Water and air problems?

We are all rather familiar with the constant political crisis in Israel and the Palestinian territories, but there is another problem that is not often spoken of, and that is the environmental problems in this area. 

The main problem in this area is the water crisis.  The Middle-east is a naturally dry area, and in recent years a severe drought has caused the problem to worsen.  To add to this, a population boom in the region has led to a severe stress on the water supply. 

To add to water shortages, the available water is often very polluted due to chemical industries.  This problem is so bad that Israeli rivers are actually considered more polluted than most American and European rivers.  Israel has taken major steps to fix this problem and has banned the dumping of industrial wastes into rivers.  Hopefully, this will improve the water quality in most areas. 

The air quality in areas like Jerusalem is also suffering because of a sharp increase in car ownership all throughout the region.  This problem is being experienced throughout the world however, and can only be fixed by reducing the pollution output of each car.  Other areas that are experiencing this problem are China, India, and even the United States.  The problem has gotten so bad in Jerusalem however that the city is now being compared to Mexico City, which is one of the most polluted cities in the world. 

No matter what the political situation is in Israel-Palestine, they both share the same environment, and they need to start preserving it together.  This does not seem to be a major possiblity in the future however.  The two sides are drifting apart faster than ever.  The Israelis have recently began the construction of a wall to seperate the Palestinians and Israelis and reduce the terrorist threat.  This political division will only add further stress to the environmental situation. 

http://www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/envirois.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/scarcity.html

TUNDRA!!!!!!

Tundra is one of the newest and most fragile of all of the biomes on earth. Tundra was first formed only around 10,ooo years ago and it now make up around 20% of the Earth’s surface. Tundra is almost exclusively located in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the fact that the land in the north is more strategically placed for tundra to form.  The soil in a tundra environment is called permafrost.  It is frozen for a long portion of the year and is up to 3 feet thick. Due to this the plants in enironments like this must be very durable and resistant to cold. The seasons in this biome are really restricted to winter and summer. Even though there is a very short spring, it is not long enough to be considered a real season. The winters are incrediably cold, as cold as -97 degrees Fehrenheit, and the summers can get as warm as the low 50’s Fehrenheit. There is even a short period of time where the sun shines for 24 hours a day.  Even though tundra environments seem harsh, there are still many animals and plants that live there. In the summers, when the snow and upper layer of permifrost melt, the land becomes marshy.  This is the perfect environment for insects and migrating birds to live.

The plant life in the Tundra environment is somewhat limited. There are about 1,700 species of moss, shrubs, and other low lying plant life that live in this area. This low diversity is due to a few key factors. First, the growing season for a plant in this environment is only around 50 days long. Also, the soil is not deep enough to support tree life in most Tundra areas, and this shallow soil also lacks many nutrients. Another problem plant life faces in the region is the high wind velocity that can tear taller plants right out of the ground.  These factors make it hard for plants to survive, but they still find a way.

Animal life is also present in Tundra, although like plant life, it has relatively low biodiversity. There are about 50 species in the Tundra region.  These range from animals as big as a wolf or bear, and as small as a rodent. The animal population is kept in check by a series of preditors. The grizzley bear and wolf population, which is very low, keeps down the caribou and moose populations.  They act as the keystone predators to the tundra region.  A keystone predator is an animal with a low population that has a large impact on the surrounding animals.  They serve to keep other populations in check and often control a large territory.  Other predators that play an important role in the tundra ecosystem are members of the bird family.  Two of these are the Gold and Bald Eagles.  These birds of prey help to keep the rodent populations down, which helps take stress of the rodents’ food source.  Also, the Arctic foxes will keep down rodent populations while also feeding on dead deer left over from wolves. The owls area of dominance somewhat overlaps the artic fox. The owl helps keep the rodent population down in the Tundra region, who likewise help keep the insect population down. The Caribou are able to survive on small shrubs and lichen, which makes them essential for keeping the plant population down. Without anyone of these animals, the entire food web would fail.  This also means that any human tampering with the area could be disasterous. 

The effects of tundra on the environment are also very important to human survival. Tundra is one of the three major Carbon Dioxide sinks in the world. This means that the plants in the region will take in more CO2 than they give off. For this reason, tundra is essential in the effort to minimize the amounts of Green House Gases in our atmosphere.

Tundra is also one of the most fragile ecosystems that can be found on planet Earth. Since the tempuratures of this region can be extremely cold, the stresses put on the plants and animals of this region are already extreme.  This makes any human interference far more damaging than it would be in any other ecosystem. The main threat to the tundra are the oil pipe lines that are now being built in the region, and the towns that are being formed to maintain these pipe lines. This can cause migration route disturbtion, destruction of habitats, and other serious problems. One huge problem is the use of pesticides to control the insect population. This harms not only the insects, but all of the animals that feed on the insects. But more importantly, the ground in Tundra regions is so sensitive, that a footprint or tire track may remain visible for 50 or 60 years. These tracks can expose roots, and when the roots are hit by the sun, can cause the permafrost to melt.  This causes large amounts of erosion. This makes areas around mining facilities extremely susceptible to long term damage, even if the human presence is minimal.

