essay about ecology problems

Environmental Issues Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on environmental issues.

The environment plays a significant role to support life on earth. But there are some issues that are causing damages to life and the ecosystem of the earth. It is related to the not only environment but with everyone that lives on the planet. Besides, its main source is pollution , global warming, greenhouse gas , and many others. The everyday activities of human are constantly degrading the quality of the environment which ultimately results in the loss of survival condition from the earth.

Source of Environment Issue

There are hundreds of issue that causing damage to the environment. But in this, we are going to discuss the main causes of environmental issues because they are very dangerous to life and the ecosystem.

Pollution – It is one of the main causes of an environmental issue because it poisons the air , water , soil , and noise. As we know that in the past few decades the numbers of industries have rapidly increased. Moreover, these industries discharge their untreated waste into the water bodies, on soil, and in air. Most of these wastes contain harmful and poisonous materials that spread very easily because of the movement of water bodies and wind.

Greenhouse Gases – These are the gases which are responsible for the increase in the temperature of the earth surface. This gases directly relates to air pollution because of the pollution produced by the vehicle and factories which contains a toxic chemical that harms the life and environment of earth.

Climate Changes – Due to environmental issue the climate is changing rapidly and things like smog, acid rains are getting common. Also, the number of natural calamities is also increasing and almost every year there is flood, famine, drought , landslides, earthquakes, and many more calamities are increasing.

Above all, human being and their greed for more is the ultimate cause of all the environmental issue.

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How to Minimize Environment Issue?

Now we know the major issues which are causing damage to the environment. So, now we can discuss the ways by which we can save our environment. For doing so we have to take some measures that will help us in fighting environmental issues .

Moreover, these issues will not only save the environment but also save the life and ecosystem of the planet. Some of the ways of minimizing environmental threat are discussed below:

Reforestation – It will not only help in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem but also help in restoring the natural cycles that work with it. Also, it will help in recharge of groundwater, maintaining the monsoon cycle , decreasing the number of carbons from the air, and many more.

The 3 R’s principle – For contributing to the environment one should have to use the 3 R’s principle that is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Moreover, it helps the environment in a lot of ways.

To conclude, we can say that humans are a major source of environmental issues. Likewise, our activities are the major reason that the level of harmful gases and pollutants have increased in the environment. But now the humans have taken this problem seriously and now working to eradicate it. Above all, if all humans contribute equally to the environment then this issue can be fight backed. The natural balance can once again be restored.

FAQs about Environmental Issue

Q.1 Name the major environmental issues. A.1 The major environmental issues are pollution, environmental degradation, resource depletion, and climate change. Besides, there are several other environmental issues that also need attention.

Q.2 What is the cause of environmental change? A.2 Human activities are the main cause of environmental change. Moreover, due to our activities, the amount of greenhouse gases has rapidly increased over the past few decades.

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612 Environment Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for interesting environment essay topics? This field is really exciting and worth studying!

🏆 Best Environment Essay Examples & Topics

👍 interesting environment topic ideas, 🎓 simple & easy environment essay titles, 🥇 easy environment essay topics, 📌 more topics on environment, 💡 good research topics about environment, ❓ environment essay questions.

Environment study field includes the issues of air, soil, and water pollution in the world, environment conservation, global climate change, urban ecology, and much more. In this article, we’ve gathered interesting environmental topics to write about. You might want to use one of them for your argumentative or persuasive essay, research paper, and presentation. There is also a number of great environment essay examples.

