EGE 3100: HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT

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Survey of human occupation of the earth’s surface.

 Human occupation 

Human occupation is defined as the doing of work (paid and unpaid), play or activities of daily living within
a temporal, physical and socio-cultural context that characterizes much of human life. The focus is on
everyday life rather than illness or disability.

MOHO theory of human occupation

INTRODUCTION
The Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) was first developed in the 1980s by Gary Kielhofner. MOHO is
an occupation-focused framework that aims to explain aspects of engaging in occupations and how illness
and disability related problems arise.

MOHO is said to be client-centred, evidence based and holistic in nature. The client's thinking, feeling and
doing are central to therapy and the model takes into account both mind and body and it has been designed
to complement other occupational therapy theories. MOHO puts more emphasis on occupational
performance than on performance components. In MOHO the environment can demand and offer
opportunities for occupational performance.

FOCUS OF MODEL

 Occupation in practice
 The motivation for occupation
 The patterning of occupational behaviour/ performance into routines and lifestyles
 The nature of skilled performance
 The influence of the environment on occupational performance

This model views the human being as a system and describes this human system using systems theories.
According to the dynamic systems theory interaction between the human as a system, the task and the
environment result in occupational behaviour. Occupational performance results in health, well- being,
development and change, hence making it dynamic. The human system is constantly changing, unfolding
and reorganising itself through engagement.

Occupation is a process through which we organise our mind and body and through our minds and body we
organise our occupation: we become what we do- occupational identity.

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FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF THE MODEL

1. Human occupation is complex

2. A person is made up of components
3. The environment influences performance
4. Occupational performance

1. Basic assumptions to understanding the complexity of human occupation

The human is a dynamic system. Elements of the system work together to produce behaviour.

Behaviour is dynamic and context dependent. Behaviour changes continuously to meet the demands and
opportunities afforded by the context.

Occupations are the essence of self organisation, therefore through everyday doing, people shape who they
are.

Occupation is a result of motivation, patterns, performance capacity factors and environmental influences.
Doing during the therapy process enables people to reshape their occupational abilities and identities,
therefore becoming more adaptive.

2. The components of the person

Occupational participation is chosen, patterned and performed through three interrelated components of the
person, namely:

o Volition - values, interests and personal causation

o Habituation- habits and roles
o Performance capacity- the mental and physical attributes and lived experiences

The components:

Volition
Volition constitutes self knowledge or common sense that is gained through experience and dispositions.
Dispositions refer to the cognitive/ emotional orientation towards occupations, such as enjoyment, value,
feelings of competence and others. It enables humans to anticipate, choose, experience and interpret
occupational behaviour and it results in thoughts, feelings and decisions about engaging in occupations.
Therefore, volition could simply be articulated as the motivation process of choosing what to do. Volition
encompasses values, interests and personal causation.

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Values are about the beliefs, commitments and significance that people attach to occupations. People are
likely to engage in occupation that they deem as important. Values create a strong disposition to perform
according to standards set by context. There are consequences attached to not acting according to values.

Interests relates to perceptions, feelings and emotions associated with pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore,
the person would choose to engage in an occupation that he/she finds satisfying and enjoyable

Habituation
Actions are organised into patterns of behaviour that become routines. Integration into our temporal, social,
physical and cultural environments is through these patterns of behaviour. Habituation comprises of habits
and roles, which are often resistant to change. Habits are automatic learned ways in which we respond and
perform in familiar situations. For habits to develop actions have to be repeated to be able to establish a
pattern and there has to be consistency in the environment. Habits operate at a subconscious level and they
influence a wide range of behaviour patterns.

Roles
MOHO states that we behave and act in learned ways that are associated with a social identity or status. Our
actions are embedded (deep-rooted) in our social roles or are performed in full or partial fulfillment of a
social role. Roles influence our interactions with others, the style, manner and content as well as the role
related tasks that form daily routine. Habits regulate routine actions and behaviour within a role. The
interwoven nature of habits and roles is evident in daily life and in turn, routine behaviour is organized. The
onset of disability or illness can disturb established habits and therefore would require relearning or
developing new habits. This would require sustained practice in order to change habituation.

