Sustainability Defined: Inexhaustible resources

The ability of ecosystems and human – Perpetually available and expected to last
cultural systems to survive, flourish, and • Renewable resources
adapt together to constantly changing – Replenished by natural processes within their
environments over long periods of time sustainable yield
What is the environment? • Nonrenewable/exhaustible resources
– Everything around us, living and nonliving
– Available in fixed quantities that can be
• Ecosystem:
renewed, but only through long-term geologic
– Group of organisms in a defined geographic
processes
area (terrestrial or marine) that interact with
How Are Our Ecological Footprints
each other and their environment
Affecting the Earth?
• Environmentalism:
Over time, growth of ecological footprints
– A social movement dedicated to sustaining
depletes and degrades earth’s natural
the earth’s life-support system
capital (natural resources and ecosystem
Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability
services)
Dependence on solar energy
– Environmental degradation
– Supplies nutrients, directly and indirectly
• Biodiversity What is an Ecological Footprint?

– Provides ecosystem services and adaptability • An ecological footprint

• Chemical/nutrient cycling – The amount of land and water needed to

– In nature, waste = useful resources supply a population or geographic area with

What is a Resource? renewable resources, as well as the ability to

A resource is anything we obtain from the absorb/recycle wastes and pollution produced
environment by resource usage
– Can be readily available for use • The growth of ecological footprints
– Or – can require technology to acquire – Leads to degradation of natural capital
• Sustainable solutions for resource use – Results in the creation of pollution and waste
– Reduce
– Reuse
– Recycle
Affluence Has Harmful Environmental – Manage all public lands wisely and

Effects scientifically, primarily to provide resources for

• High levels of consumption and waste of people

resources

• More air pollution, water pollution, and

land degradation

• Acquisition of resources without regard for

the environmental effects of their

consumption

Affluence Has Beneficial Environmental

Effects

• Better education

• Scientific research

• Technological solutions resulting in

improvements in environmental quality

(e.g., safe drinking water)

• Three major types of world views:

– Human-centered

• Planetary management world view

• Stewardship world view

– Life-centered

– Earth-centered

The Rise of Environmental Conservation

and Protection in the United States

• The preservationist school (John Muir)

– Leave wilderness areas on some public lands

untouched

• The conservationist school (Theodore

Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot)

Ecosystems • Food chains

Earth’s Life-Support System Has Four – A sequence of organisms, each of which

serves
Major Components
as a nutritional source for the next (big fish eat
• Atmosphere – composed of the troposphere
little fish)
and the stratosphere. (AIR)
• Food webs
• Hydrosphere – water at or near the earth’s
– A complex network of interconnected food
surface (ice, water, and water vapor) chains
• Geosphere – composed of a hot core, a thick, • Pyramid of energy flow
mostly rocky mantle and a thin outer crust – Energy flow through various trophic levels
• Biosphere – wherever life is found within the

other three spheres (living organisms) GPP (gross primary productivity)

– The rate that an ecosystem’s producers

Three Factors Sustain the Earth’s Life convert

• The one-way flow of high-quality energy energy into biomass

– Solar energy principle of sustainability

– Greenhouse effect • NPP (net primary productivity)

• The cycling of nutrients – The rate that producers use photosynthesis to

– Chemical cycling principle of sustainability produce and store chemical energy minus the

• Gravity rate at which they use energy for aerobic

respiration

Producers and Consumers The Carbon Cycle

• Producers (autotrophs – plants) use • Atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key

photosynthesis to make nutrients component of the carbon cycle, has a

• Consumers (heterotrophs) feed on other significant temperature effect (greenhouse

organisms or their remains effect)

– Can be herbivores (plant eaters), carnivores • How does carbon cycle through the

(meat eaters) or omnivores (eat both plants and biosphere?

meat) – Photosynthesis by producers

– Aerobic respiration by producers, consumers Ecosystems and Three Big Ideas
and
• Life is sustained by the flow of energy and
Decomposers
nutrients through ecosystems which are
The Phosphorus Cycle
continually recycled
How does phosphorus cycle through the
• Ecosystems are characterized by producers,
biosphere?
consumers, and decomposers – All aid in the
– Cycles through soils, rocks, water and plants,
cycling process
but
• Human activities impact ecosystem cycling,
not through the atmosphere
sometimes negatively, sometimes positively
– Can be temporarily removed from natural
cycling (e.g., Yellowstone)
when washed into oceans and trapped in
marine

sediments

– As with nitrogen, contributes to agricultural

runoff

The Sulfur Cycle

• How does sulfur cycle through the biosphere?

– Via mining of ore deposits/ocean sediments

– From active volcanoes – as poisonous

hydrogen

sulfide and sulfur dioxide gases

– Through decomposition of organic matter in

wetlands

– From sea spray, dust storms, and forest fires

– Absorption by plant roots

Biodiversity and Evolution everything that affects its survival and

What Is Biodiversity and Why Is It reproduction

Important? • Habitat

Sustaining life on the earth depends on the – The geographic location of the species

biodiversity found in genes, species, • Species

ecosystems, and ecosystem processes – May be generalists with broad niches, or

• Biodiversity is the variety in: specialists with narrow niches

– Species (species diversity) • Generalist species (broad niches)

– The genes they contain (genetic diversity) – Can live in a wide range of environments; less

– Ecosystems (ecological diversity) prone to extinction

– Ecosystem processes, such as energy flow and • Specialist species (narrow niches)

nutrient cycling (functional diversity) – Live in only a few types of habitats; more
prone to
Species and Biomes
extinction because of their inability to tolerate
• Species
environmental change
– Set of individuals that can mate and produce
• Native species
fertile offspring – every organism is a member
of – Live and thrive in a specific ecosystem

a certain species • Nonnative species

• Ecosystem diversity – Immigrate into, or are deliberately or

accidentally
– Deserts, grasslands, forests, mountains,
oceans, introduced, into an ecosystem

lakes, rivers, and wetlands – Can threaten native species through

competition
– Biomes are major habitations/large
ecosystems for resources, reducing the number native
species
with distinct climates and species
– Can spread rapidly if they find a favorable
Each Species Plays a Role in Its niche
Ecosystem

• Niche

– The role the species plays in an ecosystem

and