How Much Acreage of Grain is Needed to Feed a Barn Owl?

Barn owl:  2 kg
Barn owls eat roughly 2/3rd their body weight
2 kg barn owl eats 4/3 kg
barn owl eats 1.333 kg/day
barn owl eats 1333 grams/day
barn owl eats 1333 x 365: equivalent of 486,545 grams/year
486,545 grams per year/32 gram vole: 15,205 voles/year
vole weighs 14-50 grams
average vole weight: 32 grams
vole eats its body weight daily
over one year 1 vole eats 32 x 365 grams: 11,680 grams per year
15,205 voles/year x 11,680 grams per vole: 176,500,000 grams per barn owl per year
176,500 kg per vole per barn owl per year/3000 kg per acre: 58.833 acres of wheat
It takes 58.833 acres of wheat to sustain a 2kg barn owl for one year according to these calculations

Ecosystem Diversity Video

1. Why do tropical rainforests have such immense diversity? How do they maintain their diversity?

They maintain a very diverse population because of the specialization of all of the species which allows there to be a tremendous amount of different species in a small space of land. 2. What role do tropical forests play in stabilizing climate and atmosphere? Can we take advantage of and enhance their ability to store carbon? Why is this important?

Rain forest play an essential role to help stabilize the climate because the vast amounts of plant life consume massive amounts of CO2. This is so important because CO2 is a greenhouse gas the contributes to global warming.

3.How can the data from a tropical rainforest that explains species diversity and abundance be helpful in managing and protecting temperate forests such as those in Yellowstone National Park or any other ecosystem on planet Earth?

You can observe that keystone species are so important to the ecosystems because when all of the wolves were killed off in Yellowstone there was an extremely detrimental effect on the environment because the top consumer was removed which caused a massive influx and decline of other species

Depicting an Energy System

In the Energy system activity, we were asked to depict a energy system or a food chain. To do this we created a producer (tree), a primary consumer (bug), a secondary consumer (mouse), a tertiary consumer (snake), and a top level consumer (eagle). 

Research Paper

Earthquakes, water contamination, and air pollution: these are some of the dangerous and environmentally devastating side effects of fracking, also known as, hydraulic fracturing. Fracking has been implemented at the Fayetteville Shale, which stretches across Arkansas, to access natural gas buried deep below the surface of the earth. Fracking enthusiasts tout the economic benefits of this method of tapping our natural resources and are quick to dispute any argument from environmentalists. However, a close examination of the facts proves that Arkansans stands to lose more than they will gain from fracking. Fracking does not only waste water, but contaminates the water supply. Fracking pollutes the air by means of methane emissions, use of fossil fuels, and methods that release toxic gases into the air. Fracking has been linked to increased seismic activity. The emotionally charged media attention that fracking has received has, in fact, detracted from the need for this practice to be banned. Fracking, the most pressing environmental issue in Arkansas, is destroying air and water in the Natural State.

The ProPublica article, What is Hydraulic Fracturing, reports that “nine out of ten gas wells in the United States” use fracking. Given such severe side effects, why are there so many fracking wells? With hydraulic fracking, gas companies such as Halliburton can access gas that was previously considered too deep to be profitable. Now that these companies can reach these gases, there has been a gas boom throughout the United States. Arkansans have been quick to jump at the economic bandwagon. Research by Kathy Deck, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, concludes that the natural gas industry generated $18.5 billion in total economic activity between 2008 and 2011. Landowners all across the state have welcomed gas companies into their backyards. But the sums these landowners receive today may soon seem too little for the permanent damage that is being done.

Unfortunately, it is hard to find valid evidence of the dangers of hydraulic fracking because journalists often write emotional articles about fracking out of bias without checking the facts. Misguided criticisms of hydraulic fracturing give “pro-fracking” companies and politicians a useful weapon. They can easily disprove many critics, thus distracting attention from the real dangers of hydraulic fracturing. An example of this is the “myth” that fracking causes earthquakes. The process of hydraulic fracturing does not cause seismic activity. Rather, earthquakes are often activated by the injection of wastewater from fracking into disposal wells. Since many critics of fracking do not take the time to understand the difference, their claims are easily proven false. The supporters of fracking need not bother to say that earthquakes can be caused by byproducts of fracking. They can simply, and validly, state that fracking does not cause earthquakes.