 

http://www.enviroliteracy.org

http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/tundra.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/tundra_ecosystem.html

Sorry Hybrid Owners

Any easily offended hybrid owners should probably stop reading now because the fact is you’re not as environmentally smart as you thought.  Now, while it is true that a hybrid burns less fuel than most cars and thus pollutes less, these cars are in fact imposters.  The making of these cars involves the construction of two separate engines, one standard 76 horsepower engine, and one battery powered engine.  The construction of these two engines uses more than 1000 tons of nickle annually, which makes many hybrids more environmentally destructive than a Hummer. 

Also, the reduction of CO2 that hybrid owners claim is very insignificant.  In fact, with the world’s fast growing population, the hybrids have almost no effect on the CO2 level in the atmosphere. 

Hybrids are not actually the answer that many people have been looking for; they are more polluting than many cars and still dump a significant amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.  The only solucion to our energy and environmental problem of transportation is to find a new power source. Until then, hybrids are not even a bandaid solution; they are just adding to the problem  

http://clubs.ccsu.edu/Recorder/editorial/print_item.asp?NewsID=188

http://www.helium.com/tm/215530/order-understand-agianst-hybrid

Americans sure love their lawns

In today’s political world, people are looking for new environmental problems to focus their attention on.  These Environmental fantasys have now turned to the destruction of the old fashoned American lawn.  Cristina Milesi has been researching the effects of the large amounts of grass in today’s landscape.  She points out that other countries like Italy do not actually use grass like many American households.  In Italy, many yards are far smaller, and thus have less grass.  In adition to this, the Italian lawn does not usually contain what many Americans would consider grass.  This clash of cultures is more than soil deep; it has lead to enivronmental idealogical differences.  Melesi claims that the Italian lawn has many benefits over the American lawn.  She believes that the Italian lawn prevents water run off and better conserves the water resource that is becoming stressed in today’s world.  Where American lawns may use around 2 meters of water per year, Italian lawns use far less water because they need far less.  She points out that the average American lawn is completely unnatural when you look at the Western environments in the United States.  While lawns are semi-natural in the Northeast, they are unnatural everywhere else.  What she fails to point out is that in many areas, such as Florida, the citizens use a special water absorbant grass that prevents water waste, and also is extra resistant to the sun.  They also water the lawns with nonpotable water in many areas.  So in this way, people do not actually bring their environments with them as Milesi claims, they simply adjust to the environment and attempt to make their environment SIMILAR to their former home. 

She did point out however that a large amount of the United States is infact covered with grass.  This large amount of unnatural plant does effect the environment in a significant way.  Her conservative estimates claim that there are approximately 79535.51 square miles of grass in the United States, or around 219,947,506 feet.  This is a truly shocking amount, but it is not completely surprising.  This large amount of grass can cause carbon “sinks”.  A carbon sink is the process of changing carbon dioxide into organic material and storing it in the soil.  Grass does this to a far greater extent which can add more green house gasses into the atmosphere.  In this way, trees would be far better environmentaly than grass.  This is due to the fact that trees give out about 22 pounds of carbon a year, while grass gives out about 3.68 X 10^10 pounds per year. 

Also, the large amount of grass can lead to a large amount of water usage.  This can be a major problem in dry climates in western America.  This can easily be resolved, however, if a watering system was matched with a meteorology program to help regulate water.  In most climates, people should be watering their lawn around 2 meters per year.  This would prevent people from watering their lawns when it is absolutely unnecessary.  Also, further environmental problems can arise in relation to grass clippings.  The decomposing grass clippings will cause increased carbon in the atmosphere, which can increase the green house effect. 

No matter how grass lawns effect the environment, the government still should not have the power to regulate it to a large extent.  We live in a free society, and giving the government extra powers over trivial things like regulating lawns would be ridiculous.  By asking the government to regulate this, we would simply be asking “big brother” to interrupt our lives, and it is a slippery slope that could lead to further crazy regulations in the future.  No one should lose the right to have a lawn the way they like it.  After all, Americans sure love their lawns. 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/

 

What’s with Easter Island?

Easter Island in many ways can be seen as a possible future for the earth itself, primarily because it shows the devistating results of overuse of resources.  Easter Island today has virtually no trees on it, but in fact a few hundered years ago the entire island was covered with trees.  What exactly happened to them?  Well, there are multiple theories about this.  One is that the settlers of the island brought rats that ate the seeds of the trees and thereby stopped the expansion of the species.  Then, the overuse of the resources by the natives of the island began to depleat the tree population.  The native’s would use the trees as rollers to move statues into place and also as their main source of fuel and building materials.  After the tree population was all but wiped out, birds ceased flying to nest on the island, and wood became almost impossible to find.  This wood was needed in order to build and maintain boats.  This made fishing increasingly difficult and escape from the island impossible.  The lack of wood also made errecting more statues impossible, which put tremendous stress on the social organization.  In addition to this, soil errosion began to take place which today has had a massive effect.  The outcome of this disaster is simple; the island’s natives were thrown into chaos, and the civilization was forever crippled.  Now, by looking at this example, it becomes easier to see why we should all work to preserve our planet’s resources.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_island 

 http://www.apj.co.uk/rapanui/display_article.asp?specifier=history                 

http://www.primitivism.com/easter-island.htm