Activity 3.1- Human Population

  Less developed  

        World

Birth rate: 18 per 1,000

Death rate: 8 per 1,000

Population growth rate: 1.1

Life expectancy for males: 69

Life expectancy for females: 73

Fertility rate: 2.4%

Gross National Income: 13,570

Country name: Bolivia

Birth rate: 21 per 1,000

Death rate: 6 per 1,000

Population growth rate: 1.4%

Life expectancy for males: 62

Life expectancy for females: 68

fertility rate: 2.5

Gross National Income: 9,400

More  developed

          World

Birth rate: 9 per 1,000

Death rate: 12 per 1,000

Population growth rate: -0.2%

Life expectancy for males: 75

Life expectance for females: 81

Fertility rate: 1.5

Gross National Income: 56,361

Country name: Chile

Birth rate: 9 per 1,000

Death rate: 7 per 1,000

Population growth rate: 0.2%

Life expectancy for males: 78

Life expectancy for females: 84

fertility rate: 1.2

Gross National Income: 28,550

The similarities and differences of Bolivia and Chile

Both Bolivia and Chile have a higher female life expectancy than males in their countries, as well as both countries having a higher birth rate than death rate. The difference between the birth and death rates though is that Chile, being the more developed country, has a closer birth/death rate balancing one another out, which allows the country to stabilize the growth of its population so as to not max out its carrying capacity for whatever limited resources they have. Whereas Bolivia has an unbalanced birth/death rate, making it easier to exceed the environments carrying capacity and use up the limited resources, causing the country to go into a health decline. Another difference between Bolivia and Chile is that in Chile, females have a drastic increase in their life expectancy, which I would assume would be because of the change in health care for women.

The Comparison of Bolivia and Chile to the World

 What the world's less developed countries and Bolivia have in common is the birth rate exceeding the death rate, causing the overpopulation in less developed countries. Along with the low life expectancy rate for both genders. What the world and Chile have in common is the same birth rate and similar life expectancies for both genders, but that could be said for Bolivia and the world's less developed countries. It is safe to say that both countries reflect their respective categories.

Quillbot, word counter, Quillbot, 24/9/2024

 2023 world population data sheet, data sheet, 2023 world population, 24/9/2024

Activity 2.2.1 My Daily Water Use

Three months of water usage

 June 13-July 15: 13,300 gallons

July 16-August13: 11,201 gallons

August 14-September 12: 12,700 gallons

Average number of gallons across all three bills

13,300 + 11,201 + 12,700 = 37,201/3 = 12,400 average per month

Water usage per month and per person

12,400/3 = 4,133gallons/person/month

Water usage per person and per day

4,133/30 =137.77 gallons per day

Household Water Usage Calculator

1.)  Chelan County Water Use.   

https://www.chelanpud.org/conservationhome/water-conservation/water-use-calculator

681gallons per day

681/3= 227 gallons per person

2.) Home Water Works

https://home-water-works.org/calculator

211.5gallons per day

70.5gallons per person

The water bills I have used to take data from are from my aunt and uncle. They are not mine. With that being said, from the data shown above, I have found that the usage of water per day is around the same, but still a little higher amount of water used daily by households in the United States of America, which is more than 300 gallons per day. Compared to a Texas household's water usage, which is 283.8 gallons per day (divided by 8,514, which is the monthly average in Texas, by 30 days, giving me 283.8) less than the daily average for my aunt's and uncle's home. In 2023, San Antonio's residential water usage was 6,275 gallons per month divided by 30 days, equaling 209.17 gallons per day. This is lower than both calculations for the amount of water usage in my aunt's and uncle's house. Considering the two different amounts of water usage in the results from different calculators, I believe it would be around 491 gallons per day; at least that's my guesstimate. Meaning that between the country's average water use and the state's average, along with the city's average, my aunt's and uncle's average daily water usage is higher.

Activity 2.2- Cryosphere: Pedersen Glacier, Alaska

Pedersen Glacier

 Grant, U.S.. 1909. Pedersen Glacier: From the Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_photo/search/image_info/101-1-PedersenGlacier-19090722-Grant?order=true

 Beutler, Hannah. 2021. Pedersen Glacier: From the Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media.http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_photo/search/image_info/101-7-PedersenGlacier-20210818-Beutler?order=true

Google Earth pro. 2011. Perdersen Glacier.

