Assignment Instructions:

• Research a threat to biodiversity that is located anywhere in the world, be sure to investigate the causes as well possible or current solutions to the matter. Include any other information that will lend a hand in shaping the situation (200-250 words). Next, find another biodiversity threat that is local to your hometown.  This threat can be a part of a large scale issue, but make sure it differentiates from the threat you researched earlier in some way.  Lastly, compare and contrast the two threats.  Be sure to draw course related topics into this analysis (200-250 words).
• With the local biodiversity threat, or the previous investigated threat, draw a systems diagram that shows how personally, or as a community, actions that led to the threat, and the steps to resolve the matter.

In the last two hundred years, the continent of Australia has seen a dip in their biodiversity.  Australia is a unique region for biodiversity, because of the isolation of being essentially cut off for thousands of year from the rest of the continents of Earth.  Because of this separation, many species have a chance to evolve in or on this isolated continent.  For instance, according to The Wilderness Society’s website, documented in December 2015, Australia is the habitat for a huge number of endemic species, which resoundingly outnumbers the number of these species in other global regions.  With all this in mind, in the last two centuries, there has been an influx of the human population in Australia.  This increase in humans, comes with the increase of urbanization; which has put much strain on the environment as less land is available for flora to inhabit.  As humans do best, we also pollute and poison the soil, air and water which further constricts the growth of biodiversity.  Some possible solutions to this problem, is to educate the youth of today to respect and appreciate nature and the different environments across Earth.  With this, future lawmakers, activists, businessmen/women, and voters will have a better respect for the land, and make sure conservational ideals permeate throughout society.

After doing some research, a local biodiversity threat I found was in the Allegheny Watershed, but in particular, the Upper Allegheny Basin. Located for the majority in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, this area is home to a plethora of wildlife and vegetation.  I chose this area because I spend much of my time in this area hunting and fishing at my family’s camp located in Forest County.  From personal experience of spending a lot of time in the woods, including residential and state game lands, I began to see different petroleum extraction outposts pop up over the last ten years.  Once I took the time to research, the basin was facing threats from mineral extraction, insufficient agricultural practices, as well as ill-managed floodplains which allowed rain runoff to negatively affect tributaries and eventually altering the hydrology of the Allegheny River.   Both the Australian and the Upper Allegheny Basin’s biodiversity afflicted by human-caused threats.  In fact, both have threats that originate from industrial means.  On the other hand, Australia is dealing with a growing population (1.8% growth rate) that forces development to encroach on native lands of many species.  In the Upper Allegheny Basin, the situation seems to lie with out of date infrastructure, i.e. the inadequate floodplains, as well as toxins leeched into the earth from poor agricultural practices.Mod10Biodiversity

In the hometown of Pittsburgh, there were on a few natural hazards to be considered.  First off, there is indication that tropical cyclones are a prevalent natural hazard in the region in which Pittsburgh is located in.  Moreover, on a different map, precipitation trends through the decades have shown to be increasing through the past 3 decades.  In fact, there was an approximate increase of 15 percent in precipitation in the Pittsburgh area.  After further inspection, the maps give a general sense of the natural hazards in regions.  To scrutinize, the maps could have had more detail in the rankings; a better numerical data legend.

In my search, I chose Tuscany, Italy, a place that I just returned from.  Last updated on March 5, a biological hazard occurred just outside the city of Florence.  A small outbreak of meningococcal meningitis C, which is considered to be a level 3 of 4 on the biohazard scale.  This kind of biohazard is quite possible here in my area.  Being a biohazard of the virus type, geographic local doesn’t play such a large role.  Another point to consider, is recently improperly and uninformed people have been anti vaccines.  As a result there has been spikes in outbreaks of some disease like measles.  The scale of the outbreak is close to something that would happen to the population of Pittsburgh.  The human factor of the population’s education plays a decent role in the frequency and severity of the outbreak.

