PDS AP Environmental Science 8th Period 2010-11

If you missed today, we discussed the “next” industrial revolution. Did you know it was underway? The last industrial revolution gave us the linear material flow economy we diagrammed this week. While recycling programs do reduce some waste disposal and some extraction, they focus on the “downstream” end of that flow. Today, we learned of [...]

So, this is a nice 3 minute video by National Geographic that ties together ideas from Unit 6 and 7.  Lots  of humans on the this planet, and they are migrating to urban areas… Are you worried?

Since many of you enjoyed seeing Hans Rosling’s first TEDTalk, I thought you might enjoy seeing his most recent.  This one was given on 10/7/2010 and is called “The Good News of the Decade” and is about the battle against child mortality…and using averages when discussing Africa.

*Note: We only got to spend a few minutes discussing this topic the last day before exams, so I am including this nice post by IanN from last year. There are two “Human Population Problems” that we discussed in class: The Annual Growth Rate (AGR) of a population is too high, leading to problems with overpopulation. The AGR [...]

If you enjoyed the TEDTalk by Hans Rosling, I wanted give a chance to learn more about his work. First, here is yesterday’s video if you want to watch it again: Second, if any of you are interested in more about the stats in the presentation go to Dr. Rosling’s web site: http://www.gapminder.org/ Explore the [...]

Today in class we talked about the Demographic transition. We used this model to discuss how countries change over time to fit our four stages. The four stages were: Pre-Industrial: Countries without industry. Usually don’t have a centralized gov’t system (usually tribal). We didn’t find many (if any) countries that fit this stage. Transitional: These [...]

These are the notes on the different factors which can be responsible for raising or lowering the birth and death rate of a nation. If you have any questions regarding what is here, let me know! Rate of Natural Increase = CBR – CDR/10 = AGR % (ignoring migration) CBR/TFR/RF = Birth Factors: Infant mortality [...]

In class on Friday we began discussing human population. We started by watching this video that illustrated the human population growth since the beginning of recorded history: We just finished studying population ecology, how populations grow, and how they impact the environment and now we are moving into the human population and how it is [...]