environmental interrelationships

45:211: Environmental Geography

ENVIRONMENTALINTERRELATIONSHIPS

Module 1

45:211: Environmental Geography

Outline

• Nature of Environmental Geography– Interrelatedness

• Humans and The Environment

• Environmental systems - Ecosystem Approach

– Environmental Commons• Who “owns” Earth?

– Regional Concerns• Political versus Natural Boundaries

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Environmental Geography

• The role of Environmental Geography is to:– understand the natural

interactions within our environment, and

– integrate this understanding with the uses that humans make of the natural world and their impacts.

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The Environment

• Elements of the physical environment– Water– Air– Soil and Land

• Physical connections– Hydrologic Cycle– Atmospheric Circulation– Food Chains and Webs

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Human Activities

• Human settlement and Land use

• Resource extraction– Agriculture– Forestry– Energy and Mining

• Consumption and Waste– Consumption is waste

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An Environmental Lesson

• What can we learn from Walkerton?– Things are connected– Bad things happen from neglecting the

environment – Tackle the cause not the symptom

• Humans are a part of nature– Not apart from nature

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First Law of Ecology

• You can never do only one thing (Garrett Hardin)

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Connectedness

• “When you tug at a single thing in nature, you find it is attached to the rest of the world”

John Muir (1876)

Founder of the Sierra Club of North America

• The environment is interconnected, and we are connected to the environment

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Interrelatedness

• The “environment” is everything that affects an organism during its lifetime.– biotic - living component– abiotic - non-living component

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Ecosystem Approach

• Ecosystem: A region in which organisms and the physical environment form an interacting unit.

• An ecosystem approach requires looking at the way the natural world is organized and how different components act and interact.

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Natural versus Political Boundaries

• Most social and political decisions are made with respect to political boundaries and jurisdictions. – But environmental systems and environmental

problems rarely coincide with these boundaries.

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Rivers and Watersheds

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Trans-Boundary Water

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Other Transboundary Issues

• Quantity of water

• Quality of water

• Air pollution– local, regional , global– smog, acid rain, ozone depletion

• Habitat loss for migratory species

• Global climate change

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Global Commons

• Those natural systems and cycles that underpin the functioning of ecosystems everywhere.– Atmosphere – Oceans– Hydrologic Cycle– Biogeochemical (nutrient) Cycles

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Global Commons (2)

• These provide us with – air– water– soil– nutrients– climate stability– natural resources

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Atmospheric Circulation

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Ocean Circulation

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Hydrologic Cycle

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Rivers and Oceans

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Tragedy of the Commons• Ecologist Garrett Hardin reiterated Aristotle's

wisdom that "... what is common to the greatest number of

people gets the least amount of care ..." 

• The "tragedy of the commons" emerges whenever the benefits to an individual of (over-)exploiting an open-access (common) resource exceed that individual's share of the resulting damage costs.

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Regional Environmental Concerns

• Out of necessity (political and realistic) most countries, and regions within countries, focus on specific, local issues that apply directly to them.– If you live in the middle of Toronto, how “real”

is the problem of biodiversity loss in Brazil ??

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Regional Environmental Issues

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Geography Matters

• The physical environment is variable in geographic space

• Human society and culture are variable over geographic space

• Environmental interactions are thus rooted in their geographical location– So that geography matters!

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Great Lakes• The Great Lakes Region is dominated by large

metropolitan areas. Many of these large industrial centers have declined, leaving behind abandoned sites, and environmental pollution.

• One of the greatest problems associated with the industrial uses of this area is water contamination from toxic chemicals.– Bioaccumulation - Fish Advisories

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Environmental Indicator

• A selected key statistic that represents or summarizes a significant aspect of the state of the environment, natural resource sustainability or related human activity.

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Environmental Indicator

• Environmental indicators focus on – trends in environmental changes, – the stresses that are causing them, – how ecosystems and their components are

responding to these changes, and – societal responses to prevent, reduce or

ameliorate these stresses.

• Example: Stratospheric ozone and CFC's

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A qualitative indicator

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Atmospheric CO2

• Trend is a measure of the rate of change with time

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Trend and Variation

• Variation is the oscillation around the trend (or mean)

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Summary

• Humans are a part of nature– Not apart from nature

• Environmental interactions are rooted in their geographical location

• Most ecosystems do not coincide with political boundaries– This raises issues for the life-support systems of

the planet (global commons)