• Human Impact on Environment Another important action we perform to improve the situation with water is avoiding water pollution. It helps to keep the healthy and to reduce water pollution.
• Protecting the Environment Protecting the environment is the act of taking care of natural resources and using them rationally to prevent annihilation and pollution.
• Environmental Concerns in the Modern World Loss of biodiversity which is the decrease of species in ecosystems is also among the major concern faced by human race.
• Mining and Its Impact on the Environment The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the effects of mining on the environment. This approach is sustainable and capable of reducing the dangers of mining.
• Electric Car and the Environment Other factors that contributed to the rise in demand of electric cars included a rise in oil prices and the need to conserve the environment by controlling the rate of greenhouse gas emission. One of […]
• Impact of Science and Technology on the Natural Environment He “is constantly aware of the influence of nature in the form of the air he breathes, the water he drinks, the food he eats, and the flow of energy and information”.
• The Effect of Technology on the Environment At the present moment, humankind has to resolve one of the most complicated dilemmas in its history, in particular how to achieve equilibrium between the needs of people or and the risks to the Earth.
• Overcrowding in Cities as Social & Environmental Problem Uncontrolled growth in the number of cities leads to the unchecked spread of pollution and the escalation of poverty. Atmospheric pollution is the most serious in cities, and its primary source is road transport, which […]
• Impacts of Overpopulation on the Environment Other primary causes of deforestation are construction of roads and residential houses to cater for the increasing population. As the natural habitats are destroyed, many wildlife species have been displaced and many died due to […]
• Solution to Environmental Problems Environmental problems can therefore, be defined as the issues that result to the degradation of the environment because of the negative actions of human beings on the biophysical environment.
• Plastic vs Paper Bags: Production and Environment Though the production of plastic bags is frequently banned nowadays because of considerable harm to the animal world and marine life, the effects of this product on people and the environment seem to be less […]
• Human Behavior Effects on the Environment However, while some people are doing all they can to protect the environment, some are participating in activities that cause harm to the environment.
• Bakhoor as a Harmful Incense for Health and Environment In this study, the researcher will conduct a scientific investigation to determine if, indeed, the use of Bahkoor in the United Arab Emirates is harmful to the environment.
• Globalization and Environment Essay While this is the case, citizens equally have a role to play in addressing the issue of globalization and climate change.
• Panama Canal and Its Environmental Impacts The construction of the Panama Canal has profound local environmental impacts which are based on socio-political management of the project that has demonstrated the infrastructural and ecological interdependence of its service as a global transportation […]
• Poverty and the Environment The human population affects the environment negatively due to poverty resulting to environmental degradation and a cycle of poverty. Poverty and the environment are interlinked as poverty leads to degradation of the environment.
• Human Population and the Environment The fertility rate of a given species will depend on the life history characteristics of the species such as the number of reproductive periods in the lifetime of the species and the number of offspring […]
• Tourism – Environment Relationships Relationship between tourism and the environment There is a great dependency of tourism on the environment as described by Holden and Fennel’s book The Routledge Handbook of Tourism and Environment.
• Urbanization and the Environment Due to urbanization, the number, the size, the kind and the compactness of cities, in addition to the effectiveness of their management of the environment are major concerns for attainment of the international sustainability.
• Climate Change: Human Impact on the Environment This paper is an in-depth exploration of the effects that human activities have had on the environment, and the way the same is captured in the movie, The Eleventh Hour.
• Humanity and the Environment Many key factors affect the relationship between population and the environment within a particular region, including the number of inhabitants, their living standards and needs, technological advancements, the population’s attitude and philosophy towards nature, and […]
• Overconsumption and Its Impact on the Environment The purpose is to examine the statement’s applicability in light of global mineral production and consumption, emphasizing the Canadian resource industry.
• E-Waste Management in the School Environment Recycling Recycling is one of the best ways of managing e-waste in the school. Specifically, the school should roll out a comprehensive campaign on the need to dump the e-wastes in these bins.
• The Effect of Plastic Water Bottles on the Environment In addition, the proponents of plastic use have argued that recycling is an effective method of mitigating the effects of plastic to the environment.
• Environmental Pollution and Its Effect on Health In climate change, due to air pollution, the main force to prevent environmental disasters need to change the approach to the production of substances from fossil fuels.
• Green Buildings and Environmental Sustainability This paper scrutinizes the characteristics that need to be possessed by a building for it to qualify as green coupled with questioning the capacity of the green movements across the globe to prescribe the construction […]
• Environment and Human Attitude Towards It Although the issue of attitude towards the environment can address most of the predicaments affecting humanity today, there are various actions and initiatives that can be undertaken to transform the situation and reduce people’s ecological […]
• Environmental Impact of Bottled Water The process of manufacturing the water bottles, such as the dependence on fossil fuels, is causing a lot of direct as well indirect destructing to the environment.
• Environmental Abuse and Its Adverse Effects The poor are often the most affected by environmental abuse, as they are the least able to protect themselves from the harmful effects of pollution and other environmental hazards.
• Importance of Environmental Studies for Society It is upon the people to take care of the planet and understanding how human activities affect the environment is a critical step in that process.
• Fog and Its Effects on the Environment Depending on where and how the cooling effect takes place, the appearance and lasting duration of fog are affected and using this scientists have been able to categorize fog into various groups namely steaming fog, […]
• Human Impact to the Environment – Cuba Deforestation Issue One of the most significant aspects during the political eras in the nation that characterized the political development was the fluctuation in deforestation.
• The Concept of Environmental Ethics Environmental ethics is concerned with the ethical relationship of human beings with the environment. Human beings must relate ethically with all other living organisms.
• Disney’s Representations of Nature At the end of the films, man’s relation to nature shows a strong sense of commitment to conservation. It is the swamp which ultimately leads Snow White to a teeming life of the forest.
• Food Contamination and Adulteration: Environmental Problems, Food Habits, Way of Cultivation The purpose of this essay is to explain reasons for different kinds of food contamination and adulteration, harmful contaminants and adulterants and the diseases caused by the usage of those substances, prevention of food contamination […]
• Mining and Environment in Papua New Guinea In line with this commitment, the company implemented some of its strategies as indicated in the 2017 report on its operations in Chile.
• Negative Impact on the Environment The fact that human activity and industrial development negatively affect the environment is not debated because the sad reality shows that oceans, soil, and air are polluted, and many species are endangered. Overall, the main […]
• Importance of Recycling in Conservation of the Environment This piece of work looks at the different aspects associated with the process of recycling with much emphasis being given to the history of recycling and the facts associated with recycling process.
• Environmental Pollution: Causes and Solutions The consequences that have risen as a result of neglecting to take care of the environment have now become a reality to the whole of mankind.
• Environmental Initiative: Reducing Plastic Waste In this presentation, it has been proposed to reduce the use of plastic products despite their wide popularity.
• Hairy Frog’s Adaptations and Environment It releases the claw by contracting the muscles in its rear feet and causing the claw to appear by piercing the frog’s skin.
• The Impact of Food Habits on the Environment The topic of this research is based on the issue of human-induced pollution or another environmental impact that affect the Earth and dietary approaches that can improve the situation.
• E-Waste Management for the Local Environment The negative consequence of poor e-waste management, such as poor e-waste disposal, might cue the thoughts of the locals on the need to improve on their environmental awareness, thus joining the local environmental organization proposed.
• Are Electric Vehicles Better for the Environment? This article reviews and evaluates the energy efficiency and environmental impact of electric vehicles with rechargeable batteries. Electric cars meet these requirements and provide opportunities for people to create transport that is safe for the […]
• Social, Economic and Environmental Challenges of Urbanization in Lagos However, the city’s rapid economic growth has led to high population density due to urbanization, creating social, economic, and environmental challenges the challenges include poverty, unemployment, sanitation, poor and inadequate transport infrastructure, congestion in the […]
• Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in the Development of Sustainable Environmental Initiatives 1 The questions that currently ringer in people’s mind include why the NGOs are increasingly participating in environmental conservation projects, whether their initiatives are different from those they initiated in the past, and what exactly […]
• A Study of the Brine Shrimps and Their Natural Environment Brine shrimps can be used as environmental indicators and this is because one of the fundamental requirements in the breeding them is a salty environment.
• Construction Solutions in Saline Environment The researcher concluded that, indeed, salinity is one of the major causes of concrete disintegration and reduces the durability of buildings in saline environments.
• Plastic Reusable Bags for Green Environment Studies have also shown that the production process of these bags does less harm to the environment as compared to plastic or paper bags.
• Food Production and The Environment So all aspects of production – the cultivation and collection of plants, the maintenance of animals, the processing of products, their packaging, and transportation, affect the environment.
• Culture and Leadership in a Safe Industrial Environment To begin with, staff involvement enabled the health and safety professionals to incorporate the expectations of the employees in the goals and objectives of the EHS program.
• Environmental Impacts and Solutions: Solid Waste The objective of solid waste management is to reduce the amount of solid waste disposed on land and lead to the recovery of material from solid waste through various recycling efforts.
• E- Commerce and the Environment Introduction Reliance on the internet and mobile devices to do business leads to the so-called E-commerce. The term is hardly old, based on its adoption in the 2000s after the internet revolution. E-commerce is a real force in the present and future business world due to several facets. For example, the invention’s capacity to eliminate […]
• Endangered Species: Modern Environmental Problem Some of the activities which cause danger to these species include the following; This refers to loss of a place to live for the animals and can also be expressed as the ecosystem or the […]
• Environmental Assessment – Environmental Management Systems Additionally, a good EMS is usually structured in a manner that allows the identification of the impact of the organization on the environment.
• Historical Relationship of the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos and How It Is Changing the Environment To begin with, the hunting practices of this native group, as well as the invasion of the European into their land, led to a great decline in the herds of the white-tailed deer in the […]
• A Role of Human Beings in Protecting the Environment This attitude would be informed by the notion that humans are engaging in actions intended to transform the planet and the natural environment in order to suit them.
• Impact of Emirates Airlines’ Operations on the Environment This makes it difficult for Emirates to develop policies that can have a direct influence on the environmental performance of the aircrafts.
• Expanding Oil Refinery: Environmental and Health Effects Thus, this analytical treatise attempts to explicitly discuss the environmental and health consequences of locating the proposed oil refinery near the human settlement of Utah. Therefore, refinery of oil and production of gases is expected […]
• Network Organizations and Environmental Processes The contractor has the right to coordinate the work of the partners and determines the basic requirements for the fulfillment of the tasks set, but the individual characteristics of partners’ activities remain inviolable.
• Technology Impact on Society and Environment It is possible to think of a variety of effects of technology. Availability of food also adds to the increase of people’s lifespan.
• Wireless Power Transmission Implication for the Environment Designing the coils would form the trickiest task, since they have to be adjusted to the right frequency relying on the distance of the wire, the amount of loops in the wire and the capacitor.
• The Impact of Green Energy on Environment and Sustainable Development Traditional methods of receiving the necessary amount of power for meeting the needs of the developed cites and industries cannot be discussed as efficient according to the threat of the environmental pollution which is the […]
• Environment: Endangered Species Global warming also increases the risk of storms and drought, affecting food supply, which may cause death to both humans and animals.
• Tundra Biome: Environmental Impacts on Organisms The major difference between the alpine and the arctic tundra is that the alpine grounds are not covered by the permafrost.
• The Aral Sea’s Environmental Issues Prior to its destruction, the Sea was one of the biggest water bodies, rich in different species of flora and fauna; a case that is opposite today, as the sea is almost becoming extinct.
• Islamic Architecture: Environment and Climate The work of Erzen explains that the development of architectural styles and methods of innovation in the various regions of the world is often the result of responses to the natural environment.
• Environmental Impact of Livestock Production The implications of the article were concerned with the need to bring the attention of the public to the issue that the livestock sector requires the use of a large number of natural resources while […]
• Environmental Health Factors: Positive & Negative Additionally, it will expound on the impacts of nutrition, globalization, and observance of human rights to an individual’s health. Some of the positive environmental factors include adequate sources of nutrition, availability of safe water, presence […]
• The Role of Man in Environment Degradation and Diseases The link between environmental degradation and human beings explains the consequences of the same in relation to the emergence of modern-age diseases.
• Water and Environment Engineering The village is situated in the Northwestern part of the state, near the seacoast. However, one of the village residents made an offer to the turtle and the latter allowed humans to use water from […]
• Environmental Protection and Waste Management The analysis also focuses on the intellectual behaviour of people regarding the environmental effects of waste. There is lack of strong basis for scientific findings and current guidance is causing the environmental challenges to become […]
• The Nestle Company’s Environmental Sustainability Efforts What I like about Nestle’s environmental sustainability efforts: Nestle’s environmental sustainability efforts are concise and clear towards the company’s sustainability plans, that is, clear goals and objectives which are time bound. The company’s sustainability efforts […]
• Wood and Its Importance for Environment Support Despite the intentions to use wood in a variety of ways without thinking about consequences, wood has to be considered as a helpful natural resource with many positive impacts on the environment, human health, and […]
• The Importance of Saving the Environment Toxins and contaminants pollute the environment and consequently interfere with the health of man and other animals. In other words, the future is guaranteed if the environment can be safeguarded and preserved at the current […]
• Impact of Full Moon Party on Environment The disreputable occasion in Thailand that attracts millions of tourists around the globe is known as the Full Moon Party. According to Uysal and Williams, the full moon party has shocking and direct effects on […]
• The Effect of Polymers on Environment vs Glass One of the first pioneers in the application of polymers was Joseph Priestley who in 1770 made a remarkable discovery that led to the use of natural rubber as an eraser.
• The Effect of Nuclear Energy on the Environment In response to the concerns, this paper proposes the use of thorium reactors to produce nuclear energy because the safety issues of uranium.
• Approaches to the Environmental Ethics The ethical approach Victor expresses is the one that humanity has used for centuries, which made the planet convenient for people, but it also led to the gradual destruction of the environment. The benefit of […]
• The Impact of the Food Industry on the Environment The food industry is a vital and integral part of the functioning of modern society and the economy. In addition to recognizing and combating this fact, it is necessary to identify what is the most […]
• Food Web and Impact of Environmental Degradation In the course of this paper, ‘conservation’ refers to the preservation of natural resources that are, in any way, involved in the functioning of the food web.
• Impacts of Alternative Energy on the Environment The term “alternative energy” refers to energy sources other than fossil fuels, including renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy, as well as nuclear energy.
• The Genus Rosa’s Adaptation to the Environment Alternative hypothesis: The abundance and distribution of stomata, storage, transport, and floral structures have a substantial influence on the adaptation of the genus Rosa to its environment.
• UAE Laws and Regulations for Environmental Protection In the meantime, specialists point out that the activity of UAE’s focused on the environment preservation has become more consistent and efficient within the past decades. The principal governmental structure responsible for the problems of […]
• US Government and Environmental Concerns Although the levels of these six pollutants are consistently declining since the 1980s, the EPA admitted in their latest report that “ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution continue to present challenges” in numerous US cities.
• Environmental Impacts of Tourism The sphere of tourism is reliant on the environment of the sites in which the visitors are interested. The industry of invasive tourism continues to grow people are becoming more and more interested in traveling […]
• Capitalism and Its Influence on the Environment The characteristic will be determined by both benefits to the environment and the overall result for the company, as companies should implement the changes willingly. The results are expected to be a set of suggestions […]
• Fish Farming Impacts on the Environment To begin with, according to Abel and Robert, fish farming has been generalized to have adverse effects on the environment, which ranges from the obliteration of the coastal habitats which are sensitive in the environment, […]
• Social and Eco-Entrepreneurship for Environment Social entrepreneurship is a field that deals with the recognition of social problems in society and using entrepreneurial concepts, operations, and processes to achieve a social change.
• How Solar Energy Can Save the Environment? Over the past few decades, the level of greenhouse gasses in the environment has been on the rise. The only cost in the production of solar energy is making the solar panels.
• Overpopulation Effects on the Environment In comparison to the population in 2000, the population in 2050 is predicted to rise by 47 percent. The aim of this research is to describe the effects of overpopulation on land, air, and food […]
• Environmental Problem of the Ok Tedi Copper Mine In this case, the agreement achieved by the BHP and the government of Papua New Guinea cannot be discussed as ethically appropriate and effective because the decision to continue operations without the significant changes in […]
• Carbon Taxes in Environmental Protection In addition, application of the strategy extends to the use of fuels and the amount of carbon emitted in the process of production.
• Current Environmental Health Issues Considering the effects these bacteria may result in the following consequences should be remembered, the production of the lethal toxins in the intestine, the development of the clinical disease and succumb to the infection, the […]
• Human Impact on the Environment The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of logging on the forest resources in Uganda and offer recommendations that can be used to mitigate and manage the identified impacts.
• Moral Obligations in Environment Synergy between the four components of the environment is crucial to the stability of the environment. In this regard, the lack of moral obligation in human beings when interacting with land amounts to a violation […]
• Mercury: Environmental Concerns and Economic Value The environmental concerns tied to production of mercury Mercury is widely used in the gold mining. Mercury has been limited to use of obsolete technology and require the use of the high technology to reduce […]
• Australian Fires and Their Environmental Impact Mass fires continued for almost six months on the territory of the country, which destroyed the region, commensurate with the area of some European countries. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the consequences […]
• The Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster and Environment When the accident occurred, coal mining was at the peak of its popularity, providing the country with half of the electricity generated nationwide.
• Tourism and Environment In order to address the impacts of tourism on the environment, there is need to discuss how to replace the income that may be lost by implementing these measures. Environmental conservation in tourism is responsible […]
• Environmental Issues in Asia This paper is going to have a look at the key environmental issues in Asian countries as well as the policies put in place by various agencies to address the issues.
• Environmental Pollution: Causes and Consequences The essay will provide an overview of pollution and proffer solutions to combating pollution for a sustainable environment and health. Preventing pollution lowers the cost to the environment and the economy.
• Nutrition and Its Impact on the Environment One of the crucial challenges is the need to find solutions that are effective for millions of different producers on the one hand and unique to each farm on the other.
• The Roles of Environmental Protection Agencies As a personal response to the argument; the individual’s involvement in environmental conservation is not enough as there is need for policy and regulation enforcement where he can only give advice to the federal government […]
• Papua New Guinea Environmental Analysis The following report aims at determining the suitability of Papua New Guinea as a target market for introducing our product environmental measuring equipment for monitoring and logging the quality of water in waterways around the […]
• Water Cycle and Environmental Factors The phrase “water cycle” refers to the continuous movement of water from the surface of the Earth to the atmosphere, and then back to the surface of the Earth.
• Natural Resources and the Environment For example, the use of natural gas, oil, and coal leads to the production of carbon dioxide, which pollutes the environment.
• The Environmental Impact of Nuclear Energy The country has the opportunity to enhance its capacity to generate electricity from nuclear following the approval of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate between three to four units of the Vogtle […]
• Environmental Management: Green Taxes The most common environmental tax is connected with the task of ensuring that these polluters are fined appropriately for their harmful emissions to the atmosphere.
• Deforestation Impact on Environment and Human On a larger scale, it is important to reduce the consumption of paper and engage in raising awareness of the issue to strengthen the actions for addressing it.
• Florida Wetlands: Importance to the Health of the Environment Wetlands are vital to the health of the environment and they perform the same function as the kidneys in the human body.
• Open-Pit Mining Environmental Impact Finally, the author claimed that the absence of social conflict was explained through the community’s dependence on CLC’s economic activity and the assumption made by the members of the community regarding the role of government […]
• Thailand Issues: Environment, Child Prostitution, and HIV/AIDS The intensification of child prostitution is largely associated with the growing industry in Thailand, the relegated position of women in the Thai society due to Thai Buddhism and the culture of recreational sex.
• Thermodynamics: Application to Environmental Issues Cyclists would use at least 250 kWh per hour of energy walking, which is about 70% more efficient than the energy required for a car.
• Greenwashing: Full Environmental Sustainability? For companies, to be 100% sustainable and ethical would mean that each time they are presented with a decision, they would make people or nature their priority.
• Environmental Factors in the Emergence of the Egyptian Civilization Importantly, the physical composition of the land and natural resources alongside artifacts of ancient Egypt had a substantial impact on the country’s growth and development.
• Environmental Issues of Rwanda Extensive farming, as well as animal husbandry, is a common phenomenon in the country, hence leading to serious environmental degradation on the land. Deteriorating quality of water and extinction threat to wetlands in the country […]
• Environmental Pollution and Increased Birds Death The increase in the population of different animals may also cause the death of birds. This leads to the extinction of some animals and birds hence massive death.
• Is Recycling Good for the Environment? Recycling is good for the environment and should be included in the daily routine of any person that cares about the planet and the future of our children.
• Human Behavioral Effects on Environment Environmental cues shape human behaviors because they make people perceive a certain environment in a given way and behavior in a manner that fits that environment. In addition, environmental cues may force people to change […]
• Environmental Issue – Climate Change If the right measures are put in place, our environment will be regenerated and the continued alterations to the climate will eventually stop.
• Economic Growth and Environment Relation Although the relevance of the EKC and the focus on the stages of development as the important factors to speak about the relationship between the economic growth and environment are highly debatable issues, it is […]
• Application of Geography (GIS) in Biotechnology in Field of Agriculture and Environment According to Wyland, “the ability of GIS to analyze and visualize agricultural environments and work flows has proved to be very beneficial to those involved in the farming industry”.
• Organisms in Terrestrial and Aquatic Environments Water is a dense medium, and thus plants living in water have a weak shaft for supporting the foliage and the upperparts of the plant.
• The Needs of People and the Needs of the Environment The central question that these readings pose is how the needs of people can be reconciled with the needs of the environment.
• Human Interaction With the Surrounding Environment However, this paper tries to explain the meaning of environmental psychology with the help of two principal theories; the Learning Theory and the Motivational Theory.
• The Relationship Between Psychology and the Preservation of the Environment To make sure that the relation between conservation and psychological sciences is understood, it is important to consider the meaning of the notion conservational psychology. Why is the relation of the conservation to psychology that […]
• Population Growth and Its Impacts on the Environment High population growth is destructive to the society and the environment. In the US and Germany, the rate of population growth is estimated to be 0.
• Impact of Sea Transport on the Aquatic Environment The shipping companies also have a serious impact on the maritime environment in terms of the wastes often released into the water.
• Environmental Risks in the United Arab Emirates With this in mind, the primary objective of the given study is the deep analysis of the main environmental risks that the UAE faces and the creation of the appropriate risk assessment method in order […]
• US Position on International Environmental Concerns The United States of America being of one of the most powerful countries in the world is attempting to lead from the front by discouraging pollution and abuse of the environment by employing environment management […]
• Environment: Oil and Gas’ Field Development Onshore The main purpose of this report is to consider the development and planning of an oil and gas field onshore, licensing of the industry and the characteristics of the operating companies and contractors.
• Health and Environment in Abu Dhabi The three areas stated in the figure are some of the major municipalities in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The environment in the region is similar to that of the other two cities, Abu Dhabi […]
• Environmental Science: Smart Water Management Among the essential elements in human life is water, which is required for maintaining the water balance in the body and for cleanliness, as well as for many economic sectors, from agriculture to metallurgy.
• Packaging and Protection of Finished Goods and the Environment Moreover, the paper views what concerns the problem creates and identifies preventive measures so as to contribute to the development of safety in the environment and society.
• Microbial-Environmental Interactions in HIV & AIDS The virus manifests in two subtypes, HIV-1 and HIV-2, and the severity of infection depends on the type of viral attack.
• Environmental Sustainability on a Global Scale Compared to the world at the beginning of the 21st century, it required perceptional changes toward nature, biodiversity, and ecosystems, as well as reforms in agriculture and management of water, energy, and waste.
• Does Recycling Harm the Environment? Recycling is the activity that causes the most damage to the environment. Summarizing the above, it is necessary to state that waste recycling has a negative connotation in relation to nature and the environment.
• Industrial Meat Business and Environmental Issues According to Goodman, it is essential to consider the ethical implications of our food choices and their impact on animals, the environment, and society. By choosing to consume meat, individuals are complicit in the perpetuation […]
• The Environmental Impacts of Exploratory Drilling Overall, the purpose of this report is to identify the environmental impacts of exploratory drilling, the financial benefits of this activity, and the relevant political regulations.
• Fast Fashion’s Negative Impact on the Environment And this is the constant increase in production capacity, the low quality of the product, and the use of the labor of the population of developing countries.
• Globalization in the Environmental Sphere To date, the problem of globalization is relevant, and with it the question of the impact of globalization on the environmental sphere is also of great interest.
• Climate Change, Economy, and Environment Central to the sociological approach to climate change is studying the relationship between the economy and the environment. Another critical area of sociologists ‘ attention is the relationship between inequality and the environment.
• Participatory Action Research on Canada’s Environment This discussion shows that a nationwide recycling PAR is required to combat worries about people’s lack of interest in environmental stewardship to preserve the environment.
• Global Climate Change and Environmental Conservation There may be a significantly lesser possibility that skeptics will acknowledge the facts and implications of climate change, which may result in a lower desire on their part to adopt adaptation. The climate of Minnesota […]
• Environment in the Novel “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn The arguments made by the gorilla have enabled me to understand that humankind should not be separated and categorized as superior to the rest of living organisms.
• Mining in Canada and Its Environmental Impact The following critique of the article analyzes the author and his qualifications and looks at the article to establish its relevance and quality of research.
• Eco Businesses’ Effect on the Environment Businesses that aim to make a social impact and positively influence the stability of the environment affect people and their minds.
• Environmental Pollution and Human Health The effects of sprawl on health workers are discussed in the article by Pohanka. It is similarly essential to take social justice and fairness into account because the effects of sprawl on population health are […]
• Consumer Relationship With Pro-Environmental Apparel Brands The paper has presented a questionnaire to understand how consumers’ intention to buy from a pro-environmental brand is impacted by their knowledge of the effect of apparel and their overall skepticism toward climate change.
• An Environmental Communicator Profile The Environmental Defense Fund is an organization working to create awareness, research and resources to the effort of safeguarding the planet. In particular, much of the messaging is designed to encourage local action and the […]
• Technology’s Role in Environmental Protection: The Ocean Cleanup Proponents of The Ocean Cleanup technology emphasize the fact that the devices have the capacity to effectively address oceanic plastic pollution.
• Water Pollution as a Crime Against the Environment In particular, water pollution is a widespread crime against the environment, even though it is a severe felony that can result in harm to many people and vast territories.
• Human Activity: Impact on the Environment The evaluation is based on the principle that the human impact on the environment can be measured by the amount of land and resources required to support a particular lifestyle or activity.
• Genetic and Environmental Impact of the Chornobyl Disaster The ecological impact of the explosion on the lands surrounding Chornobyl comes first. Chornobyl remains the worst in human history due to radioactive contamination.
• Risk Factor Analysis and Environmental Sustainability This project was evaluated using a methodical process that included listing ten potential dangers, followed by a risk assessment matrix and an explanation of how the dangers would be managed.
• Negative Environmental Impacts and Solutions The diversity of the planet’s wildlife is among the crucial resources to conserve, and it is essential for non-domesticated species to proliferate and develop at their own pace, with minimal external invasion.
• Environmental Ethics of Pesticide Usage in Agriculture For example, pesticides are responsible for the destruction of the soil and harm to the overall ecosystem. The soil, water, and air resources are at a high risk of contamination from the toxins that are […]
• Carbon Offsets: Combatting Environmental Pollution I think that using other organizations or projects to offset an entity’s carbon footprint avoids the main goal of any present environmental protection efforts sustainability.
• The Formation of the Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the U.S.federal government that was established as a response to the debate in American society over environmental protection.
• Protecting the Environment Against Climate Change
• Environmental Pollution: Waste Landfilling and Open Dumping
• How Bottles Pollute the Environment
• Environmental Problems in China and Japan
• Exploring Environmental Issues: Marine Ecotourism
• Influence of Technology on Environmental Concerns
• Environmental Legislation in Texas
• Middle East and North Africa Region: Environmental Management
• Is Humanity Already Paying for Environmental Damage?
• Environmental Injustice Impeding Health and Happiness
• Environmental Impact of Wind Farms and Fracking
• The Dangers of Global Warming: Environmental and Economic Collapse
• The Effects of Gold Mining in the Amazons on the Environment and the Population
• Environmental Racism: The Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan
• Environmental Justice: Pollution
• Environmental Illnesses and Prevention Measures
• Environmental Psychology: The Impact of Interior Spaces on Childhood Development
• Sea Foods in the Environment Protection Context
• Market-Based Approaches to Environmental Law
• Social and Environmental Problems in Oakland and Detroit
• Coates Chemicals: Environmental, Sustainability, and Safety
• Environmental and Ethical Problems
• Environmental Feedback Loop and Ecological Systems
• A Corporation’s Duties to the Environment
• Demography, Urbanization and Environment
• How to Fight Environmental Imbalances
• Environmental Issues, Psychology, and Economics
• Environmental Impacts During Pregnancy
• Attaining Sustainability in the Environment
• Achieving Environmental Sustainability
• Eating Habits and Environmental Worldviews
• Pesticide Utilization Impact on Environment and Health
• Pesticide Resistance for Environment and Health
• Environmental Protection: Pollution and Fossil Fuels
• Environmental Anthropology and Human Survival at The Arctic Biome
• Environmental Problems: Care of the Planet
• Intermodal Transportation Impacts on Environment
• Cats’ and Dogs’ Influences on the Environment and the Ecosystem
• Is Tap Water Better and Safer for People and the Environment Than Bottled Water?
• Environmental Impact Assessment as a Tool of Environmental Justice
• Australia’s State of the Environment
• Environmental Policy’s Impact on Economic Growth
• Business Ethics in Decisions About the Environment
• Marine Environment Protection and Management in the Shipping Industry
• Environment: Miami Area Analysis
• Agriculture: Environmental, Economic, and Social Aspects
• Toxicity of Mercury: Environmental Health
• The Impact of Atmospheric Pollution on Human Health and the Environment
• Analysis of Culture and Environmental Problems
• Science and the Environment: Plastics and Microplastics
• Impact of the Exxon Valdez Spill on the Environment
• Aeon Company and Environmental Safety
• Impending Environmental Disaster in Van Camp’s “Lying in Bed Together”
• Resolution of International Disputes Related to Environmental Practices
• Environment and the Challenges of Global Governance
• Environmental Policy Recommendation
• Reducing Personal Impact on the Environment
• Coal Usage – The Effects on Environment and Human Health
• Ancient Egypt: Geography and Environment
• Environmental and Genetic Factors That Influence Health
• Limits on Urban Sprawl. Environmental Science
• Geography and Environmental Features of Machu Picchu
• The Green New Deal: An Environmental Project
• Climate Change: Causes, Impact on People and the Environment
• Restorative Environmental Justice and Its Interpretation
• The United Nations Environmental Program and Sustainable Development Goals
• Property Laws Facilitate Environmental Destruction
• The Go-Green Programs: Saving the Environment
• Measuring Exposure in Environmental Epidemiology
• Air Cargo Impact on the Environment
• Environmental Marine Ecosystems: Biological Invasions
• Gamma Ray Spectroscopy Analysis of Environmental Samples: a Literature Review
• Environmental and Global Health Issues: Measles
• Fabric Recycling: Environmental Collapse
• Environmental Research – Radon Gas
• Environmental Justice Movement
• Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice
• Environmental Discrimination in Canada
• Environmental Worldviews & Environmental Justice
• Flint Water Crisis: Environmental Racism and Racial Capitalism
• Environmental Injustice Among African Americans
• Cancer Alley and Environmental Racism
• Building a School in the Polluted Environment
• India’s Environmental Health and Emergencies
• Climate Change: Sustainability Development and Environmental Law
• Environmental Factors and Health Promotion: Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution
• Cancer Alley and Environmental Racism in the US
• Avocado Production and Socio-Environmental Issues
• Environmental Philosophies and Actions
• Bipartisan Strategies for Overcoming Environmental Disaster
• Pope Francis’s Recommendations on Environmental Issues
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Fracking: An Environmental Study
• Non-Govermental Organizations in Environmental Changes
• Green Management and Environmental Auditing
• The Environmental Movement in the US
• Mega-Events and Environmental Sustainability
• Health and Environment: The Impact of Technology
• Environmental Health of Patient With Respiratory Illness
• Dubai Aluminium Company Ltd: Environmental Policies
• Environmental Science: The Ozone Layer
• The Current Environmental Policy in the USA
• Aspects of Environmental Studies
• The Environment and Its Effects
• Paper Recycling: Environmental and Business Issues
• Cruise Liners’ Environmental Management and Sustainability
• Environmental Effect & Waste Management Survey
• Great Cities’ Impact on Ecology and Environmental Health
• Geology and Environmental Science
• Environmental Degradation Impacts of Concrete Use in Construction
• Environmental Management for Construction Industry
• Airlines and Globalisation: Environmental Impact
• The Business Ethics, Code of Conduct, Environment Initiatives in Companies
• Environmental Features of the Sacramento City
• How “Making It Eco Friendly” Is Related to Information Technology and the Environment
• Coal Seam Gas Industry Impact: Environmental Epidemiology
• A Relationship Between Environmental Disclosure and Environmental Responsiveness
• Environmental Biotechnology: “Analysis of Endocrine Disruption in Southern California Coastal Fish”
• Eco-Labels: Environmental Issues in Business
• Sustainable Environmental Policy: Fight the Emerging Issues
• Environmental Regulations Effects on Accounting
• The Introduction of Environmental Legislation
• Environmental Sustainability of Veja
• Environmental Assessment
• Environmental Law in New South Wales
• Environmental Law: The Aluminium Smelting Plan
• The National Environmental Policy Act
• Environmental Biology: Hydraulic Fracturing Technology
• Environmental Policies Statements Response
• Environmental Accounting in Dubai
• Community Environmental Exposure in Bayou Vista and Omega Bay
• Environmental Audit for the MTBE Plant
• Taking Back Eden: Environmental Law Goes Global
• Environmental Risk Report on Nanoparticles
• Lancelets’ Adaptation and Environment
• Reaction Paper: Valuing the Environment Through Contingent Valuation
• Environmental Geotechnics: Review
• Environmental Challenges Caused by Fossil Fuels
• Water for Environmental Health and Promotion
• Environmental Management ISO 14000- ENEN90005 EMS Manual for Sita Landfill
• National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
• Environmental Impact of Healthcare Facilities
• Environmental Law: Strategies and Issue of Standing
• Environmental Protection: Law and Policy
• Environmental Law: History, Sources, Treaties and Setbacks
• Business Obligations With Respect to Environment
• Environmental Microbiology Overview
• Environmental Noise Effects on Students of Oregon State University
• Australian Environmental Law
• Environment and Land Conflict in Brazil
• The Information Context and the Formation of Public Response on Environmental Issues
• Organic Food Is Not a Cure for Environmental and Health Issues
• The Environment Conditions in the Desert
• Purchasing Trees Online for Environmental Protection
• Water Scarcity: Industrial Projects of Countries That Affect the External Environment
• Rayon and Its Impact on Health and Environment
• Opportunity Cost and Environment Protection
• Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies Analysis
• Environmental Studies: Climate Changes
• Environmental Degradation in “Turning Tides” by Mathieu D’Astous
• Architecture and the Environment
• Global Warming: Negative Effects to the Environment
• Environmental Planning: Dam Construction
• Agriculture and Environment: Organic Foods
• Environmental Protection With Energy Saving Tools
• Environmental Politics Review and Theories
• Social Development: Globalization and Environmental Problems
• Macondo Well Blowout’s Environmental Assessment
• Tasmania’s Environmental Degradation and Restoration
• Environmental Species and Ecosystems
• Sheffield Flooding and Environmental Issues Involved
• Maquiladora Industry and Environmental Degradation
• Religious Tradition Solving an Environmental Problem
• Do India and China Have a Right to Pollute the Environment?
• Global Warming and Environmental Refugees
• Root Causes of the Current Environmental Crisis
• Influence of Car Emissions on the Environment
• Environmental Ethics Concerning Animal Rights
• The Politics of Climate Change, Saving the Environment
• Environmental Deterioration and Poverty in Kenya
• Fear and Environmental Change in Philadelphia
• Global Warming Issues Review and Environmental Sustainability
• Environmental Issue: Whaling
• Ensuring Healthy and Clean Environment: Importance of Recycling
• Biodiversity Hotspots and Environmental Ethics
• Impact of Mobile Telephony on the Environment
• How to Feed Everybody and Protect the Environment?
• Geographical Information System (GIS) in Environmental Impact Assessment
• Population and Environment in South Australia
• Mitigation Strategies and Solutions in Environment
• Environment and Consumption as a Social Problem
• Population Grows And Environment
• Human Population Ecology: Human Interaction With the Environment
• Environmental Policies Made by the Finland Government
• War in Modern World: Effects on the Environment
• Kenya and Brazil: Comparing Environmental Conflict
• The Influence of Global Warming and Pollution on the Environment
• Genes and Environment: Genetic Factors and Issues Analysis
• Human Impacts on the Environment
• Global Warming: Causes and Impact on Health, Environment and the Biodiversity
• Environmental Issue in Canada: Kyoto Protocol
• The Positive Impact of Environment on Tourist Industry
• Environmental Preferences and Oil Development in Alaska
• Environmental Issues in Hamilton Harbor
• Environmental Problems From Human Overpopulation
• Aboriginal Environmental Issues in Canada
• Nuclear Energy and The Danger of Environment
• Environmental Sociology. Capitalism and the Environment
• Genes, Lifestyle, and Environment in Health of Population
• Los Angeles International Airport’s Environmental Impacts
• Environmental Policy: Water Sanitation
• UAE Medical Waste Culture and Environmental Impact
• U.S. Environmental Policies: The Clean Air Act
• Pollution and Federal Environmental Policy
• Fossil Fuel Combustion and Federal Environmental Policy
• The Impact of Mining Companies on Environment
• Emiratis Perceptions of Environmental and Cultural Conservation
• Shipping and the Environment
• Environmental Security in Gulf Council Countries
• Environmental Pollution Analysis
• Preserving the Environment and Its Treasures
• Humans and Humanists: Ethics and the Environment
• Restaurant’s Environment-Friendly Rules
• Mosquito Control Strategies in the Urban Environment
• Relationship Between Population and the Environment
• Energy, Its Usage and the Environment
• Carbon Dioxide Environmental Effects in 1990- 2010
• Hydropower Dams and Their Environmental Impacts
• Fiji Water’ Environmental Effects
• Biology and Environment Issues
• Coal Pollution in China as an Environmental Problem
• Natural Storms and Environmental Studies
• Indonesia: Environmental and Indigenous Issues
• The Perception of Healthy Human Environment
• Changing Environment and Human Impact
• Environmental Perils: Climate Change Issue
• Mining and Environment in Australia and South Africa
• Health and Environment in Abu Dhabi: Graphs’ Description
• Environment Quality and Tourism in Chinese Cities
• Global Warming as Environmental Injustice
• Health and Environment in Abu Dhabi: Statistical Significance
• “Population & Environment” in Mazur’s Feminist Approach
• Fuel Cell Vehicles Preventing Environmental Hazards
• Grundfos: Environment and Society Results
• Environmental Pollution in the Petroleum Industry
• Global Warming Impact on the Natural Environment
• Precautionary Principle in Environmental Situations
• The Impact of Overpopulation on the Global Environment
• Environmental Issue: Hunting on Whales
• Animal Testing and Environmental Protection
• Green Building: The Impact of Humanity on the Environment
• Global Warming: People Impact on the Environment
• Healthy Life and Environmental Impact
• Genetically Modified Seeds in Environmental Context
• Information Technology and Environment Sustainability
• Offshore Drilling’s Negative Environmental Influence
• Anthropocene and Human Impact on Environment
• Environmental Pollution and Green Policies
• Human & Environment in Kimmerer’s & Austin’s Works
• Dioxins and Furans in Japan’s Environment
• American Indian Environmental Movement in Arizona
• Environment and Business in “Bidder 70” Documentary
• Environment and Human Needs of Goods and Energy
• US Environmental Inequality After Disasters
• Sustainability and Human Impact on Environment
• Hunting, Its Moral and Environmental Issues
• Environmental Strategy for Groundwater in Abu Dhabi
• Pure Home Water Company’s Environment
• Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill’s Environmental Effect
• Green Marketing and Environment
• Human-Environment Interdependence
• North American Environmental Transnational Activism
• Environmental Laws in the UAE
• Reverse Logistics and the Environment
• Environmental Ethics and International Policy
• Environmental Issues: The US Aiding for Other Countries
• Environmental Revolution: Air Pollution in China
• Chinese Environmental Programs and Regulations
• Rail Transportation Industry Environmental Impacts
• Environmental Risk Perception: Climate Change Viewpoints
• International Trade Impact on the Amazon Region Environment
• Globalization as to Health, Society, Environment
• Pollution & Climate Change as Environmental Risks
• Whaling and Its Environmental Impact
• The Knoxville City’s Environmental Pollution
• Environmental Technology and Its Disruptive Impact
• Data Analysis in Economics, Sociology, Environment
• America’s Major Environmental Challenges
• International Environment Management and Sustainability
• Environmental Studies: Energy Wastefulness in the UAE
• Environmental Risk Management in the UAE
• Business and Its Environment: Greenhouse Emissions
• The US Foreign Policy and Environmental Protection
• The Environmental Impacts of Transnational Migration in the US
• Contrasting Environmental Policies in Brazil
• Air Pollution Effects on the Health and Environment
• How Does Environmental Security Affect Sustainable Development?
• Environmental Sustainability in Clean City Organization
• Environmental Crisis: People’s Relationship With Nature
• Gene-Environment Interaction Theory
• Environment: Tropical Deforestation Causes in Indonesia
• Sustainability Principles of the Natural Environment
• Hydraulic Fracturing and Its Environmental Impacts
• Garbage Sorting in San Francisco – Environmental Study
• Nuclear Power & Environment
• Environmental Studies: Artificial Leaf
• Environmental Justice and Air Pollution in Canada
• Environmental Studies: Green Technology
• “Global Environment History” a Book by Ian G. Simmons
• Environmental Studies: Photosynthesis Concept
• Environment Destruction: Pollution
• Big Coal and the Natural Environment Pollution
• Externalities Effects on People and Environment
• Environment Protection Agency Technical Communication
• Maori Health Development and Environmental Issue
• Mars: Water and the Martian Landscape
• Greenbelts as a Toronto’ Environmental Planning Tool
• Environmental Studies: The Florida Everglades
• Solving Complex Environmental Problems
• Environmental Impacts of Cruise Tourism
• Environmental Studies: Saving Endangered Species
• Environmental Stewardship of Deforestation
• Environmental Studies: Transforming Cultures From Consumerism to Sustainability
• Whaling as Unethical Environmental Problem
• Assaults on the Environment as a Form of War or Violence
• Brazil Environmental Issues
• Environmental Studies: Water Contamination in China
• Environmental Impact – Life Cycle Assessment
• Environmental Hazards and Human Health
• BHP Waste Managements: Environmental Justice
• Saving the Environment With Eco-Friendly Amenities
• Population Growth Impacts on the Environment
• The Adoption of Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
• Air Pollution: Human Influence on Environment
• The Sustainable Hotel Environment
• Research Effect of Environmental Disasters on Human Reproductive Health
• Analysis of Love Canal Environmental Disaster
• Kuwait’s Desert Pollution
• Importance of Environmental Conservation for Public Health
• Global Warming and Its Effects on the Environment
• Citizen Participation in Global Environmental Governance
• Environment and Renewable Energy
• World Government and Environmental Conservation
• Materials and the Environment
• Effectiveness of Carbon Tax in Environmental Sustainability
• The Effects of Human Activities on the Environment
• Natural Catastrophes and Environmental Justice
• Environmental and Health Concerns of Hurricanes
• Environmental Protection: Liquid Waste
• Asthma Environmental Causes
• Environmental Security as an Approach to Threats Posed by Global Environmental Change
• Noise Control Act of 1972
• World Bank’s Transformation of Human-Environmental Relations in the Global South
• Environmental Conditions in Tunnels Towards Environmentally Sustainable Future
• Changes and Challenges: China’s Environmental Management in Transition
• Corporate Environmental Policy Statements in Mainland China: To What Extent Do They Conform to ISO 14000 Documentation?
• Jiangsu Province Environmental Analysis
• Environmental Impacts of Air Pollution
• Science in Environmental Management
• Quality and Environmental Management
• Modern State as an Impediment to Environmental Issues
• Emirates Airlines Environmental Consciousness
• McDonald’s: Human Rights and Environmental Sustainability
• China’s Energy and Environmental Implications
• Knowledge Management Assessment in Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi
• Environmental Issues and Management
• Green Computing: A Contribution to Save the Environment
• Environmental Issue in China
• Environmental Studies: Life Cycle Analysis of Milk
• Working for the Environment
• Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Standards
• Transportation Standards and Environmental Regulations
• Environmental Damage From the BP Oil Spill
• Environmental Sustainability Audit: The Oman Environmental Services Holding Company
• A Robust Strategy for Sustainable Energy
• Chesapeake Bay Environment Protection
• Environmental Disasters and Ways Companies Cope With Them
• Eco-Friendly Food Product Production and Marketing
• Environmental Science & Technology
• The Concept of Corporate Environmental Responsibility
• Remediation of Metals – Contaminated Soils and Groundwater
• Environmental Policy in UK, Canada, and India
• Eco and Cultural Tourism: Extraordinary Experience and Untouched Natural Environment
• Effects of Conflict or Nuclear Materials on Environment and Society
• MLC and the Environmental Management Accounting
• Environmental Degradation in Lithgow’s Waters
• Environmental Risk, Risk Management, and Risk Assessment
• Evaluate Human Resource Issues in Hong Kong Food and Environmental Hygiene Department
• On the Rescue Mission: Preserving the Environment
• A Cost Benefit Analysis of the Environmental and Economic Effects of Nuclear Energy in the United States
• Reducing the Energy Costs in Hotels: An Attempt to Take Care of the Environment
• The International Relations Theories in Addressing of Environmental Issues
• Learning of Environment Sustainability in Education
• Natural and the Environmental Protection
• Silent Spring and Environmental Issues
• The Environment, Resources, and Their Economic Effects
• Coyotes as an Environmental Concern in Southern California
• Environmental Health Practice
• Fossil Energy and Economy
• Eliminating the Conflict: Tourism and Environment
• The Process of Constructing the Hotel and Environment
• Tourism and Environment in Conflict
• The Effect of Genetically Modified Food on Society and Environment
• Wind Energy for Environmental Sustainability
• Acidic Rain Effects on the Environment
• Importance of Environment
• Concept of Environmental Ethic in Society
• Effects of Oil Spills on Aquatic Environments
• Impact of Plastics on the Environment
• The Fossil Oil Energy Effects on the Environment
• Environmental Impact of Medical Wastes
• Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Material
• The Trends, Opportunities and Challenges of Environmental Sustainability
• 21st Century Environmental Perils
• Environmental Injustice in Modern World
• Environment and Species in International Relations
• Effects of Classical Body to Environmental Thought
• Environmentalism and Economic Freedom
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Experiencing and Transforming the Environment
• Identity: Discourse of Environment
• Bottled Water Effect on Environment and Culture
• Environmental Issues of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Storage Facility in Nevada
• Would Evolution Proceed More Quickly in a Rapidly Changing Environment?
• Who Must Take Care of the Environment?
• Why Can Air Pollution Harm the Environment Dramatically?
• Why and How Should We Account for the Environment?
• Why Animals Change Their Colors in Response to Environment?
• Why Don’t Languages Adapt to Their Environment?
• Why Are Environmental Ethics Important in the Preservation of the Natural Environment?
• Why Are Industrial Farms Good for the Environment?
• Why Is Mountain Meadows Basin Very Important for the Environment?
• Why Do People Harm the Environment Although They Try to Treat It Well?
• Why Do People Use Their Cars While the Built Environment Imposes Cycling?
• Why Protecting, Our Environment, Is So Important?
• Why Need to Study the Environment?
• Why the Oil Industry Continues to Harm the Environment?
• Why Is Population Growth’s Effect on the Earth’s Environment?
• Can Cleaner Environment Promote International Trade?
• Can Ecolabeling Schemes Preserve the Environment?
• Can Employment Structure Promote Environment-Biased Technical Progress?
• Can Green Taxes Save the Environment?
• Can Social Media Help Save the Environment?
• Can the Market Take Care of the Environment?
• Can the United States Help Improve Their Perishing Environment?
• Which Human Activities Affected the Natural Environment of the Amazon Basin?
• What Are Our Responsibilities Toward the Environment?
• What Are Plastics, and How Do They Affect the Environment?
• What Are Some Ways That the Environment Affects Human Health?
• What Are the Effects of Acid Rain on the Environment?
• What Are the Effects of Motor Vehicles on the Environment?
• How Has Consumerism Shaped the Environment by Influencing?
• How Does Crude Oil Pollute Environment?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "612 Environment Essay Topics & Examples." November 30, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/environment-essay-examples/.

