Social System       vs.           Ecosystem

People’s basic need for food has indirectly lead to the destruction of forests in India. People need some source of heat to cook their food, and up until recently the only source for heat in India was to burn firewood. Collecting firewood wouldn’t be a bad source of energy if it were only needed for a small amount of people, but with India’s population nearing 1.25 billion and growing this problem is becoming more and more dire. The growing population could be thought of as a positive feedback mechanism for forest destruction, because a larger population means more firewood required to help heat the food for the people. As firewood becomes scarce, more children are needed to collect the wood. This is a runaway feedback mechanism, often described as positive feedback.

In comparing my diagram to figure 1.5 in the reading, you will notice that there are many similarities, and also some differences. In both diagrams you will notice that the arrows go both directions, meaning there are cases where the social system effects the environment and cases where the environment effects the social system. This makes up a landscape, described as the combination of environmental and human phenomena that coexist together in a particular place on Earth’s surface. The main difference is that the reading’s diagram considered the farm fields and irrigation water more than mine. There were similarities because we both based our diagrams off of the reading, and there were differences because each individual will have different things come to mind when reading something due to creative differences. By comparing the diagrams, I learned that there were some things that I should have included in mine that I left out, but there were also some things that I addressed that the reading’s diagram did not.