The Redesigned Earth: A Brief Review of Ecology for Engineers, As If the Earth Really Mattered

By John T. Tanacredi

This book provides insight into the basic aspects of ecology that impact or are affected by engineering practices. Ecological principals are described and discussed through the lens of the influences that built structures have on the Earth’s biological, geological, and chemical systems. The text goes on to elucidate the engineering influences that have or will influence the face of the Earth. These influences redesign the Earth, either by destroying natural systems and replacing them with highly subsidized systems or by attempting to restore highly disturbed or contaminated systems with the basic natural systems that were originally present. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Dec 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030312374

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

J. T. TanacrediThe Redesigned Earthhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31237-4_1

1. Ecology and the Principles of Life; It Isn’t Just About You, You Know!

John T. Tanacredi¹ 

(1)

Director of CERCOM (Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans Monitoring), Professor of Earth and Environmental Studies, Molloy College, Rockville Centre, NY, USA

Keywords

BiomeCarrying capacityEcological communityEcosystemFood websGlobal populationLaw of thermodynamicsPopulation densitySuccession

The renowned geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, noted that Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution. By analogy, I would extend the inexplorable and inexplicable progression of all life over eons of time, influenced and shaped by changing environments and changing biotic interaction, to Michael Begon who stated, Very little in evolution makes sense, except in the light of ecology. Whether we observe the ecology of an urban-influenced system or the defining of paleo-ecologies to look back on life’s earliest interrelationships, it is ecology, the study of interactions between the biotic and abiotic, which defines the living conditions on Earth. We cannot take for granted the fact that we all share this one space. Ernst Haeckel understood this concept when he coined the term ecology in 1866. Now in common use some 46 years after the first Earth Day celebration, this term derived from the Greek Oikos translates as home, and is part of our everyday language (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1975).

Ecology is the interactions of all living organisms with their environment that determines their abundance and distribution, which is a multidisciplinary field of scientific inquiry encompassing marine ecology, terrestrial ecology, freshwater ecology, benthic ecology, human ecology and industrial ecology (Piel 1992). Today, the study of specific ecologies utilizes the hierarchical structuring that demonstrates a systems approach to scientific inquiry, all emphasizing some basic foundational aspects. Mass-balance analyses in energy dynamics or thermodynamic principles provide a continuum of energy flow that establishes ecosystem structures (Ehrlich et al. 1977; Ehrlich 1986). It was the English Botanist Arthur Tansley who first utilized the term ecology in the scientific literature in 1935 to emphasize the relationships and interactions between species, populations, communities and ecosystems. Also, as Pahl-Wostl (1995) defined the eco-system for all ecologists, An ecosystem denotes functionally distinct units where biological organization interacts with the abiotic environment to produce a characteristic network of energy and matter flows.

To begin, we must formulate some general definitions. Ecologists today define a species as a group of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from others. As we shall see, these reproductive strategies play an important role in group success or fitness and will ultimately lead to stable populations across a variety of ecosystems. A population is defined as a group of organisms occupying a specific area where all the organisms of this population are of the same species. All the various populations of organisms that exist and interact in some way in a given area are defined as a community. An ecosystem is a community of living things and the related non-living environment, interacting together as a whole in a relatively self-sustaining system. Therefore, a desert community is composed of soils, climate, temperatures, water, sunlight and living organisms, microscopic and macroscopic, which define the desert ecosystems.

Ecologists want to probe these interactions, to understand cycles, characteristics, and limitations of natural systems. They may determine trends in interactions by inventorying or monitoring the presence or absence of a species (Scaglione et al. 1993). Along with observing trends and fluctuations, ecologists may look at structural or functional aspects of ecosystems. These aspects include energy availability and pathways for use, nutrient and other chemical dynamics, species differences and similarities or commonalities expressed in levels of biodiversity, sheer numbers, biomass production, standing stock, percentage coverage, and climate variability (Weiner 1990). Most challenging, though, is answering the whys of eco-dynamism (Lewens 2016). Ecologists must explain and attempt to understand the ecosystems under investigation to be able to predict trends or endpoints, which may be able to tell us something about life in general, how we got here, and where we may be headed (Eldredge 1992; Wackernagel et al. 2002).

