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Brenda Osorio

Professor Cheng

FYS 1B

02 May 2017

Environmental Science

In this section, I decided to incorporate everything I learned about my community based

on the environment. This included the knowledge of the Southern California ecosystems, the

current environmental issues, the current and future conservation efforts, and the connections

between the knowledge I had based on my life experiences before the FYS 1B course. The topic

of community is seen in the environment because every little thing an individual is capable of

doing, such as littering, polluting, the consumption of energy, can reflect on another persons life.

Southern Californias main ecosystems are desert, coastal, mountain, chaparral, and

parks. I decided to include both a YouTube video talking about deserts and chaparrals because

Southern California is mainly composed of those two. There are three main deserts in California,

the Mojave Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin desert. Chaparrals are both a

vegetation type and the name given to the community of co-adapted plants and animals found in

the foothills and mountains throughout California. The chaparral vegetation is composed of a

diverse assemblage of different species of evergreen drought and fire hardy shrubs. The shrubs

are well adapted to California Mediterranean climate.

With the help of the 2015 Environmental Report Card, I was able to gain an insight into

the current situations the Los Angeles County is in. The Report Card provided a broad picture of

current conditions, it established a baseline against which to assess the regions progress towards

environmental sustainability and used a thought-provoking tool to catalyze policy discussion and
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change. Although our community has made a significant improvement in water quality and

conservation in the past decades, we still have some major problems; these include groundwater

contamination problems, the unnecessary importation of water from hundreds of miles away, and

the vast majority of waterways being impaired by one or more pollutants.

After this topic, we directed our focus on carbon emissions. It is very important for an

individual to reduce energy consumption because it is an effortless way to better the community

we live in. The idea of reducing energy does not necessarily mean that one has to change their

whole lifestyle; all it does is remind a person that a little goes a long way. After calculating my

carbon footprint online, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if in my household I

turned down the heating thermostat on winter nights, I replace incandescent light bulbs with

ENEGERY STAR lights, and replace my refrigerator and windows with ENERGY STAR

models. By doing this and much more ideas that were not listed above, I would save roughly

about $332.

I believe that it is important to find community through your environment because you

are able to save many lives this way. For example, an individual is not able to change their

environment by themselves; in fact, it requires teamwork to better the environment. In order to

make change happen, one should start off by first spreading awareness about the dangers the

environment can cause to the community. Gaining history knowledge will allow individuals to

become empathetic towards the environment they inhabit. The easiest way to start to save the

environment is by recycling newspapers, glass, and magazines.