MIDTERM 2: Ch. 11, 13-16, 21, 26, 27

• Extreme environmental conditions
• Large environmental disturbance
• Intense environmental stress
• Simplified habitat
• Introduction of non-native species
• Geographic isolation (eg clearcutting)

• Middle stage of succession
• Moderate environmental disturbance
• Small environmental changes
• Physically diverse habitat
• Evolution

• Intrinsic or existence value
• Instrumental value
• Use value (goods and services)
• Nonuse values
• Existence
• Aesthetic
• Bequest

• Multidisciplinary science
• Uses rapid response strategies
• Aims to slow loss and degradation
of biodiversity
• Prioritize most endangered, species-
rich ecosystems or “hot spots”

• Support energy flow and chemical cycling
• Reduce soil erosion,
• Absorb and release water
• Purify water
• Purify air
• Influence local and regional climate
• Store atmospheric carbon
• Provide habitats supporting biodiversity

• Fuelwood
• Lumber
• Pulp to make paper
• Biomass
• Non-wood forest products
• Ecotourism
• Recreation
• Many different jobs

Goal: Select silvicultural methods that incorporate both harvest and regeneration.

selection cutting: cut middle aged trees
shelterwood cutting: have several cuts, ony take 1/3 every 10 years
seed-tree cutting: leave a few big trees to spread seeds - unregulated
strip cutting
clear cutting

Advantage: Max economic return in shortest time
Disadvantages: Destroys and fragments some wildlife habitats

• Decreased soil fertility from erosion
• Runoff of eroded soil into aquatic systems
• Premature species extinction
• Regional climate change
• CO2 released from burning and decay
• Flooding acceleration

• Longer rotations
• Selective or strip cutting
• Minimize fragmentation
• Reduce road building
• Leave most dead trees and fallen timber
• Certify sustainably grown timber
• Add ecological value of trees to economic models
• Adjust buffer zones

Native and non-native insect species

• Improve efficiency of wood use
• Up to 60% wasted in North America
• Use tree-free fibres (eg. hemp)
• Agricultural wastes or rapid-growth crops
• Paper and sawmill fibre recycling

• Inadequate protection
• Often too small to sustain biodiversity
• Invasion by non-native species
• Too many human visitors
• Too little funding and too few park staff

Four principles of adaptive management:
1. Integrate ecological, economic, and social
principles.
2. Stakeholder consensus
3. Decisions and strategies are experiments to
be improved.
4. Continued monitoring and innovation

Approaches
• Restoration
• Rehabilitation
• Remediation
• Replacement

Principles
• Mimic nature
• Recreate lost niches
• Rely on pioneer species
• Control non-native species
• Reconnect small patches

• Coral reefs
• Estuaries
• Deep-ocean floor

• Coastal diversity > Open sea
• Benthic (bottom) diversity > Pelagic (surface)
• Lowest diversity in the mid-depth open ocean

• Comprehensive legislation
• Federal funding
• Focus fisheries management on whole ecosystems and habitats
• Establish marine network linked by corridors

- Commercial fishing
- Non-native species (intentionally intruduced or accidentially from balast water)

Challenges
• Rapid coastal
development
• Damage not visible
• International waters
under no single
jurisdiction

• Loss of beach habitat where eggs laid
• Human removal of eggs
• Use of turtles for food, medicine, clothing
• Bycatching

Croplands 77%
• Grains (primarily)
• Wheat, corn, rice > 50% of all food calories
• Annual crops
Rangelands 16%
• Meat, mostly from grazing livestock
Ocean fisheries 7%

Industrialized Agriculture (80%)
• High input, high-throughput
• For example, plantation agriculture
(cash crops)
Traditional Agriculture
• Low-throughput agriculture
• Subsistence agriculture
• Traditional intensive agriculture
• Not economically feasible to produce the food
needed to sustain earth’s population

Three steps to increase yield per unit of cropland:
1. Monocultures
• Selectively-bred/engineered for high yield
2. Increased fertilizer, pesticides, water
3. Multiple cropping (only where possible)

Advanced technology
• Decrease fertilizer, fuel while increasing
yield

cultivating new foods
avoidind food waste

Overgrazing
• Soil erosion
• Soil compaction
• Productivity loss
• Desertification

