Too many people

In class today we watched videos that gave us ideas of our world today based on populations. Those videos showed the timeline of how populations would increase because we did not have birth control and then decrease during the time of the world wars. This happened because men had to go fight the war and woman had to step up their game and work. One video used liquid to show how each country was individually expanding. How this was represented was that birth rates would increase and death rates would be steady but because we know have doctors and medicines, deaths decreased. Then we read three articles and had to write a sentence based on what the main point was. For example my passage was about Earth's carrying capacity and how carrying capacity is not a perfect number and it depends on many factors that influence it. When I was born, I was the 5,903,222,198th person to be born. And I was since the beginning of life am number 81,345,067,401st person. Too bad the people before me are not alive to know their number!
Based on what I know now about the population, I think we do have a lot of people on earth. And I am concerned by the amount. My reason is because even though if they were to line us up shoulder to shoulder, they say we would still have room, but that doesn't matter because even with the people alive now, we are still pushing the earth for more. I think we do overuse so much land for trash and agriculture to feed so many people and ongoing. As bad as it sounds, I think death rates, if they were to increase, would actually help balance out the amount of babies coming in and those dying.

Parking Lot Lab

In class we did an activity that involved observing and collecting data. This activity was called, "Parking Lot lab." The main point of this was to gather information using two "communities" outside our school. The two communities were community a and b. We were placed into two groups and had to go outside and tally up the amount of cars there were by color. The most dominant "species" in community A was blue. While in community B it was silver. My opinion on why these two colors are dominant is because they are the preference of colors to many people which makes it common compared to someone picking red or green. After collecting our data we had to involve math to be able to put it on a chart and we concluded our information.

Flat Lorax 02

Air pollution

This picture represents air pollution because buses and other large vehicles cause a great deal of pollution because they require more gas than smaller less weight vehicles. This can affect the air around us because we breathe in oxygen. Therefore reducing the availability of oxygen.

Climate

     Today in class I learned about climate. There are five things that affect climate. The five things that affect climate are latitude, closeness to large bodies of water, rain shadow, elevation, and ocean currents. Latitude affects climate because the higher you are the annual temperature decreases. If you are closer to large bodies of water, the weather will be cooler. Rain shadow is when the windward side is cool and moist and the leeward side is warm and dry. On elevation, as it increases and temperature decreases. Ocean currents, we have not gotten to yet, but it is basically when warm currents cause warm climate and cold currents cause cooler climates.
     Boston and Orlando, Florida are two good examples of having different climates. Orlando is much more closer to the equator then Boston is which makes Orlando have much higher warmer weather than Boston. The more far away you are from the equator, it will greatly affect the average climate. Boston is more up north than Orlando and cities more north have much colder climates than countries or cities below them. Although they are at different elevations, they have the a cooler ocean current because they are very close to large bodies of water.

Lorax picture

Land use.
I took this picture at a park near my house and it represents land use. The field by the park is empty and there are people working on it now. It shows how people are using the land to make it into a new area of the park. This relates to APES because this class has to do with the environment and the problems that arise by using it.

Matter Cycles

     The Hydrologic cycle focuses on the movement of water through the biosphere. Its major steps are evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, and runoff. The cycle represents how water is evaporated into the sky by heat and then condenses into the clouds. Which is why we then have rain, hail, or snow. The Carbon cycle shows how carbon cycles in the atmosphere. Two ways that this can happen is by combustion which is manually burning something and by respiration which is what we all do, breathing. Nitrogen cycle is the most challenging because nitrogen can be absorbed by plants or be stored into the atmosphere. Also how it can be converted for plant use. In my opinion, the most important cycle is the water cycle. I think so because the hydrologic cycle is a closed cycle and it shows the importance of saving water and how if we use it all up without care, it would be very hard to save or get it back.

Trophic Gamble

     In class today we were finishing our activity on Trophic Gamble. What this activity was base on was the concept of Net Primary Productivity and Gross Primary Productivity. The goal of this project was to quantify the number of humans that can be sustained on a specific amount of land being either primary consumers or secondary consumers. The basics of this activity was to understand the food chain and the efficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels.  We had to use GPP (Gross Primary Productivity) and NPP (Net Primary Productivity). What GPP is the total amount of solar energy that producers in an ecosystem capture via photosynthesis over a given amount of time. NPP is the energy captured by producers in an ecosystem minus the energy producers respire. So we applied these concepts to what we were doing. We had to measure the "school garden" and then pick a crop. So we had to multiply the wheats' kcal with 6 meters because we rounded and ended with 19,200kcal which equals our GPP. We then had to find our NPP which was basically multiplying 75% because wheat uses 75% of calories 480,000. We got 120,000.
     The control we had was the crops. The area in which we could garden changed because we then were given acreage of 24 plots. Being a vegetarian would be a positive thing because in the activity we had to calculate the caloric requirement of one of our animals and if people were just vegetarians it would help the animals who are being killed and used.

Trophic levels

     Today in class, we did an activity called Trophic Levels. In this activity, we viewed five different ecosystems. The following were: Deciduous, Hot Desert, Grasslands, Antarctic Ocean Shore, and Freshwater Lake. On these ecosystems, we were given a list of all sorts of organisms and we had to drag them individually to the trophic level they belonged to. As we did, we had to click "check" to see if our guess was correct or not. If it wasn't it would go back to the list. Throughout the activity we had to fill out our chart that went along with the activity and write down where the organisms belonged to. After that there was a button that says "Pyramid of Energy" and it gave us a number representing the energy of each level. We also had to write that down as well.
     What I noticed about the different trophic levels are that in the third order Heterotrophs (Tertiary Consumers), there weren't as many animals as the levels below it. My guess is that that small amount can eat everything below it and there aren't so many animals that can do that. For example, Killer whales or Hawks. The other levels including: Producers, Primary Consumers, and Secondary Consumers were basically even in terms of how many animals belonged there. Another observation I made was that as the trophic levels kept getting higher the energy would begin to decrease. In example of the ecosystem of Deciduous, the producers had an energy of 6,011, next group had 623, the secondary consumers had 61, and the tertiary had 6. What I can infer about this that when producers share their energy with the levels above them, so of it is lost towards heat and etc. As the energy moves up, only about 10% of the initiated energy goes up.

