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This was a very interesting read and it reminded me that we take water for granted and we always need to pay attention to it because we have so much need in water. This article talked about how much worth water is and that New York spent 1.3 million dollars on getting a water facility for their state. Water means so much to us that since New York has built this water treatment plant other states have taken notice and are starting to build water plants as well. Over the next forty years the United States is projected to spend over 140 billion dollars on water treatment facilities and making sure that humans are getting the best filtered water available. Humans are not just the only ones that would benefit from this, also fish would because the water is more clean so they can live longer which also more fisherman. Also you need clean water if you are a farmer because you dont want your crops getting filthy water which might kill them and ruin your crop season. Since more states are getting water facilities they have seen there fish rate boost an increasing percent. Due to newer water facilities there has been an increasing number of jobs that are available which also helps the economy. Overall this article was good, I like how it gave a lot of examples of what people and states are doing to help keep water clean and drinkable. Also that states have been wiling to take a chance and really help keep water clean.
This was a really fascinating article to read about. I cant believe that fish are starting to change sex, it amazes me that because one thing in the water that scientists have discovered that fish are starting to change sexes and that its not just fish its alligators, birds and others. Endocrine is what is making these changes possible and they are trying to stop it from getting into the water so that the fish can go back to their regular sex. Also they have found that it might also be in humans, they have done tests and taken samples of urine and Endocrine has been shown is some cases so scientists are starting to think that it can also be in humans now. Another interesting study that they did was they tested fish that were in the main stream where the water plant went through and a damn where they blocked off the water from coming in and they still found samples of fish that have changed sexes. What they found out was happening is that something is blocking one of the male things so it converts to female also there is a fake thing where the fish actually thinks that it is a female when it is really a male. They haven't found a way to totally stop this but they are in progress of slowing it down until they find a way to end this. I thought that this article was very interesting and again I learned something that I didn't know was going on in the environment.
The global climate change in the Minnesota is big. Since we rely on crops as are main food producer climate change could bring in a lot of new species from warmer climates because it would be getting warmer in Minnesota so could adapt easier, they could destroy crops and make it hard for farmers to grow a good amount of crops. Also we could also have a lot of flooding and droughts due to the climate change which would have a big effect on the state. Also we will get more heatwaves and reduced air quality which could mean more diseases to the people living in Minnesota. Also due to warmer temperatures more weeds will form which will make it hard to maintain all of the forests, farms, and lawns. Climate change in Minnesota will impact us really bad because we rely so much on the crops we grow that it could really hurt the state in the long run. I think that this article is very eye opening and it told me good information about what I can expect if the climate keeps changing and also it will help people figure ways to adapt to the climate as well.
I think that this author points out a very true statement in that kids now a days just sit inside and watch TV or play video games when they could be enjoying the outside creating adventures and building forts in the woods. I think that nature does help calm kids down and makes them less stressed out about things that are going on in their lives. I know from experience when I was a kid I always loved going out and building forts with my friends in the woods and playing games at night, and it always seemed to calm me down. Also after I would get home from school the first thing I would do to take a break was go out and just lay in the grass and watch clouds, and it helped me get homework done and it was way easier. I can really relate to this article and think that nature really can help kids calm themselves down and really use there imaginations. Overall I really enjoyed this article it really reminded me of how important being outside is and enjoying the nature around you.
This article was really interesting and very deep in its meaning. At first when I started reading this I didn't really get the point of it and why it was a big deal to kill the wolf. But after reading it all it really made sense to me that everything in the mountain is there for a reason and that it should not be tampered with or changed. Also when the article talks about thinking like the mountain, I thought that the sane was really clever and very well thought threw, and the meaning was very clear. In my opinion I think that the meaning means let the mountain run its course and just cause something bad happens there will always be a positive to that negative, which is a good way to look at life and not be worried about making a mistake because out of that mistake you learned something and there could be a positive out of that. Overall I thought that this article was really intriguing and it gave me a new perspective to think about and learn.
I think that climate change is something that we have to be concerned about. We should be concerned with climate change because the temperature has risen 1.4 degrees since the 1880 and it is going to keep rising for the rest of existence. We are going to have to use less fuel and switch to other alternative gases. Because of climate change the glaciers are going to melt and that would ruin one of natures finest views and would kill all of the arctic animals. One way I can reduce my carbon footprint is carpool more instead of just driving by myself I can drive other people or ride with them. Another I can do is recycle waste instead of just throwing plastic in the garbage. I can also bike to places that are close instead of driving and wasting gas. Another one that I could do is dont go out as much so you dont gain more garbage use plates at your house so you dont have to throw them out. And the last one I could do is be more energy efficient and turn off lights when I am not using them, also you can use more energy efficient light bulbs that last longer then regular light bulbs do. These are the ways that I could reduce my carbon footprint.
