exclusive economic zones, but only with a government’s permission
b. Through this international law, the world’s coastal nations have jurisdiction over 36% of the ocean surface and 90% of the world’s fish stocks
c. Marine protected areas are the areas of ocean partially protected from human activities.
Chapter 12 Summary
In chapter twelve I learn about sustaining Aquatic Biodiversity. The freshwater systems, only occupy 1% of the earth’s surface, also provide the important ecological and economic service. Since human development more than half of the world’s coastal wetlands have disappear. We can use the HIPPO acronym to summarized the human impacts on aquatic biodiversity. Overfishing does not mean none fishes are left, but it means only a temporary depletion of fish stocks as long as the fisher let it to be recover.
Chapter 13 Food Soil Conservation, and Pest Management
I. Food Security
a. Most agricultural experts agree that the root cause of hunger and malnutrition is poverty, which prevents poor people from growing or buying enough food
b. Food security means that every person in a given area has daily access to enough nutritious food to have an active and healthy life.
c. At the national level, food security can be provided by government programs that help the poor help themselves, family planning, education and jobs, and small loans to help the poor start a business or buy enough land to grow their own food.
II. Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition
a. To maintain good health and resist disease, we need fairly large amounts of macronutrients, and smaller amounts of micronutrients consisting of various vitamins and minerals
b. People who cannot grow or buy enough food to meet their basic needs suffer from chronic undernutrition , or hunger.
c. Many of the world’s poor can afford only to live on a low-protein, high-carbohydrate, vegetarian diet consisting only of grains such as wheat, rice, or corn.
III. Overnutrition: Eating Too much
a. Overnutrition occurs when food energy intake exceeds energy use and causes excess body fat.
b. Too many calories, too little exercise, or both can cause over nutrition
c. Lower life expectancy, more disease and illness, and lower life quality.
d. We live in a world where 1 billion people have health problems because they do not get enough to eat and another 1.2 billion face health problems from eating too much
Chapter 13 Summary
In chapter thirteen we learn about food,soil conservation, and pest management. We believe that it because poverty, which prevents poor people from growing or buying enough food. In many of the developing countries they can not produce enough food to feed their people. Croplands mostly produce grains, range lands and pastures produce meat, and oceanic fisheries. Soil erosion is the movement of soil components, especially surface litter and topsoil. Farmer are allowed to produce more food if they have more land or getting higher yields per unit of the area.
Chapter 14 Water
I. Water’s Importance, Availability, and Renewal
a. We live on the water planet, with a precious film of water most of it saltwater covering about 71% of the earth’s surface
b. Water is one of our most poorly managed resources
c. Only about 0.024% of the world’s water is available to us as liquid freshwater in accessible groundwater deposits and lakes, rivers, and streams
d. Groundwater is one of our most important source of freshwater
e. Surface water, the fresh water that flows across the earth’s land surface and into rivers, streams, lakes
II. Too Little Freshwater
a. The main factors causing water scarcity are a dry climate, drought, too many people using and wasting the reliable supply water, and lack of money to drill deep wells and build dams and storage reservoirs and water distribution systems.
b. More than two-thirds of the world’s households live in hydrological poverty
c. Private companies have the money and expertise to manage these resource better and more efficiently than government bureaucracies.
III. Withdrawing GroundWater To Increase Supplies
a. In the United States, water pumped from aquifers supplies almost all of the drinking water in rural areas, one fifth of that in Urban areas, and 37% of irrigation water
b. Water tables are falling in many areas of the world because the rate of pumping out water exceeds the rate of natural recharge from precipitation
IV. Using Dams And Reservoirs to Supply More Water
a. Large dams and reservoirs have both benefits and drawbacks
b. Capture and store runoff and release it as needed to control floods, to generate electricity, and to supply water for irrigation and for towns and cities
Chapter 14 summary
In chapter fourteen we learn about water. Water is an amazing molecule with the unique properties that affect the life on earth. Water is environmental issue because excessive withdrawal of water from rivers and aquifers and pollution of the water disappearing species. As the worldwide we use about 70% of the water we withdraw each year which is from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to irrigate one-fifth of the world’s cropland and produce about 40% of the world’s food. Many poor people have little accesses to freshwater.
