Unnatural Kingdom
The New York Times article "The Unnatural Kingdom" by Daniel Duane goes into great detail about the ways that humans have used technology to help save endangeres species. The startegies for increasing the population of endangered species include a lot of trapping and relocating, but the main tactics include predation prevention and animal relocation.
Within predation prevention, scientists use several mediums of technology to watch over endangered species in the wild to see just how much the species is killed due to the natural habits of predators that prey on a species. If a predator is killing off too many members of a species, humans will hunt and kill some of the predators to lessen this threat to the endangered species.
Animal relocation includes the movement of some animals within an endangered species to a different area in which they will be predicted to thrive in. In the article, an example of this inlcudes the harsh reloaction of 5 pregnant female sheep to an area with a low population of sheep. The female sheep were captured from their native home in nets and transported by hanging from a helicopter to a whole new environment, in which they gave birth in, adding to the threatened population.
In my opinion humans just need to stop messing with the natural world- I think these methods of saving endangered species originate clearly from guilt, and selfishness. If the bears in Italy didn't start to eat farm chickens, tear up commercial beehives, and intervene with humans, the introduction of collars and sensors would not be made.  But since I have to pick which method I think has a greater chance of success, I would say animal relocation. I say this because within predation prevention, the only threat against endangered species that is payed atention to is predators, but really there are other factors that decrease a population such as disease and habitat destruction. Plus predation prevention is just purely hypocritical; how does it make sense to kill off members of a species in order to save another one? Especially when the predatorial species isnt neccesarily doing anything wrong...since when is it so bad to eat your favorite food? In the case that population numbers of an endangered species are steadily dropping because they are all being eaten by a more fit species, use animal relocation! Provide a better suited envirnoment for an endangered species to thrive in.
Restored populations of big horn sheep will have less genetic diversity than they did 200 years ago because the present population of sheep have been made by the same small species of sheep, creating a low gene pool.
The restored populations should still be considered wild because they aren't domesticated, and they still live in the wild.

Public health summary:

Industrial Food Animal Production facilities are a major contribution to the lack of public health. Facilities can be harmful to surrounding areas because of the high water and air pollution, which are also factors of the spread of disease. Not disposing of waste properly will result in the contamination of nearby bodies of water, which will affect the health of people near and far of the facilities.

Enormous Yeilds: The development of farm machines such as mechanical planters, cutters, poultry incubators, and manure spreaders led to huge spikes in production and distribution.
Agriculture In The 20th Century: The Green Revolution increased agricultural productivity and scientists behind the revolution created chemical fertilizers and pesticides, that would later prove to have negative environmental impacts.
The Animal Production Farm as Factory: Innovation in technology and the easy availability of grain and efficient transportation led to the increase in animal production, which raised the number of livestock in high concentrations greatly. Breeders had to keep up with the growing rate of sales so the usage of specially formulated seeds that have synthetic compounds helped to sustain the intensive animal production.

Solution: Go vegetarian!!

 

Tar sands EROI

1. We should use tar sands first because they have a higher EROI
2. A similarity between the two processes is that both need to be heated in order to retrieve oil
3.  A major difference is that you get more oil from tar sands; natural gas is a big emission caused by extracting oil from oil shale
4. Offshore drilling will be smarter in the long run to reduce green house gas emissions because there is a higher EROI, this means we can produce more oil without using a lot of oil and/or energy to extract it
5. When doing homework, I always do the easiest assignments first because it takes the least amount of effort and most of the time I just don't want to dig into the hard stuff right away; I do the easiest things after school so I like to spare my brain to do the easy things first

Haber Process

Fritz Haber created a brilliant plan known as the Haber-Bosch Process. This includes “proving that ammonia could indeed be cooked up in the laboratory, using hydrogen and ordinary nitrogen gas,” as stated in Head Count by Elizabeth Kolbert. Nitrogen is vital to life, but plants can only use fixed nitrogen and the lack of fixed nitrogen is often the limiting factor in an ecosystem. The ability to fix nitrogen ourselves seemed to be a perfect solution. Nitrogen is the most common element in the earth’s atmosphere—nearly four times more plentiful than oxygen and more than eighty times more plentiful than argon, therefore this process has succeeded to provide 90% of the world’s food. Haber had, as quoted in the article “figured out how to turn air into bread.” The article states that in 85 years the population will grow to an unsupportable amount of 11 billion, and total fertility rates range from .79 in developed countries to 7 in struggling countries. I think that if people are so concerned about the uncontrollable growth worldwide, we should minimize the usefulness of the Haber Process to create food for countries like Mali and Somalia, who have the highest fertility rates, and maybe reaching Weisman’s goal of bringing down the world’s population to two billion within two or three generations. Keeping the HBP in struggling countries, to decrease environmental concerns might result in the global T.F.R. of about one, which will obviously help the boom of population. I believe the creation of the Haber Process can provide lots of positive outcomes if used cautiously.

Seneca Lake Research Plan

Research Question: How does the water quality of Seneca Lake affect the conditions of plants/animals living in the lake?

Variables:

• Controlled- amount of water being tested, what part of the lake we test from, what day we go on
• Independent- depths of the three locations
• Other- the amount of dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH, temperature

There are many factors that are crucial to the success of aquatic ecosystems such as the levels of

dissolved oxygen and pH. A deficiency of DO is a sign of an unhealthy body of water. There are a variety of factors affecting levels of DO. The atmosphere is a major source, waves and tumbling

water mix atmospheric oxygen with lake water. Oxygen is also produced by rooted aquatic plants and

algae as a product of photosynthesis. The pH of river water is the measure of how acidic or basic the water is on a scale of 0-14. It is a measure of hydrogen ion concentration. According to the Water Research Center, the generally accepted minimum amount of DO that will support a large population of various fishes is from 4 to 5 mg/l. When the DO drops below 3 mg/l, even the hardy fish die. Species that cannot tolerate low levels of DO - mayfly nymphs, stonefly nymphs, and beetle larvae - will be replaced by a few kinds of pollution-tolerant organisms, such as worms and fly larvae. The Science of Seneca manual says that a pH of less than 5 or higher than 8.5 is bad for plant life. Low pH is especially harmful to immature fish and insects. According to Lenntech, water with a pH of about 9.6 will cause the gills and eyes of fish to be damaged.

