Understanding Ecosystems and Sustainable Practices

Ecosystems, Resources, and Sustainable Development

Ecosystem Components

An ecosystem consists of a physical environment, characterized by environmental factors such as temperature or salinity, the organisms that live there and form a community, and the relationships established between them.

• Biotope: The characteristic of the physical environment of a certain area, i.e., the non-living part.
• Biocenosis: The community of an ecosystem, i.e., the whole of the same species within the ecosystem.

Human Impact and Resources

Mankind gets resources from ecosystems and, consequently, produces impacts on the natural environment. These impacts are subject to natural hazards and eventually produce waste.

Natural resources: Everything that humanity derives from nature to meet its needs. Types:

• Non-renewable: Limited quantities that are depleted (e.g., oil).
• Renewable Energies: Do not deplete (e.g., sun, wind).
• Potentially renewable: Consumed but can regenerate naturally.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It promotes a balance between economic, social, and ecological factors; its outcome is the quality of life.

• Carrying capacity: The adaptation of an ecosystem to sustain the life it homes.
• Ecological footprint: The land needed to produce the resources a person needs and to assimilate the waste they generate. It serves to measure the impact of lifestyles or the degree of sustainability. It is expressed in hectares per person.

Principles of Sustainable Development

• Sustainable Gathering and Extraction: Regeneration rates should be equal to those of the natural resources.
• Sustainable Emptying: To replace the resources exploited. For example, introducing alcohol to replace oil.
• Sustainable Broadcasting: Waste should be below the assimilative capacity of the medium, e.g., water with self-purification capacity.
• Sustainable Integration: Cities should not exceed the capacity of the land.
• Sustainable Technology Selection: Use more efficient technologies, i.e., more efficient bulbs.
• Caution: Use a development path that does not exceed the limits of ecosystems.

Water Resources

70% of the Earth is water; most of it is saltwater. Water is a renewable but limited and sometimes scarce resource.

Water uses:

• Agriculture: 70%
• Industry: 22%
• Urban: 8%

Overexploitation of water: Water is obtained from rivers, springs, lakes, and groundwater. The exploitation of water extracted from aquifers faster than their regeneration ability is a concern.

Water needs management or planning using the principles of sustainable development.

Measures:

• Savings: Reduce consumption by improving farm irrigation systems.
• Industrial consumption: Using technologies that consume less water, recycling.
• Urban consumption: Using low-power devices, reusing domestic water, or educating citizens.
• Techniques: Construction of dams, performing transfers, desalination of seawater, or artificial rain.
• Politics: Holding summits and assemblies, such as the one held in Dublin in 1992, establishing water as a limited and vulnerable resource.

Agricultural Resources

Humans were engaged in subsistence agriculture, but from 1950, intensive agriculture was introduced: it was the green revolution (herbicides, fertilizers, GMOs, machinery).

Environmental issues: For example, artificial irrigation, massive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and genetic engineering of seeds.

Ecological Agriculture

Biological or ecological agriculture: It is a farming system based on the utilization of natural resources for organic food, while soil fertility is conserved and the environment is respected.

Examples

Hazards: Earthquakes, volcanoes.

Resources: Timber, minerals, water, plants, animals.

Impacts: Deforestation, drought, oil spills.

Biodiversity and Soil

Biodiversity is the variability of organisms and ecosystems of a given area or the whole Earth.

Soil: Is the thin covering of earth, composed of a mixture of minerals, organic matter, living beings, air, and water, that supports the growth of plants.