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Ecology Essay Ideas

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Ecology is the study of the interactions and reciprocal influence of living organisms within a specific environment. It's usually taught in the context of biology, though some high schools also offer courses in Environmental Science which includes topics in ecology.

Ecology Topics to Choose From

Topics within the field can range broadly, so your choices of topics are practically endless! The list below may help you generate your own ideas for a research paper or essay.

Research Topics

• How are new predators introduced into an area? Where has this happened in the United States?
• How is the ecosystem of your backyard different from the ecosystem of another person's backyard ecosystem?
• How is a desert ecosystem different from a forest ecosystem?
• What is the history and impact of manure?
• How are different types of manure good or bad?
• How has the popularity of sushi impacted the earth?
• What trends in eating habits have impacted our environment?
• What hosts and parasites exist in your home?
• Pick five products from your refrigerator, including the packaging. How long would it take for the products to decay in the earth?
• How are trees affected by acid rain?
• How do you build an ecovillage?
• How clean is the air in your town?
• What is the soil from your yard made of?
• Why are coral reefs important?
• Explain the ecosystem of a cave. How could that system be disturbed?
• Explain how rotting wood impacts the earth and people.
• What ten things could you recycle in your home?
• How is recycled paper made?
• How much carbon dioxide is released into the air every day because of fuel consumption in cars? How could this be reduced?
• How much paper is thrown away in your town every day? How could we use paper that is thrown away?
• How could each family save water?
• How does discarded motor oil affect the environment?
• How can we increase the use of public transportation? How would that help the environment?
• Pick an endangered species. What could make it go extinct? What could save this species from extinction?
• What species have been discovered within the past year?
• How could the human race become extinct? Describe a scenario.
• How does a local factory affect the environment?
• How do ecosystems improve water quality?

Topics for Opinion Papers

There is a great deal of controversy about topics that link ecology and public policy. If you enjoy writing papers that take a point of view , consider some of these:

• What impact is climate change having on our local ecology?
• Should the United States ban the use of plastics to protect delicate ecosystems?
• Should new laws be enacted to limit the use of energy produced by fossil fuels?
• How far should human beings go to protect ecologies where endangered species live?
• Is there ever a time when natural ecology should be sacrificed for human needs?
• Should scientists bring back an extinct animal? What animals would you bring back and why?
• If scientists brought back the saber-toothed tiger, how might it impact the environment?
• The Definition of a Marine Ecosystem
• Cultural Ecology
• What Is Physical Geography?
• The National Geography Standards
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• Writing a Paper about an Environmental Issue
• Is There Any Upside to Global Warming?
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Eyes on tomorrow, voices of today.

Candice Chen ’22 (left) and Noah Secondo ’22.

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Alvin Powell

Harvard Staff Writer

Harvard students share thoughts, fears, plans to meet environmental challenges

For many, thinking about the world’s environmental future brings concern, even outright alarm.

There have been, after all, decades of increasingly strident warnings by experts and growing, ever-more-obvious signs of the Earth’s shifting climate. Couple this with a perception that past actions to address the problem have been tantamount to baby steps made by a generation of leaders who are still arguing about what to do, and even whether there really is a problem.

It’s no surprise, then, that the next generation of global environmental leaders are preparing for their chance to begin work on the problem in government, business, public health, engineering, and other fields with a real sense of mission and urgency.

The Gazette spoke to students engaged in environmental action in a variety of ways on campus to get their views of the problem today and thoughts on how their activities and work may help us meet the challenge.

Eric Fell and Eliza Spear

Fell is president and Spear is vice president of Harvard Energy Journal Club. Fell is a graduate student at the Harvard John H. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Spear is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

FELL:   For the past three centuries, fossil fuels have enabled massive growth of our civilization to where we are today. But it is now time for a new generation of cleaner-energy technologies to fuel the next chapter of humanity’s story. We’re not too late to solve this environmental challenge, but we definitely shouldn’t procrastinate as much as we have been. I don’t worry about if we’ll get it done, it’s the when. Our survival depends on it. At Harvard, I’ve been interested in the energy-storage problem and have been focusing on developing a grid-scale solution utilizing flow batteries based on organic molecules in the lab of Mike Aziz . We’ll need significant deployment of batteries to enable massive penetration of renewables into the electrical grid.

SPEAR: Processes leading to greenhouse-gas emissions are so deeply entrenched in our way of life that change continues to be incredibly slow. We need to be making dramatic structural changes, and we should all be very worried about that. In the Harvard Energy Journal Club, our focus is energy, so we strive to learn as much as we can about the diverse options for clean-energy generation in various sectors. A really important aspect of that is understanding how much of an impact those technologies, like solar, hydro, and wind, can really have on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. It’s not always as much as you’d like to believe, and there are still a lot of technical and policy challenges to overcome.

I can’t imagine working on anything else, but the question of what I’ll be working on specifically is on my mind a lot. The photovoltaics field is at a really exciting point where a new technology is just starting to break out onto the market, so there are a lot of opportunities for optimization in terms of performance, safety, and environmental impact. That’s what I’m working on now [in Roy Gordon’s lab ] and I’m really enjoying it. I’ll definitely be in the renewable-energy technology realm. The specifics will depend on where I see the greatest opportunity to make an impact.

Photo (left) courtesy of Kritika Kharbanda; photo by Tiera Satchebell.

Kritika Kharbanda ’23 and Laier-Rayshon Smith ’21

Kharbanda is with the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference, Harvard Circular Economy Symposium. Smith is a member of Climate Leaders Program for Professional Students at Harvard. Both are students at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

KHARBANDA: I come from a country where the most pressing issues are, and will be for a long time, poverty, food shortage, and unemployment born out of corruption, illiteracy, and rapid gentrification. India was the seventh-most-affected country by climate change in 2019. With two-thirds of the population living in rural areas with no access to electricity, even the notion of climate change is unimaginable.

I strongly believe that the answer lies in the conjugality of research and industry. In my field, achieving circularity in the building material processes is the burning concern. The building industry currently contributes to 40 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, of which 38 percent is contributed by the embedded or embodied energy used for the manufacturing of materials. A part of the Harvard i-lab, I am a co-founder of Cardinal LCA, an early stage life-cycle assessment tool that helps architects and designers visualize this embedded energy in building materials, saving up to 46 percent of the energy from the current workflow. This venture has a strong foundation as a research project for a seminar class I took at the GSD in fall 2020, instructed by Jonathan Grinham. I am currently working as a sustainability engineer at Henning Larsen architects in Copenhagen while on a leave of absence from GSD. In the decades to come, I aspire to continue working on the embodied carbon aspect of the building industry. Devising an avant garde strategy to record the embedded carbon is the key. In the end, whose carbon is it, anyway?

SMITH: The biggest challenges are areas where the threat of climate change intersects with environmental justice. It is important that we ensure that climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategies are equitable, whether it is sea-level rise or the increase in urban heat islands. We should seek to address the threats faced by the most vulnerable communities — the communities least able to resolve the threat themselves. These often tend to be low-income communities and communities of color that for decades have been burdened with bearing the brunt of environmental health hazards.

During my time at Harvard, I have come to understand how urban planning and design can seek to address this challenge. Planners and designers can develop strategies to prioritize communities that are facing a significant climate-change risk, but because of other structural injustices may not be able to access the resources to mitigate the risk. I also learned about climate gentrification: a phenomenon in which people in wealthier communities move to areas with lower risks of climate-change threats that are/were previously lower-income communities. I expect to work on many of these issues, as many are connected and are threats to communities across the country. From disinvestment and economic extraction to the struggle to find quality affordable housing, these injustices allow for significant disparities in life outcomes and dealing with risk.

Lucy Shaw ’21

Shaw is co-president of the HBS Energy and Environment Club. She is a joint-degree student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.

SHAW: I want to see a world where climate change is averted and the environment preserved, without it being at the expense of the development and prosperity of lower-income countries. We have, or are on the cusp of having, many of the financial and technological tools we need to reduce emissions and environmental damage from a wide array of industries, such as agriculture, energy, and transport. The challenge I am most worried about is how we balance economic growth and opportunity with reducing humanity’s environmental impact and share this burden equitably across countries.

I came to Harvard as a joint degree student at the Kennedy School and Business School to be able to see this challenge from two different angles. In my policy-oriented classes, we learned about the opportunities and challenges of global coordination among national governments — the difficulty in enforcing climate agreements, and in allocating and agreeing on who bears the responsibility and the costs of change, but also the huge potential that an international framework with nationally binding laws on environmental protection and carbon-emission reduction could have on changing the behavior of people and businesses. In my business-oriented classes, we learned about the power of business to create change, if there is a driven leadership. We also learned that people and businesses respond to incentives, and the importance of reducing cost of technologies or increasing the cost of not switching to more sustainable technologies — for example, through a tax. After graduate school, I plan to join a leading private equity investor in their growing infrastructure team, which will equip me with tools to understand what makes a good investment in infrastructure and what are the opportunities for reducing the environmental impact of infrastructure while enhancing its value. I hope to one day be involved in shaping environmental and development policy, whether it is on a national or international level.

Photo (left) by Tabitha Soren.

Quinn Lewis ’23 and Suhaas Bhat ’24

Both are with the Student Climate Change Conference, Harvard College.

LEWIS:   When I was a kid, I imagined being an adult as a future with a stable house, a fun job, and happy kids. That future didn’t include wildfires that obscured the sun for months, global water shortages, or billionaires escaping to terrariums on Mars. The threats are so great and so assured by inaction that it’s very hard for me to justify doing anything else with my time and attention because very little will matter if there’s 1 billion climate refugees and significant portions of the continental United States become uninhabitable for human life.

For whatever reason, I still feel a great deal of hope around giving it a shot. I can’t imagine not working to mitigate the climate crisis. Media and journalism will play a huge role in raising awareness, as they generate public pressure that can sway those in power. Another route for change is to cut directly to those in power and try to convince them of the urgency of the situation. Given that I am 22 years old, it is much easier to raise public awareness or work in media and journalism than it is to sit down with some of the most powerful people on the planet, who tend to be rather busy. At school, I’m on a team that runs the University-wide Student Climate Change Conference at Harvard, which is a platform for speakers from diverse backgrounds to discuss the climate crisis and ways students and educators can take immediate and effective action. Also, I write about and research challenges and solutions to the climate crisis through the lenses of geopolitics and the global economy, both as a student at the College and as a case writer at the Harvard Business School. Outside of Harvard, I have worked in investigative journalism and at Crooked Media, as well as on political campaigns to indirectly and directly drive urgency around the climate crisis.

BHAT:   The failure to act on climate change in the last few decades, despite mountains of scientific evidence, is a consequence of political and institutional cowardice. Fossil fuel companies have obfuscated, misinformed, and lobbied for decades, and governments have failed to act in the best interests of their citizens. Of course, the fight against climate change is complex and multidimensional, requiring scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial expertise, but it will ultimately require systemic change to allow these talents to shine.

At Harvard, my work on climate has been focused on running the Harvard Student Climate Conference, as well as organizing for Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. My hope for the Climate Conference is to provide students access to speakers who have dedicated their careers to all aspects of the fight against climate change, so that students interested in working on climate have more direction and inspiration for what to do with their careers. We’ve featured Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, members of the Sunrise Movement, and the CEO of Impossible Foods as some examples of inspiring and impactful people who are working against climate change today.

I organize for FFDH because I believe that serious institutional change is necessary for solving the climate crisis and also because of a sort of patriotism I have for Harvard. I deeply respect and care for this institution, and genuinely believe it is an incredible force for good in the world. At the same time, I believe Harvard has a moral duty to stand against the corporations whose misdeeds and falsification of science have enabled the climate crisis.

Libby Dimenstein ’22

Dimenstein is co-president of Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society.

DIMENSTEIN:   Climate change is the one truly existential threat that my generation has had to face. What’s most scary is that we know it’s happening. We know how bad it will be; we know people are already dying from it; and we still have done so little relative to the magnitude of the problem. I also worry that people don’t see climate change as an “everyone problem,” and more as a problem for people who have the time and money to worry about it, when in reality it will harm people who are already disadvantaged the most.

I want to recognize Professor Wendy Jacobs, who recently passed away. Wendy founded HLS’s fantastic Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, and she also created an interdisciplinary class called the Climate Solutions Living Lab. In the lab, groups of students drawn from throughout the University would conduct real-world projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The class was hard, because actually reducing greenhouse gases is hard, but it taught us about the work that needs to be done. This summer I’m interning with the Environmental Defense Fund’s U.S. Clean Air Team, and I anticipate a lot of my work will revolve around the climate. After graduating, I’m hoping to do environmental litigation, either with a governmental division or a nonprofit, but I also have an interest in policy work: Impact litigation is fascinating and important, but what we need most is sweeping policy change.

