REM 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Organic Farming, Soil Biology, Deep Ecology

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burgundyhorse599

6 Dec 2014

School

Simon Fraser University

Department

Resource & Environmtl Mgmt

Course

REM 100

Professor

John Irwin

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Document Summary

Stocks or materials that are subject to human appraisal or valuation. Human ingenuity will solve all resource issues. Humans can create technologies that will substitute for environmental resources. Stocks and materials found in nature: stocks are fixed and limited, limits to resources exist. Resources are primarily defined by nature or what the ecosystem provides. Nature, ecosystems, and other species have their own intrinsic value regardless of whether humans value them. The use of and maintenance of environmental resources are moral and ethical issues. Humans are reliatan upon the existence of a functioning ecosystem. 1907: marks the division of the conservation movement into: Preservationist conservationists sought to maintain natural areas in their natural state, Utilitarian conservationists seeks to manage the sustainable harvesting of natural resources for human benefit. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. a sand county alamanac .

Related Questions

Check the Course Announcements at the beginning of the week following the deadline for Part 1 to discover exactly what happened to the deer population on the Kaibab plateau. This information is essential for completion of Part 2.

The second part of your project is to take what you've learned about the Kaibab forest ecosystem and write an accurate description of the boom and bust of this deer population, using correct ecological language. Consider as many of the aspects of these events as you can. Be sure to consider the effects on the other species in the ecosystem as well.

Refer to your on-line materials and the appropriate sections of your textbook. Your discussion should include (but not be confined to) consideration of all of the following concepts: carrying capacity, predator/prey relationships, population cycling, resource partitioning, competitive exclusion, fundamental and realized niches, food chains, food webs and trophic pyramids.

Note that the purpose of this exercise is for you to demonstrate to me that you understand these important concepts of ecology by utilizing them accurately and appropriately in the description of the disaster in the Kaibab forest. Your essay must include both clear indications that you understand the meanings of these principles and clear indication that you understand how these principles can be used to describe what happened to the ecosystem on the Kaibab plateau.

information given of part one: On the north rim of the Grand Canyon, an area called the Kaibab plateau, there is a conifer forest called the Kaibab forest. The forest's trees include pine, fir and spruce. Shrubbery includes a variety of willows, raspberries, etc. A hundred years ago, this forest was a stable ecosystem, housing, among other species, a population of about four thousand mule deer.

These deer were hunted by local Native Americans, who used them for food and other materials. They were also hunted by predators like pumas, wolves and coyotes.

In 1906, the US made this region into a National Game Preserve. With the intent of protecting the deer, hunting was forbidden. Bounties were paid for killing the pumas, wolves and other large animals that preyed on the deer. By 1925, more than 6000 predators had been killed, virtually wiping out the ecosystem's large predators.

