Explanation: Environmental Science typically affects Earth in a positive way by focusing on how we can reduce the negative impact we have on the environment. Related questions What is environmental science? What's the relationship between environmental science and environmental sustainability?
What are some topics that are in the scope of Environmental Science? What are some overlaps of the Environmental Science and Geology fields? Environmental science. Authors Authors and affiliations William W. Budd Gerald L. How to cite. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Jorgensen, S. Geography is another interdisciplinary field that is central to environmental science.
Obviously, ecology and geography are closely related fields. Increasing numbers of scientists are studying human or anthropogenic influences on ecosystems, occurring as a result of pollution, disturbances, and other stressors. Examples of the major subject areas are:. An environmental scientist is a generalist who uses science-related knowledge relevant to environmental quality, such as air or water chemistry, climate modelling, or the ecological effects of pollution.
Several well-known environmental scientists who have worked in Canada are: William Rees of the University of British Columbia, who studies ecological economics and footprints, David Schindler of the University of Alberta, who studies the effects of pollution and climate change on lakes, Bridget Stutchbury of York University, who examines factors affecting bird conservation, and Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who studies the causes and consequences of climate change.
Another group of people, known as environmentalists, is also involved with these sorts of issues, especially in the sense of advocacy. This involves taking a strong public stance on a particular environmental issue, in terms of the need to address the problem. David Suzuki is perhaps the most famous environmentalist in Canada, because he has so effectively influenced the attitudes of people through books, television, and other media.
Elizabeth May is another well-known Canadian environmentalist, who has worked to deal with many issues as the director of the Sierra Club of Canada, and more recently as the head of the Green Party of Canada and a Member of Parliament. A final example is Paul Watson, a direct-action environmentalist who has worked through the Sea Shepherd Society. However, any person can be called an environmentalist if they care about the quality of the environment and work towards changes that would help to resolve the issue.
Environmentalists may work as individuals, and they often pursue their advocacy through non-governmental organizations NGOs; see Chapter 27 for an explanation of the role of NGOs in Canada and internationally. Canadian Focus 1. In , he became a biology professor at the University of British Columbia, where he studied the genetics of fruit flies.
Beginning in the mids, Suzuki became engaged in media ventures designed to popularize knowledge about scientific issues important to society, most notably through the Quirks and Quarks radio and Nature of Things television series of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Through these media efforts, as well as his many books, magazine and newspaper articles, and public lectures, Suzuki has been instrumental in informing a broad public in Canada and other countries about the gravity of environmental problems, including their scientific and socio-economic dimensions.
This is not to say that everyone agrees with his interpretation of environmental issues. Such issues are always controversial, and there are people who believe that some environmental problems — even climate change and the effects of pesticides — are not important. But despite this disagreement, David Suzuki is a highly respected spokesperson on a wide range of environmental topics. Suzuki has built a worldwide following of a broad constituency of people concerned about environmental damage and social equity.
By doing this, he has contributed greatly to the identification and resolution of environmental problems in Canada and the world. The universe consists of billions of billions of stars and probably an even larger number of associated planets. Earth is the third closest planet to the sun, orbiting that medium-sized star every days at an average distance of million kilometres, and revolving on its own axis every 24 hours.
Earth is a spherical body with a diameter of 12, kilometres. The most singularly exceptional characteristic of Earth is the fact that certain qualities of its environment have led to the genesis and subsequent evolution of organisms and ecosystems. The beginning of life occurred about 3. It is not exactly known how life first evolved from inanimate matter, although it is believed to have been a spontaneous event.
On other words, the genesis of life happened naturally, as a direct result of appropriate physical and chemical conditions. Aside from the musings of science fiction, Earth is celebrated as the only place in the universe that is known to sustain life and its associated ecological processes.
Of course, this observation simply reflects our present state of knowledge. We do not actually know that organisms do not exist elsewhere — only that life or its signals have not yet been discovered anywhere else in the universe.
In fact, many scientists believe that because of the extraordinary diversity of environments that must exist among the innumerable planets of the multitudinous solar systems of the universe, it is likely that life forms have developed elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Earth is the only planet definitely known to support organisms and ecosystems. This makes Earth an extraordinarily special place. We can consider the universe at various hierarchical levels Figure 1.
The scale ranges from the extremely small, such as subatomic particles and photons, to the fantastically large, such as galaxies and, ultimately, the universe.