The distribution and abundance of a bivalve species such as the hard-shell clam Mercenaria mercenaria L. may be explained in terms of the physical environment the clam tolerates, or the food it eats, or the predatory activities that influence its existence. These are proximal expressions. Ultimately, ecologists want to know how the hard-shell clam has the specific characteristics that presently govern its existence, which are basic evolutionary questions that infuse both biological and physical sciences. Engineers rarely function within this precept because they are practical and functional in training and discipline. It may not be so important for an engineer to know how it works, but rather that it works and that I can fix it or redesign it if broken.

The abiotic influences, which engineers are most prepared to analyze, and what physicists still do not understand very well, can always be accounted for by reflecting on energy balances in ecosystems. Engineers work to establish predictable outcomes, such as improving energy conservation in an ecosystem. Energy flow in mass balance formulations are what engineers strive for. However, incoming solar radiation (Fig. 1.1) remains constant at 153 × 10⁸ cal/m²/yr.; travels the 93 × 10⁶ miles to earth; and the short-wave UV light is either reflected, evaporated with water, or absorbed by the soil. Visible light energy is processed by living systems, energy transformed to long-wave IR light, or heat, and as in a greenhouse, gases such as methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor and ozone that trap heat which can’t re-radiate out past these greenhouse gases. This interplay is no simple feat, between autotrophs using the amazing structure of chlorophyll, which takes small molecules like CO2 and H2O and creates large molecules like carbohydrates. Heterotrophs cannot directly consume organic molecules and derive energy set down in nature principally in the physical laws of thermodynamics, transforming energy through trophic (enrichment) levels (basic food webs) that result in the structure of all ecosystems (see Fig. 1.2).

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Fig. 1.1

Incoming solar radiation and energy distribution

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Fig. 1.2

Trophic levels and food webs

The First Law of Thermodynamics, or the law of the conservation of energy, notes that energy is neither created nor destroyed; it just takes different forms. So solar radiation does maintain constancy on Earth by being transformed into other energy forms. We experience this as heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one of efficiencies or ordered states. Systems, due to their increasingly deteriorating condition or movement toward random disorderliness—or what is denoted as entropy—will exhibit an energy form (i.e., heat again), which will be unavailable for use in our systems. In natural systems, this is observed by the fact that concentrated energy forms such as sunlight ultimately become diffused with latent heat dissipation. The 10% Principle, first described by biostatistician Alfred Lotka (1881–1949) in 1925, revealed that only a small portion of the available energy at any trophic level (energy sources as food) is transformed to the next trophic level in food webs, thus limiting the size of the trophic structure in natural systems (Kingsland 2015; see Fig. 1.3). At the top of the chain or web, organisms must be efficiency experts, deriving energy from lower energy levels and subsidies in the form available. For example, winds help birds of prey remain in the air rather than flapping to remain afloat as they seek out their next meal. Similarly, estuaries, where freshwater meets ocean waters, provide a salt gradient change that mixes with ocean waters, take in clean water, and remove degraded waters so that life forms can enter and exit daily via ocean tides. These energy externalities can be positive or negative.

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Fig. 1.3

Trophic structure and carrying capacities

Ecosystem structures and functions result from the efficient use of this available energy and are influenced by constant environmental changes. The development of niche selection formation and interactions with abiotic influences, competition, and territoriality will effectively select out organisms in populations that are unable to overcome these continuous perturbations. Thus, the organism will not successfully reproduce and pass along existing genetically maintained traits to future offspring. This fitness is initiated by reproductive success—the driving force of ecology as ecosystems are shaped—and is naturally selecting for efficiencies expressed by adaptive strategies and energy subsidization schemes by those energy externalities. All living things we see today are survivors through a natural selection process, influenced by their relationship with inert materials and other organisms. Mutualistic and symbiotic relations are necessary for organism survival so that their energy use efforts, along with a considerable amount of luck, provides for their continued existence (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990).

