Environmental Science: Matter, Energy, and Life

Matter, Energy, and Life

• Environmental Science is the systematic study of our environment, integrating natural and social sciences with the humanities
• Environmental Engineering uses engineering principles to improve environmental quality and protect against pollution
• Environmental engineers in ancient times managed water and waste
• The term "civil engineering" emerged in the mid-1700s
• In the late 19th century, focus shifted toward eliminating waterborne diseases

Elements of Life

• Ecology studies the relationships between organisms and their environment
• Understanding nutrient and energy flow is crucial in ecological systems
• Organisms are primarily composed of carbon-based compounds

Matter

• Matter has mass and occupies space
• Matter exists in four states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma
• Matter is conserved, meaning it is recycled rather than created or destroyed
• Understanding matter conservation is important for environmental systems and waste management
• Elements are chemically unbreakable substances
• There are 122 known elements; oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are most abundant in living organisms

Atoms, Ions, Organic Compounds, and Cells

• Atoms are the smallest particles retaining element characteristics
• Ions are charged atoms that gain or lose electrons
  • Anions have a negative charge
  • Cations have a positive charge
• Carbon forms the backbone of organic compounds, creating chains and rings
• Lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids are the four major categories of organic compounds
• Cells are the fundamental units of life where processes occur
• Energy does work or transfers heat
• Kinetic, potential, chemical, and heat are different types of energy
• Thermodynamics:
  • The First Law states energy is conserved
  • The Second Law states energy is degraded as used, often as heat

Energy for Life

• Solar energy is essential for warmth and photosynthesis
• Photosynthesis converts solar energy into chemical energy

From Species to Ecosystem

• Species are organisms that can interbreed
• A population is a group of species in one specified area.
• An ecosystem is a biological community and physical environment combined

Productivity, Food Chains, and Material Cycles

• Productivity is the amount of biomass produced in an area over time
  • Primary productivity (photosynthesis) and secondary productivity are forms of productivity
• Food chains are linked feeding series
• Food webs are interconnected food chains
• A trophic level is an organism's feeding status in an ecosystem
• The water cycle involves water movement through the atmosphere, biosphere, surface, and groundwater
• The carbon cycle involves photosynthesis and respiration, regulating the climate
• The nitrogen cycle is essential for protein building and involves various nitrogen compounds
• The phosphorus cycle lacks an atmospheric form, moving slowly through ecosystems

Evolution, Biological Communities, and Species Interactions

• Evolution explains species diversity
• Species interactions shape biological communities
• Community properties affect species and populations
• Communities are dynamic and changing
• Adaptation is essential in biology, helping species survive in their environment
  • Acclimation is an individual's immediate response to environmental change
    • Example: A houseplant adapting to sunlight
• Passing genetic traits to successive generations enables them to live more successfully in respective environments

Evolution and Limiting Factors

• Species change over generations due to competition for scarce resources
• Individuals selected pass on traits through natural selection
• Mutations are DNA sequence changes inherited by offspring
• Environmental pressure affects individual fitness and survival
• Limiting factors on species:
  • Physiological stress (moisture, light, temperature)
  • Competition
  • Predation
  • Luck

Critical Factor and Tolerance Limits

• Justus von Liebig defines the critical factor as the shortest supply that dictates species distribution requirements such as temperature, moisture and nutrients
• Victor Shelford expanded tolerance limits as minimum and maximum levels of environmental factors determining species survival
• Critical factors limit where species can live.
• Ecological niche:
  • Habitat is the environment where an organism lives
  • Ecological niche describes a species' role in a community of factors that determine its distribution

Competition, Predation, and Symbiosis

• Charles Elton defined niche in 1927, focusing on community and food relationships
• G.E. Hutchinson expanded the niche concept to include physical, chemical, and biological interactions
• Speciation is the development of new species
• Populations may adapt to niches, leading to speciation with specialized traits
• Allopatric speciation occurs with geographical separation
• Sympatric speciation occurs within one geographic area
• Directional selection shifts toward one extreme of a trait
• Taxonomy studies organism types and relationships, tracking common ancestry
• Binomials are scientific names used to identify and describe species
• Competition is an antagonistic relationship shaping populations and communities

