When doing Acid is not as fun as you remember

The first article we got this week covered acid drainage and its harmful effects. We talked about it in class to some length, but there were still aspects discussed ere that I may not have fully grasped. One example is just how far the drainage travels. I was unaware beforehand that some acid drainage goes over 8 miles downstream, affecting every fish, plant, or human that comes in contact with it. In addition to sulfuric acid, much of the leakage is other metals, which is what creates that rust colored lining on the bottom of some river beds. These are actually a huge problem as metals don't simply break down and disappear; they linger for years and years until someone physically cleans it out.

Two ways this info relates to class is our studies of mining. When companies use explosives or other disruptive techniques in their mines, many minerals are deposited where they shouldn't be. This creates the acid drainage we just talked about. It also goes hand in and with our lab we did today: the mining simulation. Our group was so concerned with making enough money to not be in debt that we didn't care if we made any smears (acid drainage) while mining. It's not hard to see how a company that's $200 million in the hole may not care about how clean the streams are.

A question I have is about coal mining. How long does it last? As the apparent most advanced country in the nation, we can't always stay on such cruel forms of energy such as coal, right? When does West Virginia become a solar energy capital of the world?

The Irrigation Situation

I read the second article that was provided this week and learn all about irrigation salinity. More specifically, the how, why and what is being down about his problem. It occurs because of over watering and irrigation use on farms this allows minerals underground to rise through the pools of water, effectively poisoning the soil. This usually is involved with salt, which is notoriously bad for crops (see Sherman's March to the Sea). People now are starting to be better about managing their land and water use to prevent the loss of usable soil.

As we learned in lass, it takes hundreds of years just to build a layer of soil only a few centimeters deep. Salting the limited Earth we have creates serious problems. Another thing we discussed in class was the growing human population. We actually need MORE food an land, yet we somehow continue to destroy it all. This is problematic when you think about how our population will potentially double in the next 40 years.

A question I have is about the amount of fertile land that is currently sitting on fertile soil. How much usable and rich soil is unusable because skyscrapers now sit on top. I wonder if there is anyway to get people to move off this land and onto the sandy areas that aren't good for growing anything. Then we could all live on a sunny beach like grandma wanted.

PCBs (Plastic Causing Bad stuff)

This week I chose the second of the two articles given to us, the one about PCBs. I only know what we learned in class, so my knowledge doesn't extend as far as it probably could. From the reading, I learned about exposure to PCBs, health effects to this exposure, and laws that regulate PCB use. People years ago were exposed to this compound because many facilities improperly dumped excess waste all over the place! Even though it was a long time ago, it takes a very long amount of time for the compound to properly break down and no longer be a threat to our health. Prolonged consumption of PCBs can cause may forms of cancer and do permanent damage to your nervous, immune, reproductive, and endocrine system. The United States enacted the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, which stopped the usage of PCBs. Despite this, the effects of their use will linger for many decades until it all finally decomposes.

This information was brought up in class today when discussing the different types of harm that a disease or substance can have on the body. Based on the information from the article, PCBs are a carcinogen, endocrine disruptor, and neurotoxin. This also comes into play when we discuss different ways to avoid these kind of harmful substances. Having an aluminum water bottle would help us not only to save plastic but to avoid PCBs or other Harmful chemicals from entering our bodies.

A question I have is about the people affected by PCBs. Do they get to sue people who released the chemicals and used them in their products? What if the manufacturers honestly didn't know what they were doing was wrong?

Ew, there's a weird lookin' Population Growth on my back!

Three things that I have learned from the video posted today were how industrialization affects population growth (birth rates, life expectancy, and child mortality rates). As countries become more industrialized, they encounter greater education, better medicine, and more power for women. Birth rates actually decrease, as contraceptives use and more choice for women becomes widespread. Life expectancy goes up as sanitation and accessible medicine is introduced into daily life. Child mortality rates decrease due to more immunization and increased food supply. All these factors show how  more industrialization can actually create a more populated ans stable country (eventually).