The survival of an organism in an ecosystem is no simple task. A specie’s adaptation to surroundings is dictated by processes with little direct control by those organisms affected. Phenomena that have played a role to some degree include cycles of daily, monthly, yearly (seasonality) events; topography and habitat transition or overlap (called ecotones); influences of various ecologies (biomes); climate and weather events such as large-scale phenomena (e.g., hurricanes, tornados, floods); or periodic droughts (Sims 1992), fires or microclimatic influences. For example, micrometeorology influences the atmospheric ratio of CO2/O2 and their exchange across ocean surfaces, as well as atmospheric temperature inversions due to frontal movements. The restrictive location of a geological formation for air flow, such as valleys or mountain ranges, and functioning biogeochemical cycles, are all intertwined in determining habitat type. The significance of these individual influences over immense geological time scales potentially contributes to the isolation of a species and ultimately to the vast distributional array of living organisms on Earth, providing for a complexity that has been the subject of inquiries and observations that have occupied the minds of scientists for generations (Caldicott 1992; Taylor 1986).

Ecologists look at this bio-productivity differently than say an economist who might look at a profit margin or engineers determining progress. For example, biomass is a prime contributor to establishing the productivity of an ecosystem and varies dramatically from one eco-type to another. In terrestrial systems, the forest canopy and the forest floor contribute considerably to the overall biomass of this system. In nearshore estuarine waters, the biomass may be partially hidden in sediments or offshore in the littoral zone of open coastal waters. Some other indirect measuring methods of biomass can be chlorophyll concentrations in nearshore waters, reflecting phytoplankton productivity (see Fig. 1.4).

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Fig. 1.4

Ecological externalities and biomass productivity. (Source: Adapted from Odum 1969)

Ecological biomass measurements are influenced by the subsidization of energy needs to maintain system functioning. Any energy source that reduces the cost of internal self-maintenance of the ecosystem (e.g., winds carry seeds) are energy subsidies, while pollution or extreme changes in the climate may increase stress or energy drains on a natural system. This dramatically influences what ecologists have termed the carrying capacity of ecosystems. Externalities such as disease and tolerance limits to mostly abiotic variables (e.g., drought, resistance to salinity changes) will help shape the population’s adaptability, reproductive success and general population dynamics. Scientists recognized that the frequencies of subsidization and their duration influence population levels and are critical factors in the successful functioning of natural ecosystems. In monocultures (artificially subsidized systems) such as agricultural systems or urbanized systems, the externalities subsidized normally by nature (e.g., rain, natural-decomposing nutrient recycling, etc.) can only drain energy resources from these systems by dependence on petroleum-based, synthesized chemicals or energy-demanding watering systems.

Pesticides cause impacts far more stressful to the functioning of an ecosystem than the predation impact of herbivores on the yield of corn, for example. Liebig’s Law of the Minimum identifies trophic energy transfer as mostly inefficient. With only 10% of available energy being transferred up to the next trophic level in natural systems, some production systems will always be net losses (e.g., beef cattle feed lot production can never bring yields greater than the energy subsidy required to get grain-fed beef to the market—it is always a net loss!). Ultimately, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a critical influence on the level of entropy.

Steroids and antibiotic chemicals that are added today to protect beef production will contribute tons of these chemicals into coastlines, potentially mimicking low-level constituents necessary in the communication of finfish and invertebrates. The costs to our fisheries industry may offset the artificially subsidized productivity in the beef industry. The exploitation of an ecosystem’s efficiency may shift, due to chronic contributions of low-level foreign biological chemicals of similar functioning as hormones or enzymes or the mimicking of natural metabolic pathways, thus revealing the continuing and widening of an already tremendous scientific information gap about human and ecological health (Toffler 1983; Toffler and Toffler 1993).

