17: Humans and the Natural Environment

Question 1

Nature

Answer 1

as before and outside humans or unmodified by humans
socially constructed - variable attitudes, conceptions about nature across history and cultures

Question 2

natural vs anthropogenic environment

Answer 2

modified vs unmodified environment

Question 3

geography and the natural environment

Answer 3

definition “the study of Earth as the home of humanity” - interpreted to mean human-environmental relations

Question 4

environmental determinism

Answer 4

the belief that the physical environment exclusively shapes humans and their cultures

Question 5

cultural autonomy

Answer 5

cultures are equally likely to develop any particular set of cultural traits no matter what the environmental circumstances

Question 6

culture-environment interactionism

Answer 6

the natural environment constrains or limits culture, making some cultural variants more or less possible than others, but it does not strictly determine culture (possibilism)

Question 7

human-environment relations

Answer 7

conceptual models: environmental determinism, cultural autonomy, culture-environment interactionism

Question 8

environmental hazards

Answer 8

events or conditions actually detrimental to humans
- elements, processes, or events in the environment that can cause harm to humans

Question 9

extreme events

Answer 9

events of “unusual physical magnitude” which may or may not be hazardous to people – potential hazards

Question 10

physical magnitude vs. hazard magnitude

Question 11

classifying hazards as natural or anthropogenic

Answer 11

natural: all atmospheric, hydrologic, geologic (especially seismic and volcanic), and wildfire phenomena that, because of their location, severity, and frequency, have the potential to affect humans, their structures, or their activities adversely
- “natural” eliminates such exclusively manmade phenomena as war, pollution, and chemical contamination

anthropogenic: human adaptation and location decisions always play a major role in determining how disastrous the results are
- human intervention can increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards (removing the toe of a landslide)
- human intervention may also cause natural hazards where none existed before (settling of a volcano)
- human intervention reduces the mitigating effect of natural ecosystems (desertification/ destroying wave-breaking coral reefs)

Question 12

types of natural hazards

Answer 12

ATMOSPHERIC (Hailstorms, Hurricanes, Lightning, Tornadoes, Tropical storms)

SEISMIC (Fault ruptures, Ground shaking, Lateral spreading, Liquefaction, Tsunamis, Seiches)

OTHER GEOLOGIC/HYDROLOGIC (Debris avalanches, Expansive soils, Landslides, Rock falls, Submarine slides, Subsidence)

HYDROLOGIC (Coastal flooding, Desertification, Salinization, Drought, Erosion and sedimentation, River flooding, Storm surges)

VOLCANIC (Tephra (ash, cinders, lapilli), Gases, Lava flows, Mudflows, Projectiles and lateral blasts, Pyroclastic flows)

WILDFIRE (Brush, Forest, Grass, Savannah)

Question 13

types of anthropogenic hazards

Answer 13

infectious diseases, war, pollution, and chemical contamination

Question 14

cause of hazards in nature, society, and technology

Answer 14

human adaptation and location decisions always play a major role in determining how disastrous the results are

Question 15

classifying hazards by space-time parameters

Answer 15

• more useful than casual agency classification for understanding implications for humans
• spatio-temporal parameters influence the types of human responses required or allowed
• spatio-temporal parameters can be usefully combined into a single continuum of pervasive-intensive

Question 16

pervasive-intensive continuum for hazards

Answer 16

pervasive: (especially of an unwelcome influence or physical effect) spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people.
intensive: concentrated on a single area or subject or into a short time; very thorough or vigorous.

Question 17

historical trends in hazard outcomes during 20th century

Answer 17

• over last 100 years, more people and more living in hazardous areas along with increased economic development
• loss of life down
• economic loss up

Question 18

hazard perception

Answer 18

part of environmental attitudes - beliefs and attitudes about the likelihood, consequences, possible responses to hazards

Question 19

risk perception vs. risk assessment

Answer 19

Perception of place as attractive or desirable may be quite divorced from any understanding of its hazard potential. Attachment to locale or region may be an expression of emotion and economic or cultural attraction, not just a rational assessment of risk

Question 20

hazard perception explanation

Answer 20

• probabilistic reasoning in challenging
• people tend to discredit seriousness of risks
• difficult to predict rare events (small samples)
• behavioral research on decision-making “heuristics”
• both cognitive and emotional explanations

Question 21

gambler’s fallacy

Answer 21

Monte Carlo Fallacy
When an individual erroneously believes that a certain random event is less likely or more likely to happen based on the outcome of a previous event or series of events

Question 22

decision-making heuristics

Answer 22

a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods

Question 23

availability heuristic

Answer 23

availability bias – mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision

Question 24

residential inertia

Answer 24

it takes a lot of energy to move

Question 25

IPAT equation

Answer 25

I = PAT
I = Impact on the environment
P = Population
A = Affluence (often measured by per capita income)
T = Technology

Question 26

reciprocal interaction of humans and natural environment

Answer 26

adverse consequences of human impact on the environment are the unforeseen creations of the cultural land- scapes that we have been examining and analyzing, and their study highlights the unity of physical and human geography

Question 27

biosphere

Answer 27

the living matter of plants and animals

Question 28

lithosphere

Answer 28

the upper reaches of the Earth’s crust, contains the soils that support plant life, the minerals that plants and animals require, and the fossil fuels and ores that humans exploit

Question 29

atmosphere

Answer 29

a thin blanket of air enveloping the Earth, with more than half of its mass within 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) of the surface and 98 percent within 26kilometers (16 miles)

Question 30

hydrosphere

Answer 30

consists of the perpetually moving surface and subsurface waters in oceans, rivers, lakes, glaciers, groundwater, water vapor, and clouds

Question 31

biomes

Answer 31

a large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat
- established by the pattern of global climates

Question 32

ecosystems

Answer 32

a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment
- self-contained, self-regulating, and interacting communities adapted to local combinations of climate, topography, soil, and drainage conditions

Question 33

greenhouse effect

Answer 33

the trapping of the sun’s warmth in a planet’s lower atmosphere, due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet’s surface