Hello Rocking ENSCI,
SEV2: Students will demonstrate that the Earth is one interconnected system,
Sev5: Human impact on the Environment: Summary of the 1st two weeks of class.
Opening: We are summing up the intro to Environmental Science. By now, you should be able to recognize that finding successful solutions to issues in the environment is often discovering a complex series of problems that are interconnected. Sometimes our initial investigation "unearths" a totally different mechanism affecting the ecosystem. That is why citizen scientists such as our ENSCI class are important for monitoring the our environment and implementing small changes that can improve the situation...such as recycling, planting trees and flowers, lowering the impact on an area. First, it is necessary to understand how nature works in order to better access what steps need to first be in place.
By now, you should have a clear understanding as to a few ways (we call these pathways) as to how chemicals can enter the ecosystem or a cell. Furthermore, these pathways like diffusion and osmosis are regulated by natural controls like the cell membrane. You discovered in your potato lab, egg lab or enzyme lab that these pathways are changed by different amounts of chemicals through bioacculumation or bioconcentration, there are dire consequences to the cell shape and size. In the case of DDT, these consequences may cause egg shell thinning or food tainted with chemicals. Ultimately, these chemicals find routes up the food chain and affect us. One Big Circle.
Work Session: Today, we move forward in our investigation of the different kinds of toxins that we find in our environment...even in our houses. You will visit the site www.toxtown.com and chose different chemicals to find where they are commonly used, abused and how they effect our health and how they interefere with natural processes in the environment.
Conclusion: This activity will set the stage for making connections to how osmosis, diffusion, bioacculumation, bioconcentration will find affect the nutrient cycles in nature such as the Carbon Cycle, Nitrogen Cycle, Water Cycle and the Phosphorus Cycle. Later, we will investigate chemical energy pathways such as photosynthesis to see how the absorption of the chemicals by transpiration or root-uptake will affect the growth of plants.