Life on Earth occupies intermediate levels of this hierarchy. The realm of ecology encompasses the following levels:. A species is defined as individuals and populations that can potentially interbreed and produce fertile offspring see Chapter 7. The word ecosystem is a generic term that is used to describe one or more communities of organisms that are interacting with their environment as a defined unit.
As such, ecosystems can be organized in a hierarchy — they may range from small units occurring in discrete microhabitats such as an aquatic ecosystem contained within a pitcher plant or in a garden surrounded by pavement to much larger scales such as a landscape or seascape.
Even the biosphere can be viewed as being a single ecosystem. Ecological interpretations of the natural world consider the web-like connections among the many components of ecosystems in a holistic manner. This ecosystem approach does not view the system as a random grouping of individuals, populations, species, communities, and environments.
Rather, it confirms all of these as being intrinsically connected and mutually dependent, although in varying degrees, and also as having emergent properties In Detail 1.
All organisms require specific necessities of life, such as inorganic nutrients, food, and habitat with particular biological and physical qualities. Green plants, for example, need access to an adequate supply of moisture, inorganic nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate , sunlight, and space. Animals require suitable foods of plant or animal biomass organic matter , along with habitat requirements that differ for each species.
It is important to understand that humans are no different in this respect from other species. Although this dependence may not always seem to be immediately apparent as we live our daily lives, we nevertheless depend on environmental resources such as food, energy, shelter, and water to sustain ourselves and our larger economies. It follows that the development and growth of individual people, their populations, and their societies and cultures are limited to some degree by environmental factors.
Examples of such constraints include excessively cold or dry climatic conditions, mountainous or otherwise inhospitable terrain, and other factors that influence food production by agriculture or hunting. However, humans are often able to favourably manipulate their environmental circumstances.
For example, crop productivity may be increased by irrigating agricultural land, by applying fertilizer, or by managing pests. In fact, humans are enormously more capable of overcoming their environmental constraints than any other species.
This ability is a distinguishing characteristic of our species. When humans and their societies perceive an environmental constraint, such as a scarcity of resources, they often have been able to understand the limiting factors and to then use insight and tools to manipulate the environment accordingly. The clever solutions have generally involved management of the environment or other species to the benefit of humans, or the development of social systems and technologies that allow a more efficient exploitation of natural resources.
Humans are not the only species that can cope with ecological constraints in clever ways. A few other species have learned to use rudimentary tools to exploit the resources of their environment more efficiently. For example, the woodpecker finch of the Galapagos Islands uses cactus spines to pry its food of insects out of fissures in bark and rotting wood. Chimpanzees modify twigs and use them to extract termites, a favourite food, from termite mounds.
Egyptian vultures pick up stones in their beak and drop them on ostrich eggs, breaking them and allowing access to the rich food inside. About 60 years ago in England, milk was hand-delivered to homes in glass bottles that had a bulbous compartment at the top to collect the cream as it separated. A few great tits chickadee-like birds discovered that they could feed on the cream by tearing a hole in the cardboard cap of the bottle.
Other great tits observed this behavioural novelty and adopted it. The feeding tactic became widespread and was even adopted by several other species, such as the blue tit. Cream-eating was a clever innovation, allowing access to a new and valuable food resource.
Although other species have developed behavioural changes that allow more efficient exploitation of their environment, none have approached the number and variety of innovations developed by humans. Moreover, no other species has developed a cumulative expertise for exploiting such a broad range of resources. And no other species has managed to spread these adaptive capabilities as extensively as humans have, in an increasingly global culture.
Unfortunately, humans also have developed an unparalleled ability to degrade resources and ecosystems and to cause the extinction of other species. The intense damage caused by humans and our economy is, of course, a major element of the subject matter of environmental science.
In Detail 1. Systems and Complexity The concept of systems is important in the hierarchical organization of environmental science. For this purpose, a system may be defined as a group or combination of regularly interacting and interdependent elements that form a collective entity, but one that is more than the mere sum of its constituents.
A system can be isolated for purposes of study. Note, however, that these various systems are not mutually exclusive. For example, an agroecosystem includes elements of biosystems, ecosystems, and socio-cultural systems.
Systems have collective properties, which are based on the summation of their parts. One such property might be the total number of organisms present in a defined area, which might be measured as the sum of all of the individual plants, animals, and microorganisms that are estimated to be present.
