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Environmental Science

Environmental Science is an interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment. It draws on natural sciences like biology and chemistry as well as social sciences like geography, economics, and political science to understand these interactions and address environmental problems.

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36 views

Environmental Science

Environmental Science is an interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment. It draws on natural sciences like biology and chemistry as well as social sciences like geography, economics, and political science to understand these interactions and address environmental problems.

Uploaded by

Lance
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Environmental Science

is an interdisciplinary study of how humans


interact with the living and nonliving parts
of their environment

Back Next
Nature-Deficit Disorder
- result of spending increasing less time in the natural
world
- evidence indicates contribution to stress, anxiety,
depression, irritability, difficulty in dealing with change,
and excessive body weight
- partly an effect of urbanization
Back Next
Isolation from nature:
- environmental scientists have identified this as oneof the Five major
causes of the environmental problems we face
- makes us more likely to degrade nature

Environmental Science
- provide understanding that will make us more likely to contribute
positively to the environment and to reverse degradation

"No civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural support
System. Nor will ours."- Lester R. Brown
Environmental Science
- is an interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living and nonliving
parts of their environment

NATURAL SCIENCES: SOCIAL SCIENCES:


N 00
Biology, Chemistry S Geography, Economics,
Geology and Political Science

HUMANITIES
H Ethics
Goals of Environmental Science
1. To learn how life on earth has survived and thrived;
2. To understand how we interact with the environment; and
3. To find ways to deal with environmental problems and live more
sustainably.

Important Concepts:
• ECOLOGY - the biological science that studies how living things interact with one
another and with their environment
• ORGANISM - an individual living thing
• SPECIES- a group of organisms that has a unique set of characteristics that
distinguish it from other groups of organisms
Important Concepts:
ECOSYSTEM - a set of organisms within a defined area of land or volume of water
that interact with one another and with their environment of nonliving matter and
energy
ENVIRONMENTALISM - a social movement dedicated to trying to sustain the Earth's
life-support systems for all forms of life

The Overarching Concept: Sustainability


- is the capacity of the earth's natural systems and human cultural systems to
survive, flourish, and adapt to changing environmental conditions into the very
long-term future.
The Overarching Concept: Sustainability
- life on earth has been sustained for at least 3.8billion years
- humans: 200,000 years
- mounting scientific evidence that we have seriously degraded the natural
systems that support all species and our economies

Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability:


1. Dependence on solar energy
2. Biodiversity
3. Chemical cycling
1. Dependence on solar energy
- warms the planet
- provides energy that plants use to produce nutrients
- indirect form of energy such as wind and flowing water

2. Biodiversity
- the variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems in which
organisms exist and interact
- provides vital ecosystem services
- provides ways for life to adapt to changing environmental conditions, even
catastrophic ones
3. Chemical cycling
- the circulation of
chemicals necessary for
life from the environment
through the organisms
and back to the
environment
- earth receives no new
supplies of life-
supporting nutrients
- in the natural world
wastes are useful
resources
Key Concepts to Sustainability
1. Natural capital
2. Recognition that many human activities can degrade natural capital
3. Solutions
Natural Capital
a. Natural Resources
- materials and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans
- include inexhaustible resources, renewable resources, and nonrenewable
or depletable resources
b. Ecosystem Services
- processes provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human
economies at no monetary cost to us
- include purification of air and water, renewal of topsoil, nutrient cycling,
pollination, and pest control
2. Human activities that degrade natural capital
• using normally renewable resources such as trees and topsoil faster than
nature can restore them
• overloading the earth's normally renewable air and water systems with
pollution and wastes
• replacing diverse and naturally sustainable forests with crop plantations
that can be sustained only with large inputs of water, fertilizer and
pesticides
• adding harmful chemicals and wastes to some rivers, lakes, and oceans
faster than these bodies of water can cleanse themselves through
natural processes
• disrupting the nutrient cycles that support life because many of the
plastics and other synthetic materials that we have created cannot be
broken down and used as nutrients by other organisms
3. Solutions
- environmental scientists search for scientific solutions, social scientists
look for economic and political solutions
- involves conflicts; can be addressed by trade-offs
Three Social Science Principles of Sustainability:
1. Full-cost pricing
2. Win-win solutions
3. A responsibility to future generations
1. Full-cost pricing
- economists urge that the harmful environmental and health costs of
producing and using goods and services be included in their market
prices

2. Win-win solutions
- solutions that are based on compromise in light of our
interdependence and that benefit both people and the environment

3. A responsibility to future generations


- we should leave the planet's life-support systems in at least as good a
condition as that which we now enjoy, if not better, for future
generations
Resource
- anything that we can obtain from the environment to meet our needs
and wants
- can be classified as inexhaustible, renewable, or nonrenewable or
exhaustible

Inexhaustible Renewable Nonrenewable or


Resource Resource Exhaustible
Resource
Solar energy Trees Fossil fuels ( oil, natural
Wind energy Topsoil gas, coal )
Geothermal energy Freshwater Iron and copper
Inexhaustible Resource
- solar energy
- continuous supply that is expected to last at least 6 billion years or until
the sun dies
- also provides inexhaustible wind and flowing water

Renewable Resource
- a resource that can be replenished by natural processes
- include forests, grasslands, fishes, fertile topsoil, clean air, freshwater
- the highest rate at which we can use a renewable resource
indefinitely without reducing its available supply is called its
SUSTAINABLE YIELD
Nonrenewable or Exhaustible Resource
- exists in a fixed quantity
- can be renewed by geologic processes on a time scale of millions to
billions of years
- include energy resources, metallic mineral resources, and
nonmetallic mineral resources

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