GEOG 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Jared Diamond, Kuznets Curve, Reductionism
18 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Environmental problem: condition of the biophysical environment, which negatively affects humans. naturally occurring: volcanic activity, forest fires, natural climate change. *human causation: change in the biophysical environment due to human activity. History: environmental problems are not new, many examples from history of human induced environmental collapse, maya (climatic shifts no longer maintain agriculture production, easter island (extinct deforestation/erosion/agricultural problems) Famous geographer jared diamond: many examples from history of human-induced environmental collapse and landscape alteration. Usually small scale: limited to a small area. Today we still have small scale, localized problems. Loss of locally important plant and animal species. But the scope of human settlement and technology has also allowed us to have global- scale impacts. Geog 200: focuses on those caused/ accelerated by humans and how humans cause the change. Geog 200: focuses on the effects of these human caused world environmental problems. Two types of world environmental problem: systemic. Direct human impact on globally functioning biophysical systems.