Chapter 15 Geology and Nonrenewable Mineral Resource
I. Geologic Processes
a. As the primitive earth cooled over eons, its interior separated into three major concentric zones: the core, the mantle, and the crust
b. Convection cells or currents move large volumes of rock and heat in loops within the mantle like giant conveyer belts.
c. Movement of the earth’s tectonic plates is an important part of the recycling of the planet’s crust over geological time, which has helped form mineral deposits and promote and sustain life
II. Environmental Effects of Using Mineral Resources
a. The environmental impacts from mining an ore are affected by its percentage mental content, or grade
b. Surface mining extracts about 90% of the nonfuel mineral and rock resources and 60% of the coal used in the United State
c. Subsurface mining removes coal and metal ones that are too deep to be extracted by surface mining
III. Supplies of Mineral Resources
a. Mineral becomes economically depleted when it costs more to find, extract, transport, and process the remaining deposit than it is worth
b. According to standard economic theory, in a competitive free market a plentiful mineral resource cheap when it supply exceeds demand.
c. One way to improve mining technology is to use microorganisms for in-place mining.
IV. Using Mineral Resources More Sustainably
a. The current materials revolution in which silicon and new materials, particularly ceramics and plastics, are being used as replacements for metals.
b. Recycling also has a much lower environmental impact than mining and processing metals from ores
Chapter 15 Summary
In chapter fifteen we learn about geology and nonrenewable mineral resources. The continents have joined and split as tectonic plates have very slowly drifted thousands of kilometers back and forth across the planet’s surface. The major external process is weathering, the physical, chemical, and biological processes that break down rocks and minerals into smaller particles that can help build soil. Some of the countries have richer mineral deposits and other have few or none at all. The life cycle of a metal or the other mineral resource begins with the extraction from the earth surface.
Chapter 16 Nonrenewable energy
I.Types of Energy Resources
a. Almost all of the energy that heats the earth and our building comes from the sun at no cost to us
b. Solar energy comes from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms that make up the sun’s mass
c. About 82% of the commercial energy consumed in the world comes from nonrenewable energy resources 76% from fossil fuels and 6% from nuclear power.
II. Oil
a. Petroleum or crude oil is a thick and gooey liquid consisting of hundreds of combustible hydrocarbons along with small amounts of sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen impurities
b. Produces get only about 35-50% of the oil out of an oil deposit.
c. Oil reserves are identified deposits from which crude oil can be extracted profitably at current prices with current technology
III. Natural Gas
a. Natural gas is a mixture of gases, of which 50-90% is methane (CH4)
b. When a natural gas field is tapped, propane and butane gases are liquefied and removed as liquefied petroleum gas
c. Unconventional natural gas is also found in underground sources
d. The rapid growth of coal-bed methane production in the western United State us causing environmental problems and public backlash
IV. Coal
a. Coal is a solid fossil fuel that is formed in several stages as the buried remains of land plants that live 300-400 million years ago were subjected to intense heat and pressure over millions of years ago
b. Coal is burned in power plants generate 62% of the world’s electricity
Chapter 16 summary
In chapter sixteen we learn about nonrenewable energy. The nonrenewable energy are natural gas, oil, and coal. The net energy is like net spendable income you wages minus taxes and job-related expense. Crude oil is transported to a refinery by pipeline, truck, or oil tanker. Natural gas supplies about 23% of the U.S. energy needs, 12% of the nations, electricity, and heats 52% of U.S. homes. Coal is the world’s the most abundant fossil fuels and the United State has 27% of the world’s proven coal reserves.
Chapter 17 Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
I. Reducing Energy Waste and Improving Energy Efficiency
a.Energy conservation involves reducing or eliminating the unnecessary waste of energy
b.The other 43% is wasted unnecessarily, mostly by using too many inefficient motor vehicles, power plants, furnaces, industrial motors, and other devices, and living and working in too many leaky, poorly insulated, badly designed building.
c.The net energy efficiency of a system used to heat your house, for example, is determined by the efficiency of each step in the energy conversion for the entire system
II. Ways to Improve Energy Efficiency
a. Industry accounts for about 42% of U.S. energy consumption, mostly from production of metals (26%), chemicals (19%), petroleum and coal (14%), and paper (8%)
b. A third way to save energy is to switch from low efficiency incandescent lighting to higher- efficiency fluorescent lighting
c. Transportation accounts for one-fourth of U.S. energy consumption, 74% of it by motor vehicles
d. There is growing interest in developing super efficient and ultralight cars that could eventually get 34-128 kilometers per liter, as proposed in 1991 by Amory Lovins Using Renewable Solar Energy to Provide Heat and Electricity
III. Rely mostly on renewable solar energy
a. If renewable energy is so great, why does it provide only 18% of the world’s energy and 6% if the energy used in the United State
b. A passive solar heating system absorbs and stores heat from the sun directly within a structure without the need for pumps or fans to distribute the heat
c. Solar thermal systems can collect and transform energy from the sun into high temperature thermal energy
Chapter 17 summary
In chapter seventeen we learn about energy efficiency and renewable energy. About 84% of all commercial energy used in the United States is wasted and about 41% of this energy is wasted automatically because if the degradation of energy quality imposed by the second law of thermodynamics. In western Europe cogeneration has been widely used. They want to have ,pre plug-in hybrids with a second battery that can be plugged in. China faces many serious environmental and resource problems. Active solar heating system absorbs energy from the sun.
