CHAPTER 1 Environmental Science and Sustainability: What’s the Big Idea? Chapter 1 Outline 1.1 What Is the Environment, and What Is an Ecosystem? 1.2 What Is Sustainability? 1.3 What Is Environmental Justice? 1.4 What Is Science? 1.5 What Are Challenges to Good Science? 1.6 What Shapes Our Decisions on the Environment? Chapter Objectives: This chapter will help you… • describe the range of ways in which humans affect the environment. • summarize how the scientific method works. • describe the various methods of observation and testing involved in scientific inquiry. • identify ways in which values influence our individual and collective responses to environmental issues. 1.1 What Is the Environment, and What Is an Ecosystem? (1 of 2) • Environment is a collection of systems including all living and nonliving things on Earth that sustain all life. • A system is made up of interacting components that produce patterns of behavior over time, like a household. • A car is made up of many components. Each by itself will not get you from one place to another • Only when all parts put together you can use the car to get around • This is called an emergent property of the whole system. • The environment is made up of many natural systems called ecosystems, like a coral reef. • A coral reef is an ecosystem made up of marine organisms and nonliving factors like sunlight and minerals. • The root of the prefix eco- in the words ecosystem, ecology, and economics is the Greek word oikos, which means household

Environmental Science - What’s the Big Idea

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