Environmental Science and Ethics

• Environmental science and ethics are covered
• For more information refer to the powerpoint

Science

• Derived from the Latin word "scientia," meaning "knowledge."
• Systematically builds and organizes knowledge into testable explanations and predictions about the universe

Types of Science

• Pure science: Research to expand scientific knowledge
• Applied science (technology): Practical use of scientific knowledge
• Pure science examples include human genetics, polymer science, atomic theory, and the study of the human ear
• Applied science examples include DNA fingerprinting, Lycra®, nuclear weapons, and hearing aids

Branches of Natural Science

• Life science: Study of living organisms
• Earth science: Study of Earth and space
• Physical science: Study of matter and energy, including chemistry and physics

Principles of Science

• The natural world is understandable.
• Science demands evidence
• Science blends logic and imagination
• Scientific knowledge is durable but subject to change
• Scientists identify and avoid bias
• Science is a complex social activity

Environmental Science

• An interdisciplinary academic field, drawing on ecology, geology, meteorology, biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics
• Studies environmental problems and human impacts
• A quantitative discipline using applied and theoretical aspects
• Has significantly influenced government policies worldwide
• Separate from environmental studies, which focuses on the human-environment relationship and socio-political aspects like international climate-change protocols

Global Environmental Concerns

• Fast industrialization, urbanization, and overuse of natural resources deplete and degrade the environment
• This leads to climate imbalance and endangers communities
• Earth exploitation has steeply risen
• Water scarcity is increasing with droughts
• Storms, typhoons, and tsunamis increased
• Snow and ice is melting at alarming rates due to rising atmospheric temperature
• International and national policies and plans address these concerns
• Key environmental concerns include:
  • Climate change (41%)
  • Air pollution (38%)
  • Water scarcity (32%)
  • Water quality (24%)
  • Depletion of natural resources (24%)
  • Food safety (20%)
  • Population growth (19%)

Ecology as a Discipline

• Study of the relationships between organisms and their environment
• Involves relationships within and between populations
• Seeks to understand how ecosystems develop, the human impact on them, and how to minimize it

Ecology vs. Environmental Science

• Ecology: Branch of environmental science; interaction between organisms and environment
• Environmental science: The interactions between physical, chemical, and biological components of the environment

Environmental Ethics

• A field of practical philosophy reconstructing essential arguments for protecting natural entities and using resources sustainably
• Studies moral relationships of humans to the environment, including its value and moral status
• Key issues include:
  • Addressing anthropocentrism embedded in Western ethical thought
  • Developing from the 1960s-1970s movements
  • Connecting deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, animism, and social ecology to politics
  • Applying traditional ethical theories to contemporary environmental concerns
  • Broader considerations toward wilderness, built environments, and poverty
  • The ethics of sustainability and climate change

Ethical Questions on the Environment

• Two fundamental questions to consider:
  • What environmental duties/role should one assume?
  • What constitutes right/wrong environmental behavior?
• Includes more questions like:
  • Should the present generation conserve resources for future ones?
  • Can driving other species to extinction be justified?
  • Is it moral to destroy/modify the natural environment for human benefit?

Instrumental and Intrinsic Values

• Intrinsic Value: Is the value of an environmental entity, or value as an end, without conditions (e.g., appreciation of natural biodiversity)
• Instrumental Value: The value something has as a means to a desired end, always conditional (e.g., money)

Fundamental Ethical Environmental Principles

• Anthropocentrism: Only humans having intrinsic value/moral standing; rest of world with instrumental value ("human-centeredness")
• Biocentrism: “Life-centered” morality extending intrinsic value/moral standing to all living things (humans, animals, plants)
• Ecocentrism: Ecosystem ethical perspective placing intrinsic value/moral standing on all organisms as well as their environment/processes

Emerging Environmental Principles

• Zoocentrism: "Animal-centered" ethical view looking on animal welfare/rights and attributing moral standing to certain nonhuman animals
• Deep Ecology: The living environment should be respected/legally protected regardless of its instrumental value to humans
• Ecofeminism: Ecological outlook using feminist principles to view equality between genders and valuing processes and holistic connections

Environmental Justice

• Fair treatment of all individuals, concerning environmental laws, policies etc, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.
• Social movement addressing "environmental injustice" that harms marginalized communities
• Began in the United States in the 1980s, influenced by civil rights movement and focusing on environmental racism
• Became global with aims articulated by the United Nations

