Environmental Change and Management Definitions

• Topic 1 is Environmental Change and Management

Key Definitions

• Atmosphere: The gaseous envelope surrounding Earth.
• Lithosphere: The outer layer of rocks, soils, and sands that comprise Earth's surface.
• Hydrosphere: All forms of water on Earth, including solid, liquid, and gaseous.
• Biosphere: The living components of Earth, including flora, fauna, and other organisms.
• Source: The environment's ability to supply goods and materials humans depend on.
• Sink: The environment's ability to break down, recycle, or absorb wastes.
• Spiritual: Recreational, psychological, aesthetic, and spiritual value provided to people by the environment.
• Service: Processes that support life without requiring human action for production.
• The carbon cycle involves the movement of carbon between different forms.
• The hydrological cycle is a biogeochemical cycle with continuous water movement on, above, and below Earth's surface.
• A carbon sink is a natural or artificial reservoir that absorbs and stores more carbon than it releases from the atmosphere.
• Intertidal zone: The area of a seashore covered at high tide and uncovered at low tide.
• Fresh water has a low concentration of salt.
• Salt water has a high concentration of salt.
• Brackish water has salinity between fresh and salt water, like a river/lake mix with the ocean.
• Climate change is occurring
• Greenhouse gases: Gases in Earth's atmosphere that trap heat.
• Weather changes constantly
• Climate changes over longer periods
• Human worldview: Fundamental human beliefs shaping humans understanding of the world.
• Steward worldview: Emphasizes human responsibility to care for the world.
• Earth-centered worldview: Focuses on Earth needing protection for all living things to thrive.
• Mitigation strategy: A proactive approach to reducing the flow of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
• Adaptation strategy: Planning and implementing actions to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
• Carbon sequestration: The process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
• Synoptic charts and choropleth maps are key skills.

Functions of the Environment

• Source
• Sink
• Service
• Spiritual

How Carbon is Cycled

• Respiration, excretion, and decomposition release carbon back into the atmosphere or soil, continuing the cycle.

Human-Induced Local Changes

• Vegetation clearance
• Draining of wetlands
• Covering land with hard surfaces
• Use of off-road vehicles
• Channeling of streams
• Irrigation

Wetland Functions

• Intertidal actions: Areas subjected to intertidal flows of water, where land can be exposed to the atmosphere during parts of the day.
• Pneumatophores: Roots that grow vertically upwards to get oxygen for respiration for mangroves and other plants in swampy areas.
• Cycling of nutrients: A system where energy and matter are transferred between living organisms and non-living parts of the environment.

Homebush Bay Wetlands

• Traditional custodians (Dharawal mob) transferred knowledge between generations through dreamtime stories.
• A Dreaming story about Yoongie, the greedy crocodile, helps educate about the Homebush wetlands.
• Causes of impacts is industry, transport, dumping of materials in water, high risk of soil and water pollution
• Due to the above, around 17 percent of mangrove forests have been cleared.

Vietnamese Wetlands

• Wetlands are used for aquaculture (farming of shrimp).
• Destruction of mangroves destroys filtration systems, causes lots of pollution, more erosion, loss of fish breeding grounds and no coastal defense against storms. It also causes overstocking, disease, and chemical outbreaks.
• RYNAN helps to remediate Vietnamese wetlands. It pumps in dissolved oxygen, enhances fish welfare, and uses microorganisms to clean fish waste, not chemicals.
• A water quality app measures oxygenation.

Fieldwork: Bonna Point

• Bonna Point is located on the Kurnell Peninsula in the south-east corner of Botany Bay and is considered a nature reserve.
• The Bonna Point wetland is quite healthy. The only pollution seen was plastic in the mangroves.

