Chapter 2 - Human Impacts Flashcards
Objects of Protection?
Water, Human Beings, Air ,Climate
What are the Midpoint and Endpoint of Environmental Mechanisms?
Midpoint: Point within environmental mechanism (Ozone depletion, Climate change, Human Toxicity, Ecotoxicity )
Endpoint - outside of environmental mechanisms Impact on Areas of Protection (Objects of protection, intrinsic and instrumental, cultural)
What does the DPSIR Framework stand for?
Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, Response
What is the Driving Force?
Economic Activities like Manufacturing and Waste Management
What are the Pressures?
Resource extraction, Emissions, Waste, pollutants
What is the State?
the state of the environment or the ecosystem
What are the Impacts (Midpoint categories and Damages)
Midpoint categories:
Human toxicity, Noise, Climate Change, Biotic resources depletion
Damages to:
Human health, biotic and abiotic natural environment, biotic and abiotic resources, biotic and abiotic man-made environment
Biotic vs. Abiotic
Living things like humans birds, plants
vs
Temperature, water, sunlight
Whats the Life Cycle Impact Assessment Framework
It differentiates damage into categories - the intrinisc, instrumental cultural
The impacts on the objects of protection can be classified into —-
Intrinsic, Instrumental, and Cultural
Acid rain attacks cultural heritage: damage category(ies)?
Cultural
Bee products like honey are polluted by pesticides because bees eat pesticides, and hurts humans: damage category(ies)?
Intrinsic because of human health and instrumental because the ecosystem services
The marine environment has been changed, most land and freshwater resources are used for livestock, People are fishing at unsustainable levels
instrumental because of natural resources and socioeconomic assets and ecosystem services as well as intrinsic because of the ecosystem quality
Two things that are intrinsic damage
human health and ecosystem quality- bc it hurts us in the end
Three things that are Instrumental
Socioeconomic assets, natural resources, ecosystem services
Two things that are cultural
cultural and natural heritage
What is SETAC and what did they do?
the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) divided environmental
changes into 10 environmental impact categories. all about toxicology
Say 3 examples of SETA environmental impact categories
acidification of soil and water pollution, Human toxicity, ecotoxicity, degredation of ozone, summer smog
What are some important environmental mechanisms?
an environmental mechanism is the cause-effect chain towards environmental impacts
An environmental mechanism can be described as “a system of physical, chemical and biological processes for a given impact category linking the life cycle inventory analysis results to category indicators and to category endpoints”. Therefore,
What is Human toxicity
the degree to which a substance can harm a human
What is ecotoxicity
the branch of toxicology concerned with the study of toxic effects, caused by natural or synthetic pollutants, to the constituents of ecosystems, animal (including human), vegetable and microbial, in an integral context - oil spill or pesticides
What are three ways humans interact with the environment
waste disposal, agriculture, mining, water (drinking, sewage, manufacturing)
What is the Greenhouse effect? (one of the impact categories)
It’s that the sunlight comes into the earth’s atmosphere and normally bounces off the earth back into space. greenhouse gases (CO2, Methane- agriculture)make the atmosphere so that the heat can escape less, so keeping the heat trapped and hence is heating up the world.
What objects of protection are affected by the greenhouse effect?
Climate
What are the consequences of GHG emissions?
climate change, weather extremes, rising sea level
What’s the Biogeosphere?
Plants (biosphere) draw water and nutrients from the soil (geosphere) and release water vapor into the atmosphere. Humans (biosphere) use farm machinery (manufactured from geosphere materials) to plow the fields, and the atmosphere brings precipitation (hydrosphere) to water the plants.