Chapter 18 Environmental Hazards and Human Health
I.Risks and Hazards
a. Risk is the possibility of suffering harm from a hazard that can cause injury, disease, death, economic loss, or environmental damage.
b. Risk assessment is the scientific process of estimating how much harm a particular hazard can cause to human health or the environment.
II.Biological Hazards: Disease in Developed and Developing Countries
a.Non Transmissible disease is not caused by living organism and does not spread from one person to another
b. Infectious or transmissible disease if the body cannot mobilize its defenses fast enough to keep the pathogen from interfering with bodily functions
c. The biggest killer is the influenza or flu virus, which is transmitted by the body fluids or airborne emissions of an infected person
d. Evidence indicates that bushmeat hunting of chimpanzees in Africa transferred HIV to humans
II. Chemical Hazards
a.The three major types of potentially toxic agents are mutagens, teratogens, and carcinogens
b. The immune system consists of specialized cells and tissues that protect the body against disease and harmful substances by forming antibodies that make invading agents harmless.
III.Toxicology: Assessing Chemical Hazards
a. Toxicology is the science that examines the effects of harmful chemicals on humans, wildlife, and ecosystem.
b. How much exposure to a particular toxic chemical causes a harmful responses?
Chapter 18 summary
In chapter eighteen is about environmental hazards and human health. Risk means that there is a possibility of suffering from harm with a hazard such as injury, disease, death, economic loss, or environmental damage. Diseases can spread from animals to human because of people taking over wildlife habitats and forcing animals to go to a new area. Endocrine system is a complex network of glands that releases minute amounts of hormones into the bloodstream of humans and other vertebrate animals. There are five factors that can affect the harm caused by a substance.
Chapter 19 Air Pollution
I. Structure and Science of the Atmosphere
a. Density and atmospheric pressure also vary throughout the atmosphere
b. About 75-80% of the earth’s air mass is found in the troposphere, the atmospheric layer closest to the earth’s surface.
c. This UV filter of “good” ozone in the lower stratosphere allows us and other forms of life to exist on land and helps protect us from sunburn, skin and tems
II. Air Pollution
a. Air pollution is the presence of chemicals in the troposphere in concentration high enough to harm organism, ecosystem, or materialism and high enough to alter climate.
b. With their high concentrations of cars and factories, urban areas normally have higher outdoor air pollution levels than rural areas.
c. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a colorless, odorless gas
d. The most harmful forms of SPM are fine particles and ultra fine particles
III. Urban Outdoor Air Pollution
a. When burned, most of the carbon in coal and oil is converted to carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2)
b. Air pollution is no longer viewed as mostly a localized urban problem
c.In areas beneath the cloud, photosynthesis is reduced because up to 15% less sunlight reaches the ground
d. A photochemical reaction is any chemical reaction activated by light.
Chapter 19 summary
In chapter nineteen we learn about air pollution. Air pollution comes from natural sources, for example burning fossil fuels. The urban industrial smog is rarely a problem in most developed countries where coal and oil is heavily burned. The acidic substances remain in the atmosphere for 2- 14 days. Acid deposition harm forest and crops.
Chapter 21 Water Pollution
I. Water pollution: Sources, types and effects
a. Water pollution is any chemical, biological, or physical change in water quality that has a harmful effect on living organisms or makes water unsuitable for desired uses.
b. Two major water pollution problems are exposure to infectious disease organism from having to drink contaminated water and not having enough water for effective sanitation
c. They can also monitor water pollution by using living organisms as indicator species
II.Pollution of Freshwater streams
a. In a flowing stream, breakdown of degradable wastes by bacteria depletes dissolved oxygen and creates an oxygen sag curve
b. But large fish kills and drinking water contamination still occur in parts of developed countries
c. According the Global Water Policy Project, most cities in developing countries discharge 80-90% of their untreated sewage directly into rivers, streams, and lakes whose waters are then used for drinking water, bathing, and washing clothes.
III. Pollution of Freshwater Lakes
a.Lakes and reservoirs often contain stratified layers that undergo little vertical mixing
b. They have little flow
c. We can use mechanically remove excess weeds, control undesirable plant growth with herbicides and algaecides, and pump air through lakes and reservoirs to prevent oxygen depletion.
