Concepts and Principle in Ecology

• The environment is everything around us. it includes all of the living and the non-living things with which we interact.

  The environment
• Environmental Science is an interdisciplinary study that describes and seeks solutions to problems and issues caused by human use of the natural world.
• THREE GOALS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

  • To learn how nature works.
  • To understand how we interact with the environment.
  • To find ways to deal with environmental problems and live more sustainably.
• Ecology is the biological science that studies how organisms, or living things, interact with one another and the environment.
• Ecosystem is a organisms interacting with one another and their environment of non-living matter and energy.
• Sustainability is the ability of the earth’s various natural systems and human cultural systems and economies to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions.
• WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY?

  • Because we are a species in the process of rapidly degrading our life support system.
• Four Principles Of Sustainability

  • Reliance On Solar Energy
  • Biodiversity
  • Chemical Cycling
  • Population Control
• Reliance On Solar Energy is the sun warms the planet and provides energy that plants use to produce food for themselves and for us and most other animals.
• Biodiversity includes an astounding variety of different organisms.
• Chemical Cycling is an natural processes that recycle nutrients, or chemicals that plants and animals need to stay alive and reproduce.
• Population Control should be limited by environmental factors
• Natural Capital = natural resources + natural services that keep us and other forms of life alive and support our economies.
• Natural Resources are materials and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans (can be either renewable or nonrenewable resources).
• Natural Services are processes in nature that support life and human economies.
• Natural Capital Degradation is a human activity that can degrade natural capital by using normally renewable resources faster than nature can renew them.
• NATURAL CAPITAL DEGRADATION

  • Climate change
  • Air pollution
  • Soil Erosion
  • Shrinking forest
  • Decreased wildlife habitats
  • Species extinction
  • Declining ocean fisheries
  • Water Pollution
• Ecological footprint is the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to indefinitely supply the people in a particular country with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use.
• Pollution Is the presence in the environment (air, water, or land) of waste materials and the unfavorable modification of the environment caused by man’s activities
• Pollutant is anything which when put into the atmosphere either purposely or through some acts of nature adversely affects the ecosystem.
• Thermal Problems is heat and hot water are byproducts of many manufacturing processes, and these are often dumped directly into water sources.
• Oil Spills are the oil smothers and suffocates animals and causes disastrous effects to every living organism at the site of the spill.
• AIR POLLUTANTS

  • Carbon Monoxides
  • Nitrogen Oxides
  • HYDROCARBONS
• Planetary Management World View, we are apart from the rest of nature and can manage nature to meet our increasing needs and wants.
• Stewardship Worldview, we have an ethical responsibility to be caring managers, or stewards, of the earth
• Environmental Wisdom, we should encourage earth-sustaining forms of economic growth and discourage earth-degrading forms.