STUDY TIPS FOR TEXT * INTRO TO ES * INTERIM 2015
Obviously you should review material from student presentations since it is likely to be important. The
PowerPoints are in the WordPress site. Do also especially focus on the parts of the text highlighted
below. One thing you might want to check is that for CH19 and CH20 that the figures are the same in
the two editions!?
VIDEOS
Food videos-obviously I can’t ask a specific question since you all saw different ones but I could ask
an open ended question.
Empty Oceans Empty Nets…you had questions you responded to for that one.
CH9 Food
Fig 9.2
What do we mean by some of these different terms-Malnourished, undernourished, food security
(food insecurity)
We have learned that famines are largely a result of…..
Fig 9.6 Why are all the heavy people in English speaking countries? (I don’t know the answer-any
one have any ideas?)
Why did food prices spike (especially corn) in 2007-2008?
What are issues with the increasing reliance on meat globally? (Fig 9.11) Think about this in terms of
trophic pyramid. We are exporting our culture of meat consumption.
We grow more and more corn-yay! (fig 9.9)
Seafood (here it says 1.5 billion people rely on in developing countries-I mentioned about 1/5
globally)
Advantages and disadvantages of aquaculture (also in video)
What do they mean green revolution crops are high responders? Fig 9.18
GMOs-Fig 9.2what are the different ways we genetically alter crops (golden rice, Bt corn, Roundup
ready (in the graphs they call this HT or herbicide tolerant corn)
Potato farmers are still NOT choosing to plant GMO potatos-I don’t think McDonalds would use them
so everyone nervous. Cotton is also a crop that has largely flipped to GMO cotton.
Remember that GMOs are a complex problem…not simply good or bad.
Most corn is not eaten! (fig 9.21-why did they not tell us which piece of pie was livestock feed and
which was ethanol production?)
What is the CRP program?
CH10 Farming (this looks long below but I am really just clarifying the parts that I think are
important)
Is soil a renewable resource?
What is the difference between sand and gravel……and…..silts and clays. I think the other things in
soils (not dirt) are understandable-no need to memorize though. I thought figure 10.2 was kind of
funny. I would definitely not test you on fig 10.3.
Fig 10.4-which of the two soils is like ours in MN?
Under “Healthy soil fauna…” Mycorrhizae-yay!
Do know that your food comes mostly from the A horizon but you don’t need to memorize all the
horizons and names!
Erosion has historically been a big problem-dust bowl-and continues to be a problem. Once top soil is
lost desertification is not far behind.
Locally enormous amounts of soil are washed regularly into the Cannon River and then to the
Mississippi.
Salinization happens when irrigation water from aquifers has lots of natural salts and after water
evaporates salts are left behind.
Under “Plants need nutrients…” do understand how we fix nitrogen (should be review).
Manure works too but both these sources of nitrogen wash off fields easily and into rivers and
streams and down to Gulf of Mexico-Dead Zone-do you understand why the dead zone forms?
One of the wells that serves the city in Northfield is being closed down because it has water with high
levels of nitrates in it-see Blue baby syndrome.
Under “Conventional farming…” remember that we used to use horses to do this work but now we
use large quantities of fossil fuels to work fields and transport foods-note the 2,400km that the
average food item travels. What is that in miles?
Soils can be rebuilt. There are different tillage practices-contour plowing, having cover crops after you
harvest to hold soil in place, keeping crop residue on land
Note some of the terminology concerning pests. Pesticides simply kill pests (a general term for things
we don’t want around). Herbicides and insecticides are more specific terms.
In terms of pesticides…Know that there are organochlorines like DDT (which is the worst of the
bunch). You might have heard of Agent Orange which was used during the Vietnam war to defoliate
the trees so we could see whether there were soldiers hiding there (the chemical in Agent Orange is
2,4-D and that is mentioned in text). There have been many ramifications for veterans that were
exposed. Others in this category are Atrazine (which is the one we are concerned about with frogs
and their declines). Atrazine is used lots on corn-so it is used around here. Its use has been declining
as we turn to glyphosphate which is round-up.
We use round-up lots these days because we have genetically modified corn and soy- (Round-up
ready corn).
We are also using lots more neonicotinoids because we think of them as safer for humans.