All ecosystems exhibit a level of organization. Species diversity in ecosystems is important because it allows for a variety of species to adapt to a variety of external influences that can be biotic, abiotic, or both. Organisms that can tolerate wide ranges of environmental conditions are defined by their niche within each respective habitat type. Species interactivity influences the numbers of organisms that will be carried by the support ecosystems. Population density with resultant inter-species and intra-species competition will reveal the dominant, facultative, and obligatory species within these ecosystems. Specific biomes (Fig. 1.5) cover large geographic areas containing similar animal and plant associations such as desert, tundra, tropical rainforest, and grassland.

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Fig. 1.5

Biomes

Ecosystems exhibit stratification or hierarchical layering of function. In aquatic ecosystems, there is a productive photolytic zone at the surface in response to its high photosynthetic rates. At the bottom, there is a regenerative benthic zone where decomposition mainly occurs. This trophic structure is influenced by abiotic as well as biotic factors. For example, daily circadian rhythms influence species interactions or functions. Whether a species is diurnal or nocturnal will be important to how it functions within a trophic level (Begon et al. 2005).

Ecological succession, or the aging of ecosystems, reveals specially adapted species to a set of special habitat conditions. Naturalistic relationships are very important in this development of ecosystems over time because they conserve available energy that is generally in limited supply. For example, lichens, which are symbionts, have a fungus that provides structural support and CO2 for algae that provides O2 by photosynthesis. Termites benefit from a flagellate, which lives in their guts to break down all food for energy. Pilot fish eat parasites living on the skin of sharks. All the aforementioned are natural energy-efficiency enhancements, important to the species involved and the ecosystems they reside in. Parasitism and predation (predator–prey relationships) can have a beneficial outcome for species. With predation, certain gimmicks or conditionings become important in determining survivorship for some species. For example, the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is mimicked by the Viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus) , giving it the survival benefit of an ill-tasting, regurgitated chemical found in the Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) nectar eaten by the developing Monarch butterflies or their caterpillar (Fig. 1.6). A bird predator eating a Monarch will never forget the effect on its physiology, and the Viceroy receives the benefit of the potential of that same bird thinking twice before consuming it (Boucher 2002; Ritland 2000).

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Fig. 1.6

Population dynamics of monarch butterflies

The basis of this will be found in the genetics of these species, which are directly influenced by natural selection pressures, thus eliminating those individuals with specific traits providing no protective measures against predation. These protective naturalistic gene dependent traits will be the adaptability of specific species. The Hardy-Weinberg Law states that gene frequencies will remain constant in a population from generation to generation unless something dramatically changes: (1) mutations, (2) altered selective pressures (disease), (3) random drift (sampling error), (4) immigration or emigration, and (5) non-random mating. Collectively, these all contribute to determining the fitness of the population. Fitness is a descriptor of reproductive success within a constantly changing environment that naturally selects out those characteristics that do not benefit the species’ ability to produce viable offspring.

Natural selection does not act upon the gene per se but rather upon the whole organism. The receiving end of selection is the phenotype, which throughout its development is exposed to the rigors of the environment. The environment changes and creates geographic isolation. Species that exhibit polymorphisms have distinct local forms in the same habitat. The direction of evolution’s path depends on the genetic characteristics of individuals in the population that survive and leave behind viable progeny, supporting reproduction success.

Populations, therefore, are determined by a variety of density-independent (e.g., meteorological conditions, long droughts) and density-dependent factors (e.g., reproductive strategies r and K strategist). Population dynamics, based on historically known factors identified as Malthusian, are exposed in a classic growth curve. Thomas Malthus in 1798 described population growth (Charles Darwin read Malthus before he postulated evolution by natural selection) as dependent on resources. Exponential population growth will outstrip resources if they are not replenished sustainably. How numbers of organisms or species are distributed in space (their dispersion patterns) will influence their numbers. Random, clumped, and dispersed population patterns all determine frequencies of contact, interaction and ultimately reproduction. Reproductive rates, death rates, growth rates, and migration rates are all factors determining the carrying capacity of an ecosystem.

