This is Mariko and I's submission for the week!
1. Is freshwater a "renewable" resource? Explain.
Freshwater is a renewable resource to the extent of the water that returns back into the water supply; water that is contaminated, polluted, or evaporated permanently from the system is considered to be consumed from the system and used.
2. What drives the hydrologic cycle?
The sun, and a liitle bit of capillary action.
3. Explain why residence time and pollution are related.
Residence time is the time it takes for water to trickle through the ground before it enters groundwater. The problem is that in places with high residence time, it takes a long time to detect pollution in water because it may take up to fifty years after the pollution has entered the water before it will be detected.
4. Floods kill crops, even though plants require water-why?
Plants also require air. Water will drown the plants.
5. We discussed "flux", called "discharge" in the text. How is this measured?
Flux is defined as the area of the water multiplied by its velocity.
6. The Ogallala aquifer flows south. Explain the various concerns with this aquifer.
The Ogallala Aquifer covers over four states from north to south. With water flow going south, any contaminant or pollution entering the aquifer in the north will be in the water if it is being drawn from the wells south of the origin of pollution.
7. The "Heat" video described the glaciers as "free water storage" for the planet. Where else would you see this, and why is climate change so critical to this?
Trees are carbon stores. The ice caps are also water storage; global warming is threatening to raise sea levels because their melting of the ice caps will release all that trapped water.
8. Discern between water withdrawal and consumption. What are the trends of each today?
Water withdrawal is the amount of water taken from a water body; this water is can be replenished and cycled back into the system. Water consumption is the loss of water caused by evaporation, absorption, or contamination. Today, the trend is increasingly towards water consumption, with the majority of it going towards agriculture.
9. "Water wars" are an ongoing issue in Palestine. Research this and explain.
Israel has been utilizing slant drilling to draw freshwater resources across the border in Palestine. The problem is that it now causes issues for farmers who try to irrigate using wells near the border; all the water will have been drained from the Israeli side.
10. Watersheds and wetlands are critical to human survival. Discern and explain.
Watersheds and wetlands hold water in, slowing down the traveling time and residence time of water during tropical storms.
11. Describe three steps you could take where you live to conserve water. Think outside the box.
Take shorter showers, install a solar pump that pumps hot water for instant gratification which makes sure that water isn't wasted when waiting for the heated water to come, and to use gray water for irrigation instead of freshwater.
12. The "poisoned waters" video described point source pollution. Explain how these differ from non-point-source pollution.
Point pollution are sources of pollution that can be traced to a specific location, such as a sewage pipe or a factory. On the other hand, nonpoint pollution don't have particular sources that can be identified. Nonpoint pollution is harder to control because they include runoff from farms, golf courses, construction sites, roads... where the single origin of the pollution is harder to trace.
13. Describe the trends in each pollutant on table 10.4 in the text.
The major trend for each pollutant is that they are all human-related to a large extent. Land erosion and manure can be considered natural occurrences, but the way humans are interferring with normal amounts of manure (increased chicken farms in higher concentrations) and the way humans ruin the topsoil with agriculture can increase land erosion as well as pollution caused by manure. Other pollutants are also similarly increasing as a result of increased industrial activity.
14. Figure 10.15 in the text describes BOD. Explain how temperature, flow and turbulence might impact the diagram.
Turbulence can increase the dissolved oxygen level. Temperature increases the biological oxygen demand by increasing the activity of bacteria and enzymes. Similarly, still water has higher bacterial activity compared to moving water.
15. Why are endocrine disrupters (a) hard to detect and (b) hard to remedy?
They are hard to detect because they are often found in only trace amounts, and if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, it is hard to detect. It is hard to rememdy because we are only beginning to understand how endocrine disruptors affect our bodies.
16. When Lake Erie was declared "dead" in the late 1960's, what species might still be living there (see Figure 10.15).
Sludge worms, midge, and mosquito larvae are probably present. Fish would be absent.
17. Many do not understand the connection between turbidity and DO. Explain using clear terms.
Water with lower turbidity may have bubbles of air, therefore increasing the dissolved oxygen level.
18. Discern between oligotrophic and eutrophic streams, and give a cause/effect for each.
An oligotrophic stream has low primary productivity and is usually clear due to low nutrient levels and therefore lacking in algae. Eutrophic streams have high nutrient levels that increase the productivity, leading to algae blooms that decreases dissolved oxygen level and increases biological oxygen demand, lowering the water quality.
19. Mercury and dioxins bioaccumulate in certain species. Which ones, and why?
Dioxins accumulate in blubber and therefore in species that have a lot of fat such as whales. Mercury is more likely to accumulate in apex predators such as tuna, due to the effects of bioaccumulation.
20. We studied the dustbowl of the 1930's in America some weeks ago. Connect this with the "dead zone" south of the Mississippi delta.
Dust from the dustbowl landed in the Mississippi delta. This dust was full of nitrates from agriculture. These nitrates caused plants and algae to grow rapidly, overshooting their biological oxygen demand and then completely depleting the dissolved oxygen. This then caused a dead zone, where only a few niche species can live.
