Relationship between Humans and Environment

In the previous post we learned about Ecosystem. This blog will examine numerous human changes and how they affected the environment. The pattern of cultural change can still be seen in numerous communities that still make use of traditional resources.

Introduction
Interfaces between Humans and the Environment
Other Human-Environment Interactions
Influence of Environment on Humans
Influence of Humans on Environment

Introduction

From an ecological perspective, where does a human fit in?

It is natural for humans to be a part of terrestrial ecosystems because we are a land-dwelling species.
Humans are an important part of the Earth's biosphere.
It is impossible for the human body to produce nourishment on its own. As a result, it relies on other species to receive the energy it needs to carry out its life functions. Thus, it serves as a heterotroph or consumer in its ecology.

Humans are classified as 'Animals,' a biological classification that includes a wide range of other species. To put it another way, humans are capable of moving, which implies they can relocate to a more pleasant environment. People have the ability to go toward water (for drinking and feeding), as well as shelter (for warmth and protection). It is also capable of evading predators and other potentially lethal scenarios. It also reproduces sexually, like the majority of other higher animals, which implies that in order to have offspring, it must have at least one or more mates during its lifetime. A'vertebrate,' which is another word for 'higher animal,' describes the human body. Hence, like other higher mammals, it is supported by a durable but flexible internal structure known as the "backbone," which protects and facilitates a variety of movement in sensitive bodily sections There is also a robust stimuli processing and reaction control centre known as the "brain," protected by the "skull" structure found in higher animals. Higher animals' backbones and skulls are remarkable in that they can grow and repair themselves throughout their lives, unlike smaller species, such clams, whose shells serve as protective structures.

A group of vertebrates collectively referred to as'mammals' includes the human organism. Even though it's not a true mammal (as opposed to fish or reptiles and amphibians), it does give birth to live young rather than laying eggs, produces fewer children at once, and takes a great deal of care in training its offspring to survive. The human being is classified as a 'primate' by scientists. Most primates, including monkeys and apes, have a 'hand' structure that allows them to perform a wide range of functions like using tools. As a result of climate change about 20 million years ago, most trees were replaced by grasslands, according to some estimates. When other primates, like monkeys, fled into the remaining forests, others like apes, like humans, adapted to the new grasslands and thrived. They began to walk upright, adopted an omnivorous diet, and mated year-round, all of which made them extremely adaptable in their efforts to survive and reproduce.

Humans, like other primates, are social creatures. As a result, they can work together effectively in groups that are well-structured and well-organized. The survival of the group often takes precedence over the survival of its individual members in such organisations, which operate in the name of the "better common good." Two particular talents, on the other hand, distinguish the human being as a singular member of any environment it inhabits. It is an expert communicator because it is the only animal that can speak. A feeling of the future and a conscious ability to plan for that future are also thought to be unique to humans. people can out-compete other organisms for ecosystem resources and change the environment such that they have a better chance of survival than their fellow-living organisms. To best suit their physical needs, humans developed in the tropical savannahs and can thrive in warm climates and grasslands. After humans discovered fire and learned how to handle it, they were able to clear more tropical forests and turn them to grasslands, allowing them to expand their territory. As a result, humanity were able to explore and colonise new areas in colder regions of the world such as the Arctic and Antarctic. They were able to prepare more food because of the fire, which enhanced their food supply and diversity. Human food security was greatly enhanced by the capacity to cook.

Humans may now eat dried, hard seeds that were previously inedible. Food was made to last longer and be stored more easily. No evidence suggests that our look has changed much over the past 35,000 years, and we have no reason to suppose that our ancestors weren't as clever as we are now. For the last 35,000 years or so, human history has been one of cultural evolution, not biological evolution. Humans are at the centre of an ongoing argument about whether or not they should be viewed as biotic components of ecosystems in the same way as other organisms. The biological and cultural evolution of humans is, in theory, no different from that of any other species. There is no way to rationally or practically accept that human impact on the environment is a natural phenomena that should be allowed to run its course, given the magnitude, speed, and rate of change that humans are causing on land and in the waterways around the world. To a greater extent than previously thought, it appears as though humans are altering their environment to the point where it will be unfriendly or uninhabitable to them.

