My AP Environmental Homework for the Cats Over Borneo Assignment

Simple Model of the Food Chain

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

Simple (Kind of) food web of the Cane Toad Species. Includes different levels of consumers including predators.

Modeling forest succession in a northeast deciduous forest.

First level of slowly building up a generic cost-benefit model primarily to show T313 students but useful elsewhere

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

Eastern oyster growth model calibrated for Long Island Sound
Developed and implemented by Joao G. Ferreira and Camille Saurel; growth data from Eva Galimany, Gary Wickfors, and Julie Rose; driver data from Julie Rose and Suzanne Bricker; Culture practice from the REServ team and Tessa Getchis. This model is a workbench for combining ecological and economic components for REServ. Economic component added by Trina Wellman.

This is a one box model for an idealized farm with one million oysters seeded (one hectare @ a stocking density of 100 oysters per square meter)

1. Run WinShell individual growth model for one year with Long Island Sound growth drivers;

2. Determine the scope for growth (in dry tissue weight per day) for oysters centered on the five weight classes)
 
3. Apply a classic population dynamics equation:

dn(s,t)/dt = -d[n(s,t)g(s,t)]/ds - u(s)n(s,t)

s: Weight (g)
t: Time
n: Number of individuals of weight s
g: Scope for growth (g day-1)
u: Mortality rate (day-1)

4. Set mortality at 30% per year, slider allows scenarios from 30% to 80% per year

5. Determine harvestable biomass, i.e. weight class 5, 40-50 g (roughly three inches length)

This model shows the growth of two organisms competing for a limiting resource (space) .

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

Challenges in sustainability are multilevel.
This diagram attempts to summarize levels of self reinforcing destructive dynamics, authors that deal with them, and point of leverage for change.

The base of the crisis is a mechanistic rather than ecological worldview. This mechanistic worldview is based on outdated science that assumed the universe to be a large machine. In a machine there is an inside and an outside. The health of the inside is important for the machine, the outside not. In an ecological view everything is interconnected, there is no clear separation in the future of self and other. All parts influence the health of other parts. To retain health sensitivity and democracy are inherent. The sense of separation from other that keeps the mechanistic worldview dominant is duality. Being cut off from spiritual traditions due to a mechanistic view of science people need access to inter-spirituality to reconnect with the human traditions and tools around connectedness, inner discovery, and compassion. Many books on modern physics and biology deal with the system view implications. "The coming interspiritual age" deals with the need to connect spiritual traditions and science.

At the bottom for the dynamic is an individual a sense of disconnectedness leads to a dependency on spending and having rather than connecting. The connecting has become too painful and dealing with it unpopular in our culture. Joanna Macy deals with this in Active Hope. 

This affluenza and disconnection is worsened by a market that floods one with advertisements aimed at creating needs and a sense of dissatisfaction with that one has.

National economies are structured around maximising GDP which means maximising consumption and financial capital movement. This is at the cost of local economies. These same local economies are needed for balanced happiness as well as for sustainability.

Generally institutions focus on maximising consumption rather than sustaining life support systems. David Korten covers this well.

Power and wealth is confused in this worldview. In striving for wealth only power is striven for in the form of money and monopoly.

Those at the head of large banks and corporations tend to be there because they exemplify this approach. They have few scruples about enforcing this approach onto everyone through wars and disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein and David Estulin documented this.

Power has become so centralized that we need this understanding to be widespread and include many of those in power. Progress of all of these levels are needed to show them and all that another way is possible.

Harvested fishery with endogenous investment and ship deployment policy. Ch 9 p345-360 John Morecroft (2007) Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics. See simpler models at IM-2990 and IM-2991

This model provides a dynamic simulation of the Sverdrup (1953) paper on the vernal blooming of phytoplankton.

The model simulates the dynamics of the mixed layer over the year, and illustrates how it's depth variation leads to conditions that trigger the spring bloom. In order for the bloom to occur, production of algae in the water column must exceed respiration.

This can only occur if vertical mixing cannot transport algae into deeper, darker water, for long periods, where they are unable to grow.

Sverdrup, H.U., 1953. On conditions for the vernal blooming of phytoplankton. J. Cons. Perm. Int. Exp. Mer, 18: 287-295

Two households with PV systems and electric vehicles sharing a battery and connected to the grid. What are the advantages?

This model prototypes the working of an Smart Grid with Electric Vehicles

The objective is testing the theoretical advantages of batteries (also batteries in Electric Vehicles) in combination with renewable energies. The model considers two houses, that store energy both in Electric Vehicles (Vehicle to Grid), and in a communal battery.

Except when specified otherwise, the units of all variables are expressed in W/h.

Press "Story" in the lower bar for a guided tour over the model. Better seen at 50% zoom.

by Carlos Varela (cvarela@gmx.at)

Marine plastic is rapidly increasing due to increasing production and use of plastic in all economic activities, short use times and long life times of plastic, and large mismanagement of plastic waste. With this, the threat plastic poses to the marine biosphere is also increasing and will continue to increase over a long time into the future. Risk knowledge is limited and risk perception and awareness are not resulting in significant mitigation efforts. The case study will aim at modeling the use and life cycles of plastic and the transport paths that lead to plastic entering the ocean. The models will be used to simulate possible futures based on a scenario approach. The results of these efforts will be visualized with the goal to increase risk awareness.

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

The beginning of a systems dynamics model for teaching NRM 320.

Simple mass balance model for lakes, based on the Vollenweider equation:

dMw/dt = Min - sMw - Mout

The model was first used in the 1960s to determine the phosphorus concentration in lakes and reservoirs, for eutrophication assessment.