Another example is found in editor Rob Port’s article “Video: Man claims to be able to tap water on fire.” Port claims that in the anti-fracking movies, Gasland and its sequel Gasland 2, there are scenes in which people light water on fire to show how harmful fracking can be to water quality. However, the scene in the first movie could not be connected with hydraulic fracturing because flammable water had been observed in that area long before fracking was even possible. Also, the scene in the second movie was proven to be a hoax. These inaccurate scenes undermine the valid parts of the movies. Even if fracking cannot be proven to make water flammable, it is still very destructive to the environment.

Fracking wastes water. With fracking, anywhere between 1,000,000 and 8,000,000 gallons of water are mixed with sand and chemicals and shot into the ground in order to create fissures in shale formations more than a thousand feet below . Approximately 40 percent of this water is either reused in a gas well, or trucked away and injected into sandstone disposal wells. The water that is not recycled can only be buried because it is not biodegradable. The remaining 60 percent of the water is lost in the well. Regardless of where the water ends up, it is effectively wasted. It is too complicated and expensive to completely purify water used in fracking because of all the chemicals. Therefore, the water can never be safe to replace in streams. Up to 8,000,000 gallons of water, therefore, is taken out of the water cycle. Environmentalist Roger Drouin argues that this may be one of the causes for droughts in Arkansas and Texas during the past few years.

Another way that hydraulic fracturing ruins Arkansas’s water supply is by pollution. Even though evidence points against water becoming flammable due to fracking, and water radiation has proven to not be as harmful as some critics propose, fracking, nevertheless, does contaminate water. A water quality study in Pennsylvania shows that wells in close proximity to fracking cites can have impressively increased amounts of methane dissolved in the water. As Sid Perkins, writer for Science News, Stars and Stripes, and the Columbia Missourian, reveals, “wells located more than 1 kilometer from fracking operations averaged about 1.1 milligrams of dissolved methane per liter. But in water taken from 26 wells within 1 km of one or more fracking operations, methane concentrations averaged 19.2 [milligrams of dissolved methane per liter]”.

Air pollution is also a great concern in hydraulic fracturing operations. On one hand, fracking provides alternatives for harmful fossil fuels, thus reducing carbon emissions. “Carbon-dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years,” says fracking supporter and former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, Bjorn Lomborg. But this does not necessarily mean that fracking helps the environment. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Denver claim that natural gases such as methane pollute the air near gas wells. NOAA associate scientist Gabrielle Petron explains that the main way that gases are released into the air is “leaking from the infrastructure”. In other words, methane escapes during drilling. In 2013, energy industry analyst, Andrew Nikiforuk observed that five approximately six percent of new gas wells leaked. Six percent sounds like a relatively small number, but consider that in 2013 the Marcellus Shale operation planned to construct 150,000 to 200,000 new wells. 10,000 leaky wells could be in operation in one year. Jeff Tollefson, international journalist for Nature, warns about methane pollution in the air claiming, “There is hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change”. Tollefson ominously explains, “Methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere”. Thus, any environmental gain from the drop in carbon emissions is quickly being destroyed by methane gases released during fracking.

Another reason why fracking pollutes the air is that hydraulic fracturing depends on fossil fuels to operate. For instance, in order for the water to be transported to the drilling site, it must be carried in approximately two hundred trucks. Obviously, each truck uses lots of diesel to carry such a heavy load. “About 22.38 pounds of CO2 are produced by burning a gallon of diesel fuel,” says the U.S. Energy Information Analysis. If each truck used ten gallons of diesel, then about 45,000 pounds of CO2 would be produced per well. That in time creates a large carbon footprint.

