ESRM 200 Study Questions

In the interview with Jack Turner, the interviewer asks: "What exactly do you mean by "wild"? Turner replies:

"I mean something that is self-willed, autonomous, self-organized. Basically it's the opposite of controlled."

In Jared Diamond's chapter about Easter Island, he writes: "Easter's isolation makes it the clearest example of a society..."

"that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources."

T/F: I mentioned a study published in the journal Science, conducted by Roger Ulrich, where he found that patients after gall-bladder surgery needed more pain medication and healed slower if they were in a hospital room that had a view of nature, as compared to a view of a brick

False

T/F: In Frumkin et al.'s article Nature Contact and Human Health, the authors identify 7 domains of research in this area. The authors explain that these domains do not include any of the medical sciences - such as biomedical studies or epidemiological studies - as these domains lay outside the expertise of the authors

False

T/F: In Jared Diamond's article The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, one of Diamond's critiques of hunter-gatherer life is that there was very little leisure time, given the demands of that life-way, compared to more modern times.

False

T/F: In Jared Diamond's chapter about Easter Island, he argues that Easter Island never actually had moai - and that these monolithic carved human figures are part of the myth of Easter Island that he debunks with archeological evidence.

False

T/F: In Smith's article "Counting the Dead," he argues that based on actual numbers it is a mistake to call the loss of Indigenous lives a "Holocaust."

False

T/F: In reading Michel Pollan's writings, it would be fair to say that he offers a forceful critique of the food industry and food science, but unfortunately he offers few solutions.

False

T/F: In the Hartig and Kahn article, "Living in Cities, Naturally," the authors actually come to the opposite conclusion: that cities are unnatural and unhealthy. They end their article about cities by writing: "Leave them if you can."

False

Who wrote: "We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes"?

Richard Dawkins

T/F: In "A plasma display window? - The shifting baseline problem in a technologically-mediated natural world", one of the central results focused on heart rate recovery from low level stress across the three conditions.

True

T/F: In Food Rules, Michael Pollan writes: "People who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health."

True

T/F: In Gifford Pinchot's principles of conservation, it would be fair to say that he is for development.

True

T/F: In Jared Diamond's chapter about Easter Island, he argues that Easter Island was deforested sometime after human arrival by A.D. 900 and must have been completed by 1722.

True

T/F: In Polyface Farm, Pollan writes that nearby forests are important to the farm's agricultural lands.

True

T/F: In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan visits Polyface Farm to show in detail, "on the ground" so to speak, an example of a healthy farm that seeks to mimic a natural ecosystem in its diversity and interdependence. Animals are killed on this farm.

True

In "A plasma display window? - The shifting baseline problem in a technologically-mediated natural world", there were three conditions in the experiment. What were they?

(i) a glass window that afforded a view of a nature scene, (ii) a plasma window that afforded a real-time HDTV view of essentially the same scene, and (iii) a blank wall.

In Smith's article "Counting the Dead," he argues that for the entire United States from 1492 to the present, the total number of Indigenous deaths can be estimated to be around.

13 million dead

In Chapter 8 ("Gathering") of her book, The Old Way, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas says that the Ju/wasi ate about:

80 different kinds of plants

In her chapter Defeating Windigo, what does Robin Kimmerer mean by the term Windigo?

A destructive evil force or power.

In Audryana's research, they concluded that which groups of people had the least amount of access to urban natural spaces in Seattle?

Black/latino

In the short article you read by Jennifer Roberts, she focuses on her experiences in one urban park in particular:

Central Park, NYC

In the video interview with Robin Kimmerer, Kimmerer said that publishing peer-reviewed scientific articles about mosses felt ________ to her.

Dishonest

Who wrote the following: Our sense of wonder grows exponentially: the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery and the more we seek knowledge....Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life."

E.O. Wilson

Who wrote: "The only way to make a conservation ethic work is to ground it in ultimately selfish reasoning - but the premises must be of a new and more potent kind."

E.O. Wilson

Which is NOT one of Michael Pollan's food rules?

