Unit 1 - Science Literacy & Space
1.