1. HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
Chapter 13

2. How Has the Earth Environment Changed over Time?

3. Plate Tectonics
Division of the Earth’s crust into plates, which are in motion

4. Recent Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions

5. Volcanic Eruptions 1 billion years ago Fragmentation of Pangaea
Mass depletions: Loss of diversity from failure of new species to appear
Mass extinctions: 3 over last half-billion years
Fragmentation of Pangaea
160–180 million years ago
Pacific Ring of Fire as last remnant of these eruptions

6. Glaciations Pleistocene (less than 2 million years ago) marked by
Glaciations: Permanent ice stable and growing
Interglaciation: Warming spell in which ice recedes
Emergence of humans (homo sapiens) during interglacial between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago
Most recent glaciation: Wisconsin Glaciation

7. Wisconsin Glaciation

8. Recent Glacial History
Holocene: Interglaciation that began 18,000 years ago.
Little Ice Age
A minor glaciation that began in the early 1300s
Growing glaciers
Effects on agricultural production
Abandonment of Greenland and Iceland by Europeans
Abandonment of Chung Ho’s voyages
Black Death (bubonic plague)

9. Warming Phase Eruption of Tambora (1815) on Sumatra (Indonesia)
Local pollution of land and water by ash and acid
Ash and dust in atmosphere
Cooling of temperatures worldwide: “Year without summer” (1816)
Food shortages
Warming since about 1850

10. How Have Humans Impacted Earth’s Environment?
Altering ecosystems
All humans (over time) altering environments
Impact greater with growth in population
Environmental stress
Cutting forests, emitting pollutants, spilling oil
Burying toxic waste, dumping garbage in oceans

11. Water A renewable resource (replenished as used)
Water shortages: Depletion of water in aquifers (porous, water-holding rocks) at a rapid rate
Causes of shortages
Growing population
Large population concentrations near small supplies
Agricultural and industrial use

12. Hydrologic Cycle

13. Precipitation Distribution

14. The Dying Aral Sea
Effects of climatic cycles and human interference

15. Water and Israeli-Palestinian Relations
Israel’s major water resources
Jordan River
Aquifer under West Bank
30 percent of flow to Sea of Galilee from Golan Heights

16. Atmosphere
A thin layer of air lying directly above the lands and oceans
Natural impacts (volcanic eruptions)
Human impacts
Global warming
Acid rain

17. The Land Deforestation: Effect on oxygen cycle
Soil erosion: Soil not having enough time to rebound
Waste disposal
Solid waste filling
sanitary landfills
Problem of disposal
and confinement
of toxic and
radioactive wastes

18. Biodiversity
Loss of biodiversity because species are threatened or quite concentrated
Species with a small range most impacted

19. What Are the Major Factors Contributing to Environmental Change Today?
Political ecology
An approach to nature-society relations
Concerned with the ways in which environmental issues reflect and are the result of the political and socioeconomic contexts

20. Major Factors Contributing to Environmental Change
Population
Technology: Resource extraction to fuel technologies
Transportation
Significant pollution
Energy demands—oil

21. Natural Disaster Hot Spots

22. Natural Disaster Hot Spots

23. Locations of Visible Oil Slicks

24. Sources of Carbon Dioxide

25. How Are Humans Responding to Environmental Change?
Environmental problems not confined to states
Laws that affect change passed by state
Air pollution drifting across borders

26. States vs. Environmental Issues
Major forest regions of Africa not along state boundaries
World Bank’s planning regions drawn along state boundaries

27. Issues with Solving Environmental Problems
Global conventions on environmental problems
Convention on Biological Diversity
Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change

28. Carbon Dioxide Emissions