*Read the instructions* for Part 2, then consider this additional information about the Kaibab forest.
There are some hints in here to suggest the *minimum* range of the subjects you need to discuss to explain this; You will need to read the chapters and the course materials to understand the meanings of these concepts, and to be able to use them to explain the Kaibab disaster. There are other important concepts as well--so keep your eyes open as you read. It wouldn't hurt to go back and read the original description in Part 1, either. And you may find it necessary to do some quick browsing in areas of your book not directly related to ecology. (For instance, you might just want to do some looking into the nature and importance of the bark and twig ends on a tree.) Do not neglect the on-line essays which are provided for you in this Unit. What you should *not* do is Google the Kaibab, or look it up on a source like Wikipedia. This is not about what you can *discover* about the Kaibab forest.
Your grade will depend upon how completely you convince me you understand the concepts involved in this description. This is your test on ecology--your goal is to convince me that you understand the concepts and terminology of the subject, and can apply them to a real life situation.
Before we go on to the new information, there are a few things that came up as I was grading the Part 1 submissions which I think I should mention, just to keep you from straying in some incorrect directions.
First, remember that your concern is the fate of the Kaibab forest in the *immediate* sense--over tens of years, not thousands. There are no evolutionary issues here, at least in the short term (and that's your concern right now). So we won't be talking about adaptive radiation.
Also, keep your focus on the *Kaibab forest*, not on other ecosystems. Oh, and remember that the Kaibab is pretty isolated--emigration really isn't a reasonable alternative for the species living in this forest.
And finally, until we get to Part 3, the only human interaction we are considering is the initial decision to put bounties on those large predators, which led to their near-extinction in the area. You will be thinking a bit about human hunters trying to control the deer population toward the end, but the rest of the time you're just concerned with the natural processes going on in the ecosystem.
Okay, now on to the actual description of what happened in the Kaibab Forest as a result of killing almost all of the large predators. Remember, your task in Part 2 is going to be to describe and explain all of this using the concepts of ecology which you are learning in Unit 2 of the course.
*****
The primary, most immediate outcome of the removal of the predators from the ecosystem was that the deer population exploded, because the loss of the normal predator populations removed a primary source of population control. And the expanding deer population ate a *lot.* [Hint: explaining this requires discussion of population cycling, predator prey relationships and carrying capacities.]
As the deer population got larger and larger, their impact upon their favored food plants became extreme. They ate a much larger percentage of each year's plant populations, and they ate a larger portion of each individual plant. They also began to eat more from the plants which they didn't like so well--plants normally consumed by other herbivores in the ecosystem. In the winter, the starving deer ate about anything remotely resembling food, including twigs and bark from trees. As a result of the destruction of many of the twig ends of the trees, the spring tree growth was inhibited (why?). The stripping of the bark caused the death of some of the trees (why?). The extreme browsing on the herbaceous plants caused shifts in the plant population diversity, as the deer drove many of their favored plants into extinction within the ecosystem. [Hint: Explanation here will need to include discussion of resource partitioning, competitive exclusion, and realized vs. fundamental niches.]
All of this also impacted upon the rest of the animals in the ecosystem, since many of them depended upon the same kinds of food the deer ate, or depended upon the foods that the deer were eating because they could no longer get the food they favored. Then of course, the smaller predatory species (like foxes and owls) depended upon the health of those populations of small herbivores (like rabbits and mice). [Hint: sounds like food chains, food webs and trophic pyramids come into this part.]
After a couple of decades, the ecosystem was quite altered. The plant community was very different from what it had been before, and the deer herd, though not extinct, was composed of significantly smaller and weaker deer than the herd from the 1890s. (This was partially due to their straightened circumstances re. food, but also partially due to the absence of predators. Why would the removal of the natural predators cause this change in the general vigor of the deer in the herd (and why would the substitution of *human* hunting not exert the same positive influence)?)
Okay, the next phase of your assignment is to describe all the things going on in this ecosystem using the proper terminology that you should be learning from studying this unit of the course. Note that your use of terms like, for instance, "resource partitioning" needs to show that you understand not just what the concept means, but how it is reflected in this specific ecological disaster. Feel free to discuss this as much as you want to on your Discussion Board. Don't ignore the little questions tucked into the above description, and pay attention to those hints. Your response must demonstrate proper understanding of these concepts and how they are demonstrated by the disaster in the Kaibab forest.
This is the largest part of your exam project; your response should reflect the fact that this is a 50 point "essay" question. You are given a lot of organizational clues and hints about what issues you need to include in the information above. Make use of those things.

""Please give answer with simple explaination""""Please give answer with simple explaination""""Please give answer with simple explaination""

1. In every society, choices must be made because resources are

a. Infinite, but economic want are finite

b. Finite, but economic wants are insatiable

c. Unlimited, but economic wants limited

d. Limited, and so are economic wants

2. Which question is an illustration of a microeconomic question

a. Is the quantity of wine purchased in one year dependent upon the price of wine?

b. Does government spending influence the total level of employment in the economy?

c. Is the purchasing power of the dollar higher or lower today than it was in 2000?

d. Is capitalism superior to socialism?