Eat Whoppers at Burger King but definitely don't have bacon on top (pig, not good for you).

T/F: It would be fair to say that while Frumkin et al. (in Nature Contact and Human Health) put forward interesting hypotheses for how nature might impact human health, and propose possible mechanisms, what is lacking in their article are actual references to empirical studies to back up their ideas.

False

T/F: One of the limitations of the Nature and Health field is that there are so few empirical studies out there. It would be fair to say that no more than 50 empirical articles have been published on this topic.

False

T/F: When Robin Kimmerer writes of "The Counsel of Walnuts" she makes this analogy: that just as the walnut tree grows strongest alone in the field, so do her native people now need to learn (given modern times) that they can grow strongest though embracing individual rights to land and to property.

False

T/F: Back in the early 1900's, when Pinchot wrote his principles of conservation, he basically foresaw and described the problem we currently have with wildfires today. In other words, he was arguing to let the natural forest fires burn themselves out.

False (he wanted wildfire prevention)

T/F: In her article "Casting a wide net and making the most of the catch," Usha Varanasi describes her experiences as a young girl growing up along the Yukon River and Norton Sound region in the western part of Alaska. She opens with some vivid descriptions of the Salmon fish racks, smokehouses, and fish camps of her youth.

False (she's not from Alaska)

T/F: In Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's account of the Ju-Wasi Bushmen from the 1950's, the Bushmen would not eat a dead animal unless it was killed by one of them. She found this particularly striking because several times she witnessed the Bushmen who were hungry but they walked right past the uneaten remains of antelopes recently killed by lions. She attributed this behavior to their religious beliefs.

False (they sometimes would steal prey)

Which is a sociobiological explanation for why people find flowers aesthetically pleasing?

In our ancestral history flowers indicated sources of food, and thus were indicators of that which benefitted individual and group survival. It's in this way that E. O. Wilson suggests that "beauty in some fashion can be said to lie in the genes of the beholder."

In the interview with Jack Turner, the interviewer asks: "You've called wildness 'an endangered experience.' What do you mean by that? If we're steeped in wildness, is it just a matter of perception? What is Turner's answer?

It has to do with scale. On one scale you've got the Orion Nebula, which is twenty-six light-years across and two thousand times the mass of the sun. At the other extreme is the scale of quantum physics and subatomic particles. The scale that Henry David Thoreau and the American conservation movement focus on is that of voles and coral reefs and redwoods and whales. I'm particularly interested in wildness at that scale, and it's at that scale that wildness is disappearing.

Who argues for a form of an "extension of ethics" to cover not just all people, but the land itself. In developing his position, he goes back to the time of Odysseus, and shows how slaves and wives back then were considered property.

Leopold

Who wrote "In short, a land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from a conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."

Leopold

Who wrote "Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our education and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land."

Leopold

Who wrote that environmental education will continue to fail until we help people develop a "love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value." "No important change in ethics," this person wrote, "was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions."

Leopold

Who wrote: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Leopold

It would be fair to say that Jack Turner's views are most aligned with those of:

Muir

Who wrote: "Bears are made of the same dust as we, and they breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart pulsing like ours. He was poured from the same first fountain."

Muir

In the Li and Bell (2018) article - The great outdoors: Forests, wilderness, and public health - the authors discuss Gibson's ecological theory of perception" and the idea of nature affordances. Which is an example of a nature affordance from this perspective?

On a hot day, an old growth redwood affords people the opportunity to sit down alongside it, lean one's back against its trunk, and find a little respite in the shade.

What type of nut did the young boys collect in Robin Kimmerer's chapter The Council of the ________ from her book Braiding Sweetgrass?

Pecans

T/F: E. O. Wilson believes that humans can gain material benefits from further studying plants in diverse regions on our planet.

True

Who wrote: "For now, during this time of our country's unrest, my black body will continue to enjoy and seek peace in the beauty and serenity of public greenspaces and I hope you do too."

Roberts

Robin Kimmerer says she "was raised by strawberries". What does she mean by this?