In 50 years I see energy use changing in the United States a lot. We have already made huge strides in saving energy in the United States just think in 50 years what we can accomplish. I also see some of the energy uses that are not the most popular ones like hydropower and wind power coming into play and being used more. I also see us being way more energy efficient with turning lights off when we dont have to use them. Also I can see schools teaching kids at a younger age about how being efficient is helpful to the environment and telling them ways to be efficient and things to do. Also I can see prices going up and it costing more to use energy because there will be new uses that will cost more to keep them running. These are the things that I think will change energy use in 50 years.
For this field trip we went on lakeshore of Bemidji Lake from bangsberg to Paul and babe and picked up garbage that was on the shore. The group that I was with was on the top of the road and we found a lot of garbage that was in little bushes and they were in hard locations to get. The garbage we found the most of was cigarette butts and a lot of candy wrappers. It felt really good helping out the environment and also helping the community of Bemidji it really got me closer to Bemidji. I really liked this field trip and will do this throughout my college years. It was a good way to end small group and I really enjoyed small group.
This field trip was very helpful for me and getting to know the downtown and where stores are located and what they have to offer in the store. We visited a coffee store and they told us what they have to eat and all the produce they get from all over the U.S. and how it is all organic food and coffee which makes the tastes a lot better. The other place we visited was a co-op in downtown Bemidji and the main thing there was that they sell all organic food and it is owned by Bemidji. This field trip was very cool and it helped me get to know the downtown a lot better and what they have to offer because I dont ever go down there.
For this field trip we went to a family farm where they make syrup from scratch. When I first got to the farm I imagined that a syrup farm would look a lot different, to me it looked like a normal farm but later I found out that I was wrong. We first started out by tasting what the syrup tastes like in liquid form and it didn't taste horrible a lot better then I thought it would taste from first impressions of it. Then they told us how they make it and how much the machines cost and how warm they get up to. The temperatures are extremely high and can easily burn your skin right off. Next they took us to where they get the syrup and talked to us about different types of trees that they have and what their uses are. We also learned about worms and how they travel and what they eat. Also bees and how they get shipments from California every year and how it helps there syrup making. This field trip was very fun and it was very interesting to how they make syrup.
This field trip was very interesting to me because I got to see where all the filthy water goes and how they clean it and redistribute it back out. We first started out talking about where all of the main systems were in the plant and talking about their purpose of cleaning the water. The really disgusting part of the field trip was looking at the incoming water that was going into the plant. It was all dirty and had specs of waste in it and how after the water goes threw the plant how clean it gets after the process it goes threw. Then we went to places where the water was getting cleaned and the first one we went into was nasty the water was dark and it smelled like rotten eggs(that was how the water came into the plant). Then we went to the next place and this one stopped all of the nasty waste that was in the water to begin with. What was really interesting about this one was that it went down ten feet and that if you fell in you would get sucked in and only had a couple of seconds to get help. We then went to where the clean water was being cycled through. This field trip was very interesting to see what the water looked liked before it got cleaned and how it looked after it was clean. The difference was huge and the facility was really nice and I learned a lot from this trip.
This was very interesting to listen to because he went to a ocean with not a lot of marine life and he found plastic and it was twice the size of texas. The captain is Charles Mor. What I found interesting is that the garbage is just floating around on top of the ocean which is horrible for not jjust the ocean but life in the ocean. I think that it is just horrible that we are polluting our world like this and how we really cant do anything about it. I thought that this article was an eye opener to me and how big it is and how we are not doing anything about it.
The article talked about houses and how they make them so energy efficient and good for the environment. What I enjoyed about this article is the diagram they showed of what one of the houses looks like and all of the things that help save energy in the house. This was a good article and what I noticed was that it seemed repetitive to what we learned at the BioHouse which was good because now it is stuck in my head
The Tipping Point is about change, in particular its about understanding why change often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. The main reason of the book is to examine the social epidemics that surround us. It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease, I think that this is a good reference and it makes a lot of sense. Overall I thought that this was very interesting and it was a good summary of what the book had to offer.
This was a very interesting article and very unusual to hear. It was mainly about how a few monkeys learned how to wash sand off sweet potatoes before they eat them. And also how fast it spread to other groups of monkeys and how fast they all picked it up, they found out about it in the morning and by night they already learned how to wash sand off the potatoes. I found this article to be awesome and funny, also interesting because how fast the monkeys learned to wash the potatoes.
This article describes how much a BioHouse saves energy and how efficient it is. There are many ways that this house conserves energy. They have solar panels at the top of the roof to get energy for plants that they are growing and also to heat the house up. They have blinds that protect sun from coming so the house wont get to hot and there windows are double sealed and locked so that no air can come go threw it. These are just some of the great things that this house has and this article was a great read and really interesting.