Candice Chen ’22 and Noah Secondo ’22

Chen and Secondo are co-directors of the Harvard Environmental Action Committee. Both attend Harvard College.

SECONDO: The environment is fundamental to rural Americans’ identity, but they do not believe — as much as urban Americans — that the government can solve environmental problems. Without the whole country mobilized and enthusiastic, from New Hampshire to Nebraska, we will fail to confront the climate crisis. I have no doubt that we can solve this problem. To rebuild trust between the U.S. government and rural communities, federal departments and agencies need to speak with rural stakeholders, partner with state and local leaders, and foreground rural voices. Through the Harvard College Democrats and the Environmental Action Committee, I have contributed to local advocacy efforts and creative projects, including an environmental art publication.

I hope to work in government to keep the policy development and implementation processes receptive to rural perspectives, including in the environmental arena. At every level of government, if we work with each other in good faith, we will tackle the climate crisis and be better for it.

CHEN: I’m passionate about promoting more sustainable, plant-based diets. As individual consumers, we have very little control over the actions of the largest emitters, massive corporations, but we can all collectively make dietary decisions that can avoid a lot of environmental degradation. Our food system is currently very wasteful, and our overreliance on animal agriculture devastates natural ecosystems, produces lots of potent greenhouse gases, and creates many human health hazards from poor animal-waste disposal. I feel like the climate conversation is often focused around the clean energy transition, and while it is certainly the largest component of how we can avoid the worst effects of global warming, the dietary conversation is too often overlooked. A more sustainable future also requires us to rethink agriculture, and especially what types of agriculture our government subsidizes. In the coming years, I hope that more will consider the outsized environmental impact of animal agriculture and will consider making more plant-based food swaps.

To raise awareness of the environmental benefits of adopting a more plant-based diet, I’ve been involved with running a campaign through the Environmental Action Committee called Veguary. Veguary encourages participants to try going vegetarian or vegan for the month of February, and participants receive estimates for how much their carbon/water/land use footprints have changed based on their pledged dietary changes for the month.

Photo (left) courtesy of Cristina Su Liu.

Cristina Su Liu ’22 and James Healy ’21

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Liu is with Harvard Climate Leaders Program for Professional Students. Healy is with the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference. Both are students at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

HEALY:   As a public health student I see so many environmental challenges, be it the 90 percent of the world who breathe unhealthy air, or the disproportionate effects of extreme heat on communities of color, or the environmental disruptions to the natural world and the zoonotic disease that humans are increasingly being exposed to. But the central commonality at the heart of all these crises is the climate crisis. Climate change, from the greenhouse-gas emissions to the physical heating of the Earth, is worsening all of these environmental crises. That’s why I call the climate crisis the great exacerbator. While we will all feel the effects of climate change, it will not be felt equally. Whether it’s racial inequity or wealth inequality, the climate crisis is widening these already gaping divides.

Solutions may have to be outside of our current road maps for confronting crises. I have seen the success of individual efforts and private innovation in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, from individuals wearing masks and social distancing to the huge advances in vaccine development. But for climate change, individual efforts and innovation won’t be enough. I would be in favor of policy reform and coalition-building between new actors. As an overseer of the Harvard Student Climate Change Conference and the Harvard Climate Leaders Program, I’ve aimed to help mobilize Harvard’s diverse community to tackle climate change. I am also researching how climate change makes U.S. temperatures more variable, and how that’s reducing the life expectancies of Medicare recipients. The goal of this research, with Professor Joel Schwartz, will be to understand the effects of climate change on vulnerable communities. I certainly hope to expand on these themes in my future work.

SU LIU:  A climate solution will need to be a joint effort from the whole society, not just people inside the environmental or climate circles. In addition to cross-sectoral cooperation, solving climate change will require much stronger international cooperation so that technologies, projects, and resources can be developed and shared globally. As a Chinese-Brazilian student currently studying in the United States, I find it very valuable to learn about the climate challenges and solutions of each of these countries, and how these can or cannot be applied in other settings. China-U.S. relations are tense right now, but I hope that climate talks can still go ahead since we have much to learn from each other.

Personally, as a student in environmental health at [the Harvard Chan School], I feel that my contribution to addressing this challenge until now has been in doing research, learning more about the health impacts of climate change, and most importantly, learning how to communicate climate issues to people outside climate circles. Every week there are several climate-change events at Harvard, where a different perspective on climate change is addressed. It has been very inspiring for me, and I feel that I could learn about climate change in a more holistic way.

Recently, I started an internship at FXB Village, where I am working on developing and integrating climate resilience indicators into their poverty-alleviation program in rural communities in Puebla, Mexico. It has been very rewarding to introduce climate-change and climate-resilience topics to people working on poverty alleviation and see how everything is interconnected. When we address climate resilience, we are also addressing access to basic services, livelihoods, health, equity, and quality of life in general. This is where climate justice is addressed, and that is a very powerful idea.

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28 Causes, Effects & Solutions For Ecological Problems

“ You can’t start with imbalance and end with peace, be that in your own body, in an ecosystem or between a government and its people. What we need to strive for is not perfection, but balance.”

Ani DiFranco, Musician

What Is Ecology?

Ecology can be defined as a branch of biology that examines the interaction of organisms and their natural biophysical environment.

This biophysical environment can be either biotic or abiotic.

The field of ecology includes life processes, adaptions, interactions as well as the movement of energy and materials through living communities.

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Ecology is quite important for explaining and also for the mitigation of many environmental problems.

In the following, several kinds of questions regarding ecology are answered.

Moreover, the causes, effects and solutions for ecological problems are examined.

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Biotic and abiotic factors.

While biotic factors are living organisms, abiotic factors are non-living factors of an ecosystem.

Examples for biotic factors include animals, birds and plants.

Abiotic factors include air, soil or the sunlight.

What are the different Types of Ecology?

Molecular ecology, ecosystem ecology, organismal ecology, landscape ecology, community ecology, population ecology, global ecology.

Molecular ecology can be defined as an area of evolutionary biology which examines the dynamics of ecology on a molecular level.

Molecular ecology tries to answer several genetic-based questions regarding ecological evolution.

Ecosystem ecology can be regarded as a field of study related to biotic and abiotic components and their interactions within an ecosystem framework.

This field of ecological study examines how ecosystems and their different components work and interact.

Organismal ecology tries to study how individual organisms interact and respond to changing environmental factors and environmental challenges.

Landscape ecology studies the relationships between particular ecosystems and ecological processes in the environment.

Key topics of landscape ecology include land use and land cover change and ecological flows in landscape mosaics.

Community ecology examines the interaction of two or more populations living in the same geographical area.

It also examines how interactions of living organisms can change the community structure over time.

The field of population ecology examines the genetic variety and size of a population and factors that can change the population characteristics.

Global ecology can be regarded as the most high-level type of ecology.

It examines the interaction of the planet’s atmosphere, ecosystems, land, air and oceans.

What is the Difference between Ecology and Environment?

While ecology is focused on the interactions of organisms with their surroundings and with each other, environment can be regarded as a broader term.

Environment can thus be seen as a dwelling place for organisms while ecology is more community-based and focuses on the relationships and interactions of populations.

What is the Ecological Footprint?

The ecological footprint measures the human impact on our planet’s ecosystem.

It is an indicator of the dependence of humans on natural resources.

The ecological footprint is quite an important measure for the sustainability assessment of human behavior.

By using the ecological footprint, we can determine how sustainable human behavior is for our planet and in which directions we have to adjust our behavior in order to become more sustainable to ensure the future of humanity.

What is the Ecology Pyramid?

The ecological pyramid describes biomass productivity in a given ecosystem at each trophic level.

In the ecological pyramid, primary producers like plants are located at the bottom of the pyramid, while predators are at the top of the pyramid.

The ecology pyramid starts when primary producers get energy from the sun.

Part of this energy is then transferred as biomass to the next trophic level.

It is estimated that in healthy ecosystems, around 10% of the energy is transferred to the next trophic level.

What are the Stages of Ecological Succession?

Primary succession, secondary succession, intermediate stages of succession, climax communities.

Primary succession describes the stage in the ecological succession where organisms colonize an area that has previously hit by a natural disaster that wiped out all life in this area.

In such areas, the first organisms which colonize the land usually are fungi and algae, followed by simple plants like mosses.

Eventually, as time goes by, a layer of soil is formed which can be used by advanced plant species since there now a space to locate roots and extract nutrients out of the soil.

In the next step, animals, birds and insects usually colonize these areas as there is now enough food supply through plants.

In contrast to primary succession, secondary succession does not refer to an initial state where all life had been wiped out, it rather describes the changes and evolvement of populations over time in specific areas.

Secondary succession occurs every day and can be regarded as gradual movement to the climax community state.

In the ecological evolution process, there are many intermediate states of succession.

Depending on the ecological system, the transition from primary succession to climax communities can be quite short or also can take a quite long time, depending on the circumstances and sources of disturbance.

Climax communities can be regarded as the final step of succession.

In this state, the ecosystem usually remains quite stable and unchanged.

The biggest threat to climax communities usually are natural disasters like wildfires or other events that have a huge ecological impact.

Why is Ecology important?

Ecology raises the awareness of people, new research insights, protection of species, human survival, environmental conservation, avoid the spread of diseases, protection of our climate, predicting the future, efficient resource distribution.

The science of ecology is important since it raises the awareness of people on our ecological problems and how to solve them.

Through understanding the relationships between organisms which can often be quite complex, it is easier to find effective measures in order to mitigate certain problems.

Ecology often also comes up with new research insights which in turn can be used to improve policy decisions and to mitigate certain ecological problems.

With the help of ecological insights, it can be determined which species are at risk to become endangered or extinct and suitable measures regarding the protection of these species can be taken.

Since our ecological systems are quite complex and interdependent, the survival of the human species depends heavily on the understanding of ecology and how the different organisms on our planet work together.

A big environmental problem is the destruction of habitats of many animals and plants due to mining, deforestation or other actions caused by human interventions.

Ecology can determine what level of human intervention can be tolerated and how much interaction is “too much”.

With the help of ecology, we can also examine how diseases are spread and under which ecological conditions the likelihood of the spread of diseases increases.

Therefore, whenever such conditions appear, people can be warned and made aware to take protective measures.

Since ecology examines the interactions of different organisms, it can also study how climate change affects ecosystems.

Thus, ecology can help to understand the adverse effects of global warming and can also give indications on how to mitigate the climate change issue.

Since there is plenty of data on ecological processes in the past, researchers can try to predict future ecological development.

Therefore, they may be able to spot potential dangers to humanity in time so that we are able to fight those dangers efficiently.

Ecology can also help to answer questions regarding the optimal resource distribution and allocation.

In many regions worldwide, there may be a lack of resources that prevents local development.

Therefore, supplying natural resources to these countries may support them in reaching their development goals.

Causes for Ecological Problems

Earthquakes, heavy rainfalls and floods, destruction of natural habitats, illegal dumping, emission of greenhouse gases, excessive consumption, excessive waste.

Draughts can lead to serious ecological problems since they can change the dynamics of an ecological system.

For example, draughts can lead to the death of many animals and plants which in turn affects several other organisms.

This can lead to a point where the ecological balance is lost and new equilibrium states can occur.

Earthquakes can also wipe out animals and plant species on a large scale and therefore change the affected ecological systems in an adverse manner.

Moreover, earthquakes can also lead to the spread of diseases due to unhygienic conditions and therefore may further alter the ecological systems.

Tornadoes can lead to a temporary change in the structure of an ecological system.

Tornadoes may destroy buildings and also may lead to the destruction of forests.

This forest destruction in turn hurts many animals which now have to relocate to new habitats.

In turn, this could lead to an imbalance in the ecosystem and may hurt biodiversity.

Rainfalls and floods can also hurt ecosystems since many animals and plants are likely to drown.

Moreover, a mass of dead animals can also lead to a spread of diseases or even to a spread of epidemics or pandemics.

Due to our increasing world population and our rising consumption levels, we have to extract an increasing amount of resources out of the ground.

However, the extraction process through mining can hurt ecological systems since mining often involves soil pollution and also destroys natural habitats of animals which then have to find new habitats to relocate in order to survive.

Human interventions lead to the destruction of many habitats worldwide.

This is especially true when it comes to deforestation.

Large areas of forest are cut down on a daily basis.

In the Amazon Rainforest, it is quite common to intentionally burn down forests in order to get more space for farming purposes.

However, this behavior is quite harmful to local ecosystems since it destroys the habitat of a huge variety of species.

Illegal dumping is a big problem for ecosystems, especially in poor developing countries.

Industries often dump their trash into nearby rivers and lakes, which leads to several kinds of pollution and therefore hurts many animals and plants which are living in those ecosystems.

Littering can also be a serious problem for our ecosystems.

A prominent example of littering is the disposal of used cigarettes into nature.

Many wildfires are started each year due to incorrect disposal of cigarettes in forests.

In these cases, the effects of littering on the respective ecosystems are dramatic.

The emission of greenhouse gases can have severe adverse effects on ecological systems since greenhouse gases contribute to global warming .

Global warming in turn leads to several kinds of ecological problems and many animals and plants will lose their natural habitats due to the effects of climate change.

Our consumption levels skyrocketed during the last decades since our average income increased and the prices for goods dropped compared to our wealth levels.

Therefore, people consume large amounts of material things.

However, this consumption behavior has severe adverse effects on our ecosystems, since it implies issues like resource depletion and all kinds of pollution.

The production of excessive waste is another serious ecological problem.

Since our consumption levels are quite high, this also implies large amounts of waste produced each day.

We have to get rid of this waste somehow.

This is often done through the combustion of waste.

However, in the combustion process, harmful substances are emitted into the air, which in the long run can hurt many ecosystems and related animals and plants on a global scale.

Effects of Ecological Problems

Endangerment of species, loss of livelihood for many people, water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, resource depletion, global warming, biodiversity loss.

Some of our ecological problems can lead to the endangerment or even extinction of species .

Some species only occur in a few parts of our environmental system.

If these areas are destroyed due to natural disasters or due to human interventions, these species will be lost forever.

Through ecological problems like greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting effects of global warming, many people will lose their livelihood.

This may be due to the fact that global warming will exacerbate the problem of water scarcity.

Thus, many farmers will no longer be able to tilt their fields or to raise cattle since they will simply not have enough water for these purposes.

Moreover, many islands will be flooded due to a rise in sea levels.

This will also destroy the livelihood of many people and will also lead to migration movements of the affected people.

Due to illegal dumping, significant levels of water pollution can occur.

For example, in many developing countries, industrial waste is often just disposed of into nearby lakes or rivers, which leads to significant water pollution .

Significant amounts of air pollution can occur due to industrial manufacturing processes and also due to the daily use of motor vehicles.

Air pollution contributes to the global warming issue and may also hurt ecological systems since animals are usually quite sensitive to their natural living conditions.

If there is too much air pollution, animal populations may decline due to diseases related to air pollution .

Due to natural causes like earthquakes or also through human intervention, the soil in many ecosystems can become polluted which hurts the local flora and fauna and can lead to further ecological problems since ecosystems are quite complex and interactional.

Man-made ecological problems can also lead to the depletion of natural resources .

Due to the growing world population, also the demand for material goods increases. These goods have to be constructed out of natural resources.

However, many of these natural resources like metal are non-renewable and may become depleted in the future if we do not reduce our consumption levels.

Ecological problems like the emission of harmful greenhouse gases contribute to the global warming issue.

Global warming in turn will lead to a massive decline in biodiversity and will also hurt many people who will have to migrate in order to find a new home.

Biodiversity loss may be caused by many ecological problems, either by natural causes like earthquakes or also through human interventions in ecological systems.

In the last decades, we have already lost a significant amount of species.

The problem of biodiversity loss is likely to increase in the future due to many ecological problems our planet currently faces.

Solutions for Ecological Problems

Conservation areas, restore ecological systems, government regulations, high fines for littering and illegal dumping, stop deforestation, reduce consumption, reduce waste, reuse and recycle.

One measure to protect our ecological systems is to install conservation areas where animals and plant populations can recover and live in peace with nature and are safe from harmful human interventions.

Conservation areas may therefore help to reestablish the balance of ecosystems.

Many ecological systems had been suffering from human interventions in the past.

These ecosystems should be restored in order to preserve endangered species and to give them a habitat where they can restore their populations.

There should be quite strict government regulations regarding the use of natural habitats for human purposes.

It should be more difficult for profit-maximizing firms to use untouched nature for their purposes which often involves significant amounts of pollution.

Governments should set a framework in which the protection of ecological systems is regarded as more important than the goal of profit maximization of firms.

Illegal dumping and littering can impose severe damage to our ecosystems.

Therefore, in order to reduce the incentive for those harmful actions, fines and control mechanisms regarding those actions should be increased significantly.

Our forests are crucial for human survival since they are storage spaces for many harmful gases and also provide plenty of oxygen.

They are also a natural habitat for a variety of animals and other organisms.

Thus, in order to mitigate a variety of ecological problems, we have to stop or at least reduce the level of deforestation .

Our consumption behavior is a big problem for our ecological systems.

We have to be aware that all goods we consume are made out of natural resources.

Excessive consumption can therefore lead to resource depletion and will also lead to the destruction of many natural habitats.

Therefore, it is crucial to reduce our consumption behavior in order to protect our ecosystems.

Large amounts of waste are produced every day.

In order to get rid of this waste, a significant fraction of it is burned which leads to all sorts of ecological problems.

Moreover, another part of the waste is dumped into landfills, where toxic chemicals may lead to massive soil pollution.

In order to mitigate the adverse effects on our ecological systems, we should try to reduce waste production whenever possible in our daily life.

Reusing and recycling material things is crucial in order to mitigate several ecological issues.

When you have old things that you do no longer use but that are still working, ask your family or friends if they need those items.

If not, at least make sure that you dispose of these items appropriately in order to enable effective recycling.

We have to educate our children about the adverse effects of human interventions on our ecological systems.

By doing so, when these children turn into grownups, they are likely to behave in an ecologically-friendly manner.

Moreover, children are often able to convince their parents which may also behave more environmentally-friendly .

Our ecological systems are quite important since they are the basis for the development of all life on earth.

Our planet currently faces many ecological problems, many of them made by human behavior.

Therefore, in order to mitigate these problems, everyone of us can contribute his or her part through easy measures in our daily life.

By doing so, we can make our contribution to mitigating ecological problems and therefore to ensure a livable future for the next generations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_pyramid

https://www.ecology.com/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/ecology

About the author

My name is Andreas and my mission is to educate people of all ages about our environmental problems and how everyone can make a contribution to mitigate these issues.

As I went to university and got my Master’s degree in Economics, I did plenty of research in the field of Development Economics.

After finishing university, I traveled around the world. From this time on, I wanted to make a contribution to ensure a livable future for the next generations in every part of our beautiful planet.

Wanna make a contribution to save our environment? Share it!

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Please note that all the information I provide on this website is to my best knowledge. However, I will not take any responsibility for incorrect information and will not be liable for any negative consequences that might occur due to the reliance on this information.

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Environmental Issues Essay

Climate change is happening because of human activity. We're releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing the Earth to warm up. This is called global warming, and it's a huge problem. Here are some sample essays on environmental issues.

• 100 Words Essay On Environmental Issues

Our environment is changing due to disruption. These are small steps you can take on an individual level that together can have a huge impact on the environment. And if enough individuals start taking such steps, we could make huge strides towards preserving the environment for future generations. As an individual, you can:

200 Words Essay On Environmental Issues

500 words essay on environmental issues.

Reduce your energy consumption by changing to LED or CFL light bulbs and unplugging electronic devices when not in use;

Use public transport or carpool instead of driving;

Buy locally produced food and products as much as possible;

Separate your waste for composting and recycling instead of sending it all to landfills; and

Plant trees in your yard.

In the past several centuries, humans have altered land use in order to accommodate growing populations and economic development needs. This has led to a range of environmental issues such as habitat destruction, soil erosion, pollution, species extinction and water scarcity.

How Changes in Land Use Can Lead to Environmental Issues

As a result of the disruption due to growing population, the global climate has been thrown off balance, leading to more frequent and intense natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and droughts.

One of the most pressing environmental issues caused by changes in land use is deforestation. Trees are vital for storing carbon dioxide, as well as providing habitats for wildlife. Unsustainable logging practices have led to extreme cases of deforestation that result in global warming and habitat loss. Additionally, when trees are removed from ecosystems it can lead to soil erosion which contributes to water pollution and scarce resources for the surrounding wildlife.

In addition to deforestation there are many other activities that can disrupt land use such as oil drilling, urbanization or different types of agriculture. It’s important for us to be aware of how our behaviors can cause harm to our environment so that we can take steps towards improving land management practices in order to ensure our planet remains healthy for future generations.

You sit down to dinner, and suddenly you're confronted with a difficult decision. You can either have a steak that's been raised on a factory farm, where the animal has been exposed to antibiotics and growth hormones, or you can choose something that's organic and humanely raised.

The same dilemma confronts us when we shop for groceries, clothes, or anything else. Do we want to buy something that's bad for the environment, or do we want to make a conscious choice to purchase something that will help sustain it?

It's not always easy to make the right decision, but it's important that we try. Why has the climate been changing, and why do people think it's a problem?

Examining the Effects of Pollution

Pollution is having a devastating effect on the environment. Pollution is causing irreversible damage to our planet, and it's happening on a scale that is unprecedented in human history.

The effects of pollution are far-reaching and complex. They can be felt in every corner of the globe, from the air we breathe to the water we drink. Pollution is making our planet uninhabitable, and if we don't take action now, we will be facing a very uncertain future.

