Environmental Studies VEN100

Understand environmental principles and issues. An excellent introduction to environmental studies providing a broad based grounding in environmental and conservation issues, and a foundation course for higher learning. Course Structure There are six lessons in this course as follows:

1. Living Things
   • Classification of plants and animals
   • identifying living organisms
   • using identification keys
2. Basic Ecology
   • Populations
   • communities
   • ecosystems
   • constituents of ecosystem
   • the ecosphere
   • the web of life
   • habitats and niches
   • humans in the environment.
3. Global Environmental Systems
   • The Earths structure
   • the atmosphere
   • climatic systems
   • Gaia theory
   • the carbon dioxide cycle
   • El Nino.
4. Environmental Problems
   • Deforestation
   • loss of agricultural land
   • loss of biological diversity
   • loss of water
   • loss of non renewable resources
   • environmental weeds
   • the Greenhouse Effect
   • Ozone depletion
   • ozone as a Greenhouse gas
5. Conservation
   • The definition and goals of conservation
   • the history of conservation
   • natural resources (renewable and non renewable).
6. Acting Locally: Thinking Globally
   • Humans and water
   • how to minimize water usage
   • energy use in the home
   • reducing household waste
   • domestic transport and its affect on pollution
   • building materials and their environmental impact.

Aims

• To understand the binomial system of classifying living things
• To understand the use of keys to identify living things
• To grasp the basics of ecology (the relationships between living organisms and their environment)
• To have a basic grounding in Earth Science and an understanding of global environmental systems
• To understand the Earth\'s major environmental problems and how they have come about
• To gain an understanding of conservation and its importance to individuals and the world
• To learn a range of ways to reduce the environmental impact of ones\' actions at home and globally

What you will do in the Course:

• Classify a range of living organisms in your locality
• Identify the genus and species names of plants in a nursery
• Compose a food web for your local area
• Carry out basic research into the weather in your area and what affects it
• Carry out in depth research into at least one major environmental problem
• Contact three conservation organisations to determine the issues they deal with
• Survey a building to determine the types of building materials used
• Design an environmentally friendly house

Example from Course Notes:

What Can Humans Do to Reduce Water Use?

This course is an excellent introduction to environmental studies. It will give the student a broad-based grounding in environmental and conservation issues and can serve as a course in its own right or as a platform for higher learning.

If you want to get a broad based understanding of the environment and what you can do to live in a more environmentally sensitive way; this is a great place to start.

• Reduce demand for water per person. We waste a lot of water, and even though some is recycled, some becomes polluted and cannot be used.
• Recycle waste water (bath and shower) for use in the garden.
• Select plants suited to the local environment for use in the garden so that garden watering is minimised.
• Mulch plants.
• Collect rainwater (e.g. tanks).
• Reduce pollution - through better industrial processes and waste water treatment, and through tighter anti-pollution laws.
• Desalination - this can create it\'s own problems due to the energy consumption required to run the desalination plants.
• Build more dams - this has major effects on the environment.
• Water diversion works - this also has major environmental consequences.
• Towing icebergs from Antarctica - not yet an economically feasible idea.
• Cloud seeding to cause more rain in needy areas.
• Reducing evaporation from water storages and channels through the use of covers, or anti-evaporative substances.
• Encourage people to live where water supplies are better.