Biogeochemical Cycles, Atmosphere, and Climate

• Biogeochemical Cycle is the cycle of matter, which is the transformation of chemical elements and compounds between organisms, atmosphere, and crust
• Major cycles include carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles
• Chemical element/molecule is transformed and cycled via organisms and geological forms like atmosphere, soil, and oceans
• A chemical substance cycles through biotic (biosphere) and abiotic (atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere) components

Key Biogeochemical Cycles

• Hydrologic Cycle (Water Cycle): Continuous water movement on, above, and below Earth's surface
• Carbon Cycle: Carbon exchanged among Earth's subsystems, is the main element of biological compounds and limestone
• Oxygen Cycle: Oxygen moves through the atmosphere (air), biosphere (plants and animals) and lithosphere (Earth's crust)
• Nitrogen Cycle: Nitrogen converts into forms circulating among atmospheric, terrestrial, and marine ecosystems
• Phosphorus Cycle: Phosphorus movement through lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere

Sulfur Cycle

• A cycle where sulfur moves between rocks, waterways, and environmental systems
• Impacts minerals and is important to life because sulfur essential element (CHNOPS) and sulfur compounds can be oxidants or reductants

Layers of the Atmosphere

• Troposphere: Innermost layer of the atmosphere extending 10 km above the surface
• Stratosphere: From the the top layer of the troposphere , extending to ~50 km Includes the ozone layer
• Mesosphere: Extends from stratosphere to ~85 km; most meteors burn up here
• Thermosphere: The hottest layer, where ultraviolet radiation causes photoionization, constituting the ionosphere
• Ionosphere: Regions within the mesosphere and thermosphere where radiation from the sun knocks electrons loose
• Exosphere: Outermost layer starting at 311-621 miles and ending at 6200 miles, compresses by solar wind storms

Ozone Layer Depletion

• Ozone is a naturally occuring atmospheric gas to absorbs most harmful UV rays
• Chlorofluorocarbons cause destruction ozone

Global Warming

• The rise in Earth's air and ocean temperature
• Commonly cited as an main example of climate change

Climate

• Weather conditions of the lower atmosphere such as pressure, wind direction, humidity etc
• Conditions change depending on region
• Already impacting planet through retreating glaciers, rising sea levels, extreme weather events

Ecology of Communities

• Ecology was coined by Ernst Haeckel, derived from the Greek word oikos, meaning "household, home, or place to live"

Hierarchy of Ecological Structures

• Biosphere (Ecosphere): Summation of all ecosystems worldwide
• Biome: Biological community with common characteristics in a shared climate over specified geographical area
• Ecosystem: Interacting community of populations with the chemical and physical environment
• Community: Populations of different plants and animals living and interacting in an area
• Population: Group of organisms of the same species living within a particular area
• Organism: Any life form that includes plants and animals

Types of Ecosystem

• Natural ecosystem: Operates naturally, untouched major man-made impact
  • Terrestrial examples include forests, grasslands, and deserts
  • Aquatic ecosystems include
    • Freshwater ecosystems include Lotic (running water) or Lentic (standing water areas)
    • Marine water ecosystems include oceans, seas and estuaries

Control of Ecosystem

• Ecosystem are controlled by external and internal factors
• External factors such as climate and topography control the overall ecosystem
• Internal factors such as decomposition and disturbance are influential to the ecosystem

Ecosystem Characteristics

• Dynamic entities that change due to disturbances where they are always recovering from a past disturbance Tendency of ecosystem to remain close to an equilibrium state called its resistance

Components of Ecosystem

• Abiotic components are living things that directly influence other organisms such as plants, animals, and microorganisms
• Abiotic components are non-living elements that support life such as sunlight and water

Types of Ecosystems

• Terrestrial ecosystems consist of abiotic factors like climate
• Aquatic ecosystems include dissolved gases and pH levels

Food Chains and Webs

• A food chain depicts how organisms are through obtaining food
• A food web connects two food chains
• The movement of energy from one level to another is an ecosystem's trophic level

Biotic components

• Classified into:
  • Producers: All the autotrophs using light for food production (e.g., plants, algae)
  • Consumers (Heterotrophs): Indirectly/directly depend on producers for food where they further break into herbivores, carnivores and parasites
  • Decomposers: They act on dead matter for nutrition