Impact of Deforestation on the Environment

Deforestation is a major issue that is contributing to climate change and has a serious impact on the environment.

When trees are cut down, it not only reduces the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, but it also leads to the release of carbon dioxide. This, in turn, accelerates climate change and contributes to the greenhouse effect. Deforestation also affects water systems, contributing to floods and droughts.

Exploring Lifestyle Changes to Reduce Environmental Impact

One of the biggest things you can do to reduce your environmental impact is to make lifestyle changes. This can mean anything from reducing your consumption to changing the way you travel and even altering your diet.

Reducing consumption means buying less, reusing and repurposing items, and recycling more. It also means being mindful of what you throw away.

When it comes to transportation, try switching to public transport or carpooling when possible. Or, if you’re looking for something a bit more sustainable, why not try walking or cycling?

Lastly, food is another area where you can make changes. Eating locally sourced food that’s in season reduces your carbon footprint and helps local farmers.

So, what do we need to do?

To start, it’s important to realize that individuals can make a difference. There is no single answer to this question; it will require action from all of us. But if we each take small steps in our own lives, we can make a big difference. Here are a few ideas to get started:

Reduce your consumption, and choose products that are environmentally friendly

Reuse and recycle whenever possible

Educate yourself and others about environmental issues

Support organizations that are working to protect the environment

Together, we can make a difference. Let's work together to create a more sustainable future for our planet.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

• Construction
• Entertainment
• Manufacturing
• Information Technology

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Geotechnical engineer

The role of geotechnical engineer starts with reviewing the projects needed to define the required material properties. The work responsibilities are followed by a site investigation of rock, soil, fault distribution and bedrock properties on and below an area of interest. The investigation is aimed to improve the ground engineering design and determine their engineering properties that include how they will interact with, on or in a proposed construction. 

The role of geotechnical engineer in mining includes designing and determining the type of foundations, earthworks, and or pavement subgrades required for the intended man-made structures to be made. Geotechnical engineering jobs are involved in earthen and concrete dam construction projects, working under a range of normal and extreme loading conditions. 

Cartographer

How fascinating it is to represent the whole world on just a piece of paper or a sphere. With the help of maps, we are able to represent the real world on a much smaller scale. Individuals who opt for a career as a cartographer are those who make maps. But, cartography is not just limited to maps, it is about a mixture of art , science , and technology. As a cartographer, not only you will create maps but use various geodetic surveys and remote sensing systems to measure, analyse, and create different maps for political, cultural or educational purposes.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Product Manager

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Operations manager.

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Bank Probationary Officer (PO)

Investment director.

An investment director is a person who helps corporations and individuals manage their finances. They can help them develop a strategy to achieve their goals, including paying off debts and investing in the future. In addition, he or she can help individuals make informed decisions.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

An expert in plumbing is aware of building regulations and safety standards and works to make sure these standards are upheld. Testing pipes for leakage using air pressure and other gauges, and also the ability to construct new pipe systems by cutting, fitting, measuring and threading pipes are some of the other more involved aspects of plumbing. Individuals in the plumber career path are self-employed or work for a small business employing less than ten people, though some might find working for larger entities or the government more desirable.

Construction Manager

Individuals who opt for a career as construction managers have a senior-level management role offered in construction firms. Responsibilities in the construction management career path are assigning tasks to workers, inspecting their work, and coordinating with other professionals including architects, subcontractors, and building services engineers.

Urban Planner

Urban Planning careers revolve around the idea of developing a plan to use the land optimally, without affecting the environment. Urban planning jobs are offered to those candidates who are skilled in making the right use of land to distribute the growing population, to create various communities. 

Urban planning careers come with the opportunity to make changes to the existing cities and towns. They identify various community needs and make short and long-term plans accordingly.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Naval Architect

A Naval Architect is a professional who designs, produces and repairs safe and sea-worthy surfaces or underwater structures. A Naval Architect stays involved in creating and designing ships, ferries, submarines and yachts with implementation of various principles such as gravity, ideal hull form, buoyancy and stability. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Veterinary Doctor

Pathologist.

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Speech Therapist

Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning). 

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian . 

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

Information security manager.

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

Business Intelligence Developer

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Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants.

Biology, Ecology, Health, Earth Science, Geography

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Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment . These harmful materials are called pollutants . Pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash . They can also be created by human activity, such as trash or runoff produced by factories. Pollutants damage the quality of air, water, and land. Many things that are useful to people produce pollution. Cars spew pollutants from their exhaust pipes. Burning coal to create electricity pollutes the air. Industries and homes generate garbage and sewage that can pollute the land and water. Pesticides —chemical poisons used to kill weeds and insects— seep into waterways and harm wildlife . All living things—from one-celled microbes to blue whales—depend on Earth ’s supply of air and water. When these resources are polluted, all forms of life are threatened. Pollution is a global problem. Although urban areas are usually more polluted than the countryside, pollution can spread to remote places where no people live. For example, pesticides and other chemicals have been found in the Antarctic ice sheet . In the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, a huge collection of microscopic plastic particles forms what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch . Air and water currents carry pollution. Ocean currents and migrating fish carry marine pollutants far and wide. Winds can pick up radioactive material accidentally released from a nuclear reactor and scatter it around the world. Smoke from a factory in one country drifts into another country. In the past, visitors to Big Bend National Park in the U.S. state of Texas could see 290 kilometers (180 miles) across the vast landscape . Now, coal-burning power plants in Texas and the neighboring state of Chihuahua, Mexico have spewed so much pollution into the air that visitors to Big Bend can sometimes see only 50 kilometers (30 miles). The three major types of pollution are air pollution , water pollution , and land pollution . Air Pollution Sometimes, air pollution is visible . A person can see dark smoke pour from the exhaust pipes of large trucks or factories, for example. More often, however, air pollution is invisible . Polluted air can be dangerous, even if the pollutants are invisible. It can make people’s eyes burn and make them have difficulty breathing. It can also increase the risk of lung cancer . Sometimes, air pollution kills quickly. In 1984, an accident at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released a deadly gas into the air. At least 8,000 people died within days. Hundreds of thou sands more were permanently injured. Natural disasters can also cause air pollution to increase quickly. When volcanoes erupt , they eject volcanic ash and gases into the atmosphere . Volcanic ash can discolor the sky for months. After the eruption of the Indonesian volcano of Krakatoa in 1883, ash darkened the sky around the world. The dimmer sky caused fewer crops to be harvested as far away as Europe and North America. For years, meteorologists tracked what was known as the “equatorial smoke stream .” In fact, this smoke stream was a jet stream , a wind high in Earth’s atmosphere that Krakatoa’s air pollution made visible. Volcanic gases , such as sulfur dioxide , can kill nearby residents and make the soil infertile for years. Mount Vesuvius, a volcano in Italy, famously erupted in 79, killing hundreds of residents of the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Most victims of Vesuvius were not killed by lava or landslides caused by the eruption. They were choked, or asphyxiated , by deadly volcanic gases. In 1986, a toxic cloud developed over Lake Nyos, Cameroon. Lake Nyos sits in the crater of a volcano. Though the volcano did not erupt, it did eject volcanic gases into the lake. The heated gases passed through the water of the lake and collected as a cloud that descended the slopes of the volcano and into nearby valleys . As the toxic cloud moved across the landscape, it killed birds and other organisms in their natural habitat . This air pollution also killed thousands of cattle and as many as 1,700 people. Most air pollution is not natural, however. It comes from burning fossil fuels —coal, oil , and natural gas . When gasoline is burned to power cars and trucks, it produces carbon monoxide , a colorless, odorless gas. The gas is harmful in high concentrations , or amounts. City traffic produces highly concentrated carbon monoxide. Cars and factories produce other common pollutants, including nitrogen oxide , sulfur dioxide, and hydrocarbons . These chemicals react with sunlight to produce smog , a thick fog or haze of air pollution. The smog is so thick in Linfen, China, that people can seldom see the sun. Smog can be brown or grayish blue, depending on which pollutants are in it. Smog makes breathing difficult, especially for children and older adults. Some cities that suffer from extreme smog issue air pollution warnings. The government of Hong Kong, for example, will warn people not to go outside or engage in strenuous physical activity (such as running or swimming) when smog is very thick.

When air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide mix with moisture, they change into acids . They then fall back to earth as acid rain . Wind often carries acid rain far from the pollution source. Pollutants produced by factories and power plants in Spain can fall as acid rain in Norway. Acid rain can kill all the trees in a forest . It can also devastate lakes, streams, and other waterways. When lakes become acidic, fish can’t survive . In Sweden, acid rain created thousands of “ dead lakes ,” where fish no longer live. Acid rain also wears away marble and other kinds of stone . It has erased the words on gravestones and damaged many historic buildings and monuments . The Taj Mahal , in Agra, India, was once gleaming white. Years of exposure to acid rain has left it pale. Governments have tried to prevent acid rain by limiting the amount of pollutants released into the air. In Europe and North America, they have had some success, but acid rain remains a major problem in the developing world , especially Asia. Greenhouse gases are another source of air pollution. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane occur naturally in the atmosphere. In fact, they are necessary for life on Earth. They absorb sunlight reflected from Earth, preventing it from escaping into space. By trapping heat in the atmosphere, they keep Earth warm enough for people to live. This is called the greenhouse effect . But human activities such as burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This has increased the greenhouse effect, and average temperatures across the globe are rising. The decade that began in the year 2000 was the warmest on record. This increase in worldwide average temperatures, caused in part by human activity, is called global warming . Global warming is causing ice sheets and glaciers to melt. The melting ice is causing sea levels to rise at a rate of two millimeters (0.09 inches) per year. The rising seas will eventually flood low-lying coastal regions . Entire nations, such as the islands of Maldives, are threatened by this climate change . Global warming also contributes to the phenomenon of ocean acidification . Ocean acidification is the process of ocean waters absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fewer organisms can survive in warmer, less salty waters. The ocean food web is threatened as plants and animals such as coral fail to adapt to more acidic oceans. Scientists have predicted that global warming will cause an increase in severe storms . It will also cause more droughts in some regions and more flooding in others. The change in average temperatures is already shrinking some habitats, the regions where plants and animals naturally live. Polar bears hunt seals from sea ice in the Arctic. The melting ice is forcing polar bears to travel farther to find food , and their numbers are shrinking. People and governments can respond quickly and effectively to reduce air pollution. Chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are a dangerous form of air pollution that governments worked to reduce in the 1980s and 1990s. CFCs are found in gases that cool refrigerators, in foam products, and in aerosol cans . CFCs damage the ozone layer , a region in Earth’s upper atmosphere. The ozone layer protects Earth by absorbing much of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation . When people are exposed to more ultraviolet radiation, they are more likely to develop skin cancer, eye diseases, and other illnesses. In the 1980s, scientists noticed that the ozone layer over Antarctica was thinning. This is often called the “ ozone hole .” No one lives permanently in Antarctica. But Australia, the home of more than 22 million people, lies at the edge of the hole. In the 1990s, the Australian government began an effort to warn people of the dangers of too much sun. Many countries, including the United States, now severely limit the production of CFCs. Water Pollution Some polluted water looks muddy, smells bad, and has garbage floating in it. Some polluted water looks clean, but is filled with harmful chemicals you can’t see or smell. Polluted water is unsafe for drinking and swimming. Some people who drink polluted water are exposed to hazardous chemicals that may make them sick years later. Others consume bacteria and other tiny aquatic organisms that cause disease. The United Nations estimates that 4,000 children die every day from drinking dirty water. Sometimes, polluted water harms people indirectly. They get sick because the fish that live in polluted water are unsafe to eat. They have too many pollutants in their flesh. There are some natural sources of water pollution. Oil and natural gas, for example, can leak into oceans and lakes from natural underground sources. These sites are called petroleum seeps . The world’s largest petroleum seep is the Coal Oil Point Seep, off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The Coal Oil Point Seep releases so much oil that tar balls wash up on nearby beaches . Tar balls are small, sticky pieces of pollution that eventually decompose in the ocean.

Human activity also contributes to water pollution. Chemicals and oils from factories are sometimes dumped or seep into waterways. These chemicals are called runoff. Chemicals in runoff can create a toxic environment for aquatic life. Runoff can also help create a fertile environment for cyanobacteria , also called blue-green algae . Cyanobacteria reproduce rapidly, creating a harmful algal bloom (HAB) . Harmful algal blooms prevent organisms such as plants and fish from living in the ocean. They are associated with “ dead zones ” in the world’s lakes and rivers, places where little life exists below surface water. Mining and drilling can also contribute to water pollution. Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a major contributor to pollution of rivers and streams near coal mines . Acid helps miners remove coal from the surrounding rocks . The acid is washed into streams and rivers, where it reacts with rocks and sand. It releases chemical sulfur from the rocks and sand, creating a river rich in sulfuric acid . Sulfuric acid is toxic to plants, fish, and other aquatic organisms. Sulfuric acid is also toxic to people, making rivers polluted by AMD dangerous sources of water for drinking and hygiene . Oil spills are another source of water pollution. In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing oil to gush from the ocean floor. In the following months, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spewed into the gulf waters. The spill produced large plumes of oil under the sea and an oil slick on the surface as large as 24,000 square kilometers (9,100 square miles). The oil slick coated wetlands in the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi, killing marsh plants and aquatic organisms such as crabs and fish. Birds, such as pelicans , became coated in oil and were unable to fly or access food. More than two million animals died as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Buried chemical waste can also pollute water supplies. For many years, people disposed of chemical wastes carelessly, not realizing its dangers. In the 1970s, people living in the Love Canal area in Niagara Falls, New York, suffered from extremely high rates of cancer and birth defects . It was discovered that a chemical waste dump had poisoned the area’s water. In 1978, 800 families living in Love Canal had to a bandon their homes. If not disposed of properly, radioactive waste from nuclear power plants can escape into the environment. Radioactive waste can harm living things and pollute the water. Sewage that has not been properly treated is a common source of water pollution. Many cities around the world have poor sewage systems and sewage treatment plants. Delhi, the capital of India, is home to more than 21 million people. More than half the sewage and other waste produced in the city are dumped into the Yamuna River. This pollution makes the river dangerous to use as a source of water for drinking or hygiene. It also reduces the river’s fishery , resulting in less food for the local community. A major source of water pollution is fertilizer used in agriculture . Fertilizer is material added to soil to make plants grow larger and faster. Fertilizers usually contain large amounts of the elements nitrogen and phosphorus , which help plants grow. Rainwater washes fertilizer into streams and lakes. There, the nitrogen and phosphorus cause cyanobacteria to form harmful algal blooms. Rain washes other pollutants into streams and lakes. It picks up animal waste from cattle ranches. Cars drip oil onto the street, and rain carries it into storm drains , which lead to waterways such as rivers and seas. Rain sometimes washes chemical pesticides off of plants and into streams. Pesticides can also seep into groundwater , the water beneath the surface of the Earth. Heat can pollute water. Power plants, for example, produce a huge amount of heat. Power plants are often located on rivers so they can use the water as a coolant . Cool water circulates through the plant, absorbing heat. The heated water is then returned to the river. Aquatic creatures are sensitive to changes in temperature. Some fish, for example, can only live in cold water. Warmer river temperatures prevent fish eggs from hatching. Warmer river water also contributes to harmful algal blooms. Another type of water pollution is simple garbage. The Citarum River in Indonesia, for example, has so much garbage floating in it that you cannot see the water. Floating trash makes the river difficult to fish in. Aquatic animals such as fish and turtles mistake trash, such as plastic bags, for food. Plastic bags and twine can kill many ocean creatures. Chemical pollutants in trash can also pollute the water, making it toxic for fish and people who use the river as a source of drinking water. The fish that are caught in a polluted river often have high levels of chemical toxins in their flesh. People absorb these toxins as they eat the fish. Garbage also fouls the ocean. Many plastic bottles and other pieces of trash are thrown overboard from boats. The wind blows trash out to sea. Ocean currents carry plastics and other floating trash to certain places on the globe, where it cannot escape. The largest of these areas, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. According to some estimates, this garbage patch is the size of Texas. The trash is a threat to fish and seabirds, which mistake the plastic for food. Many of the plastics are covered with chemical pollutants. Land Pollution Many of the same pollutants that foul the water also harm the land. Mining sometimes leaves the soil contaminated with dangerous chemicals. Pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural fields are blown by the wind. They can harm plants, animals, and sometimes people. Some fruits and vegetables absorb the pesticides that help them grow. When people consume the fruits and vegetables, the pesticides enter their bodies. Some pesticides can cause cancer and other diseases. A pesticide called DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was once commonly used to kill insects, especially mosquitoes. In many parts of the world, mosquitoes carry a disease called malaria , which kills a million people every year. Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for his understanding of how DDT can control insects and other pests. DDT is responsible for reducing malaria in places such as Taiwan and Sri Lanka. In 1962, American biologist Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring , which discussed the dangers of DDT. She argued that it could contribute to cancer in humans. She also explained how it was destroying bird eggs, which caused the number of bald eagles, brown pelicans, and ospreys to drop. In 1972, the United States banned the use of DDT. Many other countries also banned it. But DDT didn’t disappear entirely. Today, many governments support the use of DDT because it remains the most effective way to combat malaria. Trash is another form of land pollution. Around the world, paper, cans, glass jars, plastic products, and junked cars and appliances mar the landscape. Litter makes it difficult for plants and other producers in the food web to create nutrients . Animals can die if they mistakenly eat plastic. Garbage often contains dangerous pollutants such as oils, chemicals, and ink. These pollutants can leech into the soil and harm plants, animals, and people. Inefficient garbage collection systems contribute to land pollution. Often, the garbage is picked up and brought to a dump, or landfill . Garbage is buried in landfills. Sometimes, communities produce so much garbage that their landfills are filling up. They are running out of places to dump their trash. A massive landfill near Quezon City, Philippines, was the site of a land pollution tragedy in 2000. Hundreds of people lived on the slopes of the Quezon City landfill. These people made their living from recycling and selling items found in the landfill. However, the landfill was not secure. Heavy rains caused a trash landslide, killing 218 people. Sometimes, landfills are not completely sealed off from the land around them. Pollutants from the landfill leak into the earth in which they are buried. Plants that grow in the earth may be contaminated, and the herbivores that eat the plants also become contaminated. So do the predators that consume the herbivores. This process, where a chemical builds up in each level of the food web, is called bioaccumulation . Pollutants leaked from landfills also leak into local groundwater supplies. There, the aquatic food web (from microscopic algae to fish to predators such as sharks or eagles) can suffer from bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals. Some communities do not have adequate garbage collection systems, and trash lines the side of roads. In other places, garbage washes up on beaches. Kamilo Beach, in the U.S. state of Hawai'i, is littered with plastic bags and bottles carried in by the tide . The trash is dangerous to ocean life and reduces economic activity in the area. Tourism is Hawai'i’s largest industry . Polluted beaches discourage tourists from investing in the area’s hotels, restaurants, and recreational activities. Some cities incinerate , or burn, their garbage. Incinerating trash gets rid of it, but it can release dangerous heavy metals and chemicals into the air. So while trash incinerators can help with the problem of land pollution, they sometimes add to the problem of air pollution. Reducing Pollution Around the world, people and governments are making efforts to combat pollution. Recycling, for instance, is becoming more common. In recycling, trash is processed so its useful materials can be used again. Glass, aluminum cans, and many types of plastic can be melted and reused . Paper can be broken down and turned into new paper. Recycling reduces the amount of garbage that ends up in landfills, incinerators, and waterways. Austria and Switzerland have the highest recycling rates. These nations recycle between 50 and 60 percent of their garbage. The United States recycles about 30 percent of its garbage. Governments can combat pollution by passing laws that limit the amount and types of chemicals factories and agribusinesses are allowed to use. The smoke from coal-burning power plants can be filtered. People and businesses that illegally dump pollutants into the land, water, and air can be fined for millions of dollars. Some government programs, such as the Superfund program in the United States, can force polluters to clean up the sites they polluted. International agreements can also reduce pollution. The Kyoto Protocol , a United Nations agreement to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, has been signed by 191 countries. The United States, the world’s second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, did not sign the agreement. Other countries, such as China, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, have not met their goals. Still, many gains have been made. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River, in the U.S. state of Ohio, was so clogged with oil and trash that it caught on fire. The fire helped spur the Clean Water Act of 1972. This law limited what pollutants could be released into water and set standards for how clean water should be. Today, the Cuyahoga River is much cleaner. Fish have returned to regions of the river where they once could not survive. But even as some rivers are becoming cleaner, others are becoming more polluted. As countries around the world become wealthier, some forms of pollution increase. Countries with growing economies usually need more power plants, which produce more pollutants. Reducing pollution requires environmental, political, and economic leadership. Developed nations must work to reduce and recycle their materials, while developing nations must work to strengthen their economies without destroying the environment. Developed and developing countries must work together toward the common goal of protecting the environment for future use.

How Long Does It Last? Different materials decompose at different rates. How long does it take for these common types of trash to break down?

• Paper: 2-4 weeks
• Orange peel: 6 months
• Milk carton: 5 years
• Plastic bag: 15 years
• Tin can: 100 years
• Plastic bottle: 450 years
• Glass bottle: 500 years
• Styrofoam: Never

Indoor Air Pollution The air inside your house can be polluted. Air and carpet cleaners, insect sprays, and cigarettes are all sources of indoor air pollution.

Light Pollution Light pollution is the excess amount of light in the night sky. Light pollution, also called photopollution, is almost always found in urban areas. Light pollution can disrupt ecosystems by confusing the distinction between night and day. Nocturnal animals, those that are active at night, may venture out during the day, while diurnal animals, which are active during daylight hours, may remain active well into the night. Feeding and sleep patterns may be confused. Light pollution also indicates an excess use of energy. The dark-sky movement is a campaign by people to reduce light pollution. This would reduce energy use, allow ecosystems to function more normally, and allow scientists and stargazers to observe the atmosphere.

