Everyone’S World – What You Need To Know Re Your Environment

Key Knowledge for Everyone Who Lives on Our Planet

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 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.

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

Description
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 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.

Overview
Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Welcome! Insights to the course and the instructor

Lecture 2 Why care about the environment? Includes a short fun activity

Lecture 3 Why is the environment SO controversial?

Lecture 4 Activity – A contest between two points of view

Lecture 5 Activity – A round table with multi stakeholders

Lecture 6 Who can you trust?

Lecture 7 Can you trust the Internet?

Lecture 8 The problem of NOT UNDERSTANDING the environment

Lecture 9 What is Environmental Science?

Section 2: Some Life Forms We Should Know

Lecture 10 The importance of trees and conifer ID

Lecture 11 Some deciduous trees

Lecture 12 Some plants and insects

Lecture 13 Some fish, amphibians and reptiles

Lecture 14 Some birds and small mammals

Lecture 15 Some medium-size and large mammals

Lecture 16 Activity: Let’s make some food chains!

Section 3: How Matter and Energy Work in Nature

Lecture 17 Matter cycles

Lecture 18 The most important chemical equation on Earth?

Lecture 19 The water cycle

Lecture 20 More biogeochemical cycles

Lecture 21 Understanding energy

Lecture 22 What is energy degradation?

Section 4: How do Ecosystems Work?

Lecture 23 What is ecology?

Lecture 0 Words describing biotic components of ecosystems

Lecture 0 Adding decomposition to food chains

Lecture 0 Energy and food chains

Lecture 0 Activity: draw your local food web

Lecture 0 Some useful ecological distinctions

Lecture 0 What is the Competitive Exclusion Principle?

Lecture 0 Competition, natural selection and evolution

Lecture 0 Optimum temperature ranges and thermal neutral zones

Lecture 0 Optimum ranges and limiting factors

Lecture 0 Biomes and indicator species

Lecture 0 What is succession?

Lecture 0 Altering biogeochemical cycles

Lecture 0 Messing up planetary energy

Lecture 0 Disrupting food webs

Lecture 0 Eliminating or introducing species

Lecture 0 Biomagnification

Lecture 0 Chemical time bombs

Lecture 0 Nuclear time bombs

Lecture 0 Simplified ecosystems

Lecture 0 Wrapping up the course and predicting the Future.

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.