Environmental Science: Course Overview

• This Self-Instructional Manual (SIM) / Self-Directed Learning (SDL) is a draft version and is intended solely for students officially enrolled in GE 15: Environmental Science
• The manual is subject to revisions.

Course Outline: GE 15 – Environmental Science

• The course is a blended on-line with Face to face or Virtual with 54 hours of sessions
• Students are expected to engage in self-directed learning
• Completion of the course grants 3 units of credit
• A minimum of 95% attendance is required at all scheduled Virtual or Face to Face sessions

Course Overview

• The course is a three-unit lecture that encompasses inland, marine, and atmospheric systems
• The course studies human impacts that could influence global cycles and processes
• It presents an overview of how environment, economy, and social interactions form communities and ecosystems

Course Objectives

• Develop a deeper understanding of various disciplines such as: chemistry, earth sciences, biology, mathematics, engineering, social sciences, and humanities
• Holistic study of atmospheric, geophysical, oceanic, biological, and social sciences are introduced
• An understanding of environmental science is demonstrated
• Learn the complex processes of natural and human-made ecosystems
• Assess current environmental conditions
• Determine potential threats and hazards from industrial and population growth
• Learn sustainable and unsustainable environmental practices
• Understand the consequences of unplanned development and environmental policy enforcement
• Understand international commitments for a safe and sustainable future

Unit Learning Outcomes

• Overview of environmental science (the nature and scope)
• Overview of basic concepts, principles, and theories of environmental science

Essential Terms

• Environment: A place with different conditions such as wet or hot conditions.
  • It can be living (biotic) or non-living (abiotic) and involves physical, chemical, and natural forces.
• Science: A systematized body of knowledge that builds and organizes information via testable experiments to make predictions about the universe
• Environmental Science: This science integrates physical, biological, and informational sciences to study the environment so as to provide solutions to environmental problems
• Ecology: The branch of biology focused on interactions among organisms and their biophysical surroundings, which includes biotic and abiotic components
• Chemistry: The study of matter, its properties, how and why substances combine or separate, and how elements interact with energy.
• Biodiversity: The total number of of different individual life that inhabit the plant Earth. Biodiversity varies on their genetic component and adaptation to the environment.
  • Terrestrial biodiversity consists of animals on land, mostly near the equator, indicating climate warming.
• Habitat: The place where a specific organism survives.
  • Food, shelter, protection, and mates for reproduction are found in a habitat.
  • Physical and biological features characterize habitat.
• Sustainability: A system's ability to continually exist within the universe's thermodynamic equilibrium.
  • In the 21st century, sustainability refers to the ability of the biosphere and human civilization to coexist.
• Ethics: The branch of philosophy that systemizes, defends, recommends, and identifies right and wrong behavior.
• Environmental Ethics: A branch of philosophy that focuses on the moral relationships between human beings and the environment and gives moral status to plants and animals.
• Ecosystem: A community of living organisms interacting with the nonliving aspects of their environment.
• Photosynthesis: The process in plants that transforms into the release of energy ATP by capturing the sun's light energy.
  • Water, minerals, and carbon dioxide are converted into oxygen needed by animals for survival.
• Species: A primary unit for classifying and identifying the taxonomic rank of an organism, and a unit of biodiversity
• Food Chain: A linear network of links starting from producers and ending at apex predators, detritivores, or decomposers.
• Food Web: The interconnection of food chains in an ecological community, also known as the consumer-resource system.

