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Environmental Sustainability
Specifically, environmental sustainability refers to humans living on Earth and utilizing our natural resources in a way to ensure they are available for future generations. The factors that are important to sustainability are biological diversity, human population levels, resource consumption, CO2, CH4 and other greenhouse gas concentrations, and food production.
Sustainable Yield
An important concept related to food production is a sustainable yield. Sustainable yield is the amount of food that can be harvested without decreasing the food supply. This concept applies to timber harvesting, freshwater, fish populations as well as all crops.
Areas that have historically not been able to manage a sustainable yield are resources that are considered a commons. Fishers worldwide are being fished at a rate faster than they can reproduce causing their populations to crash. This crash often results in one of two outcomes, extinction of the species or a regulation that stops harvesting. Either option results in humans losing access to that resource. If the fishers are managed at a sustainable yield then they should be able to have a consistent population and be able to provide that resource to humans.
🎥 Watch: AP Environmental Science - Sustainability
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Required Environmental Legislation
- Why Do I Need to Know These?
- What Are The Required Pieces of Legislation?
- Laws Involving the Disposal of Hazardous Wastes
- RCRA: Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
- CERCLA: Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
- Air & Water Protection
- Clean Air Act
- Clean Water Act
- Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
- Biodiversity Protection
- CITES: Convention on Int’l Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna & Flora
- Endangered Species Act
- Commonly Confused International Protocols
- Montreal Protocol
- Kyoto Protocol
- Carcinogens
- Delaney Clause Of Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
Major Environmental Disasters
- Why Do I Need to Know These?
- What Are These Major Environmental Disasters?
- Unit 6 - Energy Resources - Disasters
- Chernobyl, Ukraine
- Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania
- Fukushima Daiichi Reactor, Japan
- Exxon Valdez, Alaska
- Unit 7 - Air Pollution - Disasters
- Great Smog, London
- Unit 8 - Aquatic/Terrestrial Pollution, Waste, and Toxicity - Disasters
- Bhopal, India
- Love Canal, New York
- Minamata Bay, Japan
- Unit 9 - Global Change - Disasters
- Great Barrier Coral Reef Bleaching, Australia, Pacific Ocean
✍️ Free Response Questions (FRQs)
🏜 Unit 1: The Living World: Ecosystems
🐠 Unit 2: The Living World: Biodiversity
👪 Unit 3: Populations
3.0Unit 3 Overview: Populations
- ⚡ Key Terms
- 3.1 Generalist and Specialist Species
- 3.2 K Selected and r selected species
- 3.3 Survivorship curves
- 3.4 Carrying Capacity
- 3.5 Population Growth and Resource Availability
- 3.6 Age Structure Diagrams
- 3.7 Total fertility rate
- 3.8 Human Population Dynamics
- 3.9 Demographic Transition
- ⚡ Quick Study - Key Terms
🌏 Unit 4: Earth Systems and Resources
🏖 Unit 5: Land and Water Use
⚡️ Unit 6: Energy Resources and Consumption
💨 Unit 7: Atmospheric Pollution
♻️ Unit 8: Aquatic and Terrestrial Pollution
🔥 Unit 9: Global Change
🧐 Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
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