21. If Facebook uses Columbia river water to cool their servers, what impact will this have on the river? What are the alternatives, and how are they better or worse?
It will increase the temperature of the water and will lead to increased biological activity nearby as a result. An alternative would be to have massive air conditioning units (like the IT building) and run higher costs both financially and to the environment due to power consumption.
22. On Oahu the Kahe point power station is known for sharks close to shore. Explain.
The power station increases the temperature of the water. Therefore the DO is higher, more plants grow, more little fish eat the plants, more big fish eat the little fish, and more sharks come to eat the big fish. Biological reactions also happen more quickly as a result.
23. What were the goals of the clean water act (CWA), and when was it formed, by whom, in response to what?
The Clean Water Act came into effect in 1972 in response to the growing environmental crises at the time: Lake Erie was dead, the Cuyahoga River burned, and beaches in Southern California were closed due to oil spills. The goals were to clean up America's waterways adequately to safely permit swimming, fishing, and drinking. It was formed under the Nixon administration as part of the wave of environmental legislation following the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
24. Look up the Minamata crisis. Explain who, where, why, what was the solution.
Near Minamata was a plant that produced batteries, batteries and more batteries. The toxic waste was dumped straight into the water. This caused serious birth defects in the kids born in the town, as well as poisoned all the fish. The Japanese government responded not by cleaning up the water, but by delivering fresh fish from other parts of the country to the fishing town, replacing the locally caught fish. This allowed the lifestyle of the fishermen to continue in an odd compromise.
25. In 1945, Japan began reconstruction, using low quality zinc plated (galvanized) plumbing. Some of this Zinc had a high level of cadmium, causing "itching disease". What was the governmental solution, and how did it resemble the solution to the Minamata crisis?
The government set up clinics that administered morphine to the victims, but did nothing to remove the poisonous plumbing. It was similar to Minamata because in the same way, the solution did not solve the problem but merely provided a workaround.
26. The Rhine river story mentions "chemical oxygen demand". Discern from BOD.
Along the bank of the Rhine existed industry and many factories, similar to Seattle and the Puget Sound. Pollution from the factories was dumped into the river. Chemical oxygen demand measured the amount of organic compounds in the water as opposed to biological oxygen demand, which is a test for the amount of bacteria. It is measured in milligrams per liter.
27. Explain why aquifer pollution is hard to detect and solve. Is this a point source issue?
Water fills aquifers over thousands of years. A single water molecule might take 50 or 60 years to reach down to the aquifer. Therefore, if poisons are put on the land, it may not be detected for several more decades, making it almost impossible to point to the source by the time the pollution is detected.
28. All refineries add "markers" to their products to track theft and pollution. Explain how this could be extended to other issues.
Markers can also be used then to determine sources and origin of pollution in addition to product tracking. Environmental contamination will be easier to determine that way.
29. "Fracking" involves water use and water pollution. Explain.
Fracking is the extraction of substances from rock using high-pressure water to crack a rock layer. Because deep veins are being opened into the rock, it provides another channel for pollutants to seep deep inside the ground, especially where groundwater is. Proppants, or the substance used to prop the rock layer apart after injection, is a common pollutant.
30. Sewage treatment involves (a) primary treatment (sedimentation, a physical process) (b) secondary treatment involves aeration, aerobic bacteria, then sterilization with chlorine and finally tertiary treatment (c) which removes heavy metals and any nutrients. Compare each of these human methods with the natural process of water filtration (e.g. soil).
Primary treatment is done naturally as water seeps through the ground, with sediment and deposits being trapped at the top because of the larger particle sizes. Secondary treatment happens when the water joins a body of water and encounters a rapid or waterfall, with aerates it. Bacteria in the stream will consume the organic matter. Tertiary treatment is simulated in nature when the minerals and nutrients are absorbed with the various wildlife in the water.
31. Look over table 10.5. How would you connect each law with a public movement?
Federal Water Pollution Control Act: movement to restore watersheds, water quality to America's waterways following Lake Erie, Cuyahoga. Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act: aquatic animals dying due to pollution, building of dams. Ports and Waterways Safety Act: closing of beaches in Southern California, Exxon Valdez spill. Safe Drinking Water Act: pollution in the country's major waterways used for drinking water, such as the Potomac. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act: similar to the Ports and Waterways Safety Act. Toxic Substances Control Act: dumping of toxic waste in the Bay Area of Alameda. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act: Love Canal, other visible waste dumps. Clean Water Act: similar to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. London Dumping Convention: again, Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and also most likely visible damage to marine life due to dumping of trash and waste in the oceans.
32. You've heard me say that your generation faces four crises: water, food, energy and culture. How are these related to each other?
They are all needs that will have to addressed when solving the world's environmental problems. Food through agriculture requires water, energy is required to power all modern technologies and lifestyles, and culture is the human aspect behind everything.
hoang phong
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