Environmental Science: Interdisciplinary Approach

Introduction to Environmental Science

• Environmental science is the study of interactions between human and natural systems.

Human Sciences in Environmental Science

• Psychology: Understanding human behavior and its impact on the environment.
• Sociology/Demography: Studying population dynamics and social structures.
• Cultural Anthropology: Examining cultural perspectives on environmental issues.
• Economics: Analyzing economic systems and their relationship to the environment.
• Political Science: Investigating environmental policies and governance.
• Religion/Philosophy: Exploring ethical and moral dimensions of environmental stewardship.
• History: Understanding past environmental changes and their consequences.

Natural Sciences in Environmental Science

• Biology: Studying living organisms and their interactions.
• Ecology: Examining the relationships between organisms and their environment.
• Zoology/Phytography: Focusing on the study of animals and plants.
• Geography: Analyzing spatial patterns and processes on Earth.
• Physics/Chemistry: Applying physical and chemical principles to environmental problems.

Core Areas of Environmental Science

• Conservation Biology: Dedicated to protecting biodiversity and ecosystems.
• Wildlife Management: Managing wildlife populations and their habitats.
• Environmental Policy: Developing and implementing regulations to protect the environment.
• Environmental Ethics: Addressing moral principles and values related to the environment.
• Climatology: Studying long-term weather patterns and climate change.

Key Environmental Issues

• Public Health: Examining the impact of environmental factors on human health.
• Land Management: Addressing sustainable use and conservation of land resources.
• Waste Disposal: Managing and reducing waste generation and pollution.
• Overpopulation: Assessing the impact of population growth on the environment.
• Loss of Biodiversity: Addressing the decline in the variety of life on Earth.
• Water Scarcity and Water Pollution: Managing and protecting water resources.
• Pollution: Reducing and preventing air, water, and soil pollution.
• Deforestation: Addressing the loss of forests and its environmental consequences.
• Ecosystems and Extinction: Protecting ecosystems and preventing species extinctions.
• Climate Change: Mitigating and adapting to the impacts of global warming.

Ecological Concepts: Levels of Biological Organization

• Atoms: Basic units of matter.
• Molecule: A group of atoms bonded together.
• Cell: The basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms.
• Tissue: A group of similar cells performing a specific function.
• Organ: A structure made up of different tissues working together.
• Body System: A group of organs working together to perform a complex function.
• Organism: An individual living being
• Population: A group of individuals of the same species living in the same area.
• Community: A group of interacting populations of different species in the same area.
• Ecosystem: A community of organisms and their physical environment interacting as a unit.
• Biosphere: The part of Earth where life exists, including all ecosystems.

Native vs. Non-Native Species

• Native Species: Found naturally in a particular ecosystem due to natural processes. An example is the koala, native to Australia.
• Keystone Species: Plays a crucial role in maintaining an ecosystem's structure, function, and productivity, like mangrove trees or starfish.
• Population Viability: A population's ability to avoid extinction.
• Ecological Resilience: The capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbances and adapt without fundamentally changing.
• Disturbances: Events like fires, landslides, flooding, windstorms, and pest outbreaks that disrupt ecosystems.
• Fragmentation: Habitat destruction that leaves smaller, unconnected areas.

Ecological Management Strategies

• Coarse Filter/Fine Filter Approach: Balances conservation efforts with human activities, focusing on biodiversity protection at different scales.
• Risk in Decision-Making: Uncertainty and complexity are inherent in environmental decisions.
• Adaptive Management: A valuable tool for managing ecosystems by embracing uncertainty, promoting learning, and adapting to new information.
• Forest Management: Adjusts logging practices based on the effects on forest regeneration, wildlife, and water quality.
• Fisheries Management: Sets fishing quotas based on the abundance of fish stocks.
• Climate Change Approach: Develops strategies for managing ecosystems in the face of changing climate conditions.
• Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM): A holistic approach that considers the entire ecosystem, including human interactions.
• Protected Areas: Safeguard biodiversity, preserve natural processes, and provide a refuge for threatened species.

The Seven Environmental Principles

• Everything is connected to everything else: Ecosystem components are interconnected and form a functional unit; human actions can alter ecosystems.
• All forms of life are important: All organisms have a purpose; species extinction disrupts the web of life.
• Everything must go somewhere: By-products of consumption return to the environment.
• Ours is a finite Earth: Nature provides resources, but they are slow to replace.
• Nature knows best: Nature maintains balance; human intervention can cause ecological backlash.
• Nature is beautiful, and we are stewards of God's creation: Humans have a responsibility to care for the environment.
• Everything changes: Change is constant; human-induced alterations can have massive repercussions.

