week6-assessment-feedback.html

Week 6 Assessment Feedback

1 through 4 were autograded

Q1 - from the class notes

Q2 - hardly anyone missed this

Q3 - The design revolution by Polack works on scale appropriate (i.e. human or community scale) solutions that can involve funding from corporations, help people earn more money and support designs that can be used by 90% of the population in developing nations. Many governments are only able to provide single solutions that have to work for the whole country - i.e. large scale and universal solutions.

Q4 - The canals that were mentioned in the video were recent attempts by governments to ship water across areas of India. The video focused on elaborate and exquisitely engineered mechanism to collect meager rainfall and store it for use later.

Q5 (2 points) - Describe how watershed restoration can actually increase the availability of water. What are some of the values of this environmental restoration to the community?

the best answer should have had:

• a positive feedback effect from the reforestation of a watershed - i.e. leading to "more" water than would just be expected from precipitation
  • another good answer was that the restoration leads to cleaner water that is free of diseases, that's another aspect of availability
• the values of this are (besides water availability of course): health, time for other productive activities, community organization around solid environmental stewardship, food security because there are more and varied crops

to say that more water is valuable because there is more water is missing the point of the question and efforts

 

Q6 (3 points) -Explain how different parameters for an LCA for diapers can lead to very different outcomes. Give several key facts that come from this LCA. What environmental decision could be made based on this accounting approach?

the best answer should have had:

• several parameters to be considered (total water, waste diapers, source of water, impact on land, etc)
• some details (liters of water per 6 months of diapering)
• a specific decision that could be made, not just a general judgement that less water use is better
  • This is the crux of the question. An accounting approach should be used to collect information that will support a specific type of question. The point isn't to just add up how much water was used, but to be able to make a decision.
  • You must have all heard the joke about the environmentalist, when asked what is best, he always says "it depends". This is sort of a double joke here -- ha ha. But the point is if you tell me what information will require then I can make a decision assuming X, Y and Z.