Systems also have emergent properties, which are revealed only when their components interact to develop functional attributes that do not exist at simpler, lower levels. For example, harmonies and melodies are emergent properties of music, as occurs when vocalists, a drummer, a bass and lead guitarist, and a keyboard player of a rock band all integrate their activities to perform a song.
Emergent properties are complex and may be difficult to predict or manage. Biological systems provide numerous examples of emergent properties see Chapter 9. For example, certain kinds of fungi and algae join together as a life form known as a lichen, which is an intimate, mutually beneficial relationship a mutualism. The biological properties of a lichen are different from those of the partner species which cannot live apart in nature , and they are impossible to predict based only on knowledge of the alga and the fungus.
Similarly, assemblages of various species occurring in the same place and time an ecological community develop emergent properties based on such interactions as competition, disease, herbivory, and predation. This complexity makes it difficult to predict changes caused by the introduction of a new disease or predator to a community including the harvesting of certain species by humans.
Assemblages of communities over large areas, known as ecoscapes, also have emergent properties, as does the biosphere as a whole. The interconnections within systems are particularly important: any effects on particular components will inevitably affect all of the others.
This extreme complexity is one of the defining attributes of life and ecosystems, in contrast with physical or non-biological systems, which are less complex. Systems analysis is the study of the characteristics of systems, including their components, the relationships among those elements, and their collective and emergent properties.
Systems analysis is used to study commercial, industrial, and scientific operations, usually with the goal of improving their efficiency. It can also be applied to improve the management of ecosystems being exploited to provide goods and services for use by the human economy.
Ecologists also use systems analysis to better understand the organization and working of natural ecosystems, regardless of any direct relationship to the harvesting of natural resources. A key result of many such analyses is that the complexity of the system often precludes accurate predictions.
The development and productivity of organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems are naturally constrained by environmental factors. These constraints can be viewed as being environmental stressors or stressors. For example, an individual plant may be stressed by inadequate nutrition, perhaps because of infertile soil or competition with nearby plants for scarce resources. Less-than-optimal access to nutrients, water, or sunlight results in physiological stress, which causes the plant to be less productive than it is genetically capable of being.
One result of this stress—response relationship is that the plant may develop relatively few seeds during its lifetime. Because reproductive and evolutionary success is related to the number of progeny an organism produces to carry on its genetic lineage, the realized success of this individual plant is less than its potential. Similarly, the development and productivity of an animal including any human are constrained by the environmental conditions under which it lives. For instance, an individual may have to deal with stresses caused by food shortage or by difficult interactions with other animals through predation, parasitism, or competition for scarce resources.
The most benign or least stressful natural environments are characterized by conditions in which factors such as moisture, nutrients, and temperature are not unduly constraining, while disturbances associated with disease, wildfire, windstorm, or other cataclysms are rare. These kinds of relatively benevolent conditions allow the most complex and biodiverse ecosystems to develop, namely old-growth rainforest and coral reefs. Other environments, however, are characterized by conditions that are more stressful, which therefore limits their development to less complex ecosystems, such as prairie, tundra, or desert.
All ecosystems are dynamic, in the sense that they change profoundly, and quite naturally, over time. Many ecosystems are especially dynamic, in that they regularly experience large changes in their species, amounts of biomass, and rates of productivity and nutrient cycling. For example, ecosystems that occur in seasonal climates usually have a discrete growing season, which is followed by a dormant period when little or no growth occurs.
To varying degrees, all of the natural ecosystems of Canada are seasonally dynamic: a warm growing season is followed by a cold dormant period when no plant productivity or growth occurs. With a computer science degree, you can embark on a career with dozens of potential job roles suited to your interests.
You can use the knowledge you develop earning your degree to work in technology, manufacturing and more. The field of cyber security is about leveraging top-notch problem-solving skills with technical aptitude to keep people and data safe. Despite being relatively new, the field of cyber security is here to stay.
What is Environmental Science? August 22, Ashley Wallis. Explore Programs. Why is Environmental Science Important? Environmental Science Careers Environmental jobs can be found in different fields of study, each focusing on exploring and educating different sectors of the population in environmental science. Business and Government - Professionals who study sustainability and environmental compliance examine the effects a company or agency's practices have on the environment and find solutions they can implement to increase their sustainability and decrease any negative environmental impact.
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