Chapter 21 summary
In chapter twenty one we learn about water pollution. Water pollution comes from single point sources or a nonpoint source. Climate change can also affect the water pollution. In the United State they pass a law that increased the number and quality of wastewater treatment plants. If the ground is contaminated it can not clean itself.
Chapter 22 Solid and Hazardous Waste
I. Wasting Resources
a. One major category of waste is solid waste because the wastes of one organism become nutrients for other organism.
b. With only 4.6% of the world’s population, the United States produce about one- third of the world’s solid waste a glaring symptom of affluenza
c. About 98.5% of this is industrial solid waste from mining, oil and natural gas production, agriculture, and industrial activities that provide consumers with good and service.
II. Integrated Waste Management
a. One is waste management a high waste approach that attempts to manage these wastes in ways that reduce environmental harm
b. 75- 90% of the solid waste we produce can be eliminated by a combination of reducing waste production, reusing and recycling material and redesigning manufacturing process and building to produce less waste.
c. Redesign manufacturing processes and products to use less material and energy
III. Reuse
a. Reuse involves cleaning and using materials over and over and this increasing the typical lifespan of a product
b. But big companies make more money by producing and shipping throwaway beverage and food containers at centralized facilities.
IV.Recycling
a. Paper products, glass, aluminum, steel, and some plastics are recyclable
b. This source separation produces much less air and water pollution and has lower start up cost than MRFs.
Chapter 22 Summary
In chapter twenty two we learn about solid and hazardous waste. We also learn about the three R's reuse, recycle, and reduce. Many products can be reuse or recycle and this would help save the environment. The industrial are burning too much fossil fuel that hurt the environment and it a waste of materials. Most cans can be recycle.
Chapter 23 Sustainable cities
I. Urbanization and Urban Growth
a. Urbanization is the percentage of the people in a country or the world living in an urban area
b. People are also pushed and pulled to cities by government policies that favor urban over rural areas.
c. The proportion of the global population living in urban areas is increasing
d. People migrated from rural areas to large central cities
II. Urban Resource and Environmental Problems
a. Economic standpoint cities are centers of economic development, education, technological developments, and jobs and have served as centers of industry, commerce, and transportation.
b. In urban areas most trees, shrubs, and other plants are destroyed to make way for buildings, roads, parking lots, and housing development
c. Because of their high population densities and high resource consumption, urban dwellers produce most of the world’s air pollution, water pollution, and solid and hazardous waste.
d. The percentage of days each year in which air pollution standards are violated has fallen from 50% to 20%
e. It faces strong political opposition from two groups: the public, which largely unaware of the huge hidden costs they are already paying, and politically powerful transportation related industries such as oil and tire companies, road builder, car makers, and many real estate developer.
Chapter 23 summary
In chapter twenty three we learn about sustainable cities. More people are living in urban areas and the population is increasing. Urban dwellers have better access to medical care, family planning, education, and social service than the rural parts. The cities are generally warmer, rainer, foggier, and cloudier than the other suburbs. Since, the population is growing more and more pollution is being produce.
Chapter 10 Sustaining Terrestrial Biodiversity: The Ecosystem Approach
I. Human Impacts on Terrestrial Biodiversity
a. In the United States, at least 95% of the virgin forest in the lower 48 states have been logged for lumber and to make room for agriculture, housing, and industry
b. Instrumental value because of their usefulness to us in the form of numerous economic and ecological services
c.Existence value the satisfaction of knowing that a redwood forest, wilderness, orangutans
II. Managing and Sustaining Forests
a. Forests with at least 10% tree cover occupy about 30% of the earth’s land surface
b. The three major types of forest are old-growth forest, second growth forest, and tree plantation or tree farm.
c. About 63% of the world's forest are secondary growth forest, 22% are old growth forest, and 5% are tree plantations
d. One way to reduce the severity of the fuelwood crisis in developing countries is to plant small plantations of fast growing fuelwood trees and shrubs around farms and in community woodlots
III. Tropical Deforestation
a. Tropical forest cover about 6% of the earth’s land area roughly the area of the lower 48 U.S. states
b. Tropical forest plants also provide chemicals used as blueprints for making most of the world’s prescription
Chapter 10 summary
In chapter ten we learn about sustaining terrestrial biodiversity the ecosystem approach. Biodiversity helps maintain the structure and function of the ecosystem and control populations of pest. Government get to decided on the fate of the world’s forest. Forest fire are bad.This help shift the timber production to other countries could decrease the biodiversity.