3. The purpose of the ceteris paribus assumption used in economic analysis is to :

a. Avoid making normative statements

b. A void the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy

c. Make sure that all relevant factors are considered

d. Restrict the analysis to effect of a single economic factor

4. The profit motive is

a. Ineffective at producing consumer goods

b. Inherently beneficial to society if left alone to pursue its own self interests

c. Effective at producing goods when consumption is non-rival or non-excludable

d. Is often at odds with societies interests

5. In the system of central planning

a. There is repaid of the infrastructure

b. There is severe inflation in wholesale and retail prices

c. Economic growth leads to widespread unemployment among workers

d. The outputs of some industries become inputs for other industries

6. The market system communicates changes in supply and demand and elicits appropriate responses from businesses and resource suppliers. This is known as the:

a. Rationing function of prices

b. Guiding function of prices

c. Monetary function of prices

d. Circular flow of income

7. An increase in the quantity of automobiles supplied would be caused by which be caused by which of the following?

a. An increase in the demand for automobiles

b. A decrease in the demand for automobiles

c. Higher prices for steel

d. Higher prices for gasoline

8. All of the following would cause an increase in the demand for private airplanes at a given price, except a:

a. Decrease in interest rates

b. Increase in consumer incomes

c. Decrease in taxes on luxury goods

d. Decrease in the costs of constructing private airplanes

9. In modern economies of mass production,

a. Biological need motivates most consumption

b. The intrinsic value of goods and services motivates mass consumption

c. Affluence makes relative depravation meaningless

d. Invidious comparison motivates much of mass consumption

10. a more equal distribution of income in the United States would result in greater total consumer satisfaction. This statement is based on the concept that:

a. Income inequality is unfair

b. Income inequality is undemocratic

c. Income equality stimulates efficiency

d. Incomes are subject to diminishing marginal utility

11. While command systems suffer from incentive problems, market economies

a. Have no incentive problems

b. Suffer from incentive problems of their own

c. Tend to resolve all problems by their own dynamics

d. Have problems to the degree that there is government interference.

12. What economic concepts can be used to explain the reason that a new car purchased by a consumer and driven off a new car lot decrease in value almost immediately compared with the value of the same make and model of a car still on the new car lot?

a. Positive and negative externalities

b. Liability rules and lawsuits

c. The Coase theorem and moral hazard

d. Asymmetric information and adverse selection

13. Consider a situation where the U.S. Congress wants to place a special tax on private airplanes to increase tax revenue. This tax would only be effective in raising new tax revenues if the price elasticity of:

a. Supply is elastic

b. Supply is inelastic

c. Demand is elastic

d. Demand is inelastic

14. Under what circumstances would you expect economic profits to be zero in a particular industry?

a. During a recession

b. When there is little competition in the industry

c. When the industry is neither expanding nor contracting

d. When the demand for the product being produced is increasing

16. If economic resources are perfectly interchangeable between the two products shown on a production possibilities graph:

a. The economy will always be at full employment

b. More of one product can be produced without producing less fo the other product

c. The production possibilities curve would be straight line

d. The two products are of equal value to the economy

17. Opportunity cost is best defined as:

a. Marginal cost minis marginal benefit

b. The time spent on an economic activity

c. The value of the best foregone alternative

d. The money cost of an economic decision

18. All of the following would affect the position of a country production possibilities curve expect:

a. The quality of labor

b. The level of employment

c. The amount of the capital stock

d. Technological progress

19. The post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy consists of:

a. Using an example to a different point

b. Inferring causality from chronological sequence

c. Jumping to conclusions from an inadequate number of cases

d. Arguing for or against the person rather than the position being supported

20. Which is one of the five fundamental question that needs to be answered by economic system

a. What is the rate of unemployment?

b. Who will be the richest person in the economy?

c. What goods and services will be produced?

d. Why are the prices for goods and services so high?

21. The institution of private property is sustained over time by:

a. Competition

b. Bequests

c. Self-interest

d. Free enterprise

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REM 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Organic Farming, Soil Biology, Deep Ecology

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