The methods used in fracking are very harmful to air quality as well. To clean and maintain the wells, the gas has to be released. Venting is one of the greatest problems with fracking. The process of venting the gases releases gasses such as; methane, ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes as well as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes and hexanes, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. Another technique used when drilling for gas is flaring, burning of dangerous or useless gases. This also contaminates the air by releasing a variety of harmful gases. However, flaring is not nearly as bad as venting. Though methane is a greenhouse gas, The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency claims that it is “a clean-burning fuel”. Therefore, it would be better to use flaring as a substitute to venting whenever possible. It is clear, however, that air quality suffers because of fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing has boosted the economy in Arkansas. But at what cost? Injection of wastewater from fracking operations into storage wells has been known to reawaken, so to speak, dead fault lines. According to attorney Stuart H. Smith, this phenomenon has been proven to be the catalyst for thousands of earthquakes throughout Arkansas. Fracking is extremely damaging to the environment; in fact, it is probably the largest threat to the environment in Arkansas. It wastes massive amounts of water by lacing water with toxic chemicals and contaminating groundwater supplies. To transport water to the drilling sites, trucks must carry it. These trucks burn great amounts of diesel, thereby releasing carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The gas wells often leak methane and other greenhouse gases. Hydraulic fracturing techniques such as venting and flaring release even more harmful gases into the air. To prevent this devastation, hydraulic fracturing should be banned. Even though it is extremely lucrative, it will not bring in enough money to purchase a new planet.

                                                        Sources

Air Pollution and Fracking. Catskill Mountainkeeper, 2014. Fracking: Air Pollution. Web. 23 Apr. 2014

Dong, Linda. “Dangers of Fracking.” www.Gaslandthemovie.com. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.

Drouin, Roger. “As Fracking Booms, Growing Concerns About Wastewater.” Yale Environment 360. Yale U, 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.

Lomborg, Bjørn. “A Fracking Good Story.” Slate 15 Sep. 2012, Project Syndicate. Web. 23 Apr. 2014

Nikiforuk, Andrew. “Shale Gas: How Often Do Fracked Wells Leak?.” The Tyee 9 Jan. 2013, News. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

Ohio, Environmental Protection Agency. Understanding the Basics of Gas Flaring. Columbus: Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, May 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. Perkins, Sid. “Methane threat to drinking water.” Nature 9 May 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

Port, Rob. “Video: Man Claiming To Be In North Dakota Lights Tap Water On Fire.” Sayanythingblog 30 Dec. 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

Smith, Stuart H. “Earthquake Outbreak: Arkansas Bans Fracking Operations Inside Thousand-Square-Mile Area.” The Stuart Smith Blog. Functional Interactive, 10 Aug. 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.

Songer, Joe. “Can Natural Gas Bring Back U.S. Factory Jobs?.” National Geographic 31 Jan. 2014, Daily News. Web. 27 Apr. 2014. 8

Tollefson, Jeff. “Air sampling reveals high emissions from gas field.” Nature 7 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

What Is Hydraulic Fracturing?. ProPublica, 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.

Global Climate Change

• Description of climate, climate change and the reasons we should study it.
• Climate change is the change of global or regional climates. The reason we must study these changes is because even the slightest change in climate can cause massive problems
• Description of the changes in temperature on Earth.
• Over the past 30 years the global temperature has gone up .6 degrees celsius. This is a rate of change that has never been recorded before.
• Description of the relationship between temperature change and CO2 levels.
• There is a direct correlation between the two. This is observed because when the CO2 levels rise so does the temperature.
• Description of the the greenhouse effect.
• The greenhouse effect is the trapping of the sun's heat due to the presence of gasses which reflect the sun's heat back to the ground.
• Description of the role of humans in the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
• Because of our dependence on fossil fuels and our abundant pollution supply we create and release the gasses into the atmosphere which only further amplify the effects.
• Conclusions
• Climate change is a growing problem and there needs to be a global intervention before irreversible damage is caused

Global Climate Change Activity

Part 1:

Question:

Can you explain to your classmate why temperatures from only a single year are not enough to reach a conclusion about changing climate? Use Figure 1.1 to construct your argument, noting when El Niño events occur, but also which years have the highest temperatures. How has the average annual temperature shifted through time? How do the temperatures in the El Niño years compare to the 1950–1970 average? To the 1985–2005 average?