Human-Environment Interfaces

Humans, like all other land creatures, depend on their surroundings to provide them with the water and food they require on a daily basis. Obtaining water and food from the environment and seeing the effects it has on the human environment will be the focus of our investigation.

Water

All terrestrial species need freshwater to live. They utilise water to clean their bodies, clothes, utensils, and cook most of their meals. Humans obtain water through naturally occurring surface waterbodies (springs, streams, and rivers) or ponds and lakes. This remains the most prevalent way human cultures obtain water, creating direct competition between humans and other land and aquatic creatures for freshwater. Humans often dig holes in the ground to access groundwater, a less direct method. This human technique of acquiring water is based on a supply not directly available by most terrestrial creatures, causing indirect competition. Groundwater recharges surface water. Human groundwater extraction depletes surface water reserves. In many regions where humans over-extract groundwater, perennial surface water sources dry up in the dry season. Human cultures place strain on different ecosystems' water resources beyond the water they drink, cook with, and clean with. Humans continue to construct water-demanding systems. Irrigated farmland, water-powered electrical generation, and water-intensive industry are examples. Densely populated cities demand more water than local ecosystems can provide.

Humans develop huge freshwater storages for agriculture, hydropower, industry, and urban water systems. Huge storages can be created by damming large rivers. A dam blocks the flow of the river on which it is built, causing water to collect in a reservoir and submerge an upstream area. When a river's flowing water becomes a dam reservoir, its oxygen level lowers. The reservoir's water column is substantially taller than the river's depth. Since sunlight can only penetrate water to a certain depth, it can only warm and light up the upper layers of the dam reservoir, leaving the lower waters chilly and dark. Due to a lack of light, warmth, and oxygen, the dam reservoir cannot maintain the aquatic plants that filled the riverbed or the aquatic creatures that ate them. Downstream of the dam, water and nutrients deplete the riverine ecology. Even when reservoir water is periodically released into the river channel to maintain a minimal flow in the dry season or to get rid of monsoon surplus, it affects downstream ecosystems.

Most dams are constructed to open at the bottom of the dam-wall, releasing water from the reservoir's coldest bottom layer, which has the least dissolved oxygen. This water tends to startle what little aquatic life is surviving in the water-starved environments downstream of the dam when discharged. Land-flows provide water and nutrients to coastal and marine habitats. Dams deprive downstream ecosystems of water and nutrients. Coastal and marine fisheries have collapsed due to lack of nutrients, while jetties and ports have been rendered unusable due to lack of water depth, both caused by damming the rivers feeding these ecosystems. The dam divides the river channel into two portions. Thus, aquatic species in one segment lose access to the other's biotic and abiotic resources. This can harm migratory aquatic animals that need to live in different portions of the river. A fish species that feeds downstream of the dam but needs to breed upstream could die extinct due to the dam's barrier-effect. Human techniques of getting and using water degrade terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Food

Humans likely evolved in the tropics. Humans are omnivores like most primates. Before agriculture, humans ate seeds, fruits, fleshy blossoms, fleshy leaves, starchy stems or roots, and animal goods like honey, eggs, caterpillars, and worms, which are available year-round in warm, sunny, tropical climes. This mainly collected diet may have been supplemented with small and large game hunts. Pre-agricultural humans were mostly gatherers. Humans discovered agriculture around the planet roughly 10,000 years ago. They grew different crops than now. Eurasia's fossils demonstrate wheat and barley cultivation. Cows, buffaloes, goats, and sheep presumably provided milk and meat. Corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and gourds are found in American fossils. Agriculture is the single most important event in human cultural evolution. It settled mankind' wandering lifestyle. Agricultural land may support many more people than hunting-gathering land. Agriculture allowed humans to settle in vast, thriving societies that became larger.