Noise Pollution Noise pollution is the constant presence of loud, disruptive noises in an area. Usually, noise pollution is caused by construction or nearby transportation facilities, such as airports. Noise pollution is unpleasant, and can be dangerous. Some songbirds, such as robins, are unable to communicate or find food in the presence of heavy noise pollution. The sound waves produced by some noise pollutants can disrupt the sonar used by marine animals to communicate or locate food.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Eco Criticism › Ecocriticism: An Essay

Ecocriticism: An Essay

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 27, 2016 • ( 3 )

Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works, both published in the mid-1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader , edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm , and The Environmental Imagination, by Lawrence Buell.

Ecocriticism investigates the relation between humans and the natural world in literature. It deals with how environmental issues, cultural issues concerning the environment and attitudes towards nature are presented and analyzed. One of the main goals in ecocriticism is to study how individuals in society behave and react in relation to nature and ecological aspects. This form of criticism has gained a lot of attention during recent years due to higher social emphasis on environmental destruction and increased technology. It is hence a fresh way of analyzing and interpreting literary texts, which brings new dimensions to the field of literary and theoritical studies. Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including “green (cultural) studies”, “ecopoetics”, and “environmental literary criticism.”

Western thought has often held a more or less utilitarian attitude to nature —nature is for serving human needs. However, after the eighteenth century, there emerged many voices that demanded a revaluation of the relationship between man and environment, and man’s view of nature. Arne Naess , a Norwegian philosopher, developed the notion of “Deep Ecology” which emphasizes the basic interconnectedness of all life forms and natural features, and presents a symbiotic and holistic world-view rather than an anthropocentric one.

Earlier theories in literary and cultural studies focussed on issue of class, race, gender, region are criteria and “subjects”of critical analysis. The late twentieth century has woken up to a new threat: ecological disaster. The most important environmental problems that humankind faces as a whole are: nuclear war, depletion of valuable natural resources, population explosion, proliferation of exploitative technologies, conquest of space preliminary to using it as a garbage dump, pollution, extinction of species (though not a human problem) among others. In such a context, literary and cultural theory has begun to address the issue as a part of academic discourse. Numerous green movements have sprung up all over the world, and some have even gained representations in the governments.

Large scale debates over “dumping,” North versus South environmentalism (the necessary differences between the en-vironmentalism of the developed and technologically advanced richer nations—the North, and the poorer, subsistence environmentalism of the developing or “Third World”—the South). Donald Worster ‘s Nature’s Economy (1977) became a textbook for the study of ecological thought down the ages. The historian Arnold Toynbee recorded the effect of human civilisation upon the land and nature in his monumental, Mankind and Mother Earth (1976). Environmental issues and landscape use were also the concern of the Annales School of historians , especially Braudel and Febvre. The work of environmental historians has been pathbreaking too. Rich-ard Grove et al’s massive Nature and the Orient (1998), David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha’s Nature, Culture, Imperialism (1995) have been significant work in the environmental history of India and Southeast Asia. Ramachandra Guha is of course the most important environmental historian writing from India today.

Various versions of environmentalism developed.Deep ecology and ecofeminism were two important developments. These new ideas questioned the notion of “development” and “modernity,” and argued that all Western notions in science, philosophy, politics were “anthropocentric” (human-centred) and “androcentric”(Man/male-centred). Technology, medical science with its animal testing, the cosmetic and fashion industry all came in for scrutiny from environmentalists. Deep ecology, for instance, stressed on a “biocentric” view (as seen in the name of the environmentalist group, “ Earth First! !”).

Ecocriticism is the result of this new consciousness: that very soon, there will be nothing beautiful (or safe) in nature to discourse about, unless we are very careful.

Ecocritics ask questions such as: (1) How is nature represented in the novel/poem/play ? (2) What role does the physical-geographical setting play in the structure of the novel? (3) How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it? That is, what is the link between pedagogic or creative practice and actual political, sociocultural and ethical behaviour towards the land and other non-human life forms? (4) How is science —in the form of genetic engineering, technologies of reproduction, sexualities—open to critical scrutiny terms of the effects of science upon the land?

The essential assumptions, ideas and methods of ecocritics may be summed up as follows. (1) Ecocritics believe that human culture is related to the physical world. (2) Ecocriticism assumes that all life forms are interlinked. Ecocriticism expands the notion of “the world” to include the entire ecosphere. (3) Moreover, there is a definite link between nature and culture, where the literary treatment, representation and “thematisation” of land and nature influence actions on the land. (4) Joseph Meeker in an early work, The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972) used the term “literary ecology” to refer to “the study of biological themes and relationships which appear in literary works. It is simultaneously an attempt to discover what roles have been played by literature in the ecology of the human species.” (5) William Rueckert is believed to have coined the term “ecocriticism” in 1978, which he defines as “the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature.”

Source: Literary Theory Today,Pramod K Nair

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Categories: Eco Criticism

Tags: Annales School , Arne Naess , Arnold Toynbee , Cheryll Glotfelty , Deep Ecology , Earth First! , Ecocriticism , green studies , Harold Fromm , Literary Theory , Mankind and Mother Earth , Nature and the Orient , Nature's Economy , The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology , The Ecocriticism Reader , The Environmental Imagination

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Your Guide to IELTS Band 7

IELTS Model Essay: Environmental Problems

In this post, I’m going to write an IELTS Writing Task 2 model essay in response to this question about environmental problems from  Cambridge 14 (Academic) :

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Some people say that the main environmental problem of our time is the loss of particular species of plants and animals. Others say that there are more important environmental problems.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own  knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

First of all, I’ll take you through my 4 Step Approach to essay planning :

• Analyse The Question
• Decide My Position
• Generate My Ideas
• Develop My Ideas

Step 1: Analyse The Question

The first thing to do is analyse the question. One way of doing this is to ( VERY carefully ) simplify the question. In this question, I think  the simplified question is this:

What is the most important environmental problem?  Is it species loss…or something else?

We can also simplify the 2 views:

View 1: species loss is the main environmental problem.

View 2: there are “more important” ones.

What might these “more important” environmental problems be? Global warming comes to my mind.

Step 2: Decide My Position

So, what do I REALLY think about this issue? In other words, what’s my position on this issue?

I think species loss is a major problem, but I think global warming is the more important one. However, I think the two problems are linked: my understanding is that global warming will lead to species loss anyway; if global warming causes species loss, it makes sense that global warming is the bigger problem.

Step 3: Generate My Ideas

Next, I need to generate some ideas for this essay .

I must also remember that the question is asking about environmental PROBLEMS, not solutions.

View 1: species loss is main environmental problem.

Well, I agree it’s important. Why do I think this?

• important to protect species – we share the world – moral obligation
• also loss of species affects humans (e.g. affects food chain, loss of fish in seas means less food for us)

View 2: there are “more important” problems.

I think global warming is a more important problem. Why do I think this?

• danger that global warming will escalate and lead to runaway warming
• ultimately this will lead to species loss anyway

Step 4: Develop My Ideas

Next, I’m going to develop my ideas using a logical structure . This will give me a clear essay plan.

Introduction :

• species loss a major concern, but is it main one?

Body Paragraph 1 

• Main Idea: moral obligation to protect species
• Explanation: loss of species is permanent, future generations
• Example: dodo

Body Paragraph 2

• Main Idea: loss of species affects humans
• Explanation: food and drugs

Body Paragraph 3

• Main Idea: global warming is more important
• Explanation: runaway heating will lead to more problems, including species loss
• Example: polar bears
• both are important, but global warming will cause species loss, so  it’s the most important problem.

I decided to write 2 separate paragraphs in my discussion of the first idea – it seems more logical to do this.

So, all I need to do now is expand these notes into full sentences and link them together ! While I write, I must, at all times, remember my position: species loss is an important problem, but global warming is even more important, and they are also linked.

So here’s my essay:

My Model Essay

The loss of natural habitats, in part due to intensive agriculture and industrial-scale mining in some parts of the world, as well as urbanisation, has put the survival of many species of plants and animals under threat. While this is certainly a major concern, is this the most pressing environmental problem that we should deal with?

I certainly feel that humanity has a moral obligation to safeguard the survival of different species of fauna and flora. The loss of any species is permanent and means that future generations will not be able to appreciate the wonders of a diverse natural world. For example, the tragic extinction of the dodo is something which we still lament even today.

Moreover, it can affect us detrimentally too. Many herbal remedies are derived from plants, and so the destruction of rainforests could easily have a negative effect on the production of medicinal drugs. In addition, we are part of a natural food chain, so the loss of animals, such as fish, means we will have less food in the future.

Ultimately though, there is a far wider problem that needs to be addressed: global warming. As a result of emissions of greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and methane, global temperatures are rising and we risk seeing runaway heating. This will lead to a number of problems, including flooding, extreme weather and drought, but also the extinction of species. Indeed, polar bears are already struggling to survive because of the loss of polar ice caps due to rising temperatures.

In other words, working to safeguard the survival of the natural world without tackling global warming would be entirely ineffective, so it’s not really a case of which one is more important: all environmental issues are ultimately interconnected, and so we need to take a holistic approach to the issue.

My Comments

Task response: had I just argued that global warming was more important than species loss, it would be good enough for a Band 7 or 8 for TR, but I went further: I argued that both problems are important, and that they are linked. It’s a more developed position, and I think worthy of a Band 9. But explaining this position requires some advanced language, so it’s tricky for many students to do well.

Vocabulary : I desperately wanted to use the phrase “flora and fauna” somewhere! (If you don’t know it, fauna = animals, flora = flowers. There’s also a lot of natural collocation in this essay, and these phrases have precise meaning:

• intensive agriculture
• industrial-scale mining
• under threat
• the most pressing environmental problem
• has a moral obligation to
• herbal remedies

There’s some repetition of words: loss, survival and species are repeated, but this is not a problem. I’ve tried to paraphrase where appropriate (e.g. “natural world” instead of “species”).

Overall, the essay uses “natural and sophisticated control” of vocabulary, with no errors (as far as I can tell!) so it’s at a Band 9 level.

I hope you like my model essay. Remember, it is only ONE possible response out of an infinite number of possible responses to this task. If you want to read more about this topic, here’s a great article by The Guardian newspaper about the loss of insects .

Read some more IELTS essay questions .

If you think that other people will find this useful, please share it. And please add your own comments and questions below.

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About the author

Charlie is a former IELTS Examiner with 25 years' teaching experience all over the world. His courses, for both English language learners and teachers, have been taken by over 100,000 students in over 160 countries around the world.

5 thoughts on “IELTS Model Essay: Environmental Problems”

Where is conclusion ? I think conclusion is mandatory to complete the essay without sum up or conclusion it will affect on overall band score, from task achievement no one can get good band score.

The conclusion is in the final paragraph, which starts “in other words”. It probably would be clearer if I’d started it “in conclusion”, but I used a different discourse marker to improve the flow of the essay.

Great essay Charlie

Thank you very much for your generosity.

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Environment Essay Titles

Below are examples of IELTS Environmental writing task 2 questions.

Human activity has had a negative impact on plants and animals around the world. Some people think that this cannot be changed, while others believe actions can be taken to bring about a change. Discuss both and give your opinion. (Reported 2017, Academic Test)

It is often said that governments spend too much money on projects to protect wildlife, while there are other problems that are more important? Do you agree or disagree? (Reported 2017, GT Test)

Some people think the best way to solve global environmental problems is to increase the cost of fuel. To what extent do you agree or disagree? (Reported 2017, Academic Test)

Some people think an international car-free day is an effective way to reduce air pollution. Others think there are more effective ways do to this. Discuss both sides and give your opinion. (Reported 2017, Academic Test)

While some people consider global warming to be the most pressing environmental problem which we have at the moment, others believe that deforestation has a more devastating impact on our world. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

The government should reduce the amount of money spent on local environmental problems and instead increase funding into urgent and more threatening issues such as global warming. To what extent do you agree?

With increasing populations and ever growing urban centers, many countries are losing their natural beauty spots. What benefits are there to protecting places of natural beauty? How can this be solved?

Although many people value their public parks, this space could be better used for other purposes such as residential areas for the ever growing population or to develop business and boost economies. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this?

With deforestation, urban development and illegal hunting, many animal species are becoming endangered as they lose their habitat and some are even threatened to the point of extinction. Do you think it is important to protect animals? What measures can be taken to deal with this problem?

Global warming is one of the biggest threats to our environment. What causes global warming? What solutions are there to this problem?

Both governments and individuals are spending vast amounts of money protecting animals and their habitat. This money could be better spent dealing with fundamental issues in society such as poverty and health care. To what extent do you agree?

As a result of growth in some urban centers, the environment in those cities is deteriorating. How could this issue be tackled by both the government and individuals?

Some people think that current environmental issues are global problems and should therefore be dealt with by the government while others believe that these problems can only be tackled by individuals. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

Global environmental issues are the responsibility of rich nations not of poorer nations. Do you agree with this opinion?

Many people believe that global environmental problems should be dealt with internationally rather than domestically. What is your opinion?

 Many animals are being hunted to the brink of extinction in order to fulfil the demand and greed of mankind for decorative purposes as well as for other reasons, such as traditional medicine. How can this issue be tackled?

Restricting air travel is the only way to prevent air pollution. Do you agree?

Reported essay questions are from students who have taken their IELTS test. These questions may vary slightly in wording from the original question. 

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Utility-Caused Wildfires Are Becoming a National Problem

Climate change is raising the risk of blazes that are started by power lines and other utility equipment in many parts of the U.S. besides California.

By Ivan Penn

Reporting from Otis and Portland in Oregon

After a utility pole fell and ignited a wildfire, Frank King and his family raced to escape as electrical transformers exploded around their homes near Oregon’s coast. A bright red glow was visible in the rearview mirror for miles.

The fire three and a half years ago destroyed 300 homes in Otis, Ore., including the one that Mr. King, a 101-year-old veteran of World War II, had lived in for almost three decades.

“A lot of the things that reminded me of the good things in my life are gone,” said Mr. King, who believes things might have turned out differently had his utility, PacifiCorp, turned off its power lines before a severe windstorm. “It takes a terrible toll on me.”

Large wildfires started by power lines and other utility equipment were, not that long ago, considered something that happened mostly in California. But these disasters are increasingly happening in many more places as forces turbocharged by climate change like extreme heat and drought wreak havoc on electric grids that were not built or upgraded to withstand them.

Xcel Energy, a utility company based in Minneapolis, recently acknowledged that its equipment most likely started the Smokehouse Creek Fire last month in the Texas Panhandle. In August, Hawaiian Electric said one of its power lines had ignited a fire in Lahaina on the island of Maui. And this month, a jury ordered PacifiCorp to pay $42 million to 10 families that lost homes in the fire that forced Mr. King to flee his house on Labor Day weekend in 2020.

In all these cases, the utilities argued that they were not negligent and should not be penalized for the fires that their equipment had started.

Most climate experts expect global warming to make wildfires much more likely, even in places that were not previously considered at risk, like rainforests and wetlands. While wildfires can be ignited in many ways, utilities with their networks of wires and transformers are a big source of worry.

The industry says it is working to reduce the risk of fires with various approaches, including burying power lines, a very expensive option, and using cheaper tools such as sensors and software to cut off the power when fires are likely.

But critics of the industry, including homeowners and some lawmakers, say the industry is not doing enough to prevent such fires.

“There’s this unwillingness in this industry to adapt,” said Cody Berne, a lawyer in Portland, Ore., who represents Mr. King and other wildfire survivors. “It’s criminal incompetence.”

Utility executives say the rapid escalation of climate-driven disasters has made it difficult to manage millions of miles of towers, poles and wires in a more-than-100-year-old system.

“Past risk is not really a good indicator of future risk anymore,” said Scott Aaronson, senior vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry trade group. “We are seeing a rapid change in the extreme severe weather. It is daunting.”

Electricity costs have risen sharply in recent years as utilities have responded to extreme weather and rising energy demand. The industry is spending billions of dollars to bury power lines, cover wires, trim and remove trees and shrubs, and buy weather stations, cameras and other equipment to better monitor and control power equipment.

But not every response to climate change has to be expensive. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, determined that the risk of utility-caused ignitions could be reduced as much 72 percent by using sensors already in place at many utilities and upgrading the companies’ software systems.

Those changes would automatically shut off parts of the utility’s network within milliseconds when tree limbs, animals or other objects caused problems on power lines. Using this technology, known as fast trip, is far cheaper and easier than putting power lines underground, an approach that several large Western utilities are also pursuing.

It can cost $3 million to $4 million per mile to bury power lines. Such projects can take years to be approved, developed and completed. By comparison, fast trip technology runs about $5,000 to $10,000 a mile, including installing equipment and sending utility crews to inspect circuits before power is restored, the Berkeley researchers said.

“There’s opportunities for innovation that could continue driving risk down,” said Duncan Callaway, professor of energy and resources at the university.

Mr. Callaway has been analyzing the wildfire prevention efforts and costs of Pacific Gas & Electric, which has 5.5 million electricity customers, more than any other utility in a single state. While PG&E and other utilities in the West use fast trip, which he calls “a no-brainer,” Mr. Callaway said he did not know how many others did so.

Arshad Mansoor, president and chief executive of the Electric Power Research Institute, agrees that fast trip is an important solution, but he added that other tools, such as low-orbit satellites, could help utilities quickly detect problems and assess conditions without cutting power.

“The first thing we need to do is get this early-warning system globally,” Mr. Mansoor said.

In Oregon, neither automated technology nor utility employees pre-emptively cut the power that September weekend in 2020 even though forecasters had warned for days about torrential winds and 90-degree heat. A falling power pole ignited a fire on Echo Mountain near the coast in central Oregon. It was one of 30 fires that burned 1.2 million acres in the state that weekend, killing nine people and destroying 5,000 homes and businesses.

Jim Holland, a 40-year-old chef, lost the home that he and his wife, Briana, had bought — their first — just nine months earlier. The Hollands and Mr. King, a neighbor, have rebuilt with insurance money and other aid, but they have also filed lawsuits seeking compensation from PacifiCorp. Many in the community are still so traumatized that they are unnerved by any plume of smoke that wafts by, even if it’s just from a barbecue. The area is still scarred by mudslides, charred power poles and burned trees with peeling bark.

“It just feels like we’re living in rubble,” Mr. Holland said. “It’s not what it was. There are people with a glazed look, wondering what happened to their lives.”

For many residents of Oregon, it has been hard to fathom how a state known for its rainforests became a tinderbox.

Last year, a wildfire ripped through a critical rainforest that includes a watershed that supplies water to a million people in the Portland metropolitan area and to a hydroelectric dam.

“If you have been here a long time, as I have, you can see climate change is real,” said Mingus Mapps, a Portland city commissioner who oversees water, transportation and environmental services. “It was a once-in-a-thousand-year fire. It was terrifying.”

A lightning strike ignited that fire. But Mr. Mapps, a Democratic candidate for mayor, said the city was also worried about the fire risk of power equipment.

For utilities, the fires also pose potentially crippling financial risks from lawsuits filed by homeowners and their insurance companies. PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after amassing billions of dollars in liability from several wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, Calif.

Mr. Aaronson, the industry trade group executive, said utilities had learned from California’s traumatic wildfires. But he noted that utility equipment caused less than 10 percent of the wildfires across the country.

“We’re working to drive that down further,” Mr. Aaronson said. “There are tens of thousands of miles of transmission infrastructure. There are millions of miles of distribution.”

Extreme weather has made it difficult to ensure that every part of the power system is ready for climate change. One upgrade some companies are making is greater use of fast trip technology.

PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, said it had started using the technology for wildfire prevention in 2021, the year after the Echo Mountain wildfire, though the technology had been around for many years.

But use of tools like fast trip or public-safety power shut-offs, which California utilities have used when fire risk in an area is expected to be high, can be unpopular because they leave residents and businesses without electricity. Utilities say they prefer approaches that keep the lights on.

Allen Berreth, vice president for operations over wildfire mitigation for PacifiCorp, said that while the company was using fast trip and other tools, it also planned to bury many more power lines.

“Undergrounding means there’s no public safety power shut-offs,” Mr. Berreth said.

Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive, Warren E. Buffett, told investors in February that he expected wildfire losses at his company’s utility subsidiaries to rise in the coming years. He also warned that utilities would need to spend a lot more money on fire prevention — spending that energy experts say will drive up electricity rates.

“The final result for the utility industry may be ominous,” Mr. Buffett said. “When the dust settles, America’s power needs and the consequent capital expenditure will be staggering.”

