Earth Environments

Part Three (Final Exam) - The Earth Does Not Have An Environmental Problem

Lynn S. Fichter - Fichtels@jmu.edu
James Madison University; 7100E Memorial Hall - phone 6531
Use the Power Points as a study guide.

Sample Test #3 - Final Exam
Sedimentary Power Point Presentations

We have been studying Earth evolutionary changes from the beginning of the course. In this last section we continue to look at the record and what it can tell us about the range of environment possible on Earth.

21. Environmental Changes: Glaciations

22. Environmental Changes: Sea Level

23. Environmental Changes: Extinctions

24. Attractors, Hysteresis, and Bistable Behavior

25. Climate and the Environment: Principles of Analysis

26. 65 Million Years of Climate Change: the Cenozoic

27. The Pleistocene Ice Age - the one we are in now, or are just leaving. 2.75 million years of ice advances and retreats.

28. The Human System - Our constant theme throughout the semester is to understand the Earth in terms of systems. We keep returning to the subject of systems, expanding, refining, and redefining what we mean by a system. But, at this point near the end of the term we begin to examine how the human species interacts with Earth systems. Before we do so, however, we need to understand that, like everything else, the human species is a system, and that we posses recognizable patterns and behaviors. This PP and the next on the Great Wave step back and try to observe objectively human systems, beginning with William Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development, and Shermer's Epidemics of Accusations. The observations might surprise you.

29. The Great Wave - 800 years of price revolutions and how humans have adapted to them.

30. The Growth of Human Civilization and Earth Environments - the question is, how is human population growth and increasing use of technology affecting or affected by (and it is both, of course) changing environments caused by changes in the Earth's orbital cycles and corresponding changes in climate?

31. Case Studies of how Humans and Environments have interacted - and a few final viewpoints about it.

END OF TEST UNIT THREE - FINAL EXAM


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