Performance Capacity
This is the ability to perform an act, based on the status of one's mental and physical capabilities, as well as
lived experiences. Capabilities include the musculoskeletal, cardiopulmonary, neurological and other
physiological systems that enable action. The capabilities are objectively assessed and the experiences are
subjective and they shape performance. An area of interest in MOHO is on the lived experiences of people
with disabilities and how they perform.

3. Environment
The environment is made up the physical, social, cultural, economic and political aspects that impact on
how occupations are motivated, organised and performed. It provides the opportunities and resources for
engagement and also presses for certain behaviour or presents constraints to engagement. Within the
environment there are objects, spaces, occupational tasks or form, culture and political and economic
influences that affect occupational performance. Different environments will have different effects on each
person, because humans are unique beings. According to MOHO, the contribution of the three components
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and environment to occupation is heterarchical in nature. This means that aspects of the components and the
environment all contribute to a dynamic whole.

4. Occupational Performance
This constitutes the actual doing which can be demonstrated at different levels, namely: skill, occupational
performance, identity, participation, competence and adaptation. It results from a heterarchical contribution
from the components of the person, namely; volition, habituation and performance capacity and the
environment. Occupational performance is dynamic in nature, because it is influenced and shaped by
external environment that is continuously changing. It is also spontaneous and must be understood within
the context of emerging action and conditions.

The Neolithic conquest of the earth.

The Neolithic Revolution, also called the Agricultural Revolution, marked the transition in human history
from small nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger, agricultural settlements and early civilization.

The Neolithic Revolution started around 10,000 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region of
the Middle East where humans first took up farming.

Shortly after, Stone Age humans in other parts of the world also began to practice agriculture.

Civilizations and cities grew out of the innovations of the Neolithic Revolution.

The period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, and the great significance and degree of
change affecting the communities in which new agricultural practices were gradually adopted and refined.
Neolithic Age
The Neolithic Age is sometimes called the New Stone Age. The term Neolithic comes from two words:
neo, or new and lithic, or stone. As such, this time period is sometimes referred to as New Stone Age.
Neolithic humans used stone tools like their earlier Stone Age ancestors.

The term Neolithic Revolution was used to describe the radical and important period of change in which
humans began cultivating plants, breeding animals for food and forming permanent settlements. The advent
of agriculture separated Neolithic people from their Paleolithic ancestors.

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Many aspects of modern civilization can be traced to this moment in history when people started living
together in communities.

Causes Of The Neolithic Revolution

There was no single factor that led humans to begin farming roughly 12,000 years ago. The causes of the
Neolithic Revolution may have varied from region to region.

(i) The Earth entered a warming trend around 14,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. Some
scientists theorize that climate changes drove the Agricultural Revolution.

(ii) In the Fertile Crescent,( Crescent- shaped region in the Middle East) bounded on the west by the
Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Persian Gulf, wild wheat and barley began to grow as it
got warmer. Pre-neolithic people called Natufians started building permanent houses in the region.

(iii) Other scientists suggest that intellectual advances in the human brain may have caused
people to settle down.

(iv)Religious artifacts and artistic imagery have been uncovered at the earliest Neolithic settlements.

The Neolithic Era began when some groups of humans gave up the nomadic lifestyle completely to begin
farming. It may have taken humans hundreds or even thousands of years to transition fully from a lifestyle
of gathering wild plants to keeping small gardens and later tending large crop fields.

Agricultural Inventions
Plant domestication: Cereals such as emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley were among the first crops
domesticated by Neolithic farming communities in the Fertile Crescent. These early farmers also
domesticated lentils, chickpeas, peas and flax.

Domestication is the process by which farmers select for desirable traits by breeding successive generations
of a plant or animal. Over time, a domestic species becomes different from its wild relative.

Neolithic farmers selected crops that harvested easily. Wild wheat, for instance, falls to the ground and
shatters when it is ripe.

Around the same time that farmers were beginning to sow wheat in the Fertile Crescent, people in Asia
started to grow rice and millet. Scientists have discovered archaeological remnants of Stone Age rice
paddies in Chinese swamps dating back at least 7,700 years.

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In Mexico, squash cultivation began about 10,000 years ago, while maize-like crops emerged around 9,000
years ago.

Livestock: The first livestock were domesticated from animals that Neolithic humans hunted for meat.
Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars, for instance, while goats came from the Persian ibex.

