Hello everyone, my name is William Graf and I am currently a senior in Environmental Systems Engineering. This is my last semester at University Park and I will graduate after this semester and hopefully find a career in my hometown of Fort Lauderdale, FL. I am hoping to use my degree in engineering to go into some form of water management or water treatment career. The climate changes in recent years have caused the sea levels to rise, and some believe that areas like Miami will be underwater in several decades. I am not positive about what to expect in this course. This course is a requirement for my major. I have taken a human geography class in high school and enjoyed that class, so I am expecting a similar experience. Some of my hobbies at Penn State are to play basketball and attend many of the Penn State athletic events.
One of the current issues that I am concerned about is the issue of overpopulation in various parts of the world. It is obvious that in some countries there are too many people in a certain area for safe living conditions. However, I sometimes drive home from school for breaks (Pennsylvania to Florida) and I drive through so many open areas with little to no population. I would be interested in learning more about how the use of some of the topics discussed in lesson 1 would be used for this problem. I would assume that maps of different areas would be able to show some of the highest population densities in the world, and determine if these areas are overpopulated. I think the use of maps and other visualization techniques would be the most effective tools to use to examine this issue, but also the human-environment interactions would have to be examined. These interactions would show if the overpopulation is causing any environmental issues.
Hey William, I definitely agree that overpopulation is an issue that needs to be evaluated. I am from Montgomery County Pennsylvania and as of 2014, the population of the county alone is larger than three states. I think it is a safety issue to keep building more houses in such a dense area instead of expanding population in areas with low population densities. The drive from my house to Penn State is only three hours and there is a large difference of lifestyle in the central part of PA compared to the East Coast. Maps would be a great way to examine the issue because we could build houses in less crowded areas instead of overpopulating a city or town. I believe this would increase the standard of living for everyone.
William I forgot to add the link to my post. https://wp.me/p3RCAy-aR8 I also go into detail about how maps in this case could be very helpful, but in other instances very misleading.
Hi William! My name is Alex and I’m a students at the Worthington campus. I see that you like to play basketball. That is my favorite sport! Congratulations on this being your last semester! I hope that you get a good job in Florida and love it. It’s awesome that you want to use your degree for water management, I love the ocean. I recently just watched San Andreas and was thinking about the theory of California sinking into the ocean so your post caught my attention.
I’m also interested in overpopulation. I wonder to what severity it affects the environment. For example, if you have so many people living in a certain area, what is the air pollution like? Or even what you said, living conditions! You see some places that are totally overpopulated and have the most atrocious living conditions. You wonder how people can even be healthy. I agree that maps would be a great tool to see this and a scale.
Here is a link to my post, if you’d like to look https://wp.me/p3RCAy-aPR