MST FINAL REVIEW

• Sustainability


  The ability to maintain or support a process or state indefinitely
• Key components of sustainability

  • Natural capital
  • Human activities
  • Creating solutions
• Natural capital


  Materials and energy provided by nature that are essential or useful to humans
• Types of natural resources

  • Inexhaustible
  • Renewable
  • Non-renewable
• Inexhaustible resources


  • Can last for billions of years, like the sun
• Renewable resources


  • Replenished by natural processes much faster
  • As long as people do not use the resources faster than natural processes can replace it
• Non-renewable resources


  • Take millions to billions of years to form them again through geological processes
  • Exist in a fixed amount, like metallic minerals such as copper and aluminum
• Energy resources


  • Oil
  • Gas
  • Coal
  • Wood
  • Wind
  • Sunlight
  • Water waves
• Oil and gas formation

  1. Formed from dead marine plants and animals millions of years ago

  2. Converted into jet engine oil, petrol and diesel which are used as a fuel in planes and cars
• Coal


  Cheap and abundant in nature
• Peat


  • A spongy material formed by the partial decay of organic material like small plants and trees in wetlands, swamps
  • Acts as a carbon store - but burning it is more polluting than natural gas and coal
• Coal utilization


  • Cheaper than burning wood
  • Can last longer as it burns at high temperature
  • Average energy efficiency of 33% in the USA
  • When burned it releases CO2, SO2 and NO2 into the atmosphere, contributing to enhancing global warming and acid rain formation
• Nuclear energy


  • Nuclear fuels do not produce harmful greenhouse gasses
  • Nuclear power is very efficient
  • Nuclear power produces radioactive waste that is dangerous and has to be sealed in containers and buried for thousands of years
• Photovoltaic energy


  • Utilizes energy from sunlight through solar panels
  • Can be used to produce heating by filling it with water
  • Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electricity via electrochemistry
• Hydroelectric power


  • Utilizing power of flowing water to move turbines
  • Traps water in reservoir or dams and releases it in controlled amounts to spin turbines
  • Reliably generates electricity more than solar and wind
  • Hydroelectric dams are very expensive and can harm wildlife, causing habitat loss and relocation of local settlers
• Terrestrial ecosystems


  • Forests
  • Grasslands
  • Nature parks
  • Nature reserves
• Terrestrial ecosystems


  • Interconnected and interacting with one another
  • Interacts with non-living components present in these communities
  • Provides habitat and food, protection from floods/cyclones/droughts, and produces atmospheric oxygen
• Grasslands


  • Cover 1/4 of the earth's land except Antarctica
  • Occur in areas where it is too wet for deserts but too dry for forests
  • Provide ecosystem services like soil formation, erosion control, chemical cycling, storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in biomass, and maintenance of biodiversity
• Rangelands


  Unfenced grasslands in temperate and tropical climates that supply forage (source of food/protein) and vegetation for grazing and browsing animals
• Grasslands - overgrazing


  • Most common major threat to grasslands ecosystems
  • When too many animals graze for too long, damaging the grasses and their roots, exceeding the biocapacity of a rangeland area
• Grasslands - overstocking


  • Too many animals in a grazing space, wiping out the vegetation before it can replenish
• Drought


  • Lack of precipitation results in crops not being able to grow and replenish, leading to fewer plant species and animals having to eat the remaining crops
• Grasslands - land use

  • Improper food management by allowing livestock to graze on new vegetation
  • Irresponsible use of land for logging, mining, pollution, and poor farming practices
• Natural reserves


  An area possessing some outstanding ecosystem features of flora and fauna with national scientific importance, maintained to protect nature and induce natural processes in an undisturbed state
• Forests


  • Cover 31% of the earth's land surface
  • Old growth forests are not disturbed by natural and human activities for more than 200 years
  • Second growth forests replace old growth forests that are disturbed or cleared
• Tropical rainforests


  • Biomes found in the warm and humid equatorial regions with the greatest biodiversity and lush vegetation with fairly constant climatic patterns
• Ecological succession


  Changes of living species over time in a particular area, where biological communities evolve progressively and replace one another due to environmental change
• Petrology


  The study of rocks in terms of formation, composition and processes
• Petrologist


  Specialist that specializes in the study of rocks
• Soil


  Part of the regolith that supports the growth of plants
• Soil composition


  • Minerals - 45%
  • Organic matter - 5%
  • Water - 25%
  • Air - 25%
• Vermicomposting


  Aiding in the growth and development of plants by introducing worms as manufacturers of natural fertilizer
• Soil types


  • Residual soil
  • Transported soil
• Tree plantations


  • Managed forests with few species of trees, established for commercial use such as paper production
• Tree harvesting methods


  • Clear cutting
  • Selective cutting
  • Strip cutting
• World Bank estimates our global forest loss at 10 million square kilometers since the beginning of the 20th century, equivalent to 33 Philippine-sized forests gone in the last 200 years
• Causes of deforestation


  • Timber/lumber harvesting for construction
  • Burning of remaining tree parts for pasture lands or land conversion
  • Conversion to palm oil plantations
• Types of forest fires

  • Surface fires
  • Crown fires
• Surface fires


  • Burn only the surface or the forest floor, killing only small trees and seedlings
  • Benefits include burning flammable underground material to prevent huge and destructive forest fires, killing destructive insects, and stimulating germination of some tree seeds
• Crown fires


  • Destructive fires that may cause extreme damage to the forest ecosystem and species living there, occurring in forests that do not experience surface fires