Alaska currently accounts for 25% of all ice loss from Global Glacier.(Huronnet et al., 2021) Between the first picture and the second of the Perdersen Glacier picture, one major change I noticed was that I don't see much ablation. The ablation zone had decreased over the years and just melted away into the ocean, leaving what used to be ice sheets that have become more of a flatter surface of land than the form it used to be, more like a slope. 
This is due to the snow accumulation being less than the melting of ice, making the glacier unable to keep its form. This is caused by the temperature increasing in the lower altitudes, but here is where the problem reveals itself. The cycle of ablation and accumulation of snow depends on the season, but because of the earth's climate rising, the seasonal amount of snow accumulation and melt changes. The accumulation of snow decreases due to the rising heat. Unable to keep up with the cycle of water turning into ice speeding up, snow doesn't stay on the glacier for too long. Over all, the cycle is not as prosperous as it once was when it comes to the balance of snowfall, accumulation, and ablation. Don't get me wrong, there is still a good amount of snow, but it's not the same as before. For example, Avalanches used to be more dry and snowpacked, whereas now the snow is more wet than dry. Again, this is due to the earth's climate change. The structure of the water molecules changes due to the melting of snow. The molecules get closer together due to water in its liquid form being denser than when water is ice, which only happens due to heat. The glacier has lost its old form due to the climate and is slowly becoming a different landscape. Losing its ways of supporting the life of bleak weather-accustomed wildlife.

Quillbot, 2024. Grammar checker.

Module 1.1- A Turning Point Event for Environmental Science, Silent Spring

The point of view from the video, Chapter 1: Rachel Carson | American Experience | PBS, is from a retelling view. The video's point of reference is that because Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, we were later able to correct the way we treat the environment. The orientation of the video is allied with Rachel Carson and her perspective that we are destroying earth and harming ourselves because of it. The objective of this video was to educate viewers on Silent Spring, more so Rachel Carson and the context of the beginning of her journey towards writing Silent Spring.

The video briefly mentioned the controversy Carson faced after the publication of Silent Spring. Being that some people saw her as a communist and a lunatic due to her ideas going against what the public thought, "That human ingenuity would triumph over nature."(American Experience, 1:46). The problem covered by the majority of the video was DDT, (dishloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) which is made up of condensing choral hydrate with chlorobenzenein concentrated  sulfuric acid, and how it affected the environment, especially the mass use of it during World War Two. DDT was a pesticide, originally shelved for decades, now used on  the frontlines to stop soldiers from getting typhus: a  severe disease that is marked by high fever, muscle and joint pain, cough, intense headache, and red rash, and that it is passed on especially by body lice. As well as getting malaria: a disease caused by a parasite. The parasite is spread to humans through the bites of  infected mosquitoes. You  end up sick with a high fever and shaking chills. DDT killed more than insects but animals like birds and fish, which in turn harmed the people after the amount used,  digested, and breathed. The video presents data like the experiments done with DDT (American Experience 4:48). Where they described how the pesticide killed insects by affecting their nervous system and motor coordination, restlessness, tremors, convulsions, paralysis, and death is the sequence in which the insects die several hours after the absorption of the chemical. In Naples, Italy, the American military started spraying people with hand sprayers to stop the spread of lice to inherently stop the spread of typhus, which did in fact kill the spread of lice and the chance of a typhus epidemic. They sprayed more than a million people with DDT, including children, the elderly, people who wanted to get sprayed, people who didn't want to get sprayed, and the "40,000 Italians dwelling in the jam-packed air raid shelters were doused." (American Experience 6:35)  In the tropical pacific, "more soldiers died of malaria than gunshot wounds." (American Experience 7:04) The American military soaked the islands waters and greenery with DDT to kill mosquitoes, preventing malaria from spreading. The video's conclusion is that Rachel Carson wanted to make the public aware with the dangers of using DDT in certain areas and to heed with caution. She went to reader's digest to release this information but in the end they had refused to publish it due to fear of losing readers. Safety tests were not done for DDT to see  how it would affect humans and wild life due to its immediate necessity in World War Two. The effects of this were some soldiers dying from DDT in World War Two, but their deaths were recognized as combat causalities. My thought on this is, yes, DDT did save lives in World War Two but I agree with Rachel Carson; There should've been some caution when using DDT in the mass amounts it was used in, on the environment, especially people. Rachel Carson was able to open people's eyes to the harm that was being done to all living organism's life in the world but it was up to the public wether or not to continue shutting  their eyes in denial or put some safety googles on and get to work on trying to help keep the environment nourished and clean after learning of all the harm that had been caused by this chemical.  It also helped raise awareness of how fragile our planet is and the responsibility that we have as inhabitants of it to care for it as a token of gratitude for it nourishing us and housing the billions of people that live in it.  We only have one planet earth, unique and beautiful. So why not keep it that way?

January 1944. The U.S. Army uses DDT to end the typhus epidemic in Naples.

image from the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring

Grammar checked by QuillBot, Sep. 5, 2024,https://quillbot.com/