Eco Footprint Calculator

     Today in class, we did a small project that is called "Eco Footprint Calculator." We used a small laptop and went on the website and it asked us questions based on quantity of how much we use or intake. For example, it asked "How many hours do you fly every year?" "How often do you ride with someone else?" "How much food is processed, packaged, and not locally grown?" Every question we answered was then calculated to represent how much we used in our real lives. The questions were asked in a level way where we got to move the little bar to the right or left to show how frequent of something. At the end the website showed us small diagrams based on our results. One showed how many earths it would take to survive. Another showed a pie chart and dated our data in percents. The other was a type of bar graph which represents the amount of acres to support our lifestyle.
     My results were 4.1 earths to provide enough resources to support people if everyone lived like me. Viewing my results and seeing how much it is that I use from earth is a lot. It also makes me think about what I can do to reduce that. There are many ways to reduce your individual effect on the environment. One of those ways are carpooling. More people being in a car helps reduce the amount we pollute in the air. If everyone were to take their own car, that would be worse. Public transportation is also a good way of reducing air pollution. Reducing the amount of energy we use is also a good way and turning off lights when not needed. Energy saving products such as light bulbs are more beneficial for us and the environment. By doing simple things to reduce harm done on the environment, we should really take this into consideration because in a way, it's like giving back to the environment because it gives us life supporting resources we need.

Tragedy Of The Commons

     In class today we played a fishing game and it simulated Tragedy of the Commons. In the game we were divided into groups of three or four and we played the roles as fishers. For the game we had to make a chart that named the people in the group, how many fish we caught, and our income as individuals and as a group. The objective of the game was to use straws to suck the m&m's and place them onto a napkin. But we had to leave the some "fish" on the plate so they would be able to reproduce. After our first "years" we total up how much fish we caught and multiply our small fish by 7 which is what they are worth and the big fish by 10. Next we totaled up our income and collected data from other group members and we totaled how much fish we collected in all. Once the whole class was done we had to write reflections based on what every person did.

     When people actually use those natural resources, it's important to use them sustainably so we don't overuse and then they don't exist anymore. Fish are a good example because fish need to reproduce in order for more fish and live. We fishermen go out fishing, they can't fish out all the fish because then we don't have any left and if they're all gone, we run out. Another good example are trees. Trees are a huge resource that we often take for granted. Trees give us oxygen and they supply us with necessities. Some things are: clean air, paper, shade, and wood. Wood is used for many things. These need to be used in a way that we do not overly use and then we don't replace. Which is why people recycle and such. Back to the fishing game, it helps us realize that when we do go out for natural resources, there is only so much we can take and we need to monitor how much is being used and what is being left.

Split of steal Reflection

    In class, we viewed a video about a reality TV show called Golden Balls. The objective of the game is two people will play against each other and they have to make a decision on which ball they will choose. Their options are to either split or steal. If one person chooses steal, you win all the money and the other person gets nothing. If split was chosen by the two opponents, they split the money among themselves. We also talked about Prisoner's Dilemma. In this scenario, you and another person are brought to headquarters and questioned, but are offered a deal. Basically, if you "rat out" your accomplice and he admits to it, he serves 25 years and you're free. If you both rat out, both of you have to serve 25 years. But if both confess then both people get 5 years. If I were in this scenario, I would do whatever I could to either not serve 25 years of prison time or go free. But to not risk serving 25 years, I would rat the other person out and hope they would crack under pressure and confess to the crime. If I was playing Golden Balls, then I would equally split the money between me and my opponent so we'd both be happy.

Lorax vs Easter Island Reflection

               In the movie The Lorax, it shows how where the Lorax lives is nice and has a lot of trees and all the animals have their own habitat and home to live in. But then the Once-ler comes over and sees that he can use the trees to make Thneeds and he begins to take advantage of his resources. The Lorax then tries to talk for the trees and tell  the Once-ler to stop. As the movie progresses, Once-ler continues to make a huge business out of Thneeds and he eventually gets other people to work for him. The environment becomes destroyed and all the animals have to leave. The air is polluted from the factories and there are no more trees. The Lorax leaves but where the last tree stood is written "unless." The story is told by the Once-ler to the boy and it shows his regret and hands the boy a Truffula seed.

              On Easter Island, people took advantage of the land. Easter Island had many trees and land. Once people started going there, they had all the trees cut down so they could build 10 feet canoes. Canoes was a necessity they needed because they would fish.  Another reason why trees disappeared was because people needed the wood for shelter and covering themselves up in bad weather. The land was also turned into a farming area because they would grow things. Rope was made to haul statues up on the places where they stand now. In conclusion, Easter Island is a perfect example of land being over used. It also shows what could happen to our Earth now.

              Both the Lorax and Easter Island are similar in many ways. They are both examples of what happens when people are greedy and over use things. In both situations land was destroyed and trees that were once abundant were now disappearing. The Once-ler and people of Easter Island cut down their natural resources and what they really only had. They didn't think about what would happen after all was used and there was going to be nothing left.