She grew up in close proximity to wild strawberry fields. The strawberries reared her and taught her life lessons.

In Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy, Joanne Macy and Chris Johnstone speak of Three Stories of Our Time. The first is Business as Usual. The second is the Great Unraveling. The third is called:

The Great Turning

The first part of the title of the article about Ron Griswell is: "Ron Griswell Has a Message for Black College Students." The second part of the title (and Griswell's message) is:

The Outdoors Are For You Too

In Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's account of the Ju-Wasi Bushmen from the 1950's, in her chapter on hunting, she says:

The person who provided the arrow that killed the animal distributes the meat.

T/F: According to Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, from her people's perspective if something is purchased it cannot be viewed as a gift.

True

T/F: According to Rosenbaum, in his chapter 635 Million Acres of Politics, the public domain has been divided by Congress into different units committed to different uses and administered by different executive agencies, including: National Wilderness Preservation System, National Park System, National Wildlife Refuge System, National Forests, and National Rangelands.

True

T/F: Deb Haaland is the first Native American Woman in United States history to head up Sec. of Department of the Interior

True

T/F: In the Li and Bell (2018) article - The great outdoors: Forests, wilderness, and public health - the authors conclude: "In comparison with urban environments, forest and wilderness can decrease indicators of sympathetic nervous activity, such as blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of stress hormones."

True

T/F: In the short 5-minute film I asked you to watch by Ross Harrison, it would be fair to say that I speak about the problem of environmental generational amnesia.

True

T/F: In your reading of Rosenbaum, in his chapter 635 Million Acres of Politics, it would be fair to say that the different agencies that manage public lands are not well coordinated, and even individual agencies sometimes embody conflicting mandates.

True

T/F: It would be fair to say that Robert Bullard believes that black people, lower-income groups, and working-class persons are subjected to a disproportionately large amount of pollution and other environmental stressors in their neighborhoods.

True

T/F: Last class, Chaja presented on the olfactory pathway that monoterpenes might enter in the human body and potential health outcomes following monoterpene exposure.

True

T/F: Richard Dawkins ideas draw on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection.

True

Which of the following agencies is NOT in the U.S. Department of the Interior?

United States Forest Service (USDA)

In the video interview you watched of Richard Wilson, the former Director of the California State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Wilson made which distinction:

between environmentalism and conservation (he is more for conservation--using the land)

According to Kellert and Heerwagen, biophilic design

emphasizes the necessity of maintaining, enhancing, and restoring the beneficial experience of nature in the built environment.

According to Kellert and Heerwagen, biophilic design can be related to which biophilic design element(s)?

environmental features natural shapes and forms natural patterns and processes place-based relationships

In Frumkin et al.'s article Nature Contact and Human Health, the authors say that contact with nature can

reduce stress lead to better sleep improve post-operative recovery reduce obesity improve eyesight improve immune function

According to E. O. Wilson, biophilia refers to:

the innate tendency to focus on life.

In Jared Diamond's article The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, he argues that this worst mistake was:

the rise of agriculture

In class last Thursday, I presented on one of my studies in human-robot interaction that involved the robot Robovie. In the 5 minute video clip you watched, one of the experimenters put Robovie in the closet. The reason this was done was:

to set up an experimental situation where a human being inflicts a moral "harm" on a social robot to assess whether people thought of a social robot as "social" and/or "moral."

In the video interview you watched with Richard Wilson, Wilson discusses:

when he was on the California Coastal Commission, and there was the Oxnard Plains in Southern California that had some of the finest soil you'll find in the world, but which succumbed to development.

In "A plasma display window? - The shifting baseline problem in a technologically-mediated natural world - the idea of "environmental generational amnesia" was discussed. The crux of this idea (of environmental generational amnesia) is that

with each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation can increase, but each generation tends to take that degraded condition as the nondegraded condition - that is, as the normal experience.

The crux of this idea (of environmental generational amnesia) is that:

with each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation can increase, but each generation tends to take that degraded condition as the nondegraded condition - that is, as the normal experience.