Two ways this information ties back into class is during our observation of exponential growth and human impact on the natural world. When we think of more people, we think of more habitat loss and resource use, which is true. However, as we saw in the other video (s/o to Hans), eventually the population should level out as people keep reproducing at a smaller rate. Currently, the population of the world is growing exponentially, but hopefully will slow down around 12 billion.

A question I have is what will happen to countries with decreasing populations. I imagine economic conditions will blow, and the amount of empty space will be pretty sad. It makes me curious what the future of places like Norway or Japan have in store.

The Population Confrontation

The article that Schreer gave me this week taught me three things about human population and how it relates to the natural environment. This includes freshwater availability, food security, and carbon dioxide emissions. As a population within a country grows, it is shown that over time freshwater availability drops dramatically. This is most likely due to a combination of human consumption and also water pollution. This is also the main reason why developing countries, the ones with rapid population growth, experience an extreme shortage of food and declining population sizes for many animals. These kind of things occur because of a lack of means to obtain food at a sustainable level. Eventually people will resort to hunting and eventually hurt animals they aren't supposed to. And as expected, the CO2 levels of countries rise along with population, who need to drive and stuff.

These issues relate to APES when considering the effect of human interaction with aquaculture and the carbon cycle. As people continue to dumb crap into freshwater reserves, we ultimately screw ourselves over. Increased waste leads to less drinkable water and less food when you consider that the animals who drink from those sources will also die. Extra carbon emissions mess up our atmosphere and create too much carbon waste in the atmosphere. This throws the carbon cycle way out of balance and according to Dr. Seuss also chokes the birds flying by. Now that's a shame.

A question I have is about countries with smaller populations. I know places like Switzerland on Norway are all super eco-friendly, but is that naturally or because of conservation efforts? They have it easier than places like India I'd imagine.

Whale would you look at what you've done with the place

Three things I learned in the blog this week was how large land mammals were vital to the nutrient cycle, how whales affect how the ocean reacts to climate change, and that the amount of phosphorus moved to plants is about 23% of what it was. Apparently creatures like giant sloths were a big reason why nutrients were moved around so much many years ago. Their feces and decaying bodies helped bring to life the ecosystems we have now. Unfortunately, modern day equivalents like whales have been dying off, so nutrients aren't being passed around so much. This is especially true with things like phosphorus, which get pushed from the bottom to the to then on land by many aquatic mammals. When they die, plants go with them. And that also means us for anyone wondering.

Two ways this relates to APES is by looking at the human activity in the oceans and back at the nutrient cycles. As people continue to whale or remain inconsiderate with their oil and fuel spillages, we continue to kill of whales, which as we have learned is pretty awful for everyone. Their absence disrupts the nutrient cycle of phosphorus, but also just reduces general biodiversity. Without whales, I'd imagine that the krill population would explode to a fairly unnatural level. The imbalance all this could cause is scary to think about.

A question I have is how connected are whales? We learned of a few examples in the article, but I bet they play a much bigger role in the world than you'd be led to believe. Can we link whale deaths to some economic issue? Maybe we'd care then.

Rather have Bees than B's

Today I learned how size can affect data collected on species, how important pollinators really are to people, and how pesticides can pose a threat to certain insects. In regards to size, butterflies and bees are in major trouble. In all seriousness, it turns out smaller animals are more likely to be overlooked when conducting biodiversity studies. This is an issue when you look at what these tiny yet necessary creatures do. The blog says in the next decade we will lose over 20,000 species of plants, which could cause massive unbalance in food webs across the globe. One method of destruction that is particularly prolific in these examples is pesticides. Agricultural areas in particular can have a massive amount of deadly runoff in the events of rain or storms, which can potentially annihilate an entire population of pollinators.

Two ways this relates back to class is our study of biodiversity and the food web. Biodiversity is the measure of diversity of ecosystems,species and in this case; genes. When any amount of, say, butterflies are killed, the genes possessed by those individuals are gone forever and can't return without some form mutation or introduction of another species. Also, the food web that includes those butterflies and all the flowers they pollinate would be thrown out of whack and eventually collapse. We learned of this and how human activities can cause this to happen.

I wonder what insects are safe from pesticides? Does the mosquito spray we use at home affect all other insects? We imagine this all happening at farms, but perhaps our stuff at home is doing just as much damage.