Ecosystem and Components

• Biosphere: Includes the atmosphere (air), hydrosphere (water), and lithosphere (earth).
• Biotic Factors: Living organisms in an environment.
  • Producers/Autotrophs: Organisms that make their own food through photosynthesis.
  • Consumers/Heterotrophs: Herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.
  • Decomposers: Heterotrophs that break down dead tissue and waste, recycling nutrients (e.g., bacteria and fungi).
• Abiotic Factors: Nonliving parts of an organism's environment, such as air current, temperature, moisture, light, and soil.

Solar Radiation and Climate

• Solar Radiation: Energy from the sun.
• Atmosphere: Consists of Nitrogen (78.084%), Oxygen (20.946%), Argon (0.934%), and Trace gases (0.036%).
• Water Distribution: 3% freshwater and 97% saline water.
• Climate: Long-term weather patterns
• Microclimate: Climate on a local scale, such as on a hill.

Energy Flow Through Ecosystems

• Food Chain: A model showing a sequence of feeding relationships among species.
• Consumers: Herbivores (eat only plants), carnivores (eat only animals), omnivores (eat both plants and animals), detritivores (eat dead organic matter), and decomposers (break down organic matter into simpler compounds).
• Trophic Levels: Nourishment levels in a food chain, including producers/autotrophs, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers.
• Energy Pyramids: Compare energy used by producers and other organisms on trophic levels.
• Energy Transfer: Only 10 percent of the energy at each tier is transferred from one trophic level to the next.
• Biomass: Measure of the total dry mass of organisms in each area.

Matter, Energy, and Life

• Energy Forms: Kinetic energy, potential energy, chemical energy, and heat.
• Thermodynamics: Energy is neither created nor destroyed but degrades to lower intensity forms when used.
• Energy Source: Nearly all energy in ecosystems is captured from sunlight by photosynthesis and released through cellular respiration.

Pollution

• Types of Water Pollution
  • Surface Water Pollution: Pollution of aquatic systems above ground, such as streams, lakes, and rivers
  • Marine Pollution: Sewage and industrial waste into the ocean which contains plastic debris that can absorb toxic chemicals.
  • Ground Water Pollution: One of the most important sources of water for irrigation but polluted by man-made products, such as gasoline, oil, road salts
• Categories of Pollution Source
  • Point Sources: Contaminants entering a waterway from a single, identifiable source, such as pipe or ditch.
  • Nonpoint Sources: Contamination that does not originate from a single discrete source.
• Contaminants and their sources
  • Pathogen: Disease-causing microorganism that produce waterborne diseases.
  • Organic Substances: Detergents, disinfectants, food processing waste, insecticide, petroleum hydrocarbons, industrial solvents
  • Inorganic Substances: Industrial discharges (sulfur dioxide from power plants), ammonia, chemical waste, fertilizers, motor vehicles and mining
  • Macroscopic Pollution: large visible items polluting water such as plastic or trash
  • Changes in Temperature: Thermal pollution is often caused by power plantations and industrial manufacturers.
• Control of Pollution
  • Municipal Wastewater Treatment: Typically treated by centralized sewage treatment plants and can remove 90% or more of the pollutant load in sewage
  • On-Site Sanitation and Safety Managed Sanitation: Households and businesses not served by municipal treatment plants may have individual septic tanks that pre-treat wastewater on site
  • Industrial Water Treatment: Can be treated with sewage treatment plants or specialized treatment systems
  • Agricultural Wastewater

Biogeochemical Cycles

• Biogeochemical Cycle: The pathways by which essential elements of living matter are circulated.
• Nitrogen Cycle
  • Nitrogen Fixation: Bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia
  • Nitrification: Conversion of ammonia to nitrite and then to nitrate.
  • Ammonification: Decomposition of dead plants and animals by bacteria and fungi, releasing ammonia.
  • Denitrification: Conversion of nitrate back to nitrite and then to atmospheric nitrogen.
  • Assimilation: Absorption of nitrogen by plants.
• Carbon Cycle
  • CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants for photosynthesis.
  • Animals consume plants, releasing CO2 through respiration.
  • Decomposition of dead organisms forms fossil fuels.
  • Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
• Phosphorus Cycle
  • Phosphorus moves to the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.
  • Provides ATP, DNA, and lipids to plants.
• Sulfur Cycle
  • Sulfur moves between rocks, waterways, and living systems.
  • Found in proteins and enzymes in plants and animals.
  • Sulfur dissolved in water is absorbed by plants and consumed by animals.
• Water Cycle
  • Evaporation, sublimation, and transpiration.
  • Condensation.
  • Precipitation.

