Lecture Notes for Jan 14, 2010

BIO 240 Biology: The scientific study of life from the GREEK word bios - life - logia Environment: the TOAL of our surroundings Humans depend completely on the environment for survival unfortunately pollution erosion, species extinction environmental changes threaten long term health PROBLEM: so many people! more than 6. billion humans Industrial Revolution brought on a lot more growth 14003-1600s: Black death:Black Plague:Bubonic Plague (all same thing) happened reduced world's population greatly Natural Resources: Renewable resources: perpetually available renew over short periods of time Non-Renewable resources: can be depleted resources many times we can't get back Environmental scene Environment <-- impacts --> Humans : it's all connected! goal: developing solutions to environmental problems Humans impact the environment! ex. (in textbook) Eastern Island tribesmen used up all their trees to make boats so they could fish for their food. Trees eventually became extremely scarce, close to being gone completely so the clans had wars over trees and in the end they all killed each other off Expanding your ethics Anthropocentric: humans Biocentric: anything alive Ecocentric: everything around you which are you? Who/What do you care about? Scientific Method 1. observations 2. questions 3. hypothesis 4. predictions 5. test 6. result End notes Correlation: A measure of the strength of Association between two variables ex. how well you can PREDIC ONE VARIABLE from the other does NOT imply cause and effect there are problems with people believing that correlation = Causation. Especially a problem with people How do we sample to represent the entire population then? take RANDOM SAMPLES from a population Variance: Variability between replicates A consistently supported hypothesis becomes a THEORY theory - has been extensively and rigorously tested differs from the popular meaning of theory "I have a theory" Sustainability: guiding principle of environmental science: living within our planet's means Human population GROWTH Amplifies all environmental growth growth RATE slowed but we still add over 200,000 people to the planet each cay our CONSUMPTION of resources has RISEN ECOLOGICAL footprints vary (how much resources we use) U.S. footprint very LARGE compared to many other countries