Fieldwork Tools

• Lux Meter: Measures brightness. To use, hold the light sensor with the white part facing up and away from any shadow and turn the dial until 001 is displayed to obtain a reading.
• Refractometer: Measures the salinity of water. To use, flip back the clear lid, lift the sample plate so the water flows away, and hold the refractometer with the sample plate level. Place a small amount of water on the plate, close the clear plastic cover, and read the salinity.
• Quadrat: A square frame used to isolate an area for study in an area. To use, unroll the rope and pull each line to maximum length after placing the middle section in the soil.
• Sediment texture graph: Used to determine the sediment of a particular area. To use, take a pinch of sediment and smear it thinly on a finger or grain card, then compare the grains to the ones on the chart.
• Parallax wedge: A measuring tool that helps determine the height difference of natural and man-made features when viewing stereoscopic photographs.
• These tools help geographers understand the conditions in which mangroves or the plants they're studying grow and give specific details about multiple different things.

Research Action Plans

• A Research Action Plan can gather evidence to assess site health by collecting data through various methods, analyzing evidence, and drawing conclusions, which determines whether the site is healthy.

Worldviews on Environmental Management

• Human-centered: Humans are apart from the rest of nature and can manage nature to meet our increasing needs and wants.
• Stewardship: Ethical responsibility to be caring managers or stewards of the Earth.
• Earth-centered: Humans are a part of and totally dependent on nature, and nature exists for all species.

Causes of Climate Change

• Global warming
• The enhanced greenhouse effect

Impacts of Human-Induced Change in Australia

• East Coast warming 2.7-4.7 degrees Celsius
• Less rainfall in winter and unpredictable rainfall cycles
• 0.3-0.5 m sea level rise and 2.1-5.7 degrees Celsius temperature increase
• Tropical cyclones are moving further south
• Dry vegetation and more extreme fire instances

Ecosystems, Food, and Farming

• Changes to rainfall increase drought.
• It is difficult for farmers to graze livestock and grow produce, which reduces food availability.

Water

• There is more water, but less usable water, which increases urban flooding.

Health Risks

• Increased temperatures increase the risk to human health.
• Coral bleaching is increased.
• One-degree warmer waters result in annual bleaching events.

Potential Impacts Humans Face if Climate Change is Unaddressed

• The cost of adapting coastal areas to rising sea levels.
• Loss of capacity to work due to heat.
• More wars to gain access to limited resources.
• Fresh water will be in short supply.
• Relocation of whole towns.
• Shrinking productivity of harvests.
• Prices of basic foodstuffs and consumer goods will rise.
• Diseases will spread due to higher temperatures.
• Infectious diseases will spread to areas that were cold, like parasites in food and malaria.
• More conflicts will arise over water.
• Clean fresh water could become contaminated with salt.
• Rainfall will become less predictable, making river systems less reliable.

Mitigation vs. Adaptation

• Mitigation stops something and refers to reducing the flow of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and enhancing carbon "sinks" on Earth, including utilizing forests, oceans, and soils.
• Adaptation is changing operations to cope with something.

Oceans

• Ocean plants absorb carbon and use it for fuel, growing big and heavy and sinking to the sea floor, storing carbon long-term.
• Seaweed is stable and can be kept in the ocean but more studies are needed on long term consequences.

Soil Sequestration

• Soils store carbon as roots expand into the surrounding soils while pulling carbon out of the air to grow the body and root system.
• Tilling soils for farming adds carbon back into the atmosphere.
• Allowing plants to function organically builds the humus layer, which adds carbon, storing it for the long term.
• Agricultural practices are critical to economic resilience; growing plants that don't need to be plowed can extract carbon and generate income for farmers.

Adaptation Strategies

• Adaptation refers to acknowledging that things will likely never be as they were, so putting strategies in place to cope with new environments.

Built Environment Adaptation

• The Paris Agreement aims to mitigate climate change by setting a long-term goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and meeting every 5 years.
• Using seaweed tackles climate change (sequestration) due to its high growth rate, high carbon sink rate and its ability to adapt to increasing carbon in the environment.
• Transitioning to cleaner energy is possible through renewable energy sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams
• Transitioning to cleaner energy would result in reduced emissions, economic advantages, and lower energy costs, however it also faces high costs, storage issues, and geographic limitations.