Essential Knowledge

• "Science" comes from the Latin "Scientia," meaning knowledge
• Environmental Science: It is the systematic study of our environment and the human's place in it
  • Integrates natural and social sciences, and the humanities
  • The foundation is ecology
  • Focuses on human impact on the environment

Knowledge Contribution to Environmental Science

• Ecology: Studies how energy production affects populations
• Chemistry: Creates better batteries
• Urban Planning: Designs to reduce energy use
• Sociology: Studies how people adopt new ideas
• Political Science: Determines effective sustainable solutions
• Engineering: Designs better vehicles
• Economics: Analyzes the benefits and costs of energy sources

History of Environmentalism

• Environmentalism: Covering all aspects of the changing environment of the Earth, as an ideology, philosophy, and social movement, environmental health and protection is included
• In 1863, Britain’s Alkali Acts were passed
• Coal Smoke Abatement Society established in 1898
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) was created in 1948
• The Clean Air Act formed in 1956 following the London Smog Episode in 1952
• 1960-1970 began the Modern Environmental Movement and the establishment of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) which was created to spimals and places from human developmental activities
• Green Revolution in Agriculture in 1966
  • Aims to understand the impacts of the use of pesticides and fertilizers on the environment
  • It was intended on improving agriculture
  • Movements such as NEPA (1969), US EPA (1970), and Greenpeace (1971) arose
• Environmental Justice Movement (1980): Aims to encourage social, economic, and environmental justice by showing a connection between health and environmental issues
  • The unjustified treatment of low-income communities exposed to environmental pollution was the movement's reason for starting.
  • Conferences such as the Stockholm conference in 1972, Montreal Protocol in 1987, and Kyoto Protocol in 1997 were organized.
• Brundtland Report in 1987 and the Earth Summit in 1992: Discussed solving problems about environmental protection in socio-economic development
• Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2000: Based on eight goals to be achieved by 2015
  • Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015: 17 goals to be achieved by 2030
• World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002: Organized sustainable development approaches and solved problems about growing resources regarding growing population
• International environmental treaties: Established such as Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001 and the Paris Agreement in 2015
• Environmentalism evolved to tackle issues like plastic pollution, genetic engineering, global warming, and overpopulation

Environmental Ethics

• Concerns the fundamental values that underlie our thinking about environmental issues
• The ways we interpret these issues depend partly on our underlying worldviews
• Moral views in society evolve over time
  • Ancient Greeks only gave moral value to men citizens
  • Now many societies believe it is unethical to treat humans as property
• Philosophical questions are not merely academic or historical
  • A journal science caused a public uproar in 2004 demonstrating that fish feel pain and the ethicality of fishing
• Instrumental value depends the usefulness to someone
• Inherent value is an intrinsic right to exist

Environmental Ethics and Principles

• Respect nature
• Harmonious relationships with other species
• Take responsibility impacting other nature
• Local and indigenous environmental knowledge should be acknowledged
• Plan for the long term

Matter, Energy, and Life

• Matter: Occupies space and possesses mass and exists in solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and Bosh Einstein Condensate; in which it contitutes arrangement of the structures and properties of atoms.
  • Everything living and all matter is recycled, not created nor destroyed
• Energy provides the force to hold matter together, tear it apart, and move from one place to another.
  • Energy for moving objects is called Kinetic Energy
  • Energy latent and ready to use is called Potential Energy
  • Energy stored in food is called Chemical Energy.
• Thermodynamics and Energy Transfers involves in natural processes that is governed by conservation law and thermodynamics law.

Dynamic Balance

• Homeostasis: The dynamic balance which means “to stand equally” in a living ecosystem
• When an ecosystem is active, it makes changes based on environment

Laws of Thermodynamics

• Atoms and molecules constantly cycle, whereas the environmental flows in a one-way path
• Energy is used repeatedly through system, and the energy is released and dissipated
• Heat is the transfer or flow of energy because of temperature difference
• Work is the transfer of energy that is not due to a difference in temperature
• First law is the conservation of energy; in a normal condition, it cannot be created nor destroyed because total amount does not change, that includes transformation of chemical bonds to heat energy
• Second law states that each successive energy degradates to lower quality forms that dissipates and is lost that includes chemical energy degrading to kinetic and eat with disorder of entropy increase

