1. Human Impact

2. Like all organisms, humans rely on Earth’s life-support systems.
We affect our environment when we obtain food, eliminate waste products, and build places to live.

3. Humans affect regional and global environments through agriculture, development, and industry in ways that have an impact on the quality of Earth’s natural resources including soil, water, and the atmosphere.

4. Effects of agriculture:
Producing food for the 7 billion people on Earth impacts resources like fresh water and fertile soil.
Monoculture: is the practice of clearing large areas of land to plant a single highly productive crop year after year. Ex: soybeans

5. Renewable vs Nonrenewable
Ecosystem goods and services are classified as either renewable or nonrenewable.
A renewable resource can be produced or replaced by a healthy ecosystem. Ex: white pine trees
A nonrenewable resource cannot be replenished by natural processes in a reasonable amount of time. Ex: coal

6. Sustainable development: using resources in an environmentally conscious way.

7. Negative impacts on Soil Quality
Desertification: lower land productivity cause by over-farming, overgrazing, seasonal drought, and climate change. ~40% of the Earth’s land is considered at risk for desertification.
Deforestation: loss of forests

8. Negative impacts on Freshwater
Pollutants: harmful material that enters the biosphere. Ex: factory spills
Biomagnification: increasing concentration of a harmful substance in organisms at higher trophic levels in a food chain/food web. Ex: DDT, mercury

10. Negative Impacts to Atmosphere
Smog: a grey-brown haze formed by chemical reactions among pollutants (industrial process + automobile exhaust)
Acid rain: rain containing nitric and sulfuric acids. Caused by burning fossil fuels
Greenhouse gasses: gasses that trap heat into the Earth’s atmosphere

11. Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the total of all the genetically based variation in all organisms in the biosphere
3 types:
Ecosystem diversity: variety of habitats, communities, and ecological processes
Species diversity: variety of species in a given area
Genetic diversity: different forms of genetic info

12. Biodiversity’s benefits to society include contributions to medicine and agriculture, and the provision of ecosystem goods and services

13. Humans reduce biodiversity by altering habitats, hunting, introducing invasive species, releasing pollution into food webs, and contributing to climate change.

15. What can we do? Reduce our ecological footprint
1. recognize the problem
2. research that problem
3. use scientific understanding to change our behavior