ENVS 1050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Snowball Earth, Reductionism, Great Oxygenation Event

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Environmental Sciences
• Course: ENVS 1050
• Professor: Don Cummings

Document Summary

Lecture 2 notes the earth as a system: naturals system share mass and energy with their surroundings! Natural system are always in disequilibrium which is steady state. All natural system are made up of larger natural systems ex a cell, a tree, the earth. Natural system - natural systems are thermodynamically open systems, meaning they do exchange mass and energy with their surroundings: name three negative feedbacks! A negative feedback occurs when an initial change is dampened, promoting stability in the system (e. g. , homeostasis). Positive feedbacks, by contrast, occur when an initial change is ampli ed, promoting instability (e. g. , audio feedback, as pictured above). The earth can be thought of as a natural system composed of several smaller, nested systems the geo-, atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and biospheres that are always in motion, constantly interacting and feeding back off each other. Two things: (a) the sun (solar radiation), and (b) heat generated within the.