The first farm animals also included sheep and cattle. These originated in Mesopotamia between 10,000 and
13,000 years ago. Water buffalo and yak were domesticated shortly after in China, India and Tibet.

Draft animals including oxen, donkeys and camels appeared much later around 4,000 B.C. as humans
developed trade routes for transporting goods.

The term Neolithic Period refers to the last stage of the Stone Age - a term coined in the late 19th century
CE by scholars which covers three different periods: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. The Neolithic
period is significant for its megalithic architecture, the spread of agricultural practices, and the use of
polished stone tools.

Impact of Neolithic revolution

The Neolithic Revolution, in all of the places where it happened, gave way to newer ideas about religion.
There's plenty of religious artifacts from the Mesolithic era, mainly statues or fertility idols carved out of
soapstone. Usually in animorphic forms or pregnant fertility goddesses.

With the Neolithic revolution, early religion started to take a manifestation of what is more familiar in most
cultures today.

temple sacrifices started in the Neolithic.

The people of the time became a lot more dependent on the changing of the seasons and weather in general.

All of the sudden they were more vulnerable to things in nature such as famine, pestilence, droughts, etc.

.And became more heavily depended on religious beliefs to deal with such problems.

Everything became more sophisticated and hierarchical, including religion.

There's also the first resemblance of organized religion as opposed to simple local animistic beliefs and little
else.

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But also because of all of this, and population growth, the belief in animal sacrifices and human sacrifices
became more important.

Widespread warfare and territorial aggression.

New art forms, designs and innovations in human sculpting began in the Neolithic, which helped the human
race unleash it's creative cultural imagination.

Most of the domesticated animals in today's world, especially farm animals, have their origins from
ancestors domesticated in the Neolithic era.

Oikoumene

 THE Greek word oikoumene  means “inhabited,” Literally, oikoumene is the “inhabited earth.”

 oikoumene was used to differentiate between inhabited and uninhabited parts of the world. Hence,
some scholars have guessed that it was first used when the Greeks encountered large unoccupied
spaces during the Great Colonization.

 But the west, east, and north were considered populous areas, since the Celts, Scythians, and Indians
lived there. The Greeks of the ancient period knew little about the Sahara and other wastelands.

 By contrast, the traditional view, that the world was populated from the centre out to the edges of
the Earth, surrounded by the Oceanus (the river that flowed around the Earth).

 Therefore, it is likely that the term oikoumene originated in another context. In 500 BCE the

philosophical schools of the Pythagoreans and Eleates claimed that the Earth is not a disc but a
globe. Parmenides (Parmenides of Elea was a Presocratic Greek philosopher), the founder of the
Eleatic school, divided the surface of the Earth into zones or belts, which run around the globe.

 According to this view, there are five zones, two inhabited and three uninhabited. The limits of the
zones are generated by projection of the course of the sun and of circles of latitudes onto the globe.
The middle “hot” or “scorched” zone has its boundaries in both tropics (c. 24°) and is divided by the
Equator. The two temperate zones extend from the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn to the north and
to the south up to the so-called Arctic and Antarctic circles (c. 66°). Between these circles and the
poles there are two cold zones. Only the two temperate zones were considered habitable; the others
were perceived of as uninhabitable owing to excessive heat or cold.

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The five zones of the Earth according to Parmenides.

 Parmenides’s hypothesis that there are not one but two zones where people can live, one in the
Northern and one in the Southern Hemisphere, was revolutionary. For the first time, the idea that
huge parts of the Earth were unknown and inaccessible to the Greeks was enunciated.

 After the invention of the globe-Earth theory, a new term was needed to distinguish the known parts
from other, but theoretically habitable, parts of Earth. For this purpose, the word oikoumene was
coined.

 The Concept of the Oikoumene in Early Geographers

 The model of the Earth with five zones was widely accepted until the end of antiquity (ancient
times), although Greek and Roman geographers knew it did not always correspond with reality that,
neither was the zone around the Equator totally scorched, nor were the areas in the north of the
Arctic Circle unbearably cold and uninhabited.

 During the 5th century BCE and the first half of the 4th century, the globe-Earth theory of the
Pythagoreans and Eleates prevailed over the Ionic model of the flat Earth. In late antiquity
Christians (e.g., Kosmas Indikopleustes) rejected some aspects of the globe theory because of its
incongruousness with some biblical passages.

