Lesson A14: Sustainable Ecosystems

Key Ideas   Unit Checklist

  Video Lesson

A sustainable ecosystem maintains itself over time. Watch this video to learn about sustainable ecosystems.

  Lesson A14: Sustainable Ecosystems


Sustainable Farming

Have you ever heard of an oyster farm? Oysters are a popular food, but taking them directly from the ocean can hurt natural oyster populations and damage the ocean ecosystem. Therefore, farming oysters makes much more sense. Oysters are filter-feeders so they do not need any feed, antibiotics, or chemicals to live. The farm does not harm the ecosystem. In fact, the oysters benefit the ecosystem because they control nutrient levels in the sea water.
Reading and Materials for This Lesson

Science in Action 7
Reading: Page 23

Materials:
No other materials are needed for this lesson.

Sustainability is the ability to endure over time. The key to sustainability is balance. Balanced, sustainable ecosystems maintain their biodiversity and their productivity. For humans interacting with ecosystems, moving toward sustainability means making decisions and taking actions that promote balance in the ecosystem.

Figure A.4.14.1 – Rice paddies in Indonesia have been feeding people for thousands of years.
Figure A.4.14.2 – Oysters are raised in farms close to shore for easy care and harvest.

Figure A.4.14.3 – Bees pollinate our crops.
Figure A.4.14.4 – Watersheds purify our drinking water.

Strong Ecosystems

Ecosystems are very productive. They continuously provide us with food, raw materials, water, minerals, medicinal ingredients, energy, and oxygen. Ecosystems regulate gases and the climate. Ecosystems decompose wastes and purify our water and air.

Ecosystems offer natural control of pests and diseases. Ecosystems provide us with recreation and discoveries of all kinds. Ecosystems feed our spirits and enrich our culture. Ecosystems provide all this and they do it over and over again. Amazing!

Our ecosystem never has to be rebooted, recharged, rebuilt, restocked, or replaced. It sustains itself through natural processes. All we have to do is live in it, respect it, and not wreck it.

Will our ecosystem always be there for us? That answer is entirely up to us.

A Sustainable Community

What is a sustainable community? A sustainable community meets people’s needs in ways that can continue forever into the future.
Figure A.4.14.5 – Forests provide us with housing, furniture, and firewood.

Figure A.4.14.6 – Imagine vegetable gardens growing where cars used to park.
A sustainable community does not use resources faster than they can be replenished. It does not produce waste faster than it can be broken down into the ecosystem.

What does a sustainable community look like? There are many ways to live sustainably, but the basic principles are the same. Some communities choose to live completely off the grid, for example. This means that no municipal electricity, natural gas, or water supply are used. Many people believe that an off-the-grid lifestyle means a sustainable lifestyle. It might be, but it might not. If a person resorts to a highly polluting gasoline-powered generator, for example. Such machines could mean an even less sustainable lifestyle. Sustainable choices must be made carefully.

Sustainability is not only about energy consumption. It is about the goods we buy and how we use them. It is about the activities in which we engage. Every aspect of our lives potentially affects our ecosystem.


Figure A.4.14.7 – Old professions can utilize new technology.
Living sustainably means making good decisions. Perhaps we power our cell phones and iPads with renewable non-polluting energy. When they no longer work, we can recycle the materials in them. We can reduce our reliance on water by conserving and recycling it. We can use “grey” water (water used to wash clothes and dishes) to water our gardens, for example. We can choose to buy biodegradable soaps and detergents. We can avoid pesticides and other chemicals when we can. We can use our cars less and take the bus, walk, and ride our bikes more. We can buy only the staples we need from the grocery store and grow as much as we can ourselves. We can choose to purchase less stuff.

Lifestyle changes such as these require time and effort, but they pay us in many ways. We are fitter, healthier, and, most importantly, we have peace of mind. We can live knowing that our great great grandchildren will enjoy all the natural resources we enjoy today.

Figure A.4.14.8 – Imagine planning all your meals around what is available locally.
Figure A.4.14.9 – Reduce, re-use, and recycle to help local ecosystems.


  Try It!


The Eco Lunch

The choice of lunch is up to you. You can reduce your ecological footprint by choosing an eco lunch.


Instructions

We can make all kinds of choices every day to live more sustainably. Think about packing a lunch, for example. Compare the two lunches in the table shown below. How are these two lunches so different? Click the hints below the image for clues.


