Environmental Issue

The goals of this research project are to link an environmental issue to its underlying ecological concept(s), daily life, and to some type of sustainable practice that can ameliorate the reported environmental issue. With these research goals in mind, your research report should be in the form of a project proposal. Consider these concepts as you conduct your research: Environmental Issue: Choose an environmental issue of interest and find and report upon at least 5 scientific publications that work to understand this issue (e.g. fish farming and overfishing/and or nutrient pollution – 5 papers from 5 different species or 5 papers just on different aspects of farming one fish like salmon, or some type of mix). Discuss the methods and data reported in the publications. If applicable include figures and data. Ecological Concept(s): Explicitly link the environmental issue to its appropriate ecological concepts. You can do so by overlaying an ecological framework on the related human action and environmental issue. Answer these questions: – How is human action disrupting normal ecological function? – How does that disruption lead to an environmental issue? For example, fish farming is a human action that disrupts global food chains (the ecological principle) by leading to overfishing. Fish farming can also be placed in the context of the nitrogen cycle, a different ecological principle. In this case, it disrupts the nitrogen cycle by artificially concentrating so many nutrients in one place. This section asks you to reframe the discussion of the environmental issue into explicit ecological language. Daily Life: Why do we practice such environmentally damaging behavior? What aspects of daily life are helped by our practice? Why do people engage in environmentally destructive behavior? For example, how do we benefit from farmed fish? Find references that back up your claim. For example, people benefit from farmed salmon by being able to buy cheap fish. Document the consumption rates and the price of salmon today versus 20 years ago. Sustainable Practice: How can we change our behavior or alter our practice to reduce our ecological impact? What will be the ecological, economic, and societal repercussions of our change in practice? For example: Can we eat less farmed fish? Can we farm different species? Can we develop different food sources for our farmed fish? How will this impact people’s livelihood? For this part of the research you should again look to 5 journal publications. You can also include references to more general popular writing if it is relevant. Your final report should take the form of a project proposal in which you describe the problem and propose a solution. Your proposal should cover the above concepts and follow this structure: