Intro to Environmental Studies Fall 2025

Hobbies often subtly influence our daily lives. After developing a passion for cooking, a friend of mine became more attentive to ingredients and where their food comes from. My mom sits outside every morning with her tea because she started birdwatching years ago. Over time, hobbies (often pursued for entertainment, fulfillment, or health) can recondition how we think, act, and move through the world.  For me, it was painting. I started around seven months ago, and since then, I’ve found that I look at the world differently. My eyes linger just a little longer, noticing the shadows cast by trees, the way light reflects off the windows, and even the cracks in the sidewalk. What once felt ordinary now feels fleeting worth pausing for. In a moment, the sun will move past the window, the shadows change so quickly, and they might fix that sidewalk tomorrow. Instead of just glancing and passing through my surroundings, I now study the environment with undivided attention. I find mysel...

Many anthropologists come from a European background, and their ancestry brings with it a particular way of thinking; one that views the lives of early humans through a distinct European worldview. This “European lens” can lead to misinterpretations of how early humans understood and interacted with the environment. Although ethnocentrism is largely rejected today, foundational ideas established by 18th-century ethnocentric anthropologists continue to influence how early human societies are understood.  In a 1996 article titled “ Humans Have Been Changing the Environment Since Prehistoric Times ” , Elizabeth Wing, a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and her son Stephen Wing, an ecologist at the University of California Davis, describe how humans have always had an impact on the environment. Through the study of bone fragments, shells, and teeth, they found evidence for environmental manipulation that predates sedentism and s...

"These works foster a connection to the environment, as the environment itself continually alters the art." From its earliest origins, art has been used to capture a glimpse of nature as a snapshot in time. Throughout different artistic periods, artists employed unique methods to express their experiences with the natural world. Yet, for much of history, the environment remained a backdrop, a tool to be manipulated on the canvas to convey a specific feeling or an idealized vision of what the artist observed. However, the rise of the environmentalist movement in the 1970s, fueled by growing concern over ecological health, drew the attention of the art world. It was during this period that artists began rethinking their relationship with nature. Perhaps art wasn’t just about depicting a scene. Perhaps artists could be more involved with the environment. In his 2022 article Art and Nature: The Emergence of Ecological Art , author Domenic Witek invites readers to “discover how ...

The escalating crisis of endangered species forces us to confront our role as the dominant ecological agent on the planet. In order to do this, first we need to be clear that most modern extinctions are driven by human activity. Habitat destruction for agriculture and development, pollution, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species are all results of our societal choices. The sheer number of species heading toward extinction, like rhinos facing relentless poaching or amphibians succumbing to habitat loss, shows we are acting as a force of geological change. Second, this causation creates a profound moral and pragmatic obligation. Morally, many argue that since we created the problem, we have a duty to fix it, following principles of environmental justice applied to nonhuman life. Pragmatically, every species lost weakens the overall resilience of the ecosystem. Losing keystone species, like sea otters maintaining kelp forests, can trigger a trophic cascade that destabil...

The intersection of water rights and healthy ecology is a central challenge in environmental governance. Historically, water rights systems, particularly in the Western US focused heavily on maximizing human consumptive use, agriculture, industry, and municipal supply. This legal framing treats water as a commodity to be diverted, often failing to account for its essential role in maintaining the integrity of the natural environment. The problem arises when human allocated rights leave insufficient instream flow. A healthy ecology requires minimum flows in rivers and streams to support aquatic life, dilute pollutants, maintain riparian habitat, and connect floodplains. When too much water is legally pulled out, rivers dry up, fish populations crash, and the entire riparian ecosystem is degraded. This isn't just an aesthetic loss; it represents a loss of critical ecosystem services like natural filtration and flood control. Modern environmental policy needs to integrate ecological f...

The distinction between a landscape and an ecosystem is fundamental in understanding the environment fully. A landscape is primarily a visual and aesthetic concept. It refers to the visible features of an area, the hills, fields, and forests, as they are perceived by an observer. Historically, this perspective was central to conservation movements focused on preserving scenic beauty or sublime wilderness, often treating nature as an aesthetic object to be viewed. In contrast, an ecosystem is a functional concept. It encompasses all the living organisms (biotic components) and their physical environment (abiotic components) and describes the complex web of interactions, energy flows, and nutrient cycles that bind them together. When we look at a mountain range as a landscape, we see peaks and trees. When we analyze it as an ecosystem, we understand the soil chemistry, the hydrologic cycle, and the predator prey dynamics that make the forest function. For environmentalism, embracing the ...