Everyone's World - What YOU Need to Know re Your Environment

Name: Everyone's World - What YOU Need to Know re Your Environment
Rating: 4.8 (51 reviews)

Environmental Science and Ecology can be fun, useful and easy to apply to today's environmental issues.

Highest Rated

Last updated 2/2023

English

What you'll learn

To be able to decipher confusing or conflicting information about the environment.
To gain a solid understanding of how the environment works.
To have familiarity with key creatures in the environment.
To grasp how energy and matter work through food webs, ecosystems and biomes.
To learn fundamental ideas of Environmental Science and Ecology that can be used to solve environmental problems.
To identify nine factors with the power to change our environment, often in detrimental ways.
To gain a balanced perspective that will enhance learning and communication about the environment.

7 sections • 43 lectures • 3h 56m total length

Welcome! Insights to the course and the instructor4:44
Discover how environmental science becomes everyone's world through clear education and communication, using real-world wildlife and pollutants to understand the environment we live in.
Why care about the environment? Includes a short fun activity8:23
Why is the environment SO controversial?6:52
Activity - A contest between two points of view3:16
Engage in a simulated public hearing where native land claims face mining interests; present concise arguments, counter statements, and let a judge decide by debate and passion.
Activity - A round table with multi stakeholders2:07
Join a four to six stakeholder roundtable, native people, diamond miners, a lumber company, an ecotourism firm, and local government, to negotiate honest points and traded concessions for win-win outcomes.
Who can you trust?8:03
Can you trust the Internet?3:16
Evaluate online information by checking sources for credibility and proof, noting agenda or bias, guarding against misinformation, seeking consensus, and ensuring it aligns with your research via the SACS guide.
The problem of NOT UNDERSTANDING the environment9:08
What is Environmental Science?2:10
Environmental science combines biology, chemistry, physics, and geography to study the environment and solve problems with objective, peer-reviewed, reliable, repeatable conclusions.

The importance of trees and conifer ID11:57
Some deciduous trees6:52
Explore deciduous hardwood trees through leaf and bark features, including maple, oak, and trembling aspen, to identify species and understand their role in forests and wood use.
Some plants and insects2:05
Some fish, amphibians and reptiles4:38
Explore a diverse array of freshwater fish, amphibians, and reptiles, from muskellunge and sturgeon to bullfrogs and garter snakes, highlighting habitats, behaviors, and indicators of climate change.
Some birds and small mammals3:06
Some medium-size and large mammals2:17
Activity: Let's make some food chains!2:01

Matter cycles7:50
The most important chemical equation on Earth?5:52
The water cycle3:41
More biogeochemical cycles5:25
Explore biogeochemical cycles, focusing on the phosphorus cycle and sulfur cycle as key macronutrients, and build a six-step memory model linking weathering, leaching, and aquatic food webs to pollution.
Understanding energy3:43
What is energy degradation?10:07
Explore how energy degrades as it transfers from higher to lower quality, from visible light to heat, and apply conservation of energy and matter to ecosystems.

What is ecology?8:57
Explore the study of ecology, linking abiotic and biotic components to ecosystems and the biosphere, and examine how human activities disrupt or sustain natural environments.
Words describing biotic components of ecosystems7:30
Adding decomposition to food chains2:27
Explore how decomposition completes food chains by recycling nutrients from detritivores and decomposers back to plants. See how matter and energy move through producers and consumers across trophic levels.
Energy and food chains6:07
Activity: draw your local food web2:54

Some useful ecological distinctions12:07
What is the Competitive Exclusion Principle?4:06
Competition, natural selection and evolution11:37
Optimum temperature ranges and thermal neutral zones12:29
Optimum ranges and limiting factors4:05
Biomes and indicator species8:19
Explore how biomes form from vegetation responses to moisture and temperature, and how altitude and latitude shape forest zones, with indicator species guiding biome identification in your region.

What is succession?9:32
Altering biogeochemical cycles3:09
Messing up planetary energy5:05
Explore how solar energy drives Earth's energy systems and shapes heat, wind, and food chains. Learn the roles of the ozone layer and greenhouse gases in regulating climate.
Disrupting food webs2:17
Eliminating or introducing species2:59
Eliminating or introducing species can destabilize ecosystems. Endangered species and diminishing biodiversity illustrate how invasive examples like sea lamprey, zebra mussel, and spiny water flea disrupt local ecosystems.
Biomagnification3:00
Biomagnification of fat-soluble chemicals raises doses up the food chain, illustrated by DDT from phytoplankton to osprey, with the energy pyramid showing pollution is not diluted.
Chemical time bombs5:51
Nuclear time bombs1:42
Simplified ecosystems1:06
Explore how monocultures create vulnerability in food crops and pests, and examine safer, reduced pesticide use and how diverse ecosystems can improve future food production.

The only requirements are having an interest in how the environment works and how that knowledge can be used to solve environmental problems.

We all live in the environment and it provides us with all our needs. Yet almost everything we do has an impact on the environment. How do we use our understanding of the environment to support its sustainability?

In this course, we will look at information, misinformation and disinformation about the environment and why the confusion exists. Since virtually everyone has a personal stake in the environment (such as nature appreciation, business interests, a focus on health or wealth, etc.), you can expect to find a wide range of extremely polarized opinion. But how can one determine which viewpoints are based on facts and which are biased by faulty information and selfish motives?

On the practical side, we’ll become familiar with key organisms and concepts that operate in our environment. We’ll focus on important details of how ecosystems, biomes, habitats and territories work in the environment and how they change with time and human impact.

We’ll examine some fundamental ideas of Environmental Science and Ecology that can be used to solve environmental problems.

We will have a brief survey of 9 specific factors that can affect our environment - often with negative impacts.

By the end of the course, you will have a balanced view of the environment, some solid ideas about a variety of environmental problems, and an enhanced ability to share your perspectives with the people around you.

Everyone's life and livelihood takes place in the environment so we all have a stake in it.
People with curiosity about the environment will learn more about how it works.
People who have doubts about environmental topics will gain clarity.
People who have expertise about the environment will gain ideas about how to more effectively share that information with others.