Ivan Penn is a reporter based in Los Angeles and covers the energy industry. His work has included reporting on clean energy, failures in the electric grid and the economics of utility services. More about Ivan Penn

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• Published: 26 March 2024

Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics

• Raina K. Plowright   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3338-6590 1 ,
• Aliyu N. Ahmed   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6039-1101 2 ,
• Tim Coulson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9371-9003 3 ,
• Thomas W. Crowther   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5674-8913 4 ,
• Imran Ejotre 5 ,
• Christina L. Faust   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8824-7424 6 ,
• Winifred F. Frick   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9469-1839 7 , 8 ,
• Peter J. Hudson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0468-3403 9 ,
• Tigga Kingston   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3552-5352 10 ,
• P. O. Nameer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7110-6740 11 ,
• M. Teague O’Mara   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6951-1648 7 ,
• Alison J. Peel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3538-3550 12 ,
• Hugh Possingham   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7755-996X 13 ,
• Orly Razgour   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3186-0313 14 ,
• DeeAnn M. Reeder   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8651-2012 15 ,
• Manuel Ruiz-Aravena   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8463-7858 1 , 12   nAff26 ,
• Nancy B. Simmons   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8807-7499 16 ,
• Prashanth N. Srinivas   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0968-0826 17 ,
• Gary M. Tabor   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4711-1018 18 ,
• Iroro Tanshi 19 , 20 , 21 ,
• Ian G. Thompson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3445-8696 22 ,
• Abi T. Vanak   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2435-4260 23 , 24 ,
• Neil M. Vora   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4989-3108 25 ,
• Charley E. Willison   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7272-1080 1 &
• Annika T. H. Keeley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7237-6259 18  

Nature Communications volume  15 , Article number:  2577 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Epidemiology
• Policy and public health in microbiology
• Viral infection

Substantial global attention is focused on how to reduce the risk of future pandemics. Reducing this risk requires investment in prevention, preparedness, and response. Although preparedness and response have received significant focus, prevention, especially the prevention of zoonotic spillover, remains largely absent from global conversations. This oversight is due in part to the lack of a clear definition of prevention and lack of guidance on how to achieve it. To address this gap, we elucidate the mechanisms linking environmental change and zoonotic spillover using spillover of viruses from bats as a case study. We identify ecological interventions that can disrupt these spillover mechanisms and propose policy frameworks for their implementation. Recognizing that pandemics originate in ecological systems, we advocate for integrating ecological approaches alongside biomedical approaches in a comprehensive and balanced pandemic prevention strategy.

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The role of environmental factors on transmission rates of the COVID-19 outbreak: an initial assessment in two spatial scales

Canelle Poirier, Wei Luo, … Mauricio Santillana

Pathogen spillover driven by rapid changes in bat ecology

Peggy Eby, Alison J. Peel, … Raina K. Plowright

A generalizable one health framework for the control of zoonotic diseases

Ria R. Ghai, Ryan M. Wallace, … Casey Barton Behravesh

Introduction

Reducing the risk of future pandemics requires investment in prevention, preparedness, and response. At present, most attention and funding is allocated to mitigation after a pathogen is already circulating in humans, prioritizing outbreak detection and medical countermeasures such as vaccines and therapeutics 1 . By contrast, primary pandemic prevention—defined as reducing the likelihood a pathogen transmits from its animal host into humans (zoonotic spillover; Fig.  1 ) 2 —has received less attention in global conversations, policy guidance, and practice 1 , 2 . Given the time delays in identifying and responding to outbreaks, and the inequity in treatment distributions, investing in pandemic prevention is essential to achieve efficient, equitable, and cost-effective protection from disease.

Primary pandemic prevention is the set of actions taken to reduce the risk of pathogen spillover from animals to humans, focusing on processes upstream of the spillover event (left panel). By contrast, secondary pandemic prevention (middle panel) focuses on limiting the spread of an outbreak to prevent its escalation into an epidemic or a pandemic. Pandemic response (right panel) involves actions taken to address a pandemic once one is underway. Although not illustrated here, pandemic preparedness involves developing capabilities to respond to a pandemic if one were to occur, and can be implemented concurrently with primary and secondary pandemic prevention. The nature of interventions varies across these phases: Primary pandemic prevention emphasizes ecological and behavioral interventions, but also encompasses biosafety practices in virological research 83 , whereas secondary pandemic prevention and response prioritize epidemiological and biomedical interventions. Definitions: an outbreak is “an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease in a particular area 84 ”; an epidemic is an outbreak extending over a wider geographic area 84 ; and a pandemic is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people 84 ”.

To effectively prevent pandemics, we must recognize two key points: first that pandemics almost always start with a microbe infecting a wild animal in a natural environment and second that human-caused land-use change often triggers the events–whether through wildlife trade or other distal activities–that facilitate spillover of microbes from wild animals to humans 3 . As land-use change becomes more intense and extensive, the risk of zoonotic spillovers, and subsequent epidemics and pandemics, will increase. Designing land management and conservation strategies to explicitly limit spillover is central to meeting the challenge of pandemic prevention at a global scale.

Herein, we present a roadmap for reducing pathogen transmission from wildlife to humans and other animals. We show how strategic conservation and restoration of nature for reservoir hosts, and mitigation of risks for humans most at risk—what we define as ecological countermeasures—can prevent spillover and protect human and animal health, while also addressing key drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Mechanisms of spillover

Despite hundreds of thousands of potentially zoonotic microbes circulating in nature 4 , pandemics are rare. Microbes, termed pathogens if they cause disease, must overcome a series of barriers, simplified and described below, to transmit from a wild animal to a human. Crossing those barriers requires the alignment of specific conditions—including ecological, epidemiological, immunological, and behavioral conditions—that are often complex and dynamic 5 .

First, the distribution of the species that maintains the zoonotic pathogen in nature (the reservoir host) and the species that is infected (the recipient host) must be connected, usually through overlapping distributions. Once wildlife reservoir hosts and humans overlap, the second barrier is the immune functions within wildlife hosts that keep potential zoonotic pathogens at low levels. Particular stressors (e.g., habitat loss, lack of food) can increase host viral infection and shedding 6 . A pathogen that passes through this second barrier and is shed by the animal host encounters a third barrier: humans must be exposed to a pathogen for spillover to occur. That exposure depends on specific interactions or behaviors of humans and the virus-shedding host. Exposure to the pathogen may be through direct contact, such as a bite, or indirect contact with the reservoir host’s excreta or a non-vertebrate vector (e.g., blood-feeding parasite). Often a bridging host species, such as commercially traded wildlife or a domestic animal, is infected by the reservoir host and subsequently amplifies and transmits the pathogen to humans. The fourth barrier is human susceptibility. The pathogen must be able to establish an infection within humans by overcoming structural and immunological barriers (e.g., binding to a human cell). Those barriers are substantial–one reason pandemics are rare–protecting humans from a continuous rain of microbes from soils, plants, and animals 5 . Fifth, after establishing an infection within a single human, the pathogen must be able to amplify within this new host, be excreted (e.g., through respiration), and then transmitted onward and exponentially 7 . If any of these barriers is not overcome, a pandemic cannot occur 5 .

Land use-induced spillover

Intact ecosystems provide the first line of defense against new pandemics because they strengthen the first three barriers to spillover (minimizing distribution overlap, host stress, and human exposure) and hence decrease the likelihood that the conditions for spillover occur or align 3 . Conversely, land-use changes and other environmental disturbances erode those first three barriers to spillover by changing the reservoir hosts’ spatial behavior and allostatic load (energy and stress budget), as well as altering human behavior. In this context, we identify targeted ecological countermeasures designed to decrease these risks (Fig.  2 ).

Historic (left panel): Historically, reservoir hosts and large human populations (and their domestic animals) were more separated, viruses circulated at low levels with seasonal fluctuations in prevalence, and the holes in the barriers to spillover were small and did not align 5 . Land use-induced spillover (middle panel): Land-use change increases the risk of spillover by driving two phenotypic changes in reservoir hosts: changes in behavior that alter how they use space, and changes in reservoir host energy and stress levels (allostatic load) that influence viral infection and shedding. Land-use change can also lead to emergent human behaviors that increase exposure to pathogens. Land-use change generally increases the overlap of reservoir, human, and bridging hosts; increases the probability that reservoir hosts are shedding pathogens; and increases the probability that humans are exposed to those pathogens. In sum, these changes increase the size and alignment of the holes in the barrier to spillover. Ecological countermeasures (right panel): Ecological countermeasures can address all three issues. Retaining natural resources reduces the overlap of humans and domestic recipient hosts in space and time, reduces the probability of allostatic overload and reduces the likelihood of emergent human behaviors that facilitate exposure.

We focus on ecological countermeasures in bats since several major epidemics and pandemics (e.g., those caused by SARS-CoV-2, Ebola virus, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and Nipah virus) have an evolutionary origin in bats (but notably do not cause disease in their bat reservoir hosts) 8 . Certain bat species are also the hosts of four of the nine diseases prioritized by the World Health Organization as having the potential to generate epidemics that pose a great risk to public health, and for which there are insufficient countermeasures 9 . However, the ecological countermeasures we present also apply to other host taxa, particularly species that are susceptible to local resource depletion and can sustain the circulation of potential pathogens (e.g., species that aggregate in large numbers like colonial nesting birds, or in spatially structured but extensive aggregations, such as prairie dogs and other rodents). For species tied to permanent refuges (roosts, breeding grounds, burrow systems and warrens), loss of habitat may quickly push populations into allostatic overload or in more mobile species, prompt resource tracking and migration with attendant energetic costs and risks.

Reservoir host energy and stress (allostatic load)

Healthy animals maintain a positive energy balance, where energy inputs either from foraging or stored reserves of fat, balance or exceed energy expenditure required for survival and reproduction (Fig.  3 ). This balance of energy in physiological systems occurs through allostasis—a dynamic process that integrates the neuroendocrine, metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune systems to adapt to varying conditions. Animals regularly adapt to increased energy demands needed to migrate, hibernate, or reproduce. The total resources an animal requires at any given time is an animal’s “allostatic load” 10 , 11 . Allostatic load is frequently estimated with biomarkers such as cortisol, a glucocorticoid hormone indicative of stress 12 , or related energetic and immune metrics, such as total white-blood-cell count, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, and immune regulatory markers. When in balance, glucocorticoid hormones help manage energy usage and have generally beneficial effects on immunity. For example, they mediate anti-inflammatory processes, support T cell maintenance, and enhance the functions of Th2, Th17 and B cells, which collectively bolster the body’s defense against infection and keep immune responses in check 13 , 14 . Across millennia, animals evolved the capacity to maintain allostasis under predictable variations in their environments, precisely aligning energetically expensive activities with periods of maximum food availability 15 (Fig.  3 ).

Bats have evolved mechanisms to meet their exceptionally high energy needs under prevailing environmental conditions. A Baseline levels of energy (green) are required for basic daily activities – to fuel cells, to move around, to find food and water, and to maintain the immune system. At any given time, a certain amount of food - or energy - is available (blue+purple+green), which varies seasonally. Bats optimize their energy intake and energy expenditure, timing expensive activities like migration and reproduction (purple) to periods in which more food is available. Under normal conditions, an energetic buffer (blue) exists providing energetic wiggle room for years with poor food availability. B Perturbations in the environment, whether natural (e.g., fire in some instances) or man-made (e.g., downstream effects of global climate change, habitat destruction, etc.) increase the amount of energy needed for survival and reproduction. For example, animals may be required to travel greater distances to locate food and resting sites. Such increased exertion diminishes the energetic buffer that enables them to withstand periods of resource scarcity. C At its worst, these perturbations result in a reversal of fortune; less energy is available than the bat needs. In these conditions, or with disturbance or harassment, animals experience allostatic overload (red). This leads to suppression of immune function, and increased susceptibility to viral infection and shedding. Figure adapted, in part, from concepts in 10 .

Animals are less able to manage the physiological and behavioral challenges that arise from unpredictable environmental changes, particularly those caused by human activities. Perhaps the most common consequence of environmental change is decreased food availability, leading to weight loss 16 . When food is limited, energy expenditure may exceed energy input and the animal shifts into a state of allostatic overload (Fig.  3 ).

Habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation profoundly increase the likelihood of allostatic overload. This risk is compounded when animals face repeated stressors, such as cave disturbance or harassment 17 . To survive, animals must divert energy from other systems, including their immune defenses 14 , 16 . The effects of allostatic overload are largely mediated by the chronically elevated glucocorticoid hormones, which can lead to immune system dysregulation, impaired resistance to infection, and a shift in the balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory processes. This state, the effects of which accumulate over an animal’s lifetime, facilitates viral infection and shedding 13 , 18 , 19 , 20 . Consequently, animals experiencing allostatic overload may shed more pathogens for longer periods, increasing the risk of spillover. Empirical evidence underscores the link between stress, acute food deprivation, and low body weight with higher probability, magnitude, and duration of viral shedding, as observed in bats 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 and birds 26 , 27 .

Reservoir host spatial behavior

Changes in land use not only affect the energy needs of reservoir hosts but also alter how reservoir hosts use space, including how they encounter humans, livestock, or other bridging hosts. Typically, animals have home ranges sufficient for them to acquire the resources they need such as food, water, shelter, and mates. Some species, especially those dependent on unpredictable or briefly available food, may need to migrate or move regularly to find these resources. Land-use changes can limit the amount and accessibility of food resources. In response, and to avoid or mitigate allostatic overload, animals often need to expand their search area or modify their home ranges to find sufficient food 28 , 29 . For example, fruit-eating bats Dermanura watsoni were observed to have larger daily feeding ranges in degraded habitats 30 . Such adaptations may increase the likelihood of encounters and, consequently, pathogen transmission between reservoir hosts, humans, and livestock. This may be especially true if they must traverse resource-sparse areas to find food, increasing stress and mortality risk. A study in Uganda, for example, showed increased contact between humans and non-human primates with increasing forest fragmentation 31 .

Moreover, wildlife populations may adapt to areas where they historically did not occur, and some species that host zoonotic pathogens have proven more likely to thrive in disturbed landscapes than in undisturbed sites 32 . For example, in response to the loss of winter habitat, Australian Pteropus alecto bats, carriers of Hendra virus, are shifting to agricultural and urban areas. Here, they feed on suboptimal but reliable foods in proximity to livestock 33 .

Increased zoonotic risk, then, often coincides with stressful life stages or times and places of resource scarcity 21 , 33 , 34 . Understanding which animals are most likely to modify their distributions, or are at the highest risk of allostatic overload, helps target countermeasures to spillover. For example, the P. alecto bats that shifted to novel agricultural and urban habitats shed higher levels of Hendra virus than bats in traditional habitats, especially during winter and after periods of food scarcity 22 , 35 . This combination of factors breaches the barriers earlier noted and has led to a higher probability of spillover 22 .

Human behavior

Although human interaction with a pathogen is a fundamental component of pathogen spillover, mere spatial overlap between humans and virus-shedding reservoir hosts is not sufficient for spillover. Specific human behaviors (not always within one’s control) that provide a transmission route and sufficient dose for infection are usually required—for example, harvesting guano or date palm sap 36 , 37 , 38 , visiting a tourist cave 34 , or butchering wildlife with inadequate protection 39 . Such behaviors, which increase the frequency and intensity of contact with wildlife and wildlife excreta, can become more prevalent because of land-use change, frequently precipitated by the construction of new roads. While road construction, if designed well, can bring benefits such as employment, reduced transportation costs, and development 40 , roads also facilitate increased access to wildlife habitats. This access can enable activities such as the extraction of wild animals for food and trade, timber harvest, and livestock grazing, following deforestation 41 , 42 . New settlements that follow roads may also promote synanthropic responses of wildlife; for example, bats are commonly found roosting on roofs of rural homes 43 .

Road construction not only alters exposure opportunities but also introduces people into communities that lack immunity to local pathogens. By contrast, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) who have coexisted with these environments may have some protective immunity to local pathogens through repeated exposures. This is evident from the presence of antibodies to various outbreak-prone viruses in populations with frequent wildlife exposure. For example, antibodies to filoviruses were detected in bat harvesters in remote northeast India 44 and antibodies to SARS-related coronavirus have been identified in people residing near caves in Yunnan Province, China 45 . Such evidence suggests that while pandemics may be rare, local spillovers could be relatively common. Furthermore, the construction of roads not only increases the risk of exposure for those lacking immunity but also facilitates the rapid spread of novel pathogens once they have entered the human population, thereby increasing the likelihood of a pandemic.

Apart from the direct impact of road construction, there is a multitude of factors relating to deforestation and forest degradation that could affect human exposure to pathogens, including agricultural practices such as the cultivation of palm oil and extractive industries, notably mining 46 . Typically, such activities are either preceded by or necessitate the building of roads, further intertwining human exposure with infrastructural development. IPLCs living in and around forests, aren’t always the main beneficiaries of these activities and can be actively harmed by them 47 , 48 . For example, land-use change can result in decreased income and food security, incentivizing some individuals to increase hunting and bush travel. This underscores the need for development projects, including road construction, to take holistic approaches that optimize outcomes for people rather than focusing on single outcomes that can have unintended consequences. Such an approach could deliver much of the economic benefits to people while reducing environmental and social damage. Individual human behaviors that increase spillover risk must be considered in the context of such socio-ecological factors–including vulnerabilities and inequalities—as well as in a historical and cultural context 49 .

Ecological countermeasures defined

We define ecological countermeasures as actions that protect and restore wildlife habitat or mitigate wildlife-human interactions to reduce the risk of pathogen spillover. These measures are strategically designed to increase the resilience of reservoir host populations, reduce stress and likelihood of viral shedding, prevent distributional shifts, and protect vulnerable human communities. By addressing these factors, ecological countermeasures target the root causes of spillover. They effectively strengthen barriers to spillover and decrease the likelihood that the conditions for spillover align.

We propose a tiered approach that considers the land-use context surrounding the habitats of reservoir hosts (Fig.  4 ), focusing on enhancing habitat integrity, heterogeneity, and connectivity. In our view, the most effective strategy to reduce the probability of another pandemic is to preserve intact ecosystems and bolster their resilience through restoration and the creation of buffer zones. This priority is driven by the likelihood that the next pandemic will be triggered by an as-yet-unknown pathogen, referred to as “Disease X” by the World Health Organization 50 , that has had scarce opportunities for spillover or for evolutionary adaptation in bridging hosts. Our primary emphasis should be on maintaining and enhancing the integrity and resilience of still-intact landscapes to prevent new interfaces that could enable the emergence of Disease X.

We propose a tiered approach that considers the land-use context surrounding the habitats of reservoir hosts. Because the next pandemic is most likely to be triggered by a pathogen that is currently limited in its exposure to human populations, the highest priority should be to preserve intact ecosystems and enhance their resilience through restoration and increasing connectivity. In regions where humans and reservoir hosts share landscapes, we prioritize the safeguarding of critical areas needed for reservoir hosts’ feeding, resting, and social aggregation. Simultaneously, we aim to protect human communities and livestock most at risk of exposure to zoonotic pathogens.

In regions where humans and reservoir hosts share landscapes, we prioritize the safeguarding of critical areas needed for reservoir hosts’ feeding, resting, and social aggregation. Simultaneously, we aim to protect human communities most at risk of exposure to zoonotic pathogens. In the following sections, we explain how these strategies target the fundamental drivers of pathogen spillover and promote the health of both wildlife and human populations. While we focus on bats as reservoir hosts, ecological countermeasures are relevant across diverse reservoir host species, as long as specific ecological contexts and local practices are considered 51 . We present these strategies with a simple policy-focused message as they would apply to bats: protect where bats forage (where bats eat), protect where bats roost (where bats sleep), and protect people at risk (Fig.  4 ).

Protect where bats forage

The quality of foraging areas determines the energetic buffer protecting individuals from allostatic overload in times of increased energetic costs or reduced resource availability (Fig.  2b ). If animals have enough nutritious food, they are less likely to become energetically or physiologically stressed, reducing the risk of allostatic overload and infection and shedding (Fig.  2c ). Moreover, the location of bat foraging areas relative to human activity determines the spatial overlap with potential recipient hosts. If enough food is available in relatively unmodified landscapes, or immediately around roosts, bats are also less likely to use areas with higher human population densities. Thus, protecting where bats eat not only ensures that they are healthy, but that they are spatially separated from people.

In natural landscapes (Fig.  4 , left panel), the overarching priority is to preserve or improve the integrity of ecosystems that animals inhabit, as previously outlined. This may entail securing extensive areas of unmodified habitats, and proactively managing these landscapes to prevent fragmentation and degradation.

In landscapes that have already been degraded (Fig.  4 , middle panel), the focus should shift to protecting, restoring, and connecting key food sources that sustain reservoir hosts during periods of resource scarcity (e.g., winter or the dry season) and through energy-demanding life stages (e.g., pregnancy and lactation). Additionally, in environments facing degradation from land-use and climate change, ecological countermeasures are crucial for mitigating food shortages caused by habitat deterioration across multiple scales.

The natural-rural interface often presents a heterogeneous landscape to bats, characterized by a mix of high-quality foraging habitats embedded in or interdigitating with degraded habitats or areas of human land use. These areas, while fragmented, can still offer valuable nutritional resources. It is crucial to protect key foraging sites, especially those outside of protected areas, and to preserve habitats surrounding roosts. A priority is to maintain or create connectivity among quality habitat patches to ensure a consistent flow of resources. Thereafter, efforts should be directed towards the restoration of critical habitats and water sources, particularly in the vicinity of roosts, coupled with strategic livestock management to reduce interactions with bats. Active management strategies should aim to maximize the benefits of human land-uses such as croplands and plantations, for both humans and bats 52 , 53 .

In suburban and urban settings (Fig.  4 , right panel), priority activities focus on the separation of bats and people through strategic planning and restricting human access. At the broadest scale, urban expansion plans should avoid encroaching on large wildlife habitats. Within urban areas, it is crucial to preserve bat foraging resources without inadvertently increasing contact with human populations. This necessitates a collaborative effort between local communities, urban planners and bat experts who understand the requirements of local species. For example, ornamental or landscaping trees used in city planning may attract fruit-eating bats (such as members of the Pteropodidae and Phyllostomidae families) in subtropical and tropical regions. This is also true for fruit trees in residential backyards 54 . A practical approach might include selecting alternative landscaping species and planting bat-attractive trees in areas that are less accessible to humans. Wildlife-safe protective netting around backyard fruit trees can also limit bats’ access to ripe fruits and minimize fruit loss 43 , 52 , 53 . Box  1 provides real-life examples of preserving or enhancing bat foraging habitat and Supplementary Table  1 provides more examples of ecological countermeasures.