Lots of processing means that materials and polluting energy were consumed to make and ship these items to your store. It means that garbage will be left behind when you have eaten the lunch.
Why is using roast leftovers for your lunch better than using individually packaged processed meat slices? Compare the amount of packaging per serving. Compare the amount of processing. Processed meat uses more energy to prepare, and packaging it uses more materials.
A reusable plastic container used many times uses much less energy and resources than does manufactured packaging that is thrown away each day.
Questions:

Think about the following questions very carefully. Then, type or write your answers. After you have your answers, click the questions for feedback.

Think about packaging, transport, and garbage produced. A homemade drink prepared with unpackaged, locally-grown ingredients, and stored in a reusable container requires less energy to prepare than a packaged drink does. The packaged drink uses many resources to make the drink and the package and to transport those packages to market. Your homemade drink will probably be healthier, and it will not involve garbage.
Processed foods require more energy to prepare and package. Often, they contain chemicals added that are not in fresh and less-processed food. Those chemicals take energy to produce, transport, and apply as well. The extra packaging of processed food makes more garbage.

Sustainable Choices may be Difficult

Change is not always easy. Sometimes convenience, taste, and habits made the change to an eco lunch challenging. However, you can always embrace large change with one small change at a time. Even a single small change, such as using a reusable water bottle in your lunch instead of a disposable one, makes a big difference over time. It reduces your ecological footprint in a big way.

You have probably heard of “reduce, reuse and recycle” before. By getting into the habit of reducing, reusing and recycling, you can reduce significantly your effect on your ecosystem.

Soda in a Can – A Single Sustainability Example

For example, similar to most people, you may drink canned beverages. Have you ever wondered how a single canned beverage affects the ecosystem?


Figure A.4.14.10 – Reduce, re-use, and recycle to help local ecosystems.
First, aluminum bauxite ore is mined. Then it is shipped to complete its processing. It must be refined, smelted, cast into ingots and sheets, and finally into cans. Along the way, recycled cans are melted and added. Some cans are recycled, but many are thrown into the regular waste.

Then, the cans are filled. The making of cola-type drinks, for example, consumes a lot of fresh water and requires large-scale agriculture. Regular cola requires fructose corn syrup, which comes from corn crops. Aspartame-sweetened cola also relies on agriculture. It requires the fermentation of corn and soybeans. These crops usually require irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides. Farm and transportation equipment must be manufactured, and their operation consumes polluting fuel. Other ingredients in the cola must also be manufactured or grown.

Finally, the filled cans must be packaged and transported to your home. Even recycling the used cans requires yet more fuel and makes more pollution.

Following the life of a canned beverage is dizzying. A lot of environmental effects are traded for a beverage in a container that is used just once and then tossed. Many experts consider canned beverages one of the most energy-consuming, polluting, waste-generating products on the market. We all have to ask ourselves: Is this product worth the environmental cost?

 Watch More

Designing sustainable practices: innovations for sustainable living

This video offers an inspiring look at how people can consider old problems in new sustainable ways.



Living Outside The Box: Sustainable Lifestyles

The United Nations recognizes how important sustainable living is to our future on Earth. A cute cartoon drives home the fact that we need to change the way we think about our lifestyles and our stuff.



Miracle Farm

Can you grow lots of food and have a sustainable ecosystem at the same time? Absolutely! Sustainable farming is called permaculture. Increasing numbers of growers are accepting its many benefits. Watch this successful permaculture experiment in Quebec. Learn how embracing biodiversity benefits not only people but all other organisms as well.

Discussion

Celebrate Sustainability

Sustainability is all about challenging our own ideas about how we live our lives and consume products. A good way to take on that challenge is by talking with others.

Instructions:

  1. Think about one recreational activity you really enjoy. For example, you might like hiking, camping, snowmobiling, quadding, skiing, playing hockey, shopping, or something else.

  2. Consider how your recreational activity affects the ecosystem. You might think about the following questions: Does it involve a polluting form of transportation? Does it result in waste? What items are involved? How were they made and where will they end?

  3. Go to the Sustainability Discussion Forum and add a post about the recreational activity that you enjoy. Use the activity in the title topic, such as “My activity is snowmobiling.” If you need a tutorial on how to use the discussion forums, click here.

  4. In your post, describe your activity, and then write a short assessment about how you think your recreational activity affects the ecosystem. (These effects could be good, bad, or neutral – have no effect at all.) If you wish, try putting your post in the form of a story. Read the following example.