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 After realizing that the surface of the Earth was only partly inhabited and known by men, Greek
geographers were faced with new questions: Was there only one oikoumene, or more? How did
“our” oikoumene fit into the northern temperate zone?10 How big was the “inhabited world”
extending from the Pillars of Heracles in the west to India in the east? Such questions of the size,
form, and position of the oikoumene(s) were hotly debated in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE.

 The Greeks between the times of Democritus and Eratosthenes found different answers to these

questions. Especially popular among literati became the model of the historian Ephorus, who drafted
the oikoumene as a rectangle in the fourth book of his Histories.

 Ephorus equated every corner of his rectangle with astronomical points and every side with both
winds and peoples: the Scythians(were a group of ancient tribes of nomadic warriors who originally
lived in what is now southern Siberia) lived in the north, the Celts (The Celts were a large group of
Caucasian tribes in Europe)in the west, the Ethiopians in the south, and the Indians in the east.

 The model revived the old notion that Greece (or rather the Aegean) lay in the middle, and it was
compatible with the prevalent Hellenocentric idea that normality and civilization are to be found in
the middle, while the environment towards the edges becomes increasingly barbaric and archaic
(outdated).

 The Oikoumene of Eratosthenes

 With regard to the division of the oikoumene, Eratosthenes agreed with his predecessor Dicaearchus,
who invented a “diaphragm.” Intersecting the whole Mediterranean and continuing with a mountain
range (“Tauros”), this divides the oikoumene into a northern and a southern part.

 By adding up the measurement data found in travellers’ accounts, periploi, and itineraria,

Eratosthenes reckoned the oikoumene length at 77,800 stades, and its breadth at 38,000 stades.

 The subdivision of the northern and southern parts of the oikoumene followed morphological breaks
such as mountain ranges or major rivers (e.g., the Indus forms the boundary between India and
Ariane). Hence Eratosthenes’s system was not an abstract grid (like the later one of Ptolemy) but a
net of some major meridians and parallels.

 Eratosthenes also tried to subdivide the bigger sections into smaller parts. Like the cartographers of
early times, he often used geometrical shapes (e.g., Britannia as triangles, India as a rhomboid, the
Caspian Sea as a circle) or easily recognizable images (e.g., Mesopotamia as a galley, Sardinia as a

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footstep, the Peloponnese as a plane-tree leaf). Through these, the form of the oikoumene was easily
constructible, measurable, and memorable.

 Eratosthenes’s sketch of the oikoumene remained the master model until the time of Ptolemy, and
even Hipparchus subscribed to it despite some criticism.

The oikoumene according to Eratosthenes of Cyrene.

 The idea that other oikumenai can be found on the surface of the Earth was often discussed in
Hellenistic, late Republican, and early Imperial times, but took a back seat in later times (possibly
because of the Roman concept of imperium sine fine). Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, who collected
all the geographical information of the early 2nd century CE, no longer conceived of
the oikoumene as an island in the Ocean (or as surrounded by interconnected seas like the Atlantic).
On Ptolemy’s world map, which covered a space of 180° in length and 80° in breadth, an “unknown
land” (agnostos ge) extended even farther to the north and south.

 Since Eratosthenes likened the shape of the oikoumene to a “chlamys” (the Macedonian cloak),  he
may have alluded here to a new—political—dimension of this term

GEOGRAPHY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING

Geography contributes to science as a part of the broad, creative, multidisciplinary effort to advance the
frontiers of knowledge. In so doing it offers significant insights into some of the major questions facing the
sciences, related to the pursuit of knowledge both for its own sake and for the sake of improving society's
well-being.

Integration in Place
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Geography's traditional interest in integrating phenomena and processes in particular places has a new
relevance in science today, in connection with the search for what some have called a ''science of
complexity."

Geography's Subject Matter

From its work on integration in place, geography has produced a substantial literature related to the
challenges of integration in place and the significance of such integrative perspectives for scientific
understanding. Two examples are environmental-societal dynamics and the distinctiveness of place.

Example: Environmental-Societal Dynamics

The relationship between population and its social and environmental resource base has been a central issue
for science, and geography has long focused on the nature of that relationship, ranging from local and
contemporary contexts to global and historic processes. Geographers are involved in both data collection
and analysis to identify connections among changes in population, environment, and social responses.

