WEEK 5 |
60 minutes - Lecture 5
20 minutes - comments and questions on the quiz
name it and claim it
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1. Lecture slides and notes:
Themes for today
Water availability depends on amount and quality.
Water availability varies by region.
Agriculture is the biggest direct water user in the US and world.
Dealing with water issues is complicated by different views on whether water is a right or a commodity.
Factoid: It is technically feasible to meet all of our energy demand (for the USA) by installing enough solar panels - but there are regions of the USA that are already operating at a water deficit.
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Overview for week 5 and 6 on water
- Week 5
- water as a renewable (regenerated) resource
- hydrologic cycle
- water shortages
- water pollution as a form of loss
- direct water use
- right vs economic commodity
- Week 6
- water use inventory
- direct water flow
- embedded water in products or processes
- large water projects
- water projects using ecosystem restoration
- appropriate scale technologies
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Water as a renewable resource and the hydrologic cycle
hydrologic cycle
- very ammenable to a "systems view"
- reservoirs
- forms of water - but still water
- amount
- processes
- lack of water flow from precipitation - drought
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Regions of water shortage
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Freshwater
total availability by country
water stress - % of available water withdrawn
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Water pollution and degradation as a loss
- major human impact is to loose natural capital from degradation
- forms of pollution
- estimates of total amount lost -
- examples
- South Africa double-bind
- ground water polluted from industrial
- surface water from agriculture - toxic cyanobacteria
- impacts of water pollution
- China - 40% with liver disorders - link
- USA - link to Parkinsons -link2 - map
- Vermont - link to ALS - link
- Review: water amounts and pollution as a major loss
recent article in the NYT
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Water requirements for human health and agriculture
- Human health
- just to survive for drinking = 3 liters/(person*day)
- for hygeine and sanitation = 50 liters
- in 2000, 55 countries below this level
- ref
- Agriculture
- water efficiency for different crops
- water used for an amount of crop production
- kg crop/m3 of water
- depends on many variables such as humidity, crop type, wind
- track water flows - figure 9
- example numbers
- desert 0.4 g per kg (0.4 grams of plant per kg of water)
- short grass prarie = 1.1
- forests 1 to 1.8
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Is clean water a right?
different points of view:
Wetzel 2001 (limnologist) - clean water is not a "right", it is rather our "responsibility" to look after the environment to maintain clean water
stress on human population - goes from desease, economy, food, energy and predicts that after 2000 it will be water will be the most severe stress
Amartya Sen :
- deprivation in human capabilities defines poverty
- such as a lack of access to water and services
- freedom from these deprivations is the value that should be counted
- link
As we saw last week, cleaning up polluted water doesn't count in the GPI.
What are our rights to clean water?
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2. In-class assessment:
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3. Reading in the text - "Multiple Perspectives and Approaches to Complex Environmental Problems"
We will be referring back to both Systems and Accounting
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4. Readings from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia of Earth:
EofE - hydrologic cycle
EofE - water use
wiki- water pollution
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5. On-line activities:
Video:
Wangari Maathai - trees and water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzikL5MJWCg&feature=related
the real cosst of pollution (air and water)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/08/26/world/asia/choking_on_growth.html#story3
Simulations:
none this week
Case study / Example:
drought in Africa - http://www.eenews.net/special_reports/kenya/part_one
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6. Learning objectives:
week 5 learning objectives
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7. Do the on-line assignment:
go to D2L
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8. Quiz feedback
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