Ecologists study species or populations by using a variety of methods. Sampling techniques have involved capturing animals and marking them (e.g., Lepidoptera) or banding them (e.g., birds) and releasing the organism and then recapturing them to determine population size. The Lincoln Index is a capture–recapture method and relies on a variety of confidence limit determinations or basic statistical applications. Relative density measurements can be determined indirectly by bird-dropping concentrations, nest frequency, grazing habitat, and the identification of probable food sources’ skeletal remains from pellets (e.g., for nocturnal raptors like owls). A sampling of sessile versus mobile organisms can require specific sampling methods. Recently with the advent of submersible and satellite technologies, scientists can study organisms in harsh inner-space environments (e.g., deep-ocean hydrothermal vents) or from the confines of outer space to observe whole ecosystem interactions.

In his book The First Eden, David Attenborough (1987) traced human influences on natural ecologies. Early agriculture emphasized olives in the forests of Cyprus and Crete islands where seeds readily took root in the soil. Farmers cloned olives from knobs on the trunk of olives trees. These trees are exceptionally long lived—more than 1000–1500 years. They were a staple food for ancient Greece and Rome, as they are today. Developing human societies took advantage of the fertility of the natural world, which was emblematic of animal sacrifices. For example, a bull was acknowledged as a symbol of fertility, and that symbolism was perpetuated through human culture. Hunting and slaughter of animals provided entertainment spectacles in ancient Rome. Bears, stags, and boars were pursued. Lions, hippos, hyenas, leopards, crocodiles, and birds were embalmed and stuffed and placed in the graves or crypts of the people of stature. The Ancient Roman view of the natural world was that it should be ravaged and plundered as they wished. They took what they wanted and cleared forests. Rome provided the legal title to undeveloped lands, and because wood was the only fuel and basic building material, ancient forests were cleared.

Attenborough (1987) identified the historic fact that wherever Roman and Greek states went to war, Roman legions cleared entire forests to provide their armies with spears and arrows and navies with ships. So as the classical empires spread from east to west along the Mediterranean and north into Europe, forests were destroyed. Attenborough noted that the history of the eastern Mediterranean and the impact of naval warfare on the forests of these coasts combusted in one battle in Greek waters at Lepanto. More than 250,000 trees were felled to create a fleet of ships for Venice against the Turkish fleets with 200,000 troops. Lepanto was the last major battle where galleys played an important role. The ship-building industry moved to northern Spain where there were still forests to be exploited. After the forests were destroyed, goats consumed every seedling and every leaf, ultimately preventing the formation of top soil and the natural successional restorative processes to restore these forests.

The growth of the human population has had the most significant contribution in altering Earth processes. People born before 1950 have witnessed in their lifetime a doubling of the world’s population, the first generation to do so. Humans cover the Earth in urbanized concentrations, occupying all types of terrestrial habitats. To accommodate the growing human population, people are destroying forests and natural habitats to occupy new land. From this alone, an estimated 100 species are lost every day. There are more than 500 million motor vehicles on Earth, one third of them found in North America alone. Technology, including the engineering that implements and uses it, perpetuated a myth in the early 1960s that the Green Revolution would eradicate world hunger (Sale 1993). However, per-capita production of grains since 1984 has decreased globally by 14% (Suzuki 1997). Around 30% of the world’s grain production is used to feed cattle for beef production.

Biotechnology has not been able to reduce the global population growth. The Dalkon Shield, a contraceptive device to prevent women from unwanted pregnancies, was a disaster—both technologically and socially (Bahr 2012). Due to its impact on women globally, research in the area of contraception is, for all practical purposes, moribund. Only if a truly private business sees a major economic windfall will there be any future investment capital venturing into contraception research and development.