Unfortunately they are terrible for bees and recent research suggests birds too. Europe has banned
them.
Do also know that pests evolve so (corn rootworm that we talked about last week which is evolving
resistance to the Bt toxin). This inevitable evolution is called the pesticide treadmill.
DDT is a POP! Know that these become concentrated up the trophic pyramid or food chain. Each
individual holds onto whatever molecules of DDT they eat. They accumulate in their fat across their
lifetimes (this is actually called bioaccumulation-but that is not in your text). Then as one individual
eats another and so on up the food chain that initial accumulation is magnified. They also show what
is called the grasshopper effect!
The other chemicals they talk about are not pesticides (like PCBs etc) so you don’t need to know
them.
Pesticides and human health…Since I teach environmental health I am actually not super happy
about their list of how these pesticides affect people. Main effects are neurological (which might
include things like effects on IQ and coordination) with some possible immune system issues.
The last paragraph in this section says that “Only 23% of the organic samples of the same groups
had any residues.” I thought this was kind of high! In sum WASH your fruits and veggies (and actually
most do NOT have pesticides on the inside).
It would be nice if you really had a good sense of what organic means.
Questions of oversight in overseas organic production facilities.
What are some ways of managing pests (insects and weeds) without pesticides?
What is IPM?
CH19 Conventional
What are fossil fuels? (petroleum also called oil/natural gas which is typically methane/coalsometimes people will separate out tar sands because it is just really gooey and doesn’t fit easily into
the typical categories above)
Figure 19.2 is a good summary.
ON page 305 of my edition of text there is a section in CH14 that is entitled “Fossil fuels originated as
peat and plankton” I thought this part did a good job of describing what comes from what.
Coal is from leaves and other plant material that were deposited and did not decompose because
often underwater-swamps.
Oil is from plankton and algae that accumulated in same way-underwater on sea floor or large river
deltas and did not decompose.
Where does our energy go-what is number 1? Transportation. What fossil fuel does it use?
Petroleum. What is number two? Industry (it uses a number of different fossil fuels and not only for
energy generation but as a raw material for plastics)
Fig 19.3 is nice (kind of complicated but what are main points?)
For each of the main fossil fuels (coal/oil/natural gas) I would flip through the page, look at the
sections headings and the bulleted points at the start of each section. I would not ask you anything
technical like how does a coal fired power plant work, but do try to get a big picture of the unique
issues with each.
Do consider comparing the history of our debate about peak oil with the debate about human
population growth. We mentioned this in class. Do you see a connection?
Do be familiar with fracking and concerns over fracking.
You don’t need to know too much about nuclear reactors except the fact that we still haven’t solved
the waste problem and decommissioning is $$ and that currently you are about 45 miles from a darn
big pile of nuclear waste at Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant near Red Wing, MN. Also worrisome is
that the plant is very close to tribal lands!
CH20 Sustainable
In general where can we gain efficiency within each of the following. Houses? Transportation?
Actually the group that gave the presentation did a great job (as did many other groups).
In fact in the presentation you all did a great job of thinking about advantages and disadvantages of
wind power. You all might do the same on your own for Solar/Hydro/Biomass. Do appreciate that
within these categories there might be different disadvantages for some kinds of solar or hydro that
don’t exist for other kinds (like super mega hydro dams vs smaller dams).
I would not ask you technical questions about exactly how power is generated or the structure of fuel
cells!
Probably the more confusing section for you all might be the biomass??
Here is a summary of Biomass!
 We can burn organic matter directly
 Any organic matter that decomposes (manure or any kind of organic waste like sewage)
without oxygen around makes methane=natural gas
 Sugar cane, other sugars and corn kernels can be fermented to make ethanol
 Palm oil or any kind of plant that produces seeds with oil like soy and sunflower and the
jatropha shrub-tree all make biodiesel
 Corn stalks, switchgrass, miscanthus and any prairie plant biomass can make ethanol
(this is called cellulosic ethanol-we kind of like it better since it is the tough plant parts
that you are using not the food parts or corn kernels)
 Alga makes oil
Energy from tides, geothermal.
A super grid would be nice-but we have to build it-and nobody wants a huge set of power lines
going through their town or farmland (fig 20.33)
Fig 20.34 is nice.