Light grazing
• Stimulate growth
• Increase diversity

Energy inefficient
Health consequences
Feedlots

Dry climate
Drought
– Prolonged period with 70% lower precipitation and
increased evaporation
Desiccation
– Drying of exposed soil due to external activities
Water stress
– Low per capita availability due to increased demand

Water Stressed
• Reliable runoff per person < 1,700 m3/yr
• Typically, demand 20% more than supply

Water Scarcity
• Reliable runoff per person < 1,000 m3/yr

all have negative effects
• Building dams
• Transferring water from another place
• Withdrawing groundwater
• Converting salt water to fresh
• Consider access rights and ownership

set and enforce minimum stream-flow levels

Natural phenomena, aggravated by human activities

Heavy rain, rapid snowmelt, removal of vegetation (deforestation), destruction of wetlands

• Temperature is increasing significantly.
• Sea ice thinner and less extensive
• Opens up Northwest Passage to shipping
• Impact on wildlife (polar bears, caribou)
• Warming in the Arctic can affect whole world
o Release of CH4 and CO2 from permafrost
o Increasing meltwater

• Past global temperatures
- Prolonged periods of global cooling and warming
• Recent trends in global temperatures
- Stable(ish) over past 12 000 years
- Regional climate changes
- In past 1000 years, temperatures dropped slightly, then started to rise 200 years ago with the Industrial Revolution

• Carbon dioxide
• Methane
• Nitrous oxide
• Chlorofluorocarbons
• Hydrochlorofluorocarbons
• Hydrofluorocarbons
• Halons
• Carbon tetrachloride

• Increased use of fossil fuels
• Deforestation and clearing
• Raising large number of cattle
- unnatural feed (corn, etc.) leads to inc. methane from digestion
• Planting rice
• Using inorganic fertilizers

• Oceans remove ~29% of excess CO2 from atmosphere
• Absorb heat and transfer to deep ocean for storage
• We don’t fully understand the impacts of ocean currents.
• How quickly can they transfer heat?
• How long will that heat be stored?
• Ocean acidification
• Absorption of CO2 forms carbonic acid – pH dropping
up to 0.5 units
• Many effects on marine life – dissolve many shelled
organisms
• long will that heat be stored?

Cloud Cover and Outdoor Air Pollution
Increased Photosynthesis

• Longer growing season
• Warmer in both summer and winter
• Higher seas in British Columbia and Eastern Canada
• More droughts in Prairies
• Arctic and Subarctic subject to widespread changes
• Great Lakes—more heat waves and lower lake levels

Wait and see
• Do more research before we act.
Act now
• Follow the precautionary principles.
• We pay to insure our homes and lives against far less certain events.
Act now with no regrets
• Strategies have benefit regardless of the extent of global warming.

Cut fossil fuel use
(especially coal).
Shift from coal to natural
gas.
Improve energy efficiency.
Shift to renewable energy
resources.
Transfer energy efficiency
and renewable energy
technologies to developing
countries.
 Reduce deforestation.
 Use more sustainable
agriculture.
 Limit urban sprawl.
 Reduce poverty.
 Slow population growth.

 Remove CO2 from
smokestack and vehicle
emissions.
Store (sequester) CO2 by
planting trees.
 Sequester CO2 deep
underground.
 Sequester CO2 in soil by
using no-till cultivation
and taking crop land out
of production.
 Sequester CO2 in the deep ocean.
 Repair leaky natural gas pipelines
and facilities.
 Use feeds that reduce CH4
emissions by belching cows.