Economics influence the growth of the human population and family size (Mazur 1994). In Ethiopia, a 30-day supply of condoms costs one-third of the entire family’s annual income, if they decide to purchase them (Jones 2005). The motion picture Black Hawk Down revealed the social implications of poverty in Somalia that contributed to the 1992 U.S. military operations there. The Somali government and warring tribes allowed the starvation of over 300,000 people when they prevented food aid from being delivered (Paarlberg 2011). Today at a global scale, with over 100 million births a year worldwide, spread out over 365 days, there are a quarter-million new people a day on the planet, or just over 10,000 people per hour (Ecology Global Network 2011). More mobility supports today’s burgeoning populations and will influence migration practices. For example, in Canada, where it appears there is plenty of room, there are estimates that more than 20 × 10⁶ people will migrate to Canada before the year 2020 (Boyd and Vickers 2000; Suzuki 1997).

Many countries have received tremendous infusions of money from the World Bank and other more affluent nations to maintain or even just to provide basic amenities to their ever-growing populations, from dams to general hydroelectric power (Kristof 1992). The Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River, between Paraguay and Brazil, took only 12 years to engineer and construct and has transformed the ecological system around the river. The construction of this dam resulted in a 140-kilometer lake and used enough concrete to house all the people in a city of over four million people. One million trees had to be planted to reduce (but not eliminate) soil erosion along its banks. Since 1984, this dam has produced electricity for San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for more than 300 years, at the tremendous loss of biological wealth and resources of a tropical rainforest; it will take decades to fully realize the total impacts (Mitchell 1990).

In his books Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980), Alvin Toffler suggested that humans are in the most energy-intensive phase of civilization’s technological development. The result of human conditions directs its technology to create the antithesis of ecosystems: monocultures. Urban areas are complex monocultures. They are devoid of many natural ecosystem functions that are replaced by external energy-subsidized systems that deplete fossil fuels. Monoculturalization was efficient in the beginnings of agricultural development. The removal of all trophic structure other than the primary producers is exemplified in urban environments. The elimination of pests that multiply within the detritus of urban systems may require the use of pesticides as a first effort to reduce their population levels. The urban fringes are affected because human populations have monocultured animals in the pet trade. Many introduced species become pests because they are feral (i.e., domestic animals that have gone wild, such as dogs). There are an estimated 90 million registered dogs in the US; although the majority of them are pets, worldwide, wild dogs outnumber the domesticated pet and have to be controlled by pesticide use or by extraordinary means such as hunting (Bekoff 2019). Even with modern practices of Integrated Pest Management, which advocates the use of all means other than pesticides to remove an unwanted organism (e.g., improved sanitation practices to remove food and habitat needs for unwanted organisms), a considerable amount of pesticides are used to provide a quick fix of a problem that could be handled in a better way. The residence time of these pesticides can be measured in decades. Figure 1.7 shows the classic ecological implications of DDT pesticide food chain impacts first identified by Rachel Carson (1962) in Silent Spring. The recovery of Bald Eagles, once listed as endangered, is testimony to the environmental protection of ecological functioning and healthy recovery once the chemical culprit is removed.

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Fig. 1.7

Bioconcentrations of DDT and ecological implications

Since humans cover general niches and are omnivorous, we have more varied competitors. In natural systems, people try to detect the breadth of a niche into either generalists, like the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and the Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens), or specialists like Desert Pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius) that lives and reproduces in practically boiling waters in volcanic fumaroles. It is this diversity that helps maintain ecosystem stability. Stability in ecological terms is reflective of the variation or adaptability of species. Because all species play an important role in an ecosystems connectedness, it is important that we seek diversity to be maintained, adhered to, and ultimately preserved.

