Dialogue Assignment

Later that evening back at the TreeHouse, Alessandro walked over towards Judy and Carmela who were sitting in the corner by the lamp with the new CFL bulb in it. Alessandro told his friends that he had done some research and is now certain the CFL bulb was the best choice for the environment. “How so?” exclaimed Carmela, “It’ll just leak toxic mercury into the environment if someone doesn’t dispose of it properly. We’re just putting the health of our planet at risk.”

“I understand your concern,” said Alessandro, “but I came across some startling information! Did you know that incandescents actually release mercury into the environment too? In fact, 100W incandescent bulbs, some of the most common, release approximately sixteen milligrams of mercury into the environment over the course of their lifespan. Incandescents require more energy than CFLs and therefore power plants need to produce more energy, so more fossil fuels are burned and more mercury is released. This is compared to 23W CFLs, some of the most common fluorescent bulbs, that only release eight milligrams of mercury into the environment over their lifespan.”

“Interesting,” Carmela explained, “I didn’t know that? I guess incandescents harm the environment even more than CFLs. But what about if someone drops a CFL bulb in their home? Wouldn’t that harm them? People could get hurt. Incandescents don’t contain any mercury.”

“Very true,” said Alessandro, “But if we’re extra careful with them, CFLs are the better choice for the environment. We’ll work hard to make sure this one gets recycled after it dies out, but even if it’s not, it will still release less mercury into the environment than an incandescent.”

“That’s a good point,” said Carmela, “we’ll just have to be extra careful with them.”

Before Carmela could finish her thought, Judy interjected, “Wow, Alessandro! I didn’t know that either! Good to know. But don’t CFLs have a shorter lifespan when you turn them on and off frequently? Won’t we just have to buy them more often? And they’re more expensive than incandescents - this TreeHouse is on a budget.”

“I completely understand your concern, Judy,” said Alessandro, “but I’ve also come across research that tested the lifespan of CFLs when used with shorter operation cycle times. The study started with three hour cycles being the cycle time that gives the bulbs the longest lifespan. When the average cycle time was reduced from three hours to one hour, the fluorescent bulb lasted eighty-percent of its projected lifespan. When the average cycle was reduced to fifteen minutes, the bulb lasted only thirty percent of its projected lifespan. When the average cycle was reduced to five minutes, the bulb only lasted fifteen percent of its project lifespan.”

Judy exclaimed, “See?! I told you incandescents were the better choice for our budget. If we keep buying these things for the TreeHouse, we’ll just blow through all of our money. Is it really worth it?”

“It depends,” said Alessandro, “If everyone in the TreeHouse can agree to only turn the lights on when they absolutely need to and not only for a few minutes here and there, the CFLs are the better choice for our wallets and the environment. If used correctly, CFLs can last ten times longer than incandescent bulbs.”

“But what if people are irresponsible with turning the lights on and off ? Not everyone is as careful as the three of us you know? We’d need to buy new CFL bulbs just as often as we already need to with the incandescents, and incandescents are much less expensive,” explained Judy.

“That’s an excellent point,” said Alessandro, “But CFLs require four times less energy than incandescents. Even if people in the TreeHouse lessen the lifespan of the CFL, the amount of energy we will save on our electric bill will greatly outweigh the cost of the bulbs.”

“Good point,” said Judy, “I didn’t really think about that.”

“Wow,” Carmela exclaimed, “You really did your research, Alessandro! I’m impressed. I think CFLs are the winner here - hands down. We just need to be extra careful so they don’t break and leak mercury in the TreeHouse. We should also make posters for around campus instructing people to recycle their CFLs instead of just throwing them away.”

“I agree,” said Judy, “CFLs are the best pick after all! If we can use them responsibly, this TreeHouse will be in great shape.”

“I’m glad we can all agree,” said Alessandro, “Now let’s go eat some bagels!”

Information Source: Ramroth, Laurie. "Comparison of Life-Cycle Analyses of Compact Fluorescent and Incandescent Lamps Based on Rated Life of Compact Fluorescent Lamp." Rocky Mountain Institute. Feb. 2008. Web. 

Story Line Modeled After: Boose, David L. "A Green Light for CFLs?" Gonzaga University. Biology Department. Print. 

