Lecture 5 – Humans Impact on Natural Systems
- Human geographers are now doing research to expose human impact on the environment
- E.g. Doing GIS for global warming
- Why is it important?
- We make decisions about the environment (e.g. Transportation, etc.)
Introduction
- The relationship between humans and environment is a 2-way relationship
- We impact the environment and the environment also influences our way of life (e.g. what
we can do, where we can live, and etc.)
Human-environment interactions
- Every human activity has an impact
- Environment impacts human activity
- Humans can be blind to their impact
- Humans have become the active and dominant agents of environmental change
- Every human activity has a direct or indirect impact
- May be insignificant, but in a long period time it will become significant
- Humans are agents of change, particularly because of their increasing population
- More need for transportation, etc.
- Environment can refer to water; oil spillage no way the water can be cleaned up to its
original state
- Humans do farming or plantation that alters the environment
- Need chemicals to grow food
o The chemicals will lead to deterioration of the landscape
- Generate garbage
- Canadians produce more garbage than anyone else (because of economy)
Global perspective
- A global perspective is employed in geography because of the fact that
“everything is related to everything else”
- One cannot change one aspect of nature without directly or indirectly affecting other
aspects.
- This is one of the principles in human geography
- E.g. What is happening in the US can affect Canada - Because everything is related, we tend to take a global relationship between human and
environment
Concept of systems and ecology
- Systems Definition: sets of interrelated parts linked together form a unified whole
o Useful to describe a wide range of phenomena and offer a simplified description of
what is a usually complex reality.
- Ecology Definition: from the Greek – ‘eco’ comes oikos, house or place to live, and ‘logy’
meaning ‘study of’, comes from the logos
o 'Study of house', study of organisms in their homes
- Whatever happens to one part of the system can affect the other component of the system
Ecosystems
- Ecosystem: a community of living organisms (plants, animals, microbes) in conjunction with
the non-living components of their environment (air, water, soil etc.) interacting as a system
- Link together through nutrient cycles and energy flows
- Ecosystems as network of interactions
- Can be any size but exists as an overlapping web- no distinct boundary
- ‘everything is connected’ = planet as ecosystem
Humans as simplifiers of ecosystems
- Humans are active and dominant agents of environmental change
- Any human change to an ecosystem is usually a simplification, and a simplified ecosystem
usually is vulnerable.
- Humans activities include:
o Farming (e.g. clearing of forests)
o Buildings of dams
o Building cities
o Oil or energy exploration etc…
- Of all the living organisms, human are the most prominent agent of change
- Whatever humans do to the system changes and it cannot be brought back to the original
state simplification
- Farming = for food
- Buildings of dams = for energy
- Presently, one of the most urgent issues facing us is the need to change the way we live
inside our ecosystems.
- Domination can be illustrated in our use of energy and our high valuation of technology
- Because there is a need for energy, we are causing a lot of impact on the environment
- Energy = the capacity to do work
- For every human activity, we need energy Energy and technology
- Energy is the capacity to do work.
- Countries in the more-developed world generally use more energy per capita than do
countries in the less-developed world.
- Technology is the ability to convert energy into forms useful for humans
- Human survival depends on our retaining access to appropriate energy sources
- As a country in the developed work, they tend to use more energy per capita because they
are more industrialized (more industries and more factories)
- Technology is helpful but is also harmful in the use for the environment
Natural resources and human values
- Humans continually evaluate physical environments.
- As human culture changes, so do those evaluations.
o Something only becomes a 'resource' if humans perceive it as useful in some way:
▪ Technological
▪ Political
▪ Economic
▪ Social
- Resource division:
o Stock resources versus Renewable resources
- Resource only becomes resource when there is human use
o Technologically it can be exploited, political will, economic reasons, and social need
- In a given resource, it can be divided into stock vs. renewable
- Stock resources = fixed in quantity; take a long time to form
o E.g. Oil
- Renewable resources = the ones that can be renewed over a long period of time; not fixed in
quantity; at any given point, their quantity can be changed form time to time because they
can be renewed
Renewable energy sources
- The biggest technological challenge of the early 21st century is to decrease our reliance
on non-renewable fossil fuels as sources of energy
- Renewable Options:
o Hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal
Arguments in favour of the use of renewable energy:
- Environmental Reasons:
o Impact of burning fossil fuels (on atmosphere)
o Impact of fuel extraction (think Alberta Oil Sands)
o Consequence of global warming – burn carbon dioxide
- Economic Reasons: o Coal, oil, and natural gas will become more expensive as supplies become
scarcer
o Creation of renewable energy infrastructure as economic driver
o Resources for energy will become more expensive
- Political Reasons:
o Pressure exerted by voters increasingly aware of environmental issues
▪ Strong movement to move towards environmentally friendly resources
o Need for national economies to be self-sufficient in energy
▪ No repeats of Gulf War
o Need to diversify in order to reduce dependence on particular suppliers of
energy sources
o Argument to shift from non-renewable to renewable
Renewable energy progress
- Clean Energy Policy:
o No Federal Policy
o Provinces Driving Force
o Some successes
o Wind in Ontario & Quebec
- Ontario and Quebec are the leaders in making
efforts
Renewable energy progress
- In 2004, coal is a major source of energy from coal exploitation that releases a lot of of
carbon dioxide
- By 2012, most plants have been shut down and its dependence on coal reduced
Compared to our neighbours
- Despite our efforts, we live in a global society
- The use of coal is extensive in a number of US states o E.g. West Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin
- You can see a clearly difference between Canada vs. US
- Not every society is making the same effort
The current debate: three contentious issues
1. Relationships between the environment and the economy
- Market forces unlikely to solve environmental problems
o Can control any impact of human impact on the environment OR market is only
driven by profit and does not care about environmental impact
- Economic growth leads to reduction of environmental problems – if accompanied by good
governance
2. Environmental problems are increasingly affecting relationships between countries
- US/Canada, Britain/Norway, Brazil/Guyana
- Tensions between countries because of environmental comcerns (use of water and oil)
3. Behaviour of individuals as group members (ecocentric versus anthropocentric):
- 1. Ecocentric world view – we all connected, and work with nature
o Because we are connected, whatever affects something will affect us all
- 2. Anthropocentric views – humans are source of all values; land exists for human use;
energy and resources are unlimited
o Use the land as much as you can, there shoul
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