Answer:

Changes in weather do affect climate over long periods of time. On the first graph provided, which maps average temperatures in the U.S. from 1950-1970 along with El Nino years, El Nino events are collectively lower than the El Nino events in the second graph, which has the same information dated from 1985-2005. And in the second graph, the average temperature is noticeably higher and El Nino events occur much more often. This proves that the more frequent the El Nino events happen, and the more extreme they are, the more they can noticeably impact a climate. So that classmate is wrong.

Part 2:

Year	CO2 PPM
1850	285
1900	300
1950	315
2000	350
2100	x>350

1. CO2 levels are increasing at an accelerating rate from decade to decade.

2. a) I would exaggerate the changes by changing the vertical scale.

   b) I would obscure the changes by changing the horizontal scale.

3. Industrial Revolution

4. The graph shows that the rate of CO2 levels is increasing at accelerating speed. It implies that if we don't reduce CO2 emissions, the CO2 levels are likely to be rise exponentially.

Part 3:

Stop	# of Students	Miles to and from school	Total miles driven by all students living near that stop
A	2	0.3	0.6
B	2	1.1	2.2
C	2	2.2	4.4
D	3	2.9	8.7
E	2	3.6	7.4
F	2	2.2	4.4
G	2	2.4	4.8
H	2	3.8	7.6
I	3	2.6	5.2
J	3	1.5	4.5
K	2	0.8	1.6
Average:			5.4

2.

1. 5.4 miles
2. 135 miles
3. 675 miles

3. 30.7 gal

4. 595.2 lb

5. 0.2976 tons

6. 9.2 miles

7. 0.368 miles/student

8. 65.7 mpg/week

9. 1274.9 lb

10. 0.637 tons

11. 2.339 tons

Part 4:

1. The X axis is the years from 0 to 2000 and the Y axis the differences from 1961-1990 average temperature in celsius.
2. The zero on the Y axis is the average temperature from 1961-1990.
3. It is a good baseline because the period of time from 1961-1990 is a time of extreme temperature change so the fluctuation is very evident on the chart
4. Do on the packet
5. The lowest temperature is around year 1600 and the highest temperature is in 2000
6. The coldest temperature in the blue is much colder than the coldest in the red but the warmest blue temperature is fairly similar to the highest red temperature.
7. It slowly Increases as the years continue
8. The impact of a climate just one degree celsius warmer by 2100 will have serious impacts on agriculture and coastal regions around the world. It will raise sea levels, hasten extinctions, and impact food production.

Reflection:

From this exploration, I gathered that the evidence of climate change is often understated. The Earth’s climate has gone from extremely hot to freezing cold a number of times, but the change in climate in the past 200 years alone is incomparably higher than that of the past several thousand years. And yes the Earth temperature is/will only rise by a few degrees. However, just a few degrees is the difference between comfortable conditions and widespread drought. The evidence for climate change must be carefully reviewed before conclusions are drawn.

Nature Walk

The walk we took during class was a great release from the school day. It allowed me time to clear my mind and to just think of the beauty of the surrounding area of school. The falling leaves and changing. The outdoors are a beautiful place filled with life and freedom. The problem is we are killing the forest with deforestation, global warming and pollution. Once forests are destroyed the animals living inside the forest die off because they rely on the resources that the forest bares. This process can destroy whole ecosystems and can lead to the endangerment and possible extinction of species. Humans feel the need to be the "dominate race" and because we are the "dominate race" we feel that we can suck the lands dry of resources because humans created the idea of owning land. I think that no one should own land because this is planet earth and we have all evolved from the same single cell organisms and all live on the same plants so why should we have the right to posses land when there are other living things inhabiting that land and a whole human race that could share the planet and live in harmony.