Image: http://hhomedesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Designer-Treehouses.jpg

World Population Video Reflection

Over the past two days in Honors Environmental Science, we watched a PBS documentary on world population and the changes it currently undergoes. This documentary was nothing short of eye-opening; I was shocked to discover just how fast the world population is increasing. I was also amazed by the fact that birthrates in developed countries are dropping and population sizes are decreasing dramatically. It is projected that Europe’s population will drop by approximately sixty percent over the next fifty years and Russia’s population by twenty percent. In addition, Japan is experiencing a crisis; there are a large amount of elderly citizens and smaller amount of younger citizens. This is due in part by women not wanting to get married as early in life, to pursue their careers further, not wanting as many children, or not wanting children at all. One scene in the documentary was of a boy in the fifth grade who lived in a rural village; the video went on the explain how the boy was the only one in his class due to the decrease in younger populations and that this was becoming the norm across Japan. Another thing that surprised me was that the United States is the only developed country with a growing population, but this is only due to the million immigrants we take in annually.

To the contrary, developing countries are experiencing massive population growth. India, for example, is split demographically; the northern portion of the country is more impoverished and overcrowded while the southern portion is less crowded with a more educated population. In northern India, the increase of population size leading to water and food shortages. Something else I found interested is that half of the country is below the age of twenty-five. In addition, Kenya and other countries in sub-saharan Africa are also experiencing massive population growth and it is leading to the same types of issues as in India. What's Interesting about Kenya is that the HIV / AIDS epidemic is causing lots of younger people to die at an earlier age. Despite this tragic outcome, the population is still growing significantly. Overall, I really enjoyed this documentary. I found it to be very informative and it made me aware of issues I was previously unaware of.

A Look Back

Looking back on the Winter Trimester thus far, we have covered a lot of material in Honors Environmental Science. With almost every topic we cover, a blog post is soon to follow. This blog represents my progress in the class; it is a way to track just how much I have learned and how well I understand the material covered. After all, the best way to know if you understand something is to teach it to others.

Without a doubt, the blog post I deem to be my best is my “r Selection, K Selection, and Survivorship Curves” post. In this post, I felt I did an excellent job describing the in-class activity and what it meant to me. Not only was I able to describe what we did in class, but why it mattered as well. I believe I did this well in my other posts too, but I feel as if I mastered it in this one. I was clear and concise, yet I did not leave out any important information or explanations. In addition, I added several meaningful and effective visual aids to break away from one giant wall of text. The pictures I chose serve as a supplement to the material I discussed in the post. Together, my concise yet effective wording combined with my meaningful choice of pictures made this blog post one of my best works thus far.

The one blog post that needs improvement is my “Human Survivorship Changes” lab. I do not believe it is the content that needs improving here - I think I was able to capture the importance of the lab in my analysis. Instead, it’s the visual aids I used as supplements. I didn’t quite realize what I did until meeting with my teacher in the following class. He explained how my post was good by all means, but that it could be better. He pointed out the screenshots of the data and graphs I made and went on to explain how they were good, but could be even more meaningful. I could enlarge the images, make comparison graphs of the data, and a few other tweaks to make the post its absolute best. I completely agree with him; the data is there, it can just be presented in a more effective, more meaningful way. I will most certainly be making adjustments to that post in the near future.

Overall, this class has been super great. I look forward to see what comes out of the remainder of the year. If it's anything like the first half, I know it'll be equally as amazing.

Human Survivorship Changes Lab

This past week was quite exciting in the big wide world of Honors Environmental Science. We began studying population and population changes. More specifically, we took an in-depth look into human survivorship curves. We most certainly hit the ground running as we completed the “Human Survivorship Changes” lab. The lab required us to break off into small groups and head over to a local graveyard. We were then to collect the ages of one-hundred people: twenty-five men who died before 1900, twenty-five women who died before 1900, twenty-five men who died after 2000, and twenty-five women who died after 2000. After roughly forty minutes of data collection, all of the groups met up and headed back to campus. The following day, we compared our data sets, filled in any missing data, and input said data into a Google Sheets document. We then input a column indicating age at the far left of the document and four additional columns to record the number of people alive at each age for each of the four data sets. We then used the “age” and “number of people alive” columns to make a line chart. With some slight tweaking, we made these line charts into human survivorship curves. All of our data and survivorship curves can be seen below:

People who died before 1900:

People who died after 2000:

Survivorship Curves:

Comparison Survivorship Curves:

The survivorship curves I created from my data sets seem to be accurate given the number of ages of death I collected. The more data someone collects - the more accurate their survivorship curve will be. While my data set is on the smaller side, I believe it gives a fair representation of the survivorship curves of men and women during the two time periods. In all four charts, the survivorship curve doesn’t start to decrease until the age reaches a higher number. In the survivorship curves of people who died after 2000, the curves do not start to decrease until an even higher age than those who died prior to 1900. This could be due to a multitude of reasons: advanced medicine, less of a need for hard labor, etc. Overall, I found this lab to be fascinating and I really enjoyed being able to collect my own data. It gave the entire class a glance into scientific research.

r Selection, K Selection, and Survivorship Curves

Today in Honors Environmental Science, we learned about population. We started out by going over the ideal ways to increase population size of any given species. We concluded that such species would need to be quick to mature sexually, produce lots of offspring, have shorter gestation periods, and reproduce multiple times throughout their lives.

