White males overall hold more social authority and are seen as more objective, and thus students are less likely to argue with them
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” By this she means that in using the tools of the system we are more likely to uphold that system than to challenge
There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
This idea relates exactly to another subject, Economics. There is no such thing as "Free". Anything that happens always comes at a cost.
Thus, the structure of a present living thing or the organization of a current natural ecosystem is likely to be "bes
Ecosystems work the best without outside intervention. The natural state of things is the best form of that ecosystem.
any major man-made change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system
This idea comes up many times. Human intervention in ecosystems causes a huge change and destroys the balance.
Animals release carbon dioxide as a respiratory waste; this is an essential nutrient for green plants. Plants excrete oxygen, which is used by animals.
This law adds to the idea that many animals are co-dependent on other species.
any nonmetabolized material present in the lower organ-isms of this chain will become concentrated in the body of the top one
This idea is similar to the idea of the energy pyramid. Where the things material metabolized at the bottom will soon move up to the top of the food chain.
The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress.
This explains how more complex areas with a greater biodiversity is usually a very strong habitat because it's resistants to stress is high.
These oscillations are built into the oper-ation of the simple cycle, in which the lynx population is positively related to the number of rabbits and the rabbit population is negatively related to the number of lynx.
This is an example of the balanced relationship between animals. One animals population goes up because it overfeeds on another. There is now less food so the predator population lessens and the prey population grows. Finally the cycle happens again.
Suppose that due to unusually warm summer weather there is a rapid growth of algae. This depletes the supply of inor-ganic nutrients so that two sectors of the cycle, algae and nutrients, are out of balance, but in opposite directions.
This is an example of how one change in an ecosystem can have dramatic impact on the those who reside inside.
It reflects the existence of the elaborate network of interconnections in the ecosphere: among different living organisms, and between populations, species, and individual organisms and their physicochemical surroundings.
This is important because it talks about the definition and explains part of the first law of ecology.
An animal, such as a deer, may de-pend on plants for food; the plants depend on the action of soil bacteria for their nutrients; the bacteria in turn live on the organic wastes dropped by the animals on the soil. At the same time, the deer is food for the mountain lion. Insects may live on the juices of plants or gather pollen from their flowers. Other insects suck blood from animals. Bacteria may live on the internal tissues of ani-mals and plants. Fungi degrade the bodies of dead plants· and animals. All this, many times multiplied and organ-ized species by species in intricate, precise relationships, makes up the vast network of life on the earth.
This cycle is key for ecosystems to work properly because so many animals and species depend on each other and through human intervention we are hurting these cycles and relationships.
The continued existence of terrestrial life is dependent on the layer of ozone in the stratosphere-a protective device that itself is the product of life.
With current global warming we are creating holes in our atmosphere which is allowing this radiation to re-enter our earth and hurt the living species on earth.
earth's surface was bathed in intense ultraviolet radiation, which was, in fact, the energy source that converted the early earth's blanket of methane, water, and ammonia info the soup of organic compounds in which the first living things originated.
Now that we have been burning these fossil fuels and reconverting them to carbon dioxid�, the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere has been rising; what effect this may be having on the earth's temperature is now under intense scientific discussion.
+IMPORTANT. This is how climate change that we know now came to be. This process of the release of carbon dioxide has bot stopped and is ongoing.
the lower layers of air are warmer than the upper ones; it is therefore called an inversion.
Important definition.
Thus, if the soil's humus content declines, the availability of nitrate for plant growth is reduced.
? What would cause for the soil's level of humus to decline? Naturally or unnaturally.
For in looking at one set of relationships we inevi-tably ignore a good deal of the rest; yet in the real world everything in the environment is connected to everything else.
Every living thing is intimately dependent on its physical and chemical surroundings, so that as these changed
It seems that humans have forgotten that they are one of the "living things" inhabiting the Earth
the earth's surface was shielded from solar ultraviolet radiation,
Due to the development of free oxygen in the atmosphere, ultraviolet had less access to Earth's surface which later allowed new organisms to develop.
How that happened is a fascinating but poorly understood problem; fortu-nately we do know enough about the characteristics of the first forms of life to establish their dependence-and their effects-on the environment.
If we destroy it, our most advanced technology will become useless and any economic and po
we have made our own environment and no longer depend on the one provided by nature.
human society is designed to exploit the environment as a whole, to produce wealth.