The 'Agricultural Revolution' is considered the direct cause of the population catastrophe. 3 million humans lived roughly 25,000 years ago. In the 15,000 years before agriculture, that number grew by only 2 million to 5 million. Since then, the human population has grown to over 7 billion, a mindboggling rate. Most of the planet's plains were inhabited by 3000 B.C., roughly 5000 years after agriculture began. Riverine floodplains have long been the favoured sites for agricultural human settlements due to their abundant water and nutrient-rich sediment. Most riverine floodplain ecosystems have been converted into farmlands or pastures due to agricultural development. Farming or animal-rearing in an ecosystem diverts its materials and energy to a few crop or livestock species humans choose to grow. Humans steal materials and energy from other organisms in these habitats. Humans strive to eradicate organisms they call 'weeds' or 'pests' by administering ecosystem-polluting herbicides or pesticides, while promoting the growth of their preferred species with fertilisers. Agriculture reduces biodiversity and pollutes soil, water, and food chains, degrading ecosystems. A farm or pasture is no longer in its natural or pristine state, but it nevertheless supports wild species in addition to developed ones. Such regions, which contain a large proportion of non-native species and where human activity has impacted ecological functions and species composition, are called'modified habitats' — areas not in their natural state, but habitats nonetheless. Fishing is another classic food-gathering method.

Fishing was a kind of hunting during the gatherer-hunter phase of human evolution. Many traditional fishing tactics, centred on capturing fish with ecosystem- or species-specific gear, are still used in varied waterbodies around the world. Aquaculture, which involves growing fish or prawns in ponds or dam reservoirs, is also an ancient human practise. Traditional subsistence fishing has little impact on aquatic ecosystems, whereas modern commercial fishing depletes aquatic species and threatens coastal and marine ecosystems. Large motorised boats and fine-mesh nets result in indiscriminate and wasteful harvesting of marine life, lowering populations of popular table species and many inedible or unpopular species caught as by-catch and dumped as waste. High population numbers protect a species from disease, climate change, and natural disasters. Due to overfishing, numerous species are in danger of extinction from natural disasters. Backyard pond or fallow paddy-field aquaculture has little impact on natural ecosystems. Modern extensive commercial aquaculture, based on massive inputs of nutrients and antibiotics, pollutes ecosystems. Agriculture and fisheries, previously primarily geared at generating food, have become economic activity with a profit motive. Modern farming and fishing focus more on producing a traded product than food. Focusing on a high yield of a tradable commodity drives decisions on what species to grow, where and how to grow them, when to harvest, and when, where, and to whom to sell. These factors often determine practises that harm the well-being of humans and ecosystems.

Other Human-Environment Interactions

The basic requirements of the human body start with food and water and end with shelter and reproduction. However, as a result of its own cultural evolution, more demands emerged that might be regarded as nearly fundamental. These necessities include food, water, shelter, medicine, clothes, and supplies for construction such as wood, stone, and mud. The tools or implements that assist people in carrying out their various life-sustaining tasks and the transportation tools that make it easier for people to move from one place to another are part of a third group of near-basic human requirements.

A variety of human-environment interfaces, similar to the ones we observed in our investigation of the human desire for water and food, have been produced as a result of human efforts to address all these other needs.

Influence of Environment on Humans

Since humans live in places with extremely varying climates, topographies, soils, vegetation, and other organisms, they must contend with a variety of abiotic and biotic conditions in order to meet their basic and almost basic needs. These variations can be seen in the significantly varied types of water supply systems, eating patterns, cooking methods, clothing, architecture, energy sources, tools, ways of transportation, and other things that are present in various ecosystems. At the same time, societies living along the same latitude, at the same altitude, or having similar biomes can be distinguished by similarities and patterns in the materials, designs, and systems of human life.

