GGR101H1: Ancient Civilizations and their Environments

Lecture 1: September 13/12

Environment and Environmental Change:
For most of us, environment means climate and environmental change is
global warming. We need to recognize that environment covers all of the
ambient influences in the physical, biological and human world.
The physical environment includes characteristics of the atmosphere, the
lithosphere and the hydrosphere. The biosphere is constrained by these
elements of the physical environment and their interactions.

Our atmosphere is composed mostly of N (78%) and O (20%). It produces a
modest greenhouse effect because of small, but significant concentrations of
CO2, CH4 and other gasses.
How stable is this composition?
How much has it changed through time?
What are the consequences of changes in atmospheric chemistry?
Our hydrosphere is unique in our solar system. Water can exist in gaseous,
liquid and solid forms and readily exchanges between the three states.
Energy exchanges accompany changes in state.
About 70% of the globe is water covered. How has that changed through
time?
What roles do oceans play in forcing environmental change?
Our lithosphere is very dynamic with a hot differentiated interior that
drives plate tectonics.
How long has plate tectonics been going on?
How does it determine environmental change?
Our biosphere is comprised of the plants and animals that we see, but also
contains huge numbers of microbes, the most successful and persistent of
Earths biota. These are essential to biogeochemical cycles (e.g. the N
cycle) and directly and indirectly influence climate.
How do biota influence global environments and what role do they play
in environmental change?


What does the geologic record tell us? (Reading one)
Evidence for past Earths and their environments comes from the geologic
record. What does the record tell us?
That the Earth is old about 4.5 billion years.
That we have a record of environmental change for most of that time.
That the record is thin for about 85% of that time. Why?
That most of that record is from marine sediments. Why? What can marine
sediments tell us about environment?
That only the last 0.6 billion years provide a detailed record. Why?

That there have been large and essentially continuous environmental
changes throughout geologic time.
That those changes have been natural, and until very recently been without
human influence.
That hominids/hominins evolve some 4 million years ago, but appear to
have had little to modest environmental impact until the Holocene, the last
10,500 years.
One really important message from geology is that the planet that we know is
quite different from previous Earths.
Throughout most of geologic time the Earth was much warmer than it is
today it had a much larger greenhouse effect.
Its geography has changed constantly.
The biomes that we are familiar with the boreal forest, prairie grasslands,
tundra, etc. are recent phenomena.
The normal warm world is mostly tropical/subtropical. Forests extended
into polar regions.

What drives earth systems?
There are two major controls. Both involve energy.
One of these is the energy generated in the Earths interior. This drives
continents, determines the timing and location of earthquakes, volcanoes,
tsunamis, etc., and controls critical chemical cycles, notably the carbon cycle.
The package is called plate tectonics.
The other source of energy is external solar radiation. This has changed
through time and fluctuates at a range of temporal scales.
How solar energy impacts on the Earth system is not only determined by the
amount emitted, but how that energy is processed by the atmosphere and
the Earths surface.
Its here where the two energy systems interact.

Systems the their behavior:
Its useful to consider the Earth environment as a large system the
consequence of the interactions between a huge number of subsystems.
Although they may vary considerably in scale and complexity, all systems
input, process and output energy and/or matter.
Systems are usually open or closed. Open systems exchange both energy
and matter, while closed systems are open for energy, but closed for
matter.
For example, the Earths energy budget is open. It has inputs (mostly solar)
and outputs. The hydrosphere, a subsystem, is essentially closed. Its driven
by energy (open), but the amount of water in the Earth system is finite
(closed). Small subsystems a lake, a forest, a field, etc. are open

Feedback and equilibrium:
The behaviour of systems is determined by feedback. In many natural
systems, the interaction of physical and biological variables tends to keep the
system in some general balance or equilibrium. These dampening effects
are called negative feedback.
E.g. energy input to the Earth system is uneven. Theres a surplus in the
Tropics and a deficit in high latitudes. The oceanic and atmospheric
circulations act as negative feedback to transfer energy from areas of
surplus to areas of deficit.
Changes in one or more components in the system may produce positive
feedback and induce changes in the behaviour of that system.
E.g. global warming is generally attributed to changes in the proportion of
greenhouse gasses a consequence of fossil fuel burning, deforestation, etc.
Over time systems may attain a steady state equilibrium. Some show a
trend (dynamic equilibrium) but no major disruption.
In part, the ability of a system to maintain equilibrium depends on its
resilience. In general, complex systems are more resilient than simple ones
(natural vs. anthropogenic systems).
Sometimes the size and rapidity of a change may exceed some threshold, a
critical point at which system behaviour suddenly changes.
Human activity often causes these behavioural changes, e.g. deforestation,
overgrazing, etc.