Adaptability can determine the survivability of species that are all constantly being tested by changing environmental conditions. Even primary production, photosynthesis, has variability built into the specific plant’s reproduction. There are two known types of chlorophyll plants: C4 plants dominate deserts and grasslands, whereas C3 plants dominate and account for most of the world’s photosynthesis because they are more competitive in communities of mixed species where light and temperatures are average. The implications of this can be considerable when one realizes that the climate influences biome development, which in turn influences ecological community development, and which in turn influences the diversity of species. Human ecological concerns are right in line with these influences as we are shifting the type of plant dominance for habitats. Botanists have noted that plants collected for arbor study in the late 1750s in England, of the same species, revealed anatomical differences. The antique leaves had more stomata. The oak species leaves of today have an average of 40% fewer stomata. Leaves must take in CO2 but in doing so, more air circulates increasing evaporation of vital water molecules. With more CO2 in the air, leaves need fewer stomata to take in enough of the gas for photosynthesis. With fewer stomata, the trees are more efferent in the rise of water, are hardier in droughts, and are thus an adaptive benefit to rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Of all applied ecological sciences, human ecology is the most influenced by engineering practices. Human quality of life is a direct function of our manipulating the human landscape. We have observed over the millennia that Earth’s limited space and resources require stewardship. Humans are geological agents that change the human-scape (landscape) to maintain order. In any ecosystem, energy must be expended, which means that products [pollution] become a stress in many such instances because if left unattended, they contribute to increasing ecological disorder (Pahl-Wostl 1995). In any ecosystem management, biological and ecological diversity is a necessity, with recycling being the major goal of the system.

Humans should be more aware of the applications of ecological principles rather than relying on technology alone as the answer to increasing population demands and resultant pollution dilemmas. LaMont Cole (1966) wrote that throughout human history, man’s continuing trouble with deteriorating environments stems from the fact that his culture has tended to be too independent of the natural environment. Humans have historically altered landscapes. The domestication of animals and plants occurred beginning 10,000 years ago (Harper 1977). Just look at our food sources—carrots from Afghanistan, peas from Italy, and beans from South America. Human settlements were made in or near flood plains of all the major rivers of the world where trade resulted in increases in populations and more developmental support. In 347 B.C., Plato wrote of deforestation and grazing causing the drying up of springs and the destruction of fertile soils. In 30 B.C., Virgil recommended crop rotations. This collective socio-ecology emphasized the rural versus urban ecology, and still today, we lament but continue to tolerate urban sprawl into suburbs (George and McKinley 1974).

The overall result has been the decline in the quality of living due to a lack of public interest and poor sustainable planning. Cities are uniquely human ecosystems, but because social indicators are pollution indicators and ultimately lead to social problems, they cannot be devoid of the biospheric system. Humans must look beyond basic ecological principles. As we are able to engineer our ecological systems to suit our needs, we are not immune to ecological disasters such as extinction. The human population in the world must culturally keep up with rapid technological changes, with education being key to making sustainable decisions (Illich 1970). Paul Ehrlich (1974) noted in Ark II that natural and political boundaries rarely overlap. So how do we accomplish proper ecosystem management when we do not have a universal education knowledge base? Engineering provides practical hands-on applications, and engineered structures can be a focal point to begin discussions on family planning, a reorganization of tax/political structures, and a regional land-use planning approach like the one proposed by Ian McHarg (1969) in Design with Nature. We must recycle, coupled with a by-product approach to waste disposal. We need to focus on sprawl and the city/rural inter-relationship, and we must create a shift in emphasis from short-term quick fixes to long-term ecosystem-based solutions to solve large-scale environmental problems (Andrewarth and Birch 1984).

The World Conservation Strategy, declared by the United Nations in 1980, stated that we should (1) not upset the basic ecological processes of life, (2) not overharvest or deplete natural resources, (3) not destroy biological diversity, and (4) reduce human population growth rates across the globe (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources 1980). These strategies are more relevant than ever and should be a basic tenet in all educational endeavors developing an Earth ethic, which is based on sound ecological practices.

Ecological competition over evolutionary periods is dependent on an overlap of geographic ranges. Natural selection tends to favor less hybridization and accomplishes this through the isolation of specific reproductive mechanisms. For example, alternating the periodicity of species’