The concept of the Tragedy of the Commons is very vital for understanding how we are destroying our environment. If a resource is used by all, then overall that resource will be destroyed. I think that Harden means when he says freedom to breed is intolerable is that he cannot stand that there are so many people in the world and that we need to decrease some of the population. I think he is also saying that if there is an over population and that there will not be enough food to provide for everyone in the world. When Hardin said consience is self limiting that it is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience. Hardin suggests mutual coercion be mutually agreed upon in the article and I think it means that people should agree with him cause it makes a lot of sense. Overall this article was really long and for me hard to follow, but it was interesting.
The main point of this article is about how they are testing an hypothesis about the hydraulic limitation of tree height. The theory of Hydraulic limitation shows that tree height is limited by the difficulty of pulling water from tree roots to treetop. They were also wondering if this was the case for just tall tree or if shorter trees can have this as well. So what they did to test there hypothesis was the got pine needles from the top of a pine tree and they load the needles into a pressure bomb and it gives a number of how hard the needles at the top of the pine were sucking to get water. This test showed that water in the upper canopy needles was under more than enough suction to force the leaf openings to close. Also they took needles from the top a pine all the way down to the bottom. And the test showed that the treetops were 20% shorter than the bottom canapys. That was just a brief summary of the tests that they did. Overall I thought that this article was really interesting and it gave first hand facts about why trees aren't growing taller.
For this assignment we were suppose to go get trash from the surrounding buildings and bring it back and analyze what could have been recycled and what could we do to make this problem more public to students. Our group went specifically to lower union and got some trash there and came back to the room. We then analyzed it and found out that the majority of the trash could be recycled. Then our group came up with a couple of ways to make this public to the students here at Bemidji. I thought that this was an eye opening project because it really shows how much we don't recycle and that we need to start taking care of the environment.
This was are second field trip and it was at the Transfer Station in Bemidji. This field trip was very interesting and I learned a lot while I was there. This was very helpful to me because when i get a house here I know where to go if I need to drop off garbage or any kind of material. At the transfer station they try to recycle as much as they can before just throwing it in the garbage. They let anybody in the Beltrami county use there station and they have truck that go and pick up garbage in designated spots all over the county. Overall this field trip was very helpful for me because I learned a lot about what goes on in the transfer station and how they run it and what to with my garbage when I get a house in Bemidji.
For our first field trip we went to the BioHouse which is located just outside of Bemidji in Concordia's language village. We were lucky enough to get a tour of this house and got taught about all of the functions that the house has to offer. There were some main features to the house that stood out more than other's. One of the big differences was how the south had the majority of the windows while north didn't have any, the east and west side didn't have as much. Another one was that the windows were hinged differently so that no air got in so they can get as much sun in as possible. A sweet feature that the house had was that there were two buttons for the toilet and to save water there was a button for pee and one for poop. Overall I thought the tour and the house was really interesting and cool. I think that it is great that they are saving and conserving energy, and I learned a lot from this field trip.
Yes I think that Earth has reached carrying capacity for humans. There are millions of people that don't have a home and food and are barely surviving each day. Because of this over capacity of people we are running short of main resources like water and gasoline. These resources are most wanted when it comes to humans. And because we are overpopulated we are running out of these main supplies. Because of this people are going to become homeless and there are going to be more of them as well. I think that we need to have people more aware of this and control this. That is why I think we have reached Earth's capacity.
Yes I believe that we are witnessing the 6th mass extinction. I also think that we are a big part of why this is going on. The definition of mass extinction is the extinction of a large number of species within a relatively short period of geological time, and this is happening all over the world. There was a test done by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson and he estimated that 30,000 species per year are becoming extinct which is a ton of species that are no longer in this world. Also we have destroyed a lot of wildlife, tree's, small species, also fish that are vital to this world. There are a couple of really big reasons why this is happening right now. They are transformation of landscaping, pollution, and over-exploitation of species. But there have been a lot of good things that we have learned to do to limit this and hopefully there will be more to keep the species alive. This is why I think that we are going threw the 6th mass extinction.
Yes I see huge changes that I would need to change in my ecological footprint. First off I use so many earths just for my footprint, it really opened my eyes to what I have to do to change it. I have to become more environmentally friendly and the first thing I have to do is recycle more than I do. The biggest one is how many miles I travel and how I need to carpool to more areas so I don't waste gas. these are the biggest things i need to do to make my self more environmentally friendly.
I think that the term environment means what objects and conditions surround you in everyday life. Also an area where something exists or lives. I think that environment means that because you are surrounded by tree's, plants, air and others everyday which is a huge impact on your daily life. Also conditions like rain, sleet, snow, sun, wind is also what environment is. This is what I think the term environment means and what a big part it plays in our life's.