    Example


    POST:
    Title: My activity is snowmobiling.
    Today I helped my older brother load up the snowmobiles. Then, we drove a short distance to St. Paul to snowmobile down part of Iron Horse Trail. What was once a railroad is now a path for snowmobiling, hiking, and cross-country skiing. We drank our thermoses of hot chocolate and ate our lunches in the ghost town of Heinsburg at the old railway station. Then, we headed back home for supper. My brother says many of the towns along the railroad have been abandoned since the 1920s. The ecosystem hasn’t been touched since then. The forests, hills, and meadows seem very wild to me.

    Assessment: The truck and snowmobiles both burn gasoline. That adds pollution. Making and transporting the gasoline consume resources. Making the snowmobiles consumed materials and energy and it result in pollution. When we rode, we might have disturbed wildlife along the trail. We put our lunch garbage in the bins at the railway station. We put our plastic bags in the regular trash. We put our paper bags into the recycling bin, so we didn’t litter.

    Writing this got me thinking. I researched ecological damage of snowmobiling online:

    http://winterwildlands.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Environmental-Impacts-from-Snowmobile-Use.pdf

    I had no idea how much negative effect this activity can have. I realize now how important it is, for example, to stay on the trial    .

  5. When you are done your post, read some posts by other students. Write at least one encouraging response that offers ideas or asks good questions.

Examples

  • RESPONSE: That sounds like a really cool trip. You and your brother are lucky! Do you see any wildlife when you ride? Do you know where I can get some information on that trail? I’d like to go horseback riding along it next summer.

  • RESPONSE: Sure, I’ve got some photos of a moose we saw last year. I just checked online and here is the trail website:
    http://www.ironhorsetrail.ca. If you go, let me know how it was.



  Make sure you have understood everything in this lesson. Use the Self-Check below, and the Self-Check & Lesson Review Tips to guide your learning.

Unit A Lesson 14 Self-Check

Instructions


Complete the following 6 steps. Don't skip steps – if you do them in order, you will confirm your understanding of this lesson and create a study bank for the future.

  1. DOWNLOAD the self-check quiz by clicking here.

  2. ANSWER all the questions on the downloaded quiz in the spaces provided. Think carefully before typing your answers. Review this lesson if you need to. Save your quiz when you are done.

  3. COMPARE your answers with the suggested "Self-Check Quiz Answers" below. WAIT! You didn't skip step 2, did you? It's very important to carefully write out your own answers before checking the suggested answers.

  4. REVISE your quiz answers if you need to. If you answered all the questions correctly, you can skip this step. Revise means to change, fix, and add extra notes if you need to. This quiz is NOT FOR MARKS, so it is perfectly OK to correct any mistakes you made. This will make your self-check quiz an excellent study tool you can use later.

  5. SAVE your quiz to a folder on your computer, or to your Private Files. That way you will know where it is for later studying.

  6. CHECK with your teacher if you need to. If after completing all these steps you are still not sure about the questions or your answers, you should ask for more feedback from your teacher. To do this, post in the Course Questions Forum, or send your teacher an email. In either case, attach your completed quiz and ask; "Can you look at this quiz and give me some feedback please?" They will be happy to help you!


Self-Check Time!
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Self-Check Quiz Answers

Click each of the suggested answers below, and carefully compare your answers to the suggested answers.

If you have not done the quiz yet – STOP – and go back to step 1 above. Do not look at the answers without first trying the questions.

A sustainable ecosystem maintains its biodiversity and productivity over time. Its processes and systems continue to function even during times of temporary stress, such as after a forest fire.
There are many ways we can protect ecosystems from damage. We can even help them recover, but we must act now. We can continue to develop technologies that increase efficiency so we consume less energy. We can continue to find ways to reduce pollution. We can find new ways to recycle materials so less becomes waste.
This question has several possible answers. One of the best ways to start living more sustainably is to become more informed. You can get great sustainability ideas from others. You could eat less processed foods. You could reduce your consumption and shopping. You could recycle more.
You could use reusable containers to hold water or drinks that you have mixed yourself from bulk, unprocessed ingredients.
Absolutely not! Information is power. Now that you know about the ecological effects of canned beverages, you can still enjoy them. It is up to you to make your own choices and decisions. Information gives you the tools you need to make the best choices. Consider the benefits of reducing your consumption. Is there a more ecologically friendly substitute available? You can also consider an ecological footprint reduction somewhere else. You can think of your total ecological effect as a bank account. How you spend it is up to you. A splurge on a canned beverage can fit into your ecological budget if, for example, you walk to school that day instead of taking a car ride.