The "natural subsidies" available to their ecology determine how easily humans can achieve their demands. Natural subsidy is the simple accessibility of an abiotic or biotic component necessary to support life, which, if limited, acts as a limiting factor. In general, compared to temperate or polar regions, the tropical portions of the Earth receive higher natural subsidies in the form of life-promoting sunlight, warmth, and rain.

Materials from higher sites wash down to lower locations due to gravity. In contrast to relatively lower areas, which often get these resources, ecosystems or habitats in higher locations generally tend to lose resources and benefit from less natural subsidies.

Examples of the flow of natural subsidies,

hill-tops lose soil, while valleys receive it;
the source regions of a river are nutrient-poor while its estuarine reaches are nutrientrich.

The area where terrestrial and marine ecosystems converge is another example of a naturally advantageous position. Here, the combined resources of the two sources result in a bigger overall natural subsidy. Therefore, regions that have a land-water interface, such as those around ponds or lakes, along streams or rivers, or close to coasts, offer more natural subsidies than areas that do not. The comparatively larger human populations sustained by the Earth's tropical regions as compared to temperate and polar parts is evidence that human life generally tends to be easier in naturally subsidised ecosystems. Additional instances of areas with higher natural subsidies include:

valleys as compared to mountains or hills,
riverine deltas as compared to headwaters and
lacustrine or riverine floodplains and continental coasts as compared to highlands or continental interiors.

Influence of Humans on Environment

Humans are said to have evolved in the plains and to have a distinct preference for settling in flat areas. So, the following activities constitute the majority of human interventions in the ecosystems they inhabit:

Clearing the land, which entails removing the natural vegetation cover, primarily trees, as well as the food, roosts, nesting materials, and other habitats that the vegetation provide;
Leveling the land changes the topography and drainage of the area, which may cause formerly dry places to become moist or wetlands to dry up.

Despite spending most of its time as a nomadic gatherer-hunter, the human organism seems to identify better with a sedentary, agriculture-dependent life. Therefore, other substantial human interventions in terrestrial ecosystems mostly entail building and land cultivation, which permanently cover beneath-ground habitats and block their access to sunlight and precipitation.

Despite the fact that humans need water to survive, just like all other organisms, it is nonetheless true that humans are a terrestrial species. So, while converting an area into a habitat for humans, humans want to keep water at a distance. The following are the primary human impacts on aquatic or semi-aquatic ecosystems:

filling up of ditches, marshes and wetlands, which leads to complete destruction of these semi-aquatic ecosystems;
construction of embankments on lakes, streams and rivers, which results in degradation of these aquatic ecosystems

Additionally, it appears that humans view ecosystems and their resources primarily as resource stores, energy providers, or waste disposal facilities. Therefore, the key ways that humans interact with ecosystems are:

harvesting of materials, which causes to depletion of natural resources;
disposal of wastes, resulting in pollution of natural resources and contamination of food-chains.

Human transportation and communication networks degrade ecosystems. Human-built roads, railroads, and pipelines split a once-connected environment into fragmented patches. Such fragmentation reduces the resources available to creatures in that environment, lowering their chances of survival, and disrupts the movement of energy and materials within the ecosystem, contributing to its degradation. Thus, human influence on natural ecosystems is mostly destructive and occasionally conservative. A community only protects, conserves, or restores an ecosystem when it understands its direct and indirect dependency on it. Dependence involves:

1. When it comes to directly harvesting commodities from the ecosystem, such as food, fuel, and fodder (referred to as "providing ecosystem services"),

2. One or more of the following scenarios can result in indirect reliance

in terms of shading, cooling, etc. (referred to as ‘regulating ecosystem services), or
in terms of soil formation, pollination, etc. (referred to as ‘supporting ecosystem services’) and
in terms of recreation, etc. (referred to as ‘cultural ecosystem services’)

Every time an ecosystem experiences habitat loss, degradation, or fragmentation, the ecosystem services it provides to the local community also suffer in a commensurate way.