For example, geographers have reconstructed population-resource dynamics for a large number of places
throughout the world. Following Butzer (1982), several important facets of the relationship over the long-
term may be distilled from these works, such as the following:

 Sustained population growth is not the norm at subglobal (regional) levels; given sufficient time,
locales and regions may display significant declines in population.
 These declines are typically associated with political devolution.
 Populations do not always, or regularly, approach the limits allowed by the socio-technological
conditions in which they exist.
 Human-induced environmental change involves continual trial-and-error adjustments on the part of
the population. Among agrarian-based societies, these adjustments are consciously related to a
strategy to balance short- and long-term needs.

Human impacts on the Earth have become sufficiently apparent and worrisome in the past few decades that
the science of human-environment relationships has become a high priority concern across disciplinary and
national lines. Witness, for instance, the rise of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change Programme. Geography is contributing significantly to agenda setting and research in these
initiatives

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Example: The Distinctiveness of Place

Where something takes place affects what takes place because of the mediating effects of local conditions.
Geographers' concern with place leads them to explore not only the particular characteristics of individual
places but also the processes by which humans divide up or appropriate portions of the Earth's surface for
various purposes.."

Geographers are interested in human territoriality because the divisions of the Earth's surface reflect and
shape the ways in which people think about the places where they live, as well as their decisions and
actions.

Geographers have addressed a wide variety of issues related to territoriality, including disjunctions between
political territories and environmental regions, ways in which territorial constructs affect ethnic relations,
and the uses of territorial strategies to achieve social ends.

Similarly, geographic work has highlighted the importance of place in the formation of cultural and social
identities and experiences. In this late-twentieth-century world, as Americans struggle to address the
tensions and celebrate the richness of human differences—of ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, and
generation—a focus on the ways that ideas about place serve to divide people but also to connect them can
offer new visions for personal and social values (Agnew, 1987).

Geographers have also challenged the tendency of much social science research to treat the environment in
which people live merely as a passive byproduct of history. They have argued that the material
characteristics of the environments in which people live reflect and influence personal, social, and
environmental understandings. As the social sciences begin to take more seriously the role of symbols and
images in human affairs, geography's concern with the social dimensions of landscapes has taken on new
relevance and visibility. Geographers have done a great deal of research to uncover the political/social
meanings, influences, and conflicts embedded in landscapes (e.g., see Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988;
Anderson and Gale, 1992) and representations of landscapes (e.g., Harley, 1990; Pickles, 1995b).

By focusing on the tangible environments where people live and work, geographic research is part of a
growing thrust within the social sciences to understand the importance of everyday life in social change
(e.g., Giddens, 1985). At the same time, geographers are affecting the direction of that thrust by linking
human ideas and actions to the settings in which they are embedded.

Geography's Relevance to Issues for Science and Society

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Geographic research addressing integration in place has put the discipline at the frontier of experimentation
with integration as a challenge for science. Geography's experience with integration in place also has been
fruitful in providing insights to issues of interest to science at large, as illustrated by the following examples
of complexity and nonlinearity and central tendency and variation. Geographic research on integration in
place is also important to scientific understanding of important societal issues. Three examples are given
below—on economic health, ecosystem change, and conflict and cooperation—to illustrate this importance.

Complexity and Nonlinearity

Geographers have applied systems theory to help understand the complex interactions between nature and
society that are caused by natural hazards. Geographers have also examined the mechanisms of ecosystem
stability and change, especially human and other agents of short-and long-term ecosystem change. Ideas
about chaotic behavior or catastrophic events within places, additionally, have contributed to research on
growth within and among cities. These studies illustrate geographers' contributions to a more fundamental
understanding of environmental and social systems in ways that should engage ecologists, engineers,
mathematicians, physicists, and other members of the scientific community.

Other geographic research has been directed toward the identification and description of patterns that may
have emerged from nonlinear, complex, or chaotic dynamics.

Economic and Social Health

A geographic perspective recognizes that economic changes can create or exacerbate economic imbalances
across places, whether or not the economic system overall is trending toward or away from equilibrium. A
particular concern of geographers is the implications of economic change for different groups in society
within a place, especially for groups distinguished by class, gender, and race.