Hydraulic Fracking

Hydraulic fracking is a way to extract natural gas from the ground. To remove the gas the engineers drill far down into the earth into layers of shale then pump a high pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals. The mixture fractures the shale that then releases the natural gases. The high pressured mixture then pushes the gases to the top of the drilling site.

While the idea of finding full on American soil may sound very nice but fracking has cause many problems with the environment. The first major problem is that fracking needs massive amounts of waters. The problem is extremely evident in Texas when the drought was at the worst point there was a massive reservoir that was next to many local farms but the water could not be used by the farmers because it was owned by a major oil company. The second biggest problem is that the chemicals used during the fracking process are known carcinogens. A carcinogen is a chemical that is known to cause cancer. After the drilling operation the chemicals can contaminate the ground water risking pollution of the ground water and well water used by civilians. There is also a worry that fracking will cause small earth tremors. Before fracking was invented stats like Oklahoma never had earth quakes but now have small earth quakes. The fracturing of the shale is thought to cause small disturbances that cause the small tremors.

Carbon Cycle Lab Questions

Step 1:

If only one half of the flora in the world existed in 2110 (perhaps due to deforestation), what do you predict the atmospheric carbon level would be ? How would you change the simulation to reflect this?

If there were only half the flora in world, there would be more CO2 levels in the atmosphere.  We would change the tree level to half of what it was originally.

What is the relationship between increased carbon in the ocean and increased carbon in the soil? How else might carbon be transferred to soil?

As carbon increases in the ocean, carbon in the soil also increases.  Carbon can be transferred to soil through carbon-based lifeforms.

Using the data generated by the simulation, determine the mathematical relationship between the percentage increase in fossil fuel consumption and the increase in atmospheric carbon. Is the relationship linear?

They are directly proportional to each other and the relationship is not linear.

Step 2:

What is the relationship between an increase in fossil fuel consumption and increased carbon in terrestrial plants? How might this change flora populations? What impact could twenty years at this level of consumption have on flora?

As we increase consumption, the carbon in terrestrial plants increases until we run out of coal, and oil, then it peaks and goes on a decline from there.  This could increase flora populations.  The flora would decrease.

What is the relationship between an increase in total carbon concentration (the smokestack) and increased carbon in the ocean surface? How might this change marine life populations? What impact could fifty years at this level of emissions have on marine fauna? On marine flora?

As the total carbon concentration increases, the amount of carbon on the ocean surface also increases; marine life would be affected by this because there is less room for oxygen. 

In addition to circulating through the carbon cycle, where else might excess carbon be found? In fifty years, where would you be most likely to see excess carbon?

Right now a lot of the excess carbon is deep underground, but in fifty years it will most likely be on the ocean floor, or in the atmosphere. 

Which areas are most highly (and quickly) affected by an increase in carbon emissions (and increase in fossil fuel consumption)? How would these effects manifest themselves? What are the dangers/benefits to these areas?

Timeline

Geological Timeline
If the formation of the earth and the events after were a fourteen foot pole vault the earth would be created on the ground. As you shot into the air at 9'10" in the air, the early formation of Pangaea could be seen. Once you reach 13'4.47" in the air the Jurassic period would have begun. As you slowly continue to clime at  13'9.84" you be able to see early primates roaming the earth. And right  before you clear the bar at 13'11.9996532" you could finally see the beginning of the existence of modern man. After that you 
would be able to fly over the bar and fall into present times.

Video intrests

The most interesting aspect of of the video to me was how they discussed that Earth has a natural cooling and heating mechanism built into it. I thought it was interesting about how is it warmed up too much the weathering would become more extreme due to the rise in temperature which then consumes more carbon than average which entail brings both the temperature and carbon levels down. And on the same side if it cool down too much weathering rates would get slower and the volcanic gassing rate stays the same the carbon levels would raise which Intel brings up the temperature which then raises the weathering patterns which then brings down the temperature and carbon levels.