GEOG1000A/1003A Environmental Change

Defining and Measuring

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Prof Jennifer Fitchett

Jennifer.Fitchett@wits.ac.za
BP012
Throughout this block you’ve encountered a lot of
new terms:

• Proxy
• Empirical evidence
• Fossils
• Stable Isotopes
• Pollen grains

We’ve spoken often to how environmental change is

measured, monitored. In this lecture we unpack it.

First, what is environmental change?

 What is the Environment?
The Biosphere
(Science: ecology)
Definition
noun, plural: biospheres
(1) The part of the earth
where living things
exist.
(2) The part of the earth
(or planet) that is
capable of supporting
life.
(3) The living things and
their environment.
(4) All of the ecosystems • highest bird >11,000m (Ruppell’s vulture)
of the earth. • deepest fish: >8,000m (Abyssobrotula galatheae)
www.biology-online.org/dictionary
• microbes in high atmosphere & deep rock cores
What is the Environment?
The Biosphere is relatively thin component of the earth but there
is a lot that we do not know.
James Cameron, 1st to reach Challenger Deep in 50 years:
I didn't see a fish... I didn't find anything that looked alive to
me, other than a few [shrimplike] amphipods in the water
 What is the Environment?
Ecosphere
(Science: ecology)
Definition
The earth, all of the
organisms living on it,
and all of the
environmental factors
which act on the
organisms. The
volume of area where
biological matter can
exist, slightly above, on
or below ground level.
www.biology-online.org/dictionary

Includes the Biosphere AND its interactions with the

physical environment and systems
What is the Environment?
Biosphere or Ecosphere?

• Used interchangeably by many

• Ecosphere also used to mean “zones in the
universe where life should be sustainable”

…..we will use the term BIOSPHERE

Huggett, RJ,1999: Ecosphere, biosphere or Gaia? What to call the global

ecosystem, Global Ecology & Biogeography, 8, 425-431.
What is Environmental Change?

Geography involves the study of Earth as created

by natural forces and as modified by human action

Environmental change has a specific focus on:

• The human-environment sub-discipline of
geography
• Human impacts and influence on the
environment
• Ways in which humans are affected by the
natural environment
What is Environmental Change?

• How do we define what is natural?

• Does this need to be constant?

• What is changing?
• Biosphere
• Natural resources
• Humans and societies

• What are the big issues?

• Common perceptions
• Conventional wisdom
What is Environmental Change?

Change is often viewed as being unidirectional

Variability implies fluctuations around a mean point

 Timescales of Environmental Change

• Occurs naturally over GEOLOGIC timescales

(millions to billions of years)
e.g. mountain formation, plate tectonics,
weathering
• 10s to 1000s of years
e.g. soil formation
• Less than decades
eg. natural catastrophes, human activities
• Main focus of this course - changes over
human timescales (mostly years to centuries)
 Natural resources
Anything in physical environment useful to humans (often culturally
specific), which can include humans themselves
Classifications of Natural Resources
Continuous resources:
Resources which will ‘never’ run out (solar energy,
wind, tidal energy)
Renewable resources:
Can naturally regenerate if regeneration capacity not
damaged (e.g. plants, animals, clean water, soil)
Non-renewable resources:
Only in specific places and in finite quantities (only
renewable on scales not relevant to human use)
e.g. fossil fuels, some ground waters
Human forces driving environmental change
Environmental changes
• List 5 examples of environmental change

• List 5 examples of environmental change that you

have studied at school

• List 5 examples of environmental change that you

have studied in this course

• List 5 examples of environmental change that you

have observed first hand
Why do we Monitor the Environment?
1. Information and Basic Knowledge
• Understand the environment
• What are the biotic factors
• What are the abiotic factors
• Inter-relationship between biotic and
abiotic
2. Detecting the Onset and Extent of Change
• Understanding rates of change and cycles of
variability
• Anthropogenic impacts may have long-term effects
• May be synergistic or cumulative
• Early detection of potentially harmful effects
Why do we Monitor the Environment?
3. Assessing the Efficacy of Policy
• Explore the difference in environmental
conditions before and after an intervention
• Explore knock-on effects of policy changes
4. Environmental Regulation
• Determine critical levels that cannot be exceeded
if the environment is to be protected
• Determine environmental conditions required for
safe human habitation in a region
• Controlling human demand vs environmental
supply – eg. water restrictions
 Why do we Monitor the Environment?
1. Information and Basic Knowledge

Annual flood vital to Egyptian civilisation.