After looking in to the different natural hazards that affect my local region, and found it to be quite moderate.  Pittsburgh has virtual no geological hazards.  Given that according to wiki answers the closest volcano is in the Caribbean, along with nearly no earthquake activity making the region safe of geological hazards.  Also, there is no Tornado index is below both the state and national average.  The only prevalent metrological hazards are flood and hail. With this being said, the numbers correlate with trend in the NATHAN maps.  The flood forming storms are explained by the dark green area over the region depicted on the map.

Mod8Flooding

I come from Bairdford a small rural town that is 30 min north of the city of Pittsburgh.  During the industrial steel boom that occurred in Pittsburgh in the earlier 20^th century, my town along with many others that surround Pittsburgh were responsible to mine coal that was used to run the large steel furnaces.  Bairdford includes many windy rural back-roads, as well as long straight roads beside farmland.  According to the census taken in 2010, there are just under seven hundred residents, but if you were to include the outlying homes it would be a fair estimate of just under a thousand.  I’ve fallen in love with the small town feel that I have grew up with, as well as the connection to nature and the environment I’ve gained from the rural atmosphere.

In the reading, we came across a region in Boston, Massachusetts called Beacon Hill.  This area is well known for its “walker friendly” atmosphere.  The area was developed in the 1800s to allow residents to be within walking distances to much of the necessities and commodities that they need.  This is because traveling far distances for things was a challenge and time consuming.  Beacon Hill still has goods and services within walking distances.  I believe that communities like this will be very common in the near future. Although Bairdford wouldn’t be considered an automobile suburbs, but most if not all attractions, stores, and functions are only accessible by cars.  Using Beacon Hill’s close knit community in Bairdford would greatly help make the town more sustainable with less cars driving to get to and fro.

In the reading, we get a second prospective from Boston, Massachusetts. A region called Jamaica Plain.  In this area the community employs a streetcar to get to the city from the suburbs.  From talking with my grandparents, streetcars were quite common in their days as a mean of transportation from the suburbs where most people lived, to the city, where most people worked.  The idea of streetcars, and other clean transits to get into the city should be re-introduced in modern communities today.  Many people today can relate to how congested and aggravating the “rush hour” traffic is to get to and from the city in their personal cars.  With the technology today, an efficient monorail system can be employed to move the working commuters from their suburban/rural home in Bairdford to the city.  This would cut down on the number of cars that pollute their way to work, as well as reduce the traffic coming in and out of the city.

A huge social norm, especially here in the United States is fast and convenient food.  You can’t drive down the street or turn on the television without seeing an example of fast food or a quick and cheap mentality when it comes to food.  Just like many others I have fallen victim to this social norm; and more so than I’d like to admit.  I can recall just last weekend an instance occurred where fast and convenient food prevailed.  It was late and I was tired from a long day.  I was perfectly capable of cooking food that I recently bought from the grocery store earlier in the week. Instead, I chose the more convenient and faster option to order food and have it delivered to me by a local delivery service.

With my choice of ordering fast and convenient food delivery, can be broken down to different societal issues.  First, by implementing a delivery driver, I further add to the carbon emissions, thus adding to greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.  This relates to what we learn in how the transportation of foods causes a lot of environmental pollution, especially with air pollution.  Another issue explored with my food choice was nutrition.   By picking a fast and convenient food, I’m also picking a less nutritious and lower quality of food, over picking a fresh choice I had from the farmer’s market.  Although, having fast and convenient food is a great option to have, I would like to see a new social norm to cooking fresh local produce and meat. Along with people having their own gardens. Doing this will increase nutrition intake, which will hopefully reduce obesity here in the United States.  ConvenientFood

The case study that I chose was the new efforts being taken by African nations to combat the illegal logging being done in Tanzania and Mozambique.  The Zanzibar Declaration on Illegal Logging is supposed to improve the communications between customs authorities and forest officials, according to http://allafrica.com/stories/201509091188.html.  This declaration will hopefully reduce the amount of deforestation, which is largely due to “terrorist organizations” using the lumber to fund their activities.  In fact, according to the article, over 4 million hectares have been cut down just in 12 years.  This issue directly deals with environmental justice, which was prevalent in this module.  The trees not only important for the wildlife in the area, but also important for lowering the carbon dioxide levels for the entire planet.