Environmental Change

Scientific concerns about environmental change have increased markedly in the past few decades.
Geographers have made important contributions to the understanding of such changes through their research
on human-induced climate change, ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity, and earth surface processes.

For example, human populations are increasingly concentrated in urban and suburban regions. Land
surfaces in these areas, in turn, are being transformed into highly unnatural mosaics. With the
transformation of rural landscapes into suburban and urban landscapes come dramatic changes in local and
regional climates. Urban heating and drying, for example, have been measured and simulated by
geographers for decades. Geographers' research not only has brought to light climatic consequences of
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urbanization, but their models have begun to provide a means for assessing the potential climatic impacts of
future urbanization.

Conflict and Cooperation

In any effort to understand how individuals and groups relate to one another, context is fundamental.
Geography's concerns with the integration of phenomena in place and the positioning of one place with
respect to others are key to an understanding of context; they focus attention on the importance of such
matters as resources, land use, and the distribution and movements of peoples. For example, geographers
have shown how conflicts over water have affected territorial disputes

Spatial Economic Flows

Geographers argue, however, that distance itself is not a datum (a fixed starting point of a scale or
operation.) but a social construction whose influence changes with shifts in the barriers between, and
communication technologies linking, different places.

THE EMERGENCE OF EARTH’S SCIENCES AND SPECIALIZATIONS IN GEOGRAPHY.

SPECIALIZATION IN GEO
Some of the specialized areas are:

• Economic Geography: Economic geography is the study of geographic location, distribution and spatial
organization of economic activities.

• Cultural Geography: It focuses on analysing the cultural factors.

• Political Geography: Political geography studies the relationship between the government and people,
trades and treaties, political power, and boundaries.

• Historical Geography: Historical geography deals with all the physical, fictional, theoretical geographies
of the past. 

• Tourism Geography: Tourism geography is the study of travel and how the environment and its features
help in the tourism aspects of a specified area. 

• Transportation Geography: Transportation geography can be considered as a branch of economic

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geography which explores the spatial interaction or movement of goods, information and people.

• Regional Geography: Regional geography examines the exclusive characteristics of both the nature and
human of a region.

• Medical Geography: Also known as the health geography, medical geography is the research on health and
spread of diseases in the world. It also looks into how climate effect human's health.

• Geomorphology: It is the scientific study of landforms.

• Hydrology: Hydrology explores the water resources and water cycle.

• Glaciology: Glaciology is the study of different forms of ice which also includes the history and future of
glaciers. 

• Biogeography: It is all about the study of bio diversity of an area. The bio geographer learns about the
harmony of life and its surroundings. 

• Climatology: It deals with the study of weather conditions of the nation.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

Environmental movement sometimes referred to as ecology movement addresses environmental issues. 

Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of
the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as
a participant in (not enemy of) ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights.

The environmental movement is an international movement, represented by a range of organization and

varies from country to country. Due to its large and varying membership, and occasionally speculative
nature, the environmental movement is not always united in its goals.

The movement also encompasses some other movements with a more specific focus, such as the climate
movement.

At its broadest, the movement includes professionals, religious devotees, politicians, scientists, nonprofit
organizations and individual advocates.

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Primary focus points
The environmental movement is broad in scope and can include any topic related to the environment,
conservation, and biology, as well as preservation of landscapes, flora, and fauna for a variety of purposes
and uses.

The Environmental Movement has had many different goals throughout it's time period. However, all of
these different goals can be summed up between the conservation of the environment and preservation of
the environment.

Environmental Conserving

This means using the resources wisely and making sure that they're put to good use and not overused so that
they don't run out. In general, it just simply means being smart with what you have. At the beginning of this
movement, this was mostly seen with the timber industry, but also with other resources such as minerals and
fuels in the United States. This can be considered with oil deposits, coal deposits, and other things as well.
Due to people wanting to preserve the environment, we are now much more cautious with raw minerals and
don't use them as fast anymore.

