Sustainable Air Quality Michael Roberts February 4, 2002

Background Long term sustainable development requires understanding between human and natural processes. Industrial and agricultural activities causes the most severe anthropogenic stress on the natural system. To understand human material flow, we must identify the major players and the driving forces behind the major players An ecosystem is a biotic assemblage of plants, animals, and microbes, taken together with their physico-chemical environment. There are three (3) main groups to every ecosystem: Producers, consumers and decomposers (recyclers). Human activities that disturb the natural ecosystem can be identified by three (3) main groups: Energy production, manufacturing, and growing food.

Ecosystem Analog In a ecosystem, most of the products are passed directly from the producers to the recyclers. Also the recyclers pass most of the recycled stuff back to the producers for re-use. In an anthroposystem, little if anything is passed directly from the producers to the recyclers. Only a small fraction of the product is passed fromthe recyclers back to the producers for re-use. Pollutant mass (Mi) can be calculated from production rate (Pi) times concentration of impurity (Ci). Expressed mathematically Mi=Pi*Ci. In an anthroposystem, most of the products from producers reach the consumers by railroad, trucks, or ships. In an anthroposytem, the consumers transport the products to the receptors (recyclers) by smelting or combustion.

Environmental Spheres Analog The Earth comprises of four (4) spheres: Biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. If one sphere undergoes a change, the rest of the spheres will undergo a change as well. The atmosphere can be looked at as transport-conveyer of matter. It has the smallest ability to store anything, but it distributes matter better than the other three (3) spheres. The hydrosphere has two main components the rivers and the oceans. Whatever is collected in the rivers is soon distributed to the oceans. The lithosphere is a solid shell of inorganic materials at the earths surface. This sphere is made up of mostly soil and rock down to a depth of 50kilometers. Most of the biochemical reactions occur in the soil. The biosphere is a thin shell of organic material at the earths surface. This sphere is responsible for most of the flow of materials in nature.

Environmental Spheres Analog Human activities mostly resemble the function of the biosphere. Humans and the biota are responsible for the re-distribution of the chemicals. Compared to the natural ecosystem, the anthroposystem doesn’t have a built in mechanism to reduce oxidizing compounds.

Summary Both the natural ecosystem and the anthroposystem have been described by flow charts or graphs. Both consist of producers, consumers, and decomposers (recyclers). Human activity most resembles the biosphere of the natural ecosystem. Human activity is responsible for the wide spread pollutants of man made products. The biggest difference of the two systems is that the natural ecosystem tends to balance itself out therefore doing little damage to the environment. The anthroposystem on the other hand, hasn’t balanced itself out and is far from doing so. So most of the environmental damage is caused by the anthroposystem.

What have I learned I learned how to track pollutants and to figure out where the pollutant came from, either the natural ecosystem or the anthroposystem. You can model any system via a mathematical model. Found out what man closely resembles in terms of the natural ecosystem, that is the biosphere and found out why. Also learned that when one of the four spheres undergoes a change, the rest of them will undergo a change as well.