Hypothesis: I think the water quality, DO and pH levels of Seneca Lake will be within a healthy level in order to maintain animal and plant life.

Procedure:

• Collect an equal water sample from 3 of our locations
• test for DO by adding 8 drops of the manganese(II) sulfrate solution (bottle 4167) followed by 8 drops of the alkaline potassium iodize azide solution (bottle 7166) to the LaMotte sample bottle
• mix it all up and wait 3-4 minutes to allow the orange/brown precipitate to settle
• add one level of sulfamic acid (bottle 6286) to the solution you made above
• shake until all crystals have dissolved
• pour this new solution from the LaMotte bottle into the titration tube up to 20ml
• fill the Direct Reading Titrator (0337) up to the 0 mark with the sodium thiosulfate solution
• put the titrator through the hole in the cap of the titration tube and stir in one drop of titrant until the bluish color is gone.
• dump everything left over into a labeled waste container and clean with distilled water.

Data: The three different sites we used for sampling were at locations of 42˙50’N 76˙58’W, 42˙50’N 76˙57’ and 42˙50’N 76˙58’. The weather was on average, about 54 degrees and mostly cloudy. It was moderately windy, and the water was calm for the most part. My group’s dredge sample was taken at a water depth of 8 meters. The character of the surface was soupy,  there was no acid reaction and no smell. We found several clumps of about 10-20 mussels each, scattered throughout the middle and edge of the sample. The mussels were mostly clams of light color, such as light browns and greys. The dredge sample had 2 or 3 layers of sediments/clay ranging in color from light to dark. After we evaluated the sediment dredge, we analyzed the particle sizes. We also collected plankton, in which my group specifically found 2 Anabaena, 6 Copepod, 1 Rotifer, and 3 Bosmina at a depth of 38.9m.

Results:

Particle Size Analysis

Sieve Mesh Size	Volume Retained	% of total volume retained
14	80ml	20
24	3-5ml	1
42	220ml	55
80	20ml	5
175	20ml	5

Chemical Results Sample 1 Am and Pm

Am		Pm
Latitude	42˙49.9’ N	Latitude	42˙49’N
Longitude	76˙59.9’ W	Longitude	76˙57’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	7˙C
Depth	38.9m	Depth	54m
pH	7.3	pH	7.4
Chloride	200ppm	Chloride	180ppm
D.O	30ppm	D.O	10.4ppm
DTB	46.6	DTB	62.6

Chemical Results Sample 2 Am and Pm

Am		Pm
Lat.	42˙51’N	Lat.	42˙84’W
Long.	76˙58’W	Long.	76˙52’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	14˙C
Depth	10m	Depth	10m
pH	7.4	pH	7.4
Chloride	300ppm	Chloride	143ppm
D.O	6ppm	D.O	10ppm
DTB	22.7m	DTB	22.3m

Chemical Results Sample 3 Am and Pm

Am
Lat.	42˙52’N	Lat.	42˙55’N
Long.	76˙57’W	Long.	76˙56’W
Sample Temp	13˙C	Sample Temp	13˙C
Depth	Surface	Depth	Surface
pH	7.5	pH	7.3
Chloride	200ppm	Chloride	140ppm
D.O	10ppm	D.O	10ppm
DTB	8m	DTB	7.5m

Frequency of Phytoplankton

Sample	Total Species	Frequency of Species	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
1Am	9		2	2	2	3
2Am	15		2	2	1	7	2	1
3Am	9		1	1	3	1	1	2
1Pm	21		1	1	1	16	2
2Pm	17		1	1	1	2	5	7
3Pm	19		1	7	3	1	1	6

pH Measurements:

Chloride Measurements: Units in PPM

Discussion/Evaluation: Based off the data my group collected, the pH measurement for Sample 1am was smaller than Sample 1pm, while both measurements for Sample 2am and Sample 2pm were the same. Sample 3am had the biggest measurement. The Chloride measurements for Samples 1am, 2am, and 3am were all larger than the pm samples.

Conclusion: Mussels live on the bottom on the lake, and the water samples were taken at heights above the bottom, so any results the mussels had on the water is not accurate. The research activities performed were kind of irrelevant to my hypothesis due to the creation of my hypothesis before I was informed of what we were actually going to measure. My hypothesis was partly answered during the Chemical Results section, but not answered enough to draw a proven conclusion. In order to fully test my hypothesis, I would have needed to find more plankton, or other animals that could indicate the quality of water. I also stated that I was going to evaluate the different types of plant life in order to determine water quality, but we did nothing with plants. Human error was another major factor in this experiment, during chemical results, many groups left the Chloride cap off for too long, or didn’t put exactly 8 drops of the required chemicals into our solutions.

 

Citations:  

• Water Quality." Water Quality. Cuyahoga River Water Quality Monitoring Program, Cleveland State University, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
• Oram, Brian, Mr. "Dissolved Oxygen in a Stream May Vary from 0 Mg/l to 18 Mg/l. Readings above 18 Mg/l Are Physically Impossible." Dissolved Oxygen in Water, Streams, Watershed. Water Research Watershed Center, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
• "Water Treatment Solutions." PH and Alkalinity. LennTech, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.