Creating sustainable futures/CSF101/Holocene to Anthropocene/E-activity2

Complete the tasks listed below:

Think about the ways that humans have affected the natural ecological systems and consider the following questions:


 * 1) What human activities move chemical materials from the Earth’s crust and release them into the biosphere?
 * 2) What chemicals are involved?
 * 3) What volumes of material are involved?
 * 4) How do they end up in the biosphere and what is the effect of releasing them into natural systems?
 * 5) How are these materials returned to the Earth’s crust to retain the biosphere's balanced chemical composition?
 * 6) What new chemical materials have humans developed and released into the biosphere?
 * 7) What examples can you think of?
 * 8) Where are these chemicals used?
 * 9) What happens to them after they have been used?
 * 10) How are these synthetic chemicals broken down into substances that nature can process?
 * 11) Other than the movement of chemicals, how have humans physically affected natural systems like forests, wetlands, oceans, rivers and soils?
 * 12) What ecosystem functions have been affected?
 * 13) What impacts might this have on the biosphere and what might it mean for us?
 * 14) What reliance does our economy and society have on the activities you’ve identified above?
 * 15) What are the implications of this?