Community Dynamics

• Intraspecific competition occurs among the same species, while interspecific competition occurs between different species
• Predation affects species population dynamics through organisms eating other organisms
• Symbiosis intimately links two or more species, often enhancing survival
• Types of Symbiosis
• Mutualism is where both benefit (e.g., dogs and humans)
• Commensalism is where one benefits, the other unaffected (e.g., spider on a tree)
• Parasitism is where one benefits at the other's expense (e.g., fleas on animals)
• Endosymbiosis when one lives inside another
• Ectosymbiosis when one lives on the surface of another

Ecosystem Roles

• Keystone species play a critical role in community dynamics, disproportionate to their abundance
• Primary productivity measures biomass production and energy conversion.
• Abundance measures total number of organisms
• Diversity measures distinct species and ecological niches.
• Abundance and diversity are often inversely related in communities with a large number of species
• Ecological structure patterns spatial distribution of populations
• Distributions can be random, clumped, or ordered
• Communities remains relatively stable over time

Stability and Change

• Robert MacArthur stated more complex are more stable
• Types of Stability or Resiliency
• Constancy: Lack of fluctuations
• Inertia: Resistance to change
• Renewal: Ability to recover after disturbance
• Climax community represents the final lasting community
• Succession history: Organisms change their conditions permitting new invasions
• Primary succession begins on bare land
• Secondary succession: Community develops from a biological legacy

Disturbances & Biomes

• Forces disrupting established community patterns include events like fires
• Introduction of new species can change community dynamics
• Disappearance of species is part of ecological succession
• Biomes are general types of communities with similar climate conditions and vegetation

Types of Biomes

• Tropical moist forests, marine and freshwater ecosystems are discussed
• Human disturbance of world biomes are presented
• Terrestrial biomes:
• Biological communities vary with temperature, precipitation, and latitude
• Hot, humid regions generally have greater biological productivity
• Climate graphs used describe precipitation and temperature
• Temperature and precipitation are crucial determinants of biome distribution
• Kind of biological community is predicted based on range of climatic conditions
• Zonation: Vegetation rapidly changes from warm and dry to wet up a mountain

Tropical Seasonal Forests

• Moist tropical forests include many kinds:
  • Cloud Forests: Found in mountains with constant fog
  • Tropical Rainforests: High rain and warm temperatures
• Soil are old, thin, acidic and nutrient poor
• Tropical Seasonal Forests: Drought-tolerant, appears brown and dormant during dry seasons
• Tropical Savannas & Grasslands: Grasslands receive 25-75 cm of rain per year
  • Savannas: Grasslands with tree patches, receive 50-150 cm rain per year
  • Adaptations involve drought, heat, an fires
• Deserts have scarce vegetation
• Plants and animals adapted for long droughts
• vulnerable to off-road vehicle damage

More Biomes

• Temperate Grasslands have enough rain for grass
• mix of grasses and forbs
• deep roots surviving thick, organic-rich soils due to an annual accumulation of dead leaves
• Temperate Shrublands have dense thickets of evergreen shrubs
• tolerant animals
• Temperate Forests: Deciduous Forests occur where rainfall is plentiful
• leaves lost in winter at mid-latitudes Coniferous forest range of temperature and moisture
• provides wood products
• temperature rain forest are cool and rainy

