Environmental Sustainability Ch 1-3
Why do we have environmental problems?
Population growth unsustainable resource use poverty excluding environmental cost from market prices increasing isolation from nature
heterotrophs
consumers
ecosystems
defined as a set of organisms interacting of nonliving matter and energy within a defined area
2nd law of thermodynamics
energy always goes from a more useful to a less useful form when it changes
1st law of thermodynamics
energy input = energy output
solar capital
energy source
industrial ecology
shifting of industrial process from systems in which rescue and capital investments move through the systems to become waste, to systems where waste becomes input for new processes
basic principles of sustainability
solar energy, biodiversity, chemical cycling, population control, nutrient cycling
potential energy
stored energy
science in the media
- tentative - reliable - unreliable - limitations
the makeup of an organism
-cells -macromolecules - complex carbs - proteins - nucleic acids - lipids -gene -chromosome
Waste
-high throughput -low throughput -reuse, reduce, recycle
carbon cycle
-nutrient/mineral cycle -organisms -fossil fuels
ecology
-plays an important role in the study of environmental science -biological science -the study of how organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment of matter and energy
scientific method
1. identify a problem 2. find out what is known 3. ask a question to be investigated 4. design an experiment to answer the question and collect data 5. propose a hypothesis to explain the data 6. make testable predictions 7. test the predictions 8. accept or reject the hypothesis 9. peer review
economy, environment, society
3 factors of sustainability
abiotic
Non-living things
earths life support system
The atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the geosphere (rock, soil, and sediment), and the biosphere (living things)
hydrological cycle
a cycle of natural renewal of water quality - purifies as it moves through soil and rock material - affected by humans
degradation of natural capital
global warming, air pollution, soil erosion, etc
elementsssss
idk
Environmental science
interdisciplinary study of human relationships with living and non living things on earth
Types of energy
kinetic and potential
biotic
living things
kinetic energy
moving energy
nitrogen cycle
nitrogen changes forms, nitrification
how can matter change
physical , chemical, and nuclear changes
phosphorous cycle
plate tectonics - phosphate runs into ocean
autotrophs
producers, make their own food
Gross
rate at which producers convert solar energy into chemical energy as biomass
net
rate at which producers use photosynthesis to produce and store chemical energy minus the rate at which they use some of the stored energy through aerobic respiration
biomass
the amount of life an ecosystem can support is determined by the amount of energy captures and stored as chemical energy by the producers and how rapidly they can produce and store chemical energy
high quality energy
this energy is concentrated, can perform much useful work
low quality energy
this energy is dispersed and has little capacity to do useful work
limiting factor principle
too much or too little of any abiotic factor can limit or prevent growth of a population, even all other factors are at or near the optimal range of tolerance
scientific law
well accepted patterns in data
scientific theory
well tested and widely accepted hypothesis
natural capital
what earth has to offer (air, minerals)
law of conservation of matter
when a physical or chemical change occurs, no atoms are created or destroyed