Water levels gauged for > 5000 years. Written records for 1300 years.
Why do we Monitor the Environment?
1. Information and Basic Knowledge
 Why do we Monitor the Environment?
2. Detecting the Onset and Extent of Change
CO2 emissions and temperature change: Record from Mauna Loa
started in 1958 by David Keeling.

Why the wiggle?

Intra-annual variations
due to C sources and
sinks in northern and
southern Hemispheres
Monthly Average
Mauna Loa CO2
December 2022: 418.95 ppm
December 2021: 416.71 ppm
December 2017: 407.00 ppm
December 2010: 389.99 ppm
December 2004: 377.68 ppm
Why do we Monitor the Environment?
2. Detecting the Onset and Extent of Change
CO2 emissions and temperature change: Record from Mauna Loa
started in 1958 by David Keeling.
Why do we Monitor the Environment?
2. Detecting the Onset and Extent of Change
CO2 emissions and temperature change: aquatic effects

• Changes to hydrological
patterns – droughts and
floods
• Sea-level rise
• Rising water
temperature
• Changing oceanic
circulation

N.B. effects and causes can both be monitored

Why do we Monitor the Environment?
3. Environmental Regulation
Point-source pollution monitoring
Usually occurs as a plume with
highest concentrations nearest the
source and decaying downstream
through dilution

Examples of point source pollution:

• Nutrients (sewage, fertilizers)
• Pesticides, VOCs and metals (agricultural,
industrial)
• Microbiological (pathogens e.g. faecal coliforms,
Giardia) from sewage and urban runoff
• Acid mine drainage
• High temperature cooling waters (power stations,
industrial)
Types of Monitoring
1. Simple Monitoring
• Recording values of variable(s) at one point over
time a) Danby Beck

5
pH

2
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004
Types of Monitoring
2. Survey Monitoring
• Monitoring an area affected by an environmental
problem, often comparing it to a ‘control’ area not
affected
Types of Monitoring
3. Surrogate or Proxy Monitoring
• Compensation for lack of previous monitoring by
using surrogate information to infer changes
Types of Monitoring
4. Integrated Monitoring
• Combining a range of detailed sets of ecological
information to answer a question

CSIR Scientists measuring water temperature,

dissolved oxygen, pH and electrical conductivity
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?

Instrumental Records
Records captured by calibrated instruments
eg. thermometer, pH meter, flow meters
• High temporal resolution
• Lower error margins, no human bias
• Low spatial resolution - costly
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?

Historical Records
Span the period of human record keeping
• Regionally variable
• What about oral histories?
• Greater temporal resolution and span, but
potential for human bias and error
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?
Measuring material trapped in ice and sediment cores
Variations over 420,000 years of CO2, methane(CH4), and isotopes,
from the Vostok ice core: four complete glacial cycles.
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?

Exploring the plants and animals that lived in these

environments
• Proxies of past environments and climates
• Fossilized remains of plants and animals, trapped
in the soils they were deposited on
• Change in past plant and animal distributions is
representative of environmental and climate
change

What is a proxy? A stand-in for direct measurements

How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?
What is a fossil?
The process of fossilization involves the dissolving and
replacement of the original minerals in the bone with other
minerals (and/or permineralization, the filling up of spaces
in fossils with minerals, and/or recrystallization in which a
mineral crystal changes its form)

So how can plants become fossils if they don’t have bones?

Broader definition: the remains or impression of a
prehistoric plant or animal embedded in rock and preserved
in petrified form.
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?

Plant fossils
• Pollen
• Phytoliths
• Charcoal
• Diatoms
• Impressions
• Tree-rings
• Macrofossils
• Leaf wax
Animal fossils
• Endoskeletons
• Exoskeletons
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?
Progressive rainfall change

Maximum prairie
development (less rainfall)

Development of prairie
and oak woodland

Very wet – trees occur on

poorly drained soil
How do we Reconstruct Past Environments?
Sea level change

Sea level
dropping

High sea
level
Biomonitoring

“The use of biota to gauge and track changes in

the environment” in response to natural and
anthropogenic stressors
• Underpins management and conservation of
freshwaters and terrestrial ecosystems
• Primarily used for supporting legislators and
managers
• Also used in academic research
Biomonitoring

• Key advantage: biological responses measured

directly instead of relying on inferences from
chemical data
• Biological consequences usually of ultimate
concern
• Integrated response over space and time lowers
sampling effort and cost, enables impacts to be
detected even if stressor / pollutant is not
measurable at time of sampling (eg pollution
pulse)
What monitoring and measuring techniques have been
used in the marker for your chosen start date of the
Anthropocene?

How could we improve monitoring to better argue for a

start date?