Introduction

The importance of spatial and temporal scales in understanding environmental change

it gives a clear distinct understanding between Environmental events and Environmental
change. In addition , it also gives a clear explaination why discrete events should not be
investigated in isolation when looking at environmental change. The spatial and
temporal scales concepts are tools that are useful particulalry in studying environmental
events and change across different fields of study. These two tools are also very
important in demonstrating the importance of discrete environmental events significance
when analyisig the envronmental impact. Environmental impact is well known that it
gives birth to Environmntal events and these events result in environmental change. For
example, burning of fossil fuels is closely associated with greenhouse effect and global
warming (Mohrmann et al., 2022).

It is therefore, imperative to use these two tools to analyse,present,past and future

environmental impact. In terms of the discrete environmental impact analysis it is
imperative to note that environmental events and change are distict or rather different
hence it is important to take into consideration the difference between environmental
events and environmental change. Nash (2015) wrote a well researched academic
paper about "Defining Appropriate Spatial and Temporal Scales in Analysing the
Ecological Impact " and his detailed explaination, he argued that Spatial and Temporal
Scales are important tools tools because they are used to promote consistent
interpretations of results and to facilitate decision making process about environmental
impact.

Importance of Spatial Scales

The importance of Spatial and Temporal Scales is well detailed by Warren (2022) in his
scholarly analysis in understanding Chlorophyll variability in Southern Ocean. Well
some people might think that there is no distinct feature to conclude that is the
environmental impact but it is environmental impact. It is note-worthy that environmntal
impact ,events and and change are often used intertwine despite the fact that these
concepts are multifaceted and one needs to careful when is investigating each of them
to identify their sequential pattern in their occuring and resuts (du Plessis et al., 2022).
Spatial scales and temporal scales offered a clear analysis about discrete or different
factors that causes evironmental events and result in environmental change particularly
in Warren analysis which is understanding Chlorophll in Southern Ocean . For instance ,
key finding of Prend et al. (2022) is that the relevant timescales over which chlorophyll
concentration varies differ by region and this signifies the importance of spatial scales.

As one continue with the example of chlirophyll analysis from the Southern Ocean the
Subtropics are said to be on the south of 30°S and north of the Subtropical Front and
could be identified by a repeating sinusoidal cycle with low overall magnitudes and
reletive small change in amplitude from year-to-year Prend et al. (2022). This shows
how important is the spatial scales in studying and analysing environmental events and
environmental change and demonstrate the effectiveness of consistent interpretations in
yielding or producing desired resuts in order to facilitate decision-making (Joao
2002 .In addition, Chlorophyll variability was correlated or equated across areas
greater than 600 km in the subtropics.This means in this region, the seasonal
component is dominated by the variability in chlorophyll concentration and is indicating
that the annual mean is closely tied to the seasonal bloom magnitude.

Temporal Scales of Importance

As previously mentioned that both spatial and temporal are important tools to analyse
environmental impact which include both analysis environmental events and change .
When it comes to the temporal scales one can draw an example from Warran analysis
(2022). Warran (2022) argued that the previous analysis meaning an analysis before his
has regressed satellite chlorophyll concentration in the Southern Ocean against climate
oscillation indicators , such as the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), but found limited
explanatory when it comes to power for chlorophyll variability (Prend et al., 2022;
Lovenduski & Gruber, 2005). Additionally, Prend et al. (2022) contended that he found
multi-annual component explained in a very small or limited of the total chlorophyll
variability across most of the Southern Ocean.
Therefore, to investigate why the SAM index lack explanatory power of chlorophyll
variability, the previous authors correlated the SAM index with chlorophyll variability
within each temporal component (sub-seasonal, seasonal, and multi-annual). While the
multi-annual component was strongly correlated with the SAM index, over the Southern
Ocean this component explained only -10% of chlorophyll variability. Because the multi-
annual component explained such a small amount of the chlorophyll variability, it is hard
to extract a relationship between chlorophyll variability and SAM. Instead, the authors
found that phytoplankton biomass variability is better correlated with the sub-seasonal
than with the multi-annual time scale (i.e., climate oscillations). This also explained the
importance of discrete environmental events and change when you are using these
tools to analyse environmental impacts. In the previous sentences one has explained
the different and correlation of the specific subject being analysed which also signifies
the importance of discrete environmental events and change.

Incolcusion

There are number of factors contributing to environmental events or shifts and

environmental change. The analysis of the Chlorophyll on the Southern Ocean as a
prime example of this evaluation of the temporal and spatial scales on evironmental
events and change has shown that that there is a different between spatial and
temporal scales depending on the subject that is being being analysed. It could be
spatial ecological analysis metioned from the beginning of this essay or Chlorophyll on
the Southern Ocean ,but these two tools can provide and promote consistent
interpretations on the environmental impact. No one can alienate or argue that the
ocean is not part of ecology as far as the environmental events and change are
concerned hence it is therefore, argued that temporal and spatial scales are best tools
to be used when analysing evironmental shifts and change by looking into distinct
factors.

References

du Plessis, et al. (2022). Storms drive outgassing of CO2 in the subpolar Southern
Ocean. Nature Communications, 13(1), 1–12.

Joao, E. 2002. How Scale Affects Environmental Impact Assessment.Environmental

Impact Assessment Review 22(4):289–310.

Lovenduski, N. S., & Gruber, N. (2005). Impact of the Southern Annular Mode on
Southern Ocean circulation and biology. Geophysical Research Letters, 32(11), L11603.

Prend, C. J., Keerthi, M. G., Lévy, M., Aumont, O., Gille, S. T., & Talley, L. D. (2022).
Sub-seasonal forcing drives year-to-year variations of Southern Ocean primary
productivity. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 36(7), e2022GB007329.

Warran, N. (2022). Iron limitation modulates ocean acidification effects on Southern

Ocean phytoplankton communities. PLoS One, 8(11), 1–9