Box 1 Real-life examples illustrate the importance of protecting or enhancing where bats forage

In subtropical Australia, no Hendra virus spillovers occurred when Pteropus species bats left agricultural areas to feed on pulses of nectar in winter-flowering forests 33 . In some areas of the subtropics, over 90% of these crucial habitats have been cleared and the remaining forest flowers on multi-year cycles. Consequently, the occurrence of abundant winter flowering has become increasingly rare 33 . Restoring these habitats would target animals’ needs during predictable periods of scarcity, decrease their allostatic load, and reduce their reliance on human-dominated areas for food. Replanting winter habitats would be a sustainable, scalable, and effective strategy to reduce the risk of spillover of not just Hendra virus, but other viruses carried by Pteropus species bats.

Great fruit-eating bats ( Artibeus lituratus ) captured in areas of Colombia that used agroforestry had higher body weights and body condition scores than those within conventional farming areas 85 . Thus, emphasizing agroforestry in agricultural landscapes can provide critical food and shelter for bats 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 . In turn, bat predation of agricultural insect pests provides economic and ecological benefits to agriculture by increasing crop yields and reducing pesticide applications 90 .

To improve the foraging efficiency of wild little brown bats ( Myotis lucifugus ), insect density was increased using UV light lures 91 . This approach aimed to reduce the bats’ allostatic load and their susceptibility to white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungal pathogen that does not pose a risk of spillover to people. Increased fat reserves can improve a bat’s ability to survive this disease. Bats had reduced commuting costs and increasing foraging efficiency, demonstrating that bats behaviorally respond to increased prey availability during critical energetic periods. This work highlights the potential benefits of restoring and enhancing habitats near bat hibernacula to improve the resilience of reservoir host species.

Agave plants are being restored along bat migration corridors in the southwest United States and northeast Mexico to provide nectar for Mexican Long-nosed bats ( Leptonycteris nivali ) and Lesser Long-nosed bats ( Leptonycteris yerbabuenae ) during energetically expensive migration 92 . In the first five years, over 80,000 agaves were planted within 50 km of six key bat roosts, encompassing both migratory and maternity roosts. This restoration effort not only aids bats but also benefits farmers and rural communities in Mexico, as wild agaves are also harvested for food and beverages, livestock fodder, fencing materials, and other uses. Agaves hold significant cultural value and contribute to the livelihoods of rural Mexican communities 92 . Consequently, restoring bat foraging habitat is an example of how conservation efforts can simultaneously enhance human well-being when co-benefits are identified and integrated.

Protect where bats roost

Roosts are locations where bats sleep, shelter, mate, socialize, and raise their young. With few exceptions, bats cannot construct shelters and must roost in pre-existing natural (e.g., caves, rock crevices, tree cavities, and tree foliage) or human-made (e.g., buildings, bridges, mines) structures. Moreover, species are typically highly selective of their roost sites, seeking out particular microclimates, light conditions, ingress, and egress conditions. The number of bats using a roost can vary greatly, containing anywhere from a few bats to hundreds of thousands, depending on the species and nature of the roost.

Protecting the roost includes minimizing disturbance and persecution—conversely, often a first response to an outbreak of a bat-borne pathogen. Disturbance not only causes stress, impairing their immune responses but can also force bats into new areas. This increases their energy expenditure and likelihood of contact with humans 22 , 55 . Moreover, culling bats has been linked to increased active infection within bat populations (e.g., rabies in vampire bats [ Desmodus rotundus 56 ] and Marburg virus in Egyptian fruit bats [ Rousettus aegyptiacus 21 ], and a greater risk of spillover.

Roosts are typically small natural features, and protecting roost sites is a specific management action that can reduce the risk of pathogen spillover. This may require establishing protection buffers around roosts or installing physical barriers (Fig.  4 , and Supplementary Table  1 ). Such buffers are also vital for preserving the quality and quantity of foraging habitats surrounding the roost. Engaging local communities is another key strategy, especially if the roost holds cultural or use value, as is common with caves 57 . Local communities are less likely to harm bats if they are aware of bat natural history, and have previously engaged in environmental education 58 , and are aware of the benefits of bat presence 59 .

Protect people at risk

The third countermeasure, focused on the safety of humans and livestock in proximity to reservoir hosts, is less ecologically oriented but is crucial in mitigating pathogen exposure risk (Fig.  4 , Supplementary Table  1 ). Pathogen exposure can occur through contact with reservoir hosts, their body fluids, excreta, or through aerosols and droplets derived from these sources. Thus, identifying and modifying human behaviors that elevate the risk of such exposures is essential.

For communities reliant on bat-associated economic activities, such as guano harvesting, tourism, and wildlife consumption 45 , 56 , 60 , 61 , adopting safe practices is critical (Supplementary Table  1 ). Additional measures may include restricting and regulating the trade of bats 62 and preventing contact between bats and farmed wildlife 63 . When the specific mechanisms of pathogen spillover are understood, the implementation of preventative measures can be relatively straightforward. In Bangladesh, an effective measure to prevent Nipah virus transmission is covering the areas of date palm trees where sap is collected, which prevents bats from contaminating the sap and transmitting the Nipah virus to humans 64 . In Malaysia, a regulation requiring fruit trees to be planted at a distance from pig sties may explain the lack of subsequent Nipah virus spillovers 65 . Similarly, keeping horses away from trees frequented by bats at night may reduce the risk of Hendra virus transmission between bats and horses 66 .

Box  2 lists interventions in the context of the degree of human landscape modification. Future work must assess the relative effectiveness, feasibility, and prioritization of these countermeasures across different countries and regions since the underlying conditions and legal landscapes will vary. Additionally, given the dynamic nature of climate and land use-induced changes impacting natural and human environments, a flexible, iterative, and adaptive approach is essential for prioritization of these countermeasures 67 .

Box 2 Countermeasures in the context of degree of human landscape modification

Ecological countermeasures that protect where bats eat and roost, and protect people at risk, must consider the activities of bats and humans in the landscape. Countermeasures can be implemented at a range of geographic extents and within different contexts of degrees of human modification (Fig.  4 and Supplementary Table  1 )

In large wild areas, protect where bats forage and roost:

Maintain or increase the integrity of ecosystems by preventing the destruction and fragmentation of natural areas.

In shared landscapes dominated by natural areas interspersed with human land uses:

Protect where bats eat:

Connect protected areas.

Preserve and restore vegetation diversity and structural complexity in bat foraging habitats.

Protect and restore habitats that provide food during periods of resource scarcity and high energetic demand.

Maintain or restore landscape heterogeneity through, for example, wide buffers of natural vegetation along sensitive habitat like streams and wetlands.

Promote sustainable agriculture and forestry practices that support bat foraging and roosting.

Minimize disruption to water sources used by bats.

Protect natural areas when planning new developments.

Protect where bats roost:

Limit human access to roost sites to minimize disturbances.

Create buffers of foraging habitat around known roosts.

Protect a diversity of roosting options for bats, including large cavity-bearing trees, tree snags, and caves.

Provide alternative roosting options such as boxes and hollow trees.

Protect people at risk:

Manage livestock to reduce interactions with bats and bat excreta.

Provide information on risks and risk mitigation associated with certain activities.

Use personal protective equipment for individuals in contact with bats or their excreta.

Vaccinate at-risk populations for endemic bat-borne pathogens such as Ebola or rabies and potentially against pandemic potential pathogens in the future.

Empower communities as stewards of the local land and wildlife, including bats.

In heavily modified landscapes such as intensively farmed and urban areas:

Preserve where bats eat and roost:

Conserve remaining natural habitats that provide shelter or food.

Maintain and restore connectivity.

Restore foraging habitat near roosts.

Restore habitat buffers around roosts.

Increase the proportion of native plant species that provide food and shelter for bats in remnant natural areas away from people.

Exclude bats from human food (e.g. fruit trees) and water supplies.

Exclude humans from roosts in public buildings and structures (e.g. churches, bridges, culverts).

Humanely exclude bats from houses and construct bat-proof housing.

Actively involve communities in risk mitigation measures.

Policy outlook

Currently, multilateral policy discussions focus predominantly on enhancing pandemic preparedness (e.g., developing new vaccines, readying healthcare systems) 1 , 68 . While these capacities are undeniably important, integrating a more balanced approach that also prioritizes spillover prevention could reduce human suffering and negative economic impacts in the long term. Despite this, prioritizing prevention proves challenging and is overshadowed by reactive strategies that are activated only after a pathogen is already circulating among humans. This is evident in the current draft of the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, which does not mention “primary pandemic prevention” and uses the word “prevention” only in the context of secondary prevention measures such as early detection and outbreak response 69 .

Although the importance of pandemic prevention is well-acknowledged, the concept of using ecological countermeasures—actions that protect and restore wildlife habitat or mitigate wildlife-human interactions—as a preventative strategy is only emerging. Ecological countermeasures offer multiple advantages: not only can they prevent spillover, but they engage multiple sectors in action beyond public health, and they contribute multiple co-benefits including climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, and added ecosystem services (e.g., pest control and pollination by bats). Feedback among these sectors calls for integrated approaches. For example, both climate change and biodiversity loss can intensify processes that drive spillover. Excess heat, extreme climate events, and changing plant phenology are likely to increase allostatic load and alter wildlife (and human) spatial behavior 70 . The loss of biodiversity, including predator species, often leaves ecosystems dominated by species that are more competent hosts for zoonotic pathogens 32 . Together these processes escalate the need for ecological countermeasures.

Ecological countermeasures support, strengthen, and work in accord with existing and future policy frameworks, including those under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the new Pandemic Fund through the World Bank, and the WHO Pandemic Agreement. Such existing policy efforts offer opportunities for nations to invest in and incorporate primary pandemic prevention alongside preparedness efforts 1 .

Centrally, ecological countermeasures are fundamentally equitable because health benefits almost always accrue regardless of access to health systems. We’ve seen with COVID-19 and mpox that the most vulnerable populations, at greatest risk of infection and adverse outcomes, often had limited access to vaccines 71 . By contrast, spillover prevention benefits everyone globally, irrespective of individuals’ access to health systems 1 , 72 , 73 .

An Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics

Many international entities have mandates that include enhancing pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, including the One Health High-Level Expert Panel, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, and the Quadripartite. Such bodies all address unique and important issues, but none acts as an official scientific body that regularly assesses and synthesizes the full breadth of the latest data on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

To address this, we strongly support the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics, which could eventually come to fruition with the passage of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. This panel, if created, would provide regular scientific assessments to guide governments as they implement policies and programs related to pandemics. The scope of such a panel must include primary pandemic prevention alongside preparedness and response. The panel could be modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 74 , 75 .

We recognize a risk of fragmentation with multiple different panels focused on climate, biodiversity, and pandemics. It is critical, therefore, to assure their coordination. By doing so, repeated efforts can be avoided, and, where applicable, intersectoral solutions can be implemented to harness co-benefits and synergies across sectors.

Moreover, there is a need to critically evaluate the evidence for the effectiveness of various pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response strategies. Although the global health community widely endorses strategies such as disease surveillance, perhaps largely due to their familiarity and experience with such methods, investments in primary prevention remain unprioritized. This raises a critical question: is there evidence that surveillance offers a greater reduction in pandemic risk compared to primary pandemic prevention (for example, is surveillance likely to activate response strategies in time to prevent spread of a pathogen with high transmissibility and pre-symptomatic spread)? To address these issues, an independent, broadly representative body could provide unbiased and politically neutral evaluation of the various strategies, encompassing prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and response 75 .

Metrics for pandemic prevention

Any program to mitigate pandemic risk through the conservation and restoration of nature must be evaluated to ensure it has the intended impact. Thus, we propose that the Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics develop clear and robust metrics. These metrics should not only evaluate primary pandemic prevention efforts but also integrate them into existing biodiversity and climate change frameworks. Such metrics could monitor program performance, ensure accountability and transparency, and guide equitable wealth distribution to local communities based on program outcomes.

Numerous existing biodiversity assessment metrics could be shared with pandemic prevention metrics. Examples include the Ecological Integrity Index, STAR biodiversity index, and SEED biocomplexity metric, all in line with the CBD protocols. Additionally, there needs to be metrics specifically addressing spillover risk, including the guidance presented here (e.g., protect habitats where reservoir hosts forage and rest, especially during periods of resource scarcity; and reduce land-use changes that increase human-wildlife encounters).

The development of these metrics presents an opportunity to maximize the co-benefits of biodiversity preservation, climate change mitigation, and pandemic prevention. Such an integrated and synergistic approach should increase the success of program implementation globally 75 , 76 . For instance, restoration of koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus ) habitats in Australia, if strategically focused on trees that both support koalas and provide nectar for bats, could concurrently restore water catchments, sequester carbon, and reduce the risk of bat virus spillovers 33 .

Empowering local communities through One Health efforts

The One Health approach–popularized in recent years to optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems 77 –offers opportunities to implement ecological countermeasures for primary pandemic prevention. Currently, however, One Health efforts are overwhelmingly focused on disease surveillance in livestock and humans, rarely considering environmental drivers of emerging health threats 78 . One of the bottlenecks to advancing a more holistic One Health practice is the lack of practitioners across the animal-human-environment fields. To bridge this gap, we propose the creation of networks of ecosystem health workers to operationalize One Health and support local communities in implementing primary pandemic prevention. Those ecosystem health workers—who may include local forestry, wildlife, veterinary, medical, or public health officers–could be trained in, and help develop and implement, locally relevant ecological countermeasures, while embedded in larger governmental One Health teams. Their duties could include environmental education and ecological consultation (Supplementary Table  1 ), and information collection relevant to management actions (Box  3 ). They could also engage local universities and create pipelines for research on ecological countermeasure implementation and monitoring. They could ensure that local information is reported to national and international entities to inform effective, equitable decision-making 79 .

In parallel, it is essential to recognize the vital role of IPLCs in this framework. Integrating the perspectives and knowledge of IPLCs is not just a matter of cultural respect and justice; it is also a pragmatic strategy for designing and implementing appropriate, feasible and practical ecological countermeasures. Collaborating with IPLCs will help ensure that countermeasures align with local context and meaningfully incorporate local and Indigenous knowledge. IPLCs have managed natural ecosystems for thousands of years, and their involvement is increasingly seen as critical for reaching global climate and conservation goals 80 . Engaging IPLCs as equal partners in designing and implementing solutions to threats such as pandemics and climate change will increase the chances of successful outcomes 80 , 81 .

Box 3 Key questions for risk assessment and mitigation through ecological countermeasures, using bats as an example

Natural systems focus:

Which species of bats are present?

To what extent are local roost sites and foraging areas mapped?

Are local roost sites, and buffers around these sites, protected from disturbance?

What and where are the highest-quality habitats for these species in each season?

What resources are limited, either seasonally or consistently?

What habitat is required to ensure food is available during critical life stages?

How well are the local bat biology and movement patterns understood?

Human interactions focus:

Is land-use change likely to change the distribution and decrease the availability of bat foraging grounds, increase encounter rates with humans, or increase disturbance to roosts?

What is the nature of current bat-human interactions?

Are bat-human interactions increasing and, if so, why?

What are the attitudes of local communities toward bats, and why?

Who has regulatory authority to implement countermeasures?

Who are the key stakeholders needed to develop implementation mechanisms?

Is the available information sufficient to make informed decisions or actions?

Can areas critical to bats’ viability and health be protected or restored?

What steps can be taken to reduce contact between people and bats?

Expand the evidence base for ecological countermeasures

Our current understanding of pathogen spillover is characterized by vast knowledge inequalities. Biomedical aspects of spillover are extensively explored, while ecological components of spillover are under-represented. For example, thousands of publications detail the entry of bat-origin coronaviruses into human cells, but only a few studies explore their circulation in nature 82 . Moreover, studies on spillover are relatively rare but studies that examine the entire spillover process—from environmental drivers to reservoir hosts to human infections—are exceptionally rare. Therefore, our understanding of spillover is built on partial knowledge, such as studies demonstrating increased frequency of animal-human contact following habitat loss, or higher shedding in animals under stress (Supplementary Table  2 ). Although there is strong evidence for these component drivers of spillover, there is a critical need for studies that encompass the entire spectrum of spillover stages, including wildlife ecology, wildlife viral dynamics, human exposure, and human infection. Such studies need to be transdisciplinary, landscape-scale, with replication in space and time, shared data, and integration of local knowledge. Critically, these investigations must be grounded in the ecological systems where pandemics are likely to originate.

Pandemics have predominantly been addressed through a biomedical lens. While biomedical approaches are an essential part of the pandemic response toolbox, the genesis of a pandemic is rooted in ecological systems, necessitating ecological approaches for prevention. By aligning our research priorities with this understanding, we can build a comprehensive set of preemptive countermeasures that mitigate pandemic risk.

Conclusions

Spillover is an ecological process and, in the realm of human health, an ecological problem. While the human health issues arising from spillover events, such as outbreaks and pandemics, are addressed by epidemiological and biomedical countermeasures (e.g., testing, isolation, vaccines), the ecological aspects of spillover necessitate ecological solutions. In an ideal world, successful ecological countermeasures, which prevent spillover, would greatly reduce the need for biomedical countermeasures. We do not live in an ideal world; thus, we must move forward on both fronts.

To date, biomedical countermeasures to treat pandemics have received far more attention than ecological countermeasures. Our goal here has been to highlight the use of targeted ecological interventions as sensible, equitable, and efficient methods to prevent pandemics. While currently underutilized, ecological countermeasures have demonstrated potential in preventing spillover 33 , 76 . As challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and a growing global population intensify, the relevance and necessity of ecological approaches for pandemic prevention are expected to increase.

Although we illustrate the science of ecological countermeasures using bats as a case study, the concepts are applicable across various wildlife reservoir host taxa, including ungulates, primates, and rodents. To reduce the likelihood of pandemics, we must protect where animals forage and rest so that we can keep wildlife healthy, minimize allostatic load, reduce the need for animals to alter their spatial behavior, and minimize risky human-wildlife encounters.

The current confluence of political will, resources, and scientific evidence for primary pandemic prevention provides an opportunity to incorporate ecological countermeasures into multiple policy frameworks. Such countermeasures can help prevent pandemics by, in part, protecting and restoring nature across the globe. Explicit consideration of such countermeasures within global land management and conservation strategies is key to simultaneously addressing the intertwined threats of biodiversity loss, climate change and global pandemics.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Sonia Altizer, Andrew Breed, Daphne Carlson-Bremer, Peggy Eby, Lee Hannah, Eric Moise Bakwo Fils, and Paul Webala for the discussions that helped shape this manuscript. Thank you to Mary Noel at Blu Skye Consulting for helping organize a workshop that generated ideas for this manuscript, Robyn Egloff for help with figures, and Scott Bischke, Erica Fleishman, and Brooklin Hunt for comments on a draft of the manuscript. Funding: Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (R.K.P., C.E.W.); National Science Foundation DEB-1716698, EF-2133763, EF-2231624 (R.K.P., P.J.H., A.J.P., M.R.A.); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency PREEMPT program Cooperative Agreement D18AC00031 (R.K.P., P.J.H., A.J.P., M.R.A., A.T.H.K.); National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health R01AI151144 (D.M.R. and I.E.); Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute On Transitions (R.K.P.); Natural Environment Research Council NE/V014730/1 (C.L.F.). The views, opinions, or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

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Manuel Ruiz-Aravena

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Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

Raina K. Plowright, Manuel Ruiz-Aravena & Charley E. Willison

Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, WC1E 7HT, UK

Aliyu N. Ahmed

Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK

Tim Coulson

Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, 8092, Switzerland

Thomas W. Crowther

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Imran Ejotre

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Bat Conservation International, Austin, TX, 78746, USA

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Winifred F. Frick

Centre for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, 16801, USA

Peter J. Hudson

Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409-3131, USA

Tigga Kingston

College of Climate Change and Environmental Science, Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala, 680 656, India

P. O. Nameer

Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia

Alison J. Peel & Manuel Ruiz-Aravena

School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

Hugh Possingham

Biosciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4PS, UK

Orly Razgour

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DeeAnn M. Reeder

Department of Mammalogy, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY, 10024, USA

Nancy B. Simmons

Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560070, India

Prashanth N. Srinivas

Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Bozeman, MT, 59771, USA

Gary M. Tabor & Annika T. H. Keeley

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Small Mammal Conservation Organization, Benin City, 300251, Nigeria

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Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, 2605, Australia

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Plowright, R.K., Ahmed, A.N., Coulson, T. et al. Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics. Nat Commun 15 , 2577 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46151-9

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Environmental Factor

Your online source for niehs news.

• Standardizing zebrafish studies for toxicology testing
• Personal care product use during puberty may affect breast cancer risk
• Autoantibodies signal poor prognosis for inflammatory condition
• How smoking affects DNA methylation
• Outdoor air pollution may be linked to uterine cancer in U.S. women

• Air pollution may trigger DNA modifications tied to Alzheimer’s disease
• Heavy metal exposure linked to earlier menopause
• Phthalate exposures associated with high numbers of preterm birth
• Moderate radon exposure associated with increased risk of stroke in women
• Time: 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
• For more information
• Location: Hillside High School, 3727 Fayetteville Road, Durham, NC 27707; Creedmoor Community Center, 108 E. Wilton Ave., Creedmoor, NC 27522; Mountain Area Health Education Center, 121 Hendersonville Road, Asheville, NC 28803
• Time: 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
• Location: Virtual
• Time: 11:00 a.m.-noon
• Speaker(s): Molly Frazar, University of Kentucky
• Location: Hybrid event on Zoom and in person at NIEHS Building 101, Rodbell Auditorium, located at 111 TW Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
• Time: 3:30 -5:00 p.m.
• Join on Zoom
• Time: 11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
• Speaker(s): Multiple speakers and topics.
• Location: Hybrid event on Zoom and in person at Keystone Building, Rooms 2164/2166
• Time: 10:00-11:00 a.m.

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