AGR 2050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Ogallala Aquifer, Algal Bloom, Aquifer
17 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Lake erie-phosphorus run off leads to algae bloom making dead zones. Drought- due to ecosystem alterations- cost of irrigation temperature and climate changes. Corn crop that produces 9 tonnes per hectare requires about 6 million litres of water during the growing season. Ogallala aquifer: one of the world"s largest aquifers in the usa- 8 states are on the aquifer. Dead zone gulf of mexico- 11000 km2. The tragedy of the commons, which predicts excessive rates of depletion under common property situations. All of these are examples of significant unintended consequences of agriculture. Overlooked because of economic gains but don"t consider ecological feed-back loops. Each management decision has a ripple effect . Traditional analysis: separating individual pieces of what"s being studied it is reduction science( breaking thing into there constitutional parts) System thinking is how thing interact with each other- instead of isolating , system thinking expands its views to take larger number of interactions into account.