Advantages
• Simple to administer
• Clear price on carbon
• Covers all emitters
• Predictable revenues

Disadvantages
• Tax laws can get complex.
• Vulnerable to loopholes
• Doesn’t guarantee lower emissions
• Politically unpopular

Advantages
• Clear legal limit on emissions
• Rewards cuts in emissions
• Record of success
• Low expense for consumers

Disadvantages
• Revenues not predictable
• Vulnerable to cheating
• Rich polluters can keep polluting
• Puts variable price on carbon

• Numerous persistent chemicals
• Former Uses of CFCs

• Economic System
• Social institution to produce, distribute, consume goods and services
• Relies on capital
• Sustains business or produces wealth
• Natural capital
• Human capital
• Physical or manufactured capital

• Efficient use of resources
• Economic and environmental monitors
• Full-cost pricing
• Phase out environmentally harmful government subsidies
• tax breaks
• New laws and regulations
• Limits on overall pollution
• Eco-labelling

• Increased production efficiency
• Decreased resource use
• Decreased production cost and equilibrium price
• Often driven by resource scarcity

• Challenging to estimate cost/ benefit for different stakeholders
• Improving consistency of CBA

• Gross domestic product (GDP)
• Genuine progress indicator (GPI)
• Human Development Index (HDI)
• Canadian Index of Well-being (CIW)

• Internal (Direct) Costs
• External (Indirect) Costs
• Full-Cost Pricing

• Government Tax Reform
• Regulations
• Tradable Permits
• Eco-Labelling

• Mimic natural systems
• Sunset businesses
• More Eco-friendly businesses
• Improve public awareness

• Short time between elections shifts the focus to short-term
issues.
• Politicians often lack ecological literacy.

• Humility
• Reversibility
• Precautionary
• Prevention
• Polluter pays
• Integrative
• Public participation
• Human rights
• Environmental justice

1. Challenging to establish legal right or legal standing
2. Expensive, especially for individuals
• Legal fees may be tax-deductible for corporations but not for public-interest firms
3. Must establish that the defendant caused
the harm
4. Statute of limitations
5. Court decisions may take years
6. Countersuits by corporations

Mediation provides a faster, less costly alternative.

• Monitor environmental activities
• Lobby for new or stronger environmental laws
• Collaborate with companies on environmental solutions
• Raise awareness of issues
• Includes grassroots, global, and issue-based groups
• Execute change

• Gather and evaluate environmental data.
• Develop environmental treaties.
• Provide funds and loans for sustainable economic development.

Goals
• Creative solutions at a local level
• Cooperation between citizens, businesses, officials

Measures
• Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI)
• Environmental Performance Index (EPI)

A mineral is an element or inorganic compound that occurs naturally,
is solid, and has a regular internal crystalline structure

A rock: part of the earth’s crust, solid combination of one or more
minerals

An ore: a rock containing enough of one or more metallic minerals to
be mined profitably

Resource: anything obtained from the environment to meet our
needs and wants

Mineral resources: nonrenewable materials that we can extract from
the earth’s crust and process into useful materials

rock cycle

• Identified resources: known deposits
• Undiscovered resources: potential deposits assumed to exist
• Reserves: identified resources yet to be extracted
• Other resources: identified or undiscovered resources not classified as reserves

• Satellite and air imagery
• Radiation detectors
• Magnetometers
• Gravity differences
• Seismic surveys
• Chemical analyses

tailings
air pollutants

• its percentage of metal content, or grade. (ratio of waste to mineral)
• its accessibility

• Acid mine draining - water flows through iron sulfide minerals that have been exposed forming sulfuric acid and dissolved iron.
• Contaminates water supplies, can destroy aquatic life

tailings

- long running nickle mine, lots of nickle ore
- but it was inside sulphide ore
- was one of the worlds biggest polluters at one point
- the inco superstack was made in the 70s made to make the waste gas dissipate better, making the gas other areas' problem
- the Inco superstack emitted SO2 into the air, which reacted with the rain to make sulphuric acid rain
- the path of the smoke had dead vegetation and dead lakes
- early 80s they faced pressure, eventually the gov't stepping in and telling them to clean stuff up or shut down
- they cleaned stuff up and creating scrubbing techniques yippee

Environmental damage, not supply exhaustion, may be the greatest
limitation to the availability of nonrenewable mineral resources

china

- super toxic gas is emitted
- more tailings
- more waste
- so little desired material

• The actual or potential supply of the mineral
• The rate at which we use it

• Recycle or reuse existing supplies
• Waste less
• Use less
• Find a substitute
• Do without

Depletion time: how long it takes to use up a certain proportion –
usually 80% - of the reserves of a mineral at a given rate of use.

• find new deposits
• Develop better mining technology
• make it profitable to mine lower grade ores
• Find substitutes
• promote resource conservation