In Maryland the Chesapeake Bay is a very important natural feature of the area.  But recently, the bay has seen a huge drop in its oyster population which brings a pretty big concern for the health of the bay.   The oysters act as natural filters and provide habitat for aquatic life.  Recently, the oyster populations have been down to only two percent of the usual population because of pollution. According to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s website, in response to this, an oyster gardening program where people grow adolescent oysters to adulthood, has been set up to combat the dwindling oyster population.  This issue relates to the topic of how development has environmental downsides.  The Chesapeake Bay has become a foothold for many industries on the east coast, and as a result of this
this development pollution has caused oyster populations to be diminished, which in turn resulted in poor water quality because of the lack of the natural filtration the oysters provided.

http://www.cbf.org/how-we-save-the-bay/programs-initiatives/maryland/oyster-restoration

http://www.cbf.org/how-we-save-the-bay/programs-initiatives/maryland/oyster-restoration/oyster-gardening-program

My hometown of Pittsburgh, PA was once the hub of steel manufacturing of the world.  Pittsburgh was ideal for manufacturing because of its convenient location at the intersection of three rivers, the Allegheny, Monongahela, and the Ohio Rivers.  As industry boomed for decades, the rivers ecosystems’ took a toll as pollution and toxins leaked into the rivers.  Just like how in Africa, the illegal logging negatively affected the African forest ecosystem, the illegal dumping of pollution in the Pittsburgh river ecosystem adversely affected it.  Also, similarly to the oyster situation in the Chesapeake Bay, pollution due to development also hurt the ecosystem.  Like the African illegal logging, governmental intervention was necessary to cull the illegal dumping in the rivers. Moreover, like the oyster growing initiative in Maryland, environmental groups in Pittsburgh came together to restore the rivers to their natural beauty.

In my hometown only a few areas public water and sewage; areas where recent housing developments arose after farmers gave into real estate developers.  Therefore, my family gets our water from a well system and use a septic tank for waste water.  Water is drawn up through pipes from deep within the earth and is stored in tanks in our basement for future use.  Fortunately for us, our water is clean from the source and has the right vitamins and minerals to give our water a clean and refreshing taste.    Water that is used in the sink, shower, washing machine, and other non-sewage sources go into an underground tank called a grey water holding tank.  This water goes through different layers of sand and gravel and other natural filtration features of the ground. Water from toilets, called black water, is sent to a series of tanks called a septic system.  One of the tanks filter out solid wastes, while another tank is responsible for filtering the liquid in a similar fashion as the grey water using sand and gravel layers.  Ultimately the water is returned to the watershed in which the well draws from making it a cyclical process.

Living on a limit of two gallons of water/day would be quite different.  The main components in my life that require water are drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene.  After much thought, it’s clear that much of these areas will have to change to accommodate the water per day limit.  The first priority is drinking water.  It’s is recommended that humans should intake 1/2 gallon of water a day.  In order to stay healthy this daily intake of water didn’t change.  Now a gallon and a half remains.  When cooking the majority of water used in the post cleanup of the utensils and pans.  An effective strategy to limit water use is to sparingly wet the pans and sponge. Lastly after scrubbing each item, I used the bare minimum of water to rinse.  Lastly, for daily personal hygiene like showering and brushing teeth, a similar strategy was implemented to conserve water consumption. After trying, it was successful, but definitely hard to maintain.  Comparing numbers in 1-b, it’s quite humbling that people use 1/20 of the water I use daily.  It’s also clear that living in a geographical location where clean water isn’t readily accessible is a huge factor in water use. 