Biomes

• Biome: A large region of the Earth with specific types of living things; smaller areas within biomes are called ecosystems.
  • Freshwater: Low salt concentration (less than 1%), including ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands.
  • Marine: Covers about three-fourths of the Earth's surface; includes oceans, coral reefs, and estuaries.
    • Ocean: Largest ecosystem, large bodies of saline water. 71% of earth's surface with main basins the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Antarctic.
    • Coral reefs: Consists of both algae and tissues of animal polyp in warm shallow waters that forms barrier along continents.
    • Estuary: Areas where freshwater or rivers merge with the ocean
  • Desert: Covers one-fifth of Earth's surface; rainfall is less than 50 cm/year, and soils have abundant nutrients.
  • Forest: Large area dominated by trees.
    • Tropical Rainforest: Greatest diversity of species near the equator; rain and dry seasons only.
    • Temperature Deciduous Forest: Distinct winter in eastern North America, northeastern Asia, and western and central Europe.
    • Boreal Forest (Taiga): Largest terrestrial biome in the board belt of Eurasia/ North America.
  • Grassland: Lands dominated by grasses.
    • Tropical Grassland and Savannah - scattered individual trees in Africa.
    • Temperate Grasslands - dominant vegetation and absent large trees/shrubs.
  • Tundra: Coldest of all biomes with frost-molded landscapes, poor nutrients, and short growing seasons.
    • Arctic Tundra: Northern hemisphere, encircling the North Pole with permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil).
    • Alpine Tundra: Located on mountains; well-drained soil below the freezing point.

Organisms and Their Environment (Biodiversity)

• Ecology: Study of interactions between organisms and their environment.
• Abiotic Factors: Non-living environmental components (air currents, temperature, moisture, light, and soil).
• Biotic Factors: Living components of the environment.
• Biodiversity: The variety of life in the world or habitat or ecosystem.

Philippine Ecosystem

• Forest Ecosystem: Decreased from 70% to about 24% due to deforestation; significant deforestation rate per year.
• Mangrove Ecosystem: Medium-sized flora tolerant to brackish water threatened by human interaction.
• Coral-Reef Ecosystem: Part of the "coral triangle"; diverse ecosystems. In verde island Batangas, noted to be “the center of center”.
• Freshwater Ecosystem: Inland bodies of water, including rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, and artificial fishponds.
• Seagrass and Soft-Bottom Ecosystem: Aquatic flowering plants in seawater used as a nursery for young marine life.
• Species as Indicators of Ecosystem Health:
  • Keystone Species: Depends on biological needs such as food and shelter.
  • Sensitive Species: May disappear from site when subjected to external disturbances
  • Tolerant Species: Opposite of sensitive
  • Endemic Species: Also serves as indicators of habitat and ecosystem health; lives in a specific area
  • Umbrella Species: Exerts a major ecological influence on a community, having a large habitat/range.
  • Flagship Species: Catches public sympathy and serves as an icon for conservation.
  • Charismatic Species: Publicly known and regarded as conservation symbols.

Evolution, Biological Communities, and Species Interactions

• Natural selection acting spontaneous mutations results in evolution
• Taxonomic Relationships Theory: Describing the relationships between species

Theories of Evolution

• Charles Darwin: Natural selection leads to evolution.
• Charles Lyell: The world is older than previously thought.
• Thomas Malthus: Competition for scarce resources determines survival.
• Gradual Evolutionary Steps: Replication, trait variation, and selection.
• Natural Selection Traits: Heritable traits that help species survive.

Species Limitation, Living in Limits

• Species can increase without limits due to the availability of resources within the system

Ecological Roles, Niche

• Ecological Niche: Environment in which organism lives, and their ecological role.
  • Generalists Vs Specialists: Varying species based on environmental resources found in area.
  • Speciation: Splitting of 1 species
  • Allopactric Vs Sympatric: Different forms of evolution due to environmental pressures.

Evolutionary Process

• Predator-Prey Dynamics: all spicies in life cycle
• Batesian Mimicry: Species mimic other species on their ability to capitalize
• Competition Occurs Between Species: competition for resources between them.
• Adversarial Relationship: occure when organism compete to survive

Symbiosis And Effects

• Types Of Species Relations: The way in which different species interacts and live together.
• Mutualism: Both organisms benefit in interactions
• Commensalism : 1 Benefit other does not
• Parasitism: 1 harms other benefits