Preserving the environment meant that natural resources and land in general would be set aside and not
used or impacted by humans what so ever. This would be best seen through things such as national parks or
government owned forests which wouldn't be available to logging or any other industries, and would be
kept and preserved from use. Today, this can be seen through how the United States keeps many reserves of
minerals and oil fields untapped and unused, having them simply be sealed and within nature without being
disturbed.
CONCERNS ABOUT, MAN’S ROLE IN CHANGING THE EARTH.
 Some human activities that cause damage (either directly or indirectly) to the environment on a
global scale include Carbon Dioxide Emissions , Draining Rivers, Black Carbon, Industrial
Agriculture, Reef Destruction, plastic Production
Some of the problems, including global warming and biodiversity loss pose an existential risk to the
human race, and overpopulation causes those problems
Carbon Dioxide Emissions 
 The human activity most widely viewed as changing the planet is the burning of fossil fuels. In order
to produce the energy that drives the world’s economy, countries rely on carbon-rich fossil fuels like
coal, oil, and gas. By burning these materials, humans have increased the atmospheric levels of
carbon dioxide. 
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 Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas, and as a result of these atmospheric changes, average
temperatures on the planet are rising and global weather patterns are changing. Some of the carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed into oceans, increasing their acidity by 30 percent over the
past 100 years. This change has impacted on oceanic ecosystems and the food chains that support
underwater plant and animal life.
Draining Rivers
 Life depends heavily on the supply of fresh water that exists in rivers, lakes, and aquifers. It’s
estimated that one fourth of Earth’s river basins run dry before ever reaching the ocean. This is
the result of reduced rainfall caused by deforestation and the construction of man-made dams that
divert water flow in inefficient ways. Less water flowing through river basins has also altered local
weather patterns.
Black Carbon
 For centuries, humans have engaged in activities that produce black carbon particles. Black carbon
particles are released into the atmosphere in the form of smoke that is produced by cooking with
solid animal fuels (cow dung), burning trees, and emitting diesel exhaust.

 When black carbon particles reach the atmosphere, they form a heat-absorbing layer that causes
temperatures to rise. Raindrops tend to form around black carbon particles in the atmosphere, and
when they fall to the ground, they absorb heat there too, thus magnifying their warming effect.

Industrial Agriculture
 As the world’s population continues to grow, so does the amount of farmland needed to provide
sufficient food. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over 40 percent of
Earth’s surface is now comprised of agricultural lands, and a large portion of these lands were once
covered by forests. Much of Europe, for example, was once covered with dense temperate forests
but over time population growth-driven deforestation has led to more farm land.
 According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, three billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere
every year from deforestation. Due to deforestation carbon-dioxide absorbing capacities are being
diminished, which in turn means more of the heat-trapping gas is reaching the upper atmosphere,
causing global temperatures to rise.
 Fertilizers used in farming have had far-reaching effects. Their use has injected vast amounts of
nitrogen and phosphorous into regional ecosystems.  These practices add a tremendous amount of
nitrogen and phosphorus to the biosphere than would occur naturally. Runoff from farmland often
carries large amounts of fertilizer into rivers and streams that eventually drain into the sea. All of
this fertilizer runoff creates rapidly-expanding marine dead zones.

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 Reef Destruction
 Ocean reefs make up the foundation of some of the world’s richest marine ecosystems. Their demise
is disturbing the flow of nutrients and energy that support animal and plant life in our oceans.  As a
result of water pollution, ocean acidification, overfishing, and climate change, experts estimate
that one-fifth of global reefs are now dead and one-quarter of reef species may be extinct by 2050.
Furthermore, the livelihood of some 500 million people worldwide is dependent on reefs, as these
are where many fish and other species start their lives.
 Scientists believe northwest Mediterranean once supported a vibrant array of reefs, which provided
home to plant and animal species. Today, however, the stripped-down ecosystem is dominated by
bacteria and jellyfish, which exhibit a reduced capacity to regulate flows of nutrients and energy.

Plastic Production
 Technological development has led to the invention of new materials, such as plastics, that were
previously unknown to the planet. Many of these new materials are made up of chemical compounds
that can remain active in the environment for thousands of years and have lasting impacts on the
delicate regulatory cycles and ecosystems.
 At high concentrations, these chemicals can disrupt animal endocrine systems, alter reproduction
patterns, and cause cancer. Organic pollutants and plastic-derived endocrine disruptors have been
discovered in low concentrations all over the world, even in areas where they’ve never been used,
such as Antarctica and at the bottom of the oceans. While the effects of low doses of these chemicals
are less understood, they are widespread stresses that ultimately change ecosystems. The damage to
marine ecosystems is estimated to be around $13 billion a year.

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