Additional Biomes

• Boreal Forest: Northern Forests lying between 50°
• 60° north, Dominated by pines, hemlocks, spruce, cedar
• Slow-growing due to cold temperatures
• Treeless Tundra landscapes at high latitudes or mountaintops
• Arctic Tundra and Alpine Tundra are variants
• Marine Ecosystems vary mainly with depth, temperature, and salinity
• coral reefs and estuaries are highly productive and diverse -Vertical stratification affects light penetration
• ocean systems based on depth
• Benthic: Bottom communities, Pelagic: Water column
• epipelagic hosts organisms coastal zones for productivity and diversity:coral,mangroves, estuaries,marshes

Freshwater Ecosystems, Human Disturbance, and Earth Processes

• Tide Pools: Rocky shoreline depressions
• Barrier Islands: Narrow islands forming parallel to coastlines
• Freshwater Ecosystems varies with depth and light penetration
• freshwater lakes have vertical zones like Benthos
• submerged land surfaces are Wetlands -- wooded, non-wooded saturated, bogs fens.
• Humans dominate the Earth disturbing ecosystems.

More on Earth

• 40% of net terrestrial primary productivity impacts biodiversity
• Conversion to human use greatest Biodiversity lost
• causes significant impact
• Recognizing effects of climate change is needed to affect society
• Responsibility for social impact lies in mining and drilling
  • include processes that shape earth and resources.
• solutions are alternative materials
• The Earth is a dynamic, constantly changing layered sphere --dense mass generate magnetic field, rocky, pliable crust

Structure and Plate Tectonics

• Antonio Snider's contribution is sedimentary rocks show climate evidence
• Alfred Wegener's Continental Drift is how the fossils distributed
• Brittle elastic crust is the lithosphere
• Plastic layer plates are the asthenosphere
• Divergent Plate Boundaries Plates move to form a lithosphere.
• Covergent Plate Boundaries move for mountain building zones
• Transform plate scrapes each other causing earthquakes

Rocks, Minerals, and Recycling

• The definition naturally occurring solid with specific composition and crystal structure
• Example types quartz and clays, various chemical consisents are non-silcates
• Aggregates of minerals are rocks --Sedimetary formed sediments--igneous lava--metamorphic heat
• Economic is metals with materials
  • nonmetals are stones, etc Conservation with gemstones fund activities
  • Mining pollutes, extraction effects eco- friendly alternatives

Climate and Weather

• Reduce metal Climate is short-term weather
• globaly regional patterns are green house like effects trap heat
• effects temperature change
• technology reduce depletion
• earthquakes occur and cause tsunamis, mass floods
• beach erosion occurs
• warming effects global

Resources: Water, Soil, Mineral & Rock, and Energy

• Various resources necessary as water, soil, rock for our society.
• Water availability for domestic use, agriculture, and industry
• Lack of water may control the extent of development of resources
• Most fresh water is locked up in ice caps
• Local supplies may be inadequate even though water is renewable

Water, Aquifers, and Erosion

• Rock holds enough water transmittable to a water surface level
• A rock aquatard flows quantity of water stores but flows
• Aquifers, not confined by rocks
• Rocks have bounds and low permeability
• Rocks and compact water are saturated in subsidence
• fresh lens thins the water moving fresh.
• Urbanization Groundwater influence by modifying surface stream channels
• Reduction imperm covering area
• Water crucial evaluates supplies

Extending Supplies

• Supply is needed to be moderated for irrigation
• Moving water is dry with water transfer
• purifying water for distillation
• Soils production soil is from wind weather
• layers
• Reflects features
• Refect Color characteristics

Climate, Soil, and Minerals

• schemes
• Tropical climates causes problem
• Dust is erosion cause
• global resources is of degradation
• degradation and global concern and require restoration
• rocks are building blocks
• rocks is metal at high concentration
• rocks are demand profit

World Mineral Supply

• Projected are longlife minerals
• substitution is effective

Mining, Energy, Oil, and Gas

• mining affects humans
• natural fuels oil gas
• natural is from ancient
• supply outpaces discoveries
• recovery alternatives
• supplies stretch technoligically drilling transportation cause pollution
• forms pant like and effects Combustion pollutes, limit
• biofuel causes emission