Community Ecology

• The study of interactions between species in a specific area, also known as Synecology
• Consists of interactions between species groups on scales of temporal and spacial dimensions such as population, structure and demography

Community Ecology Characteristics

• Diversity of different creatures in a community such as animals, bacteria and plants
• Use Growth forms to analyze forests, herbs and shrubs
• Dominance of few species controlling exercise in its community
• Self-reliance by many in the community through different organisms

Different Proportions of the Population

• The relative abundance of an organism in proportion to others
• Its Trophic structure which relates how different organisms affect the food and energy
• the Periodicity relating to the different life aspects of all organisms

Community Ecology Organization

• Niche: The way a species interacts within an environment
• Trophic level: Position that an organism holds on the food web
• Guid: A species in a community that utilize same resources sharing the same traits

Species Interactions

• Intraspecific Competition: When a species compete for the same limited resources
• Interspecific Interactions: Interactions between different species involving Competition, Predation, Herbivore, Mutualism and Parasitism

Ecological Pyramid

• Represents by graphically the different trophic levels, can point out different findings:
  • Shows feeding structure of an ecosystem
  • Transfer of energy
  • The ability to find damages

Energy Flow Ecology

• Energy moves through ecosystems, matter cycles within them
• Sun light captured for energy storage
• Energy is transferred through the trophic levels

Energy Flow Scenario

• Primary producers - sunlight fixed by consumers
• Secondary consumers - primary consumers consumed by secondary consumers
• Tertiary consumers - secondary consumers consumed by tertiary consumers
• Decomposers - break down remaining organic matter

Nutrient cycling in ecosystem

• Nutrients cycle form, consumers to decomposers
• Then back as a cyclic motion between living organisms.
• Plants turn into living organisms and used again by living organisms

Energy Flow Vs. Nutrient Cycling

• Energy flow is transferred by organisms in a unidirectional motion, energy is lost as heat in this process where sunlight is its ultimate source
• Nutrient cycling encompasses movement where physical and living organism are present in an ecosystem

Biomes evolution, biodiversity, and population ecology

• Biomes: a community that consist is response to a physical environment that shares the same climate
• Divided as aquatic, grassland, forests, desert and tundra

Types of Biomes

• The five types:
  • Aquatic - bodies of water like rivers
  • Grassland - Warm dry grassland
  • Forest - Trees make up the area
  • Desert - dry lands with <20 inches per year
  • Tundra - in average is really inhospitable

The Aquatic biome

• The is the largest covering earth
• Freshwater content with less than 1 percent - marine covers three forths

Darwin's Theory of Evolution

• Evolution is change from a point in the past
• With natural selection and other changes increasing a bodies fitness

Evolution

• The struggle of existence
• Survival for the fittest

Evolution Vs Mutation

• Evolution happens over time to a new environment, where mutations happen quickly
• Mutations are essential and will initially be the result for how bodies react
• Deleterious Mutations can cause species change

Biodiversity

• Is the variation of life on earth
• Heath indicator for an ecosystem

Importance of Biodiversity

• Is the source for most necessities
• what keeps species safe
• it allows for insights
• is the being motivation

Types of Biodiversity

• Genetic: the traits within a community
• Species: the count of different species present
• Ecosystem: habitats the communities

Philippine Biodiversity

• One of earths largest biodiversity areas
• Threats put into action by humans and earth

Population Ecology

• Ecology branch for the population of a species
• Demography - size, status, and behavior of population
• Population size is number of individuals in an environment
• Population density is how big the relative population
• Aging structure what categories the population fits into

Population density primary ecological counts

• Birth rate: how many births per 1,000
• Death rate: measure in scale to how big the mortality is
• migration - movement/emigration to a place for habitat

Ecological Events

• Conditions that effect all population members
• Those that operate depending on how dense
• Density based: water based and food based

Population Distribution

• Random
• Uniform
• Clumped

Population growths

• is what indicates the numbers of pop.
• A graph pattern will determine what results
• J based will abruptly crash
• S based well stabilize
• the slope with lines

K and R Strategist

• The term to show how well a species grows in population to its environment
• r strategist survive in unstable environment to produce energy
• k strategist require stable environment produce efficiently