Ecological Organization

• Ecologists study interactions at the species, population, biotic community, or ecosystem level
• Species are genetically similar
• A population consists of all the members of a species
• Biological Community consist of populations that are interacting

Ecosystem Components

• composed of a biological community and the physical environment
  • The abiotic factors (e.g. water, climate, minerals, sunlight)
  • The biotic factors (e.g. organisms, their products and effects)

Energy Flow Through Ecosystems

• Energy Flow through Ecosystems involves sunlight capture by primary producers that leads to food flows through webs in a way by being stored alternatingly during life cycle
• Trophic Level determines steps along food changes like a producer starts the level with herbivores and carnivores eating both
• Ecological Pyramids are limitations to trophic levels as one organism may eat another depending on 10% rule

Food Chain and Food Web

• Matter and energy process through trophic levels via food chains through each transfer that supplies ecosystem in a consistent motion as chain includes producers, herbivores, and carnivores.

Biomes Essential Knowledge

• Biomes: Diverse communities where organisms thrive with a shared environment on a continent where local communities have general climate conditions, vegetation, and the growths
  • Tropical Moist Forest is one of the complex biomes with rainfall and unchanging temperatures
    • Cool Cloud Forests has moisture in the mountains while Tropical Forests has rains all year
• Tropical Seasonal
  • Hots seasons in the region where tolerant trees exist and open woodlands are grading into savannahs
• Tropical Savannas and Grasslands
  • Too little rainfall to support with Savannahs having trees with rainy seasons yet, grasses still endure droughts, heat, and fires with long-lived roots
• Deserts: Rainfall is rare and plants adapt with water-storing abilities as well as with adaptations from drought, heat, and cold
• Temperate Grassland: Has rain to support grass that involves grass and plants that create colors and is less than a meter
• Accumulation from leaves produce deep soil

Temperate Shrub lands

• Dry environments are biologically rich, supporting trees and grasses in the Mediterranean with wet, dry seasons where plant life occurs with Spring flowering.

Temperate Forests

• Evergreen/Deciduous Forests occur typically in mid-latitudes with various precipitation conditions.
  • Deciduous Forests: Where plentiful loses leaves with color changes where low latitude Southern oaks live that re-grow for warmth.
  • Coniferous Forests: Wide ranges where some have cold winters(frozen), drought seasons because tree loss is lower to water
• Boreal Forests: Exist to extreme degrees when qualities, amounts and types of cedar, hemlocks, and other trees exist through high latitudes
• Tundra: Treeless and short having average temperatures where small, vegetation can survive.

Marine Ecosystems

• Oceans and Seas have organisms and complex biomes where a great impact on surface
  • Open Oceans: Low productivity that distributes plankton yet, microscopic and various to support marine food
  • Coastal Zones: Nutrients may contribute bacterial growth but the area has biology
    • Coral Reef is a ecosystem due to organism relation symbiotically and is sensitive to water, especially due to warming for the plant algae dies over time
• Saltwater and Freshwater ecosystems for tropical coastlines
  • Estuaries mixing saltwater, freshwater and shallow are affected by waves
  • Barriers islands are narrow for protection

Freshwater Ecosystems

• Aquatic environments are high in vegetation, underground reservoirs because of limited availability
  • Lakes have vertical plankton, and organism that is limited to oxygen as anaerobic may

Wetlands Community

• Wetlands have sediment that are essential, yet have vegetation set to have biodiversity and bird interaction which gradually results in increasing sediment to roads
  • Swamps are wetlands with trees
  • Marshes are wetlands without trees
  • Bogs areas of vegetation that consists as peat
  • Lens like bogs is adapted

Environmental Variables: Affecting the Biomes

• Sunlight: Sunlight produces by vision
• Temperature: Survive with reactions for tissues
• Water and Dissolved: Stability for living cells
• Oxygen: The concentration from bacteria
• Metabolic Waste: Oxygen by day with a waste to cycle
• Nutrients distribution to survive