The Impact of Human Activities in Earth System

       

      An environmental issue is now one of the worldwide concerns. But before that, let us identify first what does environment, ecology, or ecosystem means. As I have read the environmental perspective, I learned that environment defined as our surroundings that affect our growth, health, and our way of living. Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and their environments. And ecosystem refers to a community of organisms and their relationships to each other and to their environment. These help me understand more how environments affect our lives and how our ways of living affect the environment.

Human activities such as deforestation, illegal mining, and burning of fossil fuels can result to negative impact on environmental condition. Some examples are pollution to air, water, or even land areas, global warming, acid precipitation, extinction of biological species and damage to the atmospheric ozone layer. Another one is we are rapidly depleting nonrenewable natural resources like coil and oil which one exhausted, will not be replaced. Some people often lead to environmental overshoot (using more resources like forest, in a year than their annual renewal, growth, or replacement) which is not good.

Human activities will always affect the environment in some way, but if we understand the factors and process involved, we can work to minimize the negative impacts.

I also learned that earth’s most critical feature is that it is a life-support system and if this fails to operate properly, living organisms may no longer be able to survive. Thus, we have the responsibility of helping to maintain our present and future habitat, the earth system. To be a responsible citizen of earth, we should “think globally but act locally”.