With my diagram on the social system of the village with the ecosystem around the village I am trying to demonstrate how the actions of the village change the ecosystem around them which also forces the village to change in return. This is an example of a human-environment coupling. The people in the village rely on wood to fuel their stoves to cook food. Unfortunately, there is not an overabundance of wood in India. Because of this the people in the village were exhausting the resources of the wood. My diagram demonstrates this as well as the effect it has on the children not being able to attend school due to workers being needed to collect the wood. The diagram goes on to show that because of reduced home air quality, thanks to the overuse of wood, a new fuel source for cooking was needed. The creation of the biogas tanks creates a full circle effect. Thanks to the impact of wood fueled cooking, biogas was incorporated so that the impact of wood consumption could decrease. What my diagram does not quite cover is the feedback loop that exists because of this. There is one slightly demonstrated in that with the creation of biogas the use of wood decreases and then also leads to more jobs and more schooling for the kids. What was not explored in the video or this diagram is the potential effect the biogas slurry dumping can have on the environment. If the slurry is not properly disposed another whole cycle begins which would potentially lead to yet another fuel source being needed for cooking. This is a great example of a feedback cycle as it is always constantly going back and forth between social and environmental issues.

My diagram is similar to that of Gerry Marten’s in that it addresses the social system and ecosystem have a feedback loop and are constantly effecting each other. His diagram goes more in depth though by showing smaller levels of impact like microorganisms, which do play a part in the biogas solution as well through the creation of compost that can be the habitat of worms. There are similarities and differences because everyone’s view on how the social aspect of humans and the ecosystem aspect of the environment affect each other, but the most views on these issues come from the same core ideas which will always lead to similarity.