We then moved into the two types of strategists: r-strategists and K-strategists. r-Strategists are species that live in unstable environments with a significant growth rate among younger organisms. r-Strategists are small organisms, produce lots of offspring, mature early, have short life expectancies, and reproduce more than once during their lives. Common examples are mice or other rodents and insects. K-Strategists, on the other hand, are species that live in stable environments and typically have greater carrying capacity. K-Strategists are larger organisms, produce fewer offspring, are late to maturity, require prolonged parental care, have longer life expectancies, and can also reproduce more than once. Some common examples are humans and elephants. 

Following this, we learned about the three different types of survivorship curves: Type I, Type II, and Type III. The Type I Survivorship Curve represents K-Strategists and reflects a high, stable number of surviving individuals though younger ages and then starts to decrease as the ages of individuals reach significantly higher numbers. The Type III Survivorship Curve represents r-Strategists and reflect a high number of surviving individual at a young age, but very quickly decreases as the age of individuals increases. The Type II Survivorship Curve lies between Type I and Type III making a gradual decline from a high point at a young age to a low point at an older age. Examples of the three can be seen below: 

Towards the end of class, we broke off into groups and completed the “Household Pets and Pests” activity. This required each group to come up of a list of common household pets followed by a list of common household pests. We were then to describe what makes each species attractive to own as a pet or unattractive to experience as a pest. Some common examples for pets were dogs, cats, fish, birds, snakes, rabbits, etc. while some common examples of pests were flies, spiders, cockroaches, mice, ants, stinkbugs, etc. Common themes were that pets were playful, interesting, and enjoyable to be around while pests were a nuisance, annoying, and not enjoyable to be around. After compiling our list, we determined that pets were most likely K-strategists while pests were most likely r-strategists. We also concluded that this was not definite, meaning that not all pets strictly adhere to the K-strategist model and vice versa and that pets, who are mostly K-strategists, accompany humans, who are also K-strategists, while pests, who are mostly r-strategists, serve as a nuisance to humans, who are oppositely K-strategists.

Image Sources:

Image 1: http://www.wildaid.org/sites/default/files/photos/elephants_Peter%20Knights.JPG

Image 2: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Survivorship_Curves.jpg/400px-Survivorship_Curves.jpg

Image 3: https://www.petfinder.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dog-how-to-select-your-new-best-friend-thinkstock99062463.jpg

Forest Succession Lab

Over the past few days, we’ve been learning about ecological succession in Honors Environmental Science. Ecological succession is the process when one natural community changes into another over a period of time, typically measured in years or centuries. There are two types of ecological succession: primary and secondary. Primary succession is when species colonize an ecosystem for the first time. Secondary succession is when species re-enter an ecosystem after a catastrophic event such as a wildfire. In order to better understand this process, we completed the “Investigating Forest Succession” lab to see exactly how ecological succession takes place.

The “Investigating Forest Succession” lab instructed our group to study an area of a forest that was fifteen feet wide and two-hundred feet long. We were then to record each tree found, their species, and which stage they were in their life: sapling, young, adult, mature, old, or over-mature. Due to the fact that we became short on time, we used data previously collected from a forest plot in New Jersey with the same requirements we needed to further complete this lab. After reviewing the data, my group and I had to input it into a Google Sheets document. We then used Google Sheets to calculate the total tree density, the density of each species, and the percentage of each species at each age. Following this, we made graphs to better display the data. All of our data is shown below: 

Our data shows that the forest is going through a substantial change due to succession. Since we were unable to survey the area directly due to time constraints, we are unsure as to why the forest is going through succession; some possibilities include forest fires or other types of natural disasters. My group is quite confident in our data given it was collected by professionals in the field and we were very careful when making our calculations. Through our data, we were able to conclude that trees such as Sweet Gum and Chestnut Oak have lived on this plot of land for an extended period of time given the high number of mature and overmature trees. Likewise, we were able to conclude that trees such as American Beech, Sugar Maple, and Red Maple are slowly making their way onto this plot of land given the high number of samplings and young trees. Our data suggests that high concentrations of trees such as Sweet Gum and Chestnut Oak inhabited this plot centuries ago. Our data also leads us to believe that high concentrations of trees such as American Beech, Sugar Maple, and Red Maple will inhabit this plot in the future.