After much thought and consideration, the ecosystem is more than just how it impacts mankind, it should be protected and preserved for its sake.  The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, while humankind has inhabited earth for only a few hundred thousand years.  This fact alone shows that the ecosystem has been around for a very long time before human beings and will be here much longer than we will be.  Therefore, we, like whom or whatever comes after us, inherited this world and it is our duty maintain it.  Additionally, we must consider all the millions of species of animals and plants that we share this ecosystem with.  Just in the last couple hundreds of years, plants and animals have suffered because of the damage we have done by polluting the earth.   Although, I’ve argued for ecocentric view, I believe that people should have an environmentally healthy combination of ecocentric and anthropocentric views.

Before reading this module, I thought that being a good person was basically synonymous with doing good acts.  Now, after reading this section and with more pondering on the subject, I believe that actually performing good acts is more important.  Whether you do good acts because you are a good and kind person or you have an ulterior motive, perhaps a selfish gain like, gaining popular public opinion, someone or something is benefiting from that good deed.  I believe that is the most important thing; as long as the act is a good one that betters the world, I am all for it.  Unfortunately, word “good” is vague and subjective enough that someone can see something to fit to their idea of good, yet be detrimental to many others.  An extreme but obvious example of this would be Adolf Hitler’s vision of a perfect race and nearly exterminating an entire ethnic group, in his mind was an act of good, yet was an act of genocide and was rightly stopped.

When it comes to life, I believe mine is worth the same as anyone else.  I feel this especially when it comes people being treated under the law.  But, I also believe in a societal view someone who is highly intelligent has the potential to solve many problems in the future for society.  Moreover, someone who excels in a certain trade or art form has more worth to people in society.  Both of these examples show how these peoples’ skills demonstrate how to society they may have a larger value, whether that be monetary or social.  I also feel that a murder, rapist, terrorist etc. are worth less as people strictly by the fact that they killed, severely harmed or traumatized other people.  The world we live in is not just black and white, there is a lot of grey area.  This question is an example of this blurry zone.

In my systems diagram (BiogasINDIA jds5940), I constructed a cause and effect system that shows turning to the newer technology of biogas generators can better cooking and other household chores, along with bettering their society. Importantly, utilizing the biogas generators the healthiness of the households of India will increase.  Shown in the video, in the town of Karnataka, before the biogas stoves, wood stoves were used to cook upon.  The smoke produced from the wood is health hazards to all.  Thus, replacing wood burning stoves with biogas stoves, will eliminate the breathing irritants caused by wood smoke. A secondly is the correlation between biogas generators and the local children’s education.  Specifically, the children will spend much less time gathering wood for their mother’s cooking stove, which we observed in the video caused school tardiness.  With more time, children will have more time to focus on their studies.  This is important because this will help lead to an educated population, which leads to prosperity for all.  In regard to the figure, the similarity is that both Figure 1.5 and my diagram are dealing with human interactions with the ecosystem. The difference is the scale of the diagrams. This is because my diagram deals with a specific region and issue, while Figure 1.5 is addressing the much larger scope of dealing with the entire ecosystem and social systems.  Lastly, after seeing both diagrams, you can clearly see the cyclic pattern of services and energy flowing from each side as seen in Figure 1.5.

Hello, my name is Justin Sutter, I am a sophomore at Penn State University.  Currently, I am living in State College, PA; but I spent most of my life in Gibsonia, PA, a rural/suburban area above Pittsburgh, PA.  At Penn State I am studying environmental systems engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.  Many concepts interest me in this course, but in particular, the idea of sustainability has really captured my attention in the short time I have been at this university.    I have always enjoyed nature and the outdoors throughout my life and ultimately that interest has brought me to a major centered on the environment.  Along with studying at Penn State, I like hiking, snowboarding, and watching and playing sports.

After reading module 1, many issues came to mind that could use the efforts of geography to assist in.  One issue that has become quite a large issue, because of its local proximity to many residents of Pennsylvania, is drilling and fracking for petroleum products in the ground.  Although, most of the processes are done underneath the Earth, there are many factors that must be considered on the surface.  Geography could be used as a tool for making the many types of maps and surveys the drillers need to have a good understanding of the land and area in which they are drilling.  Along with maps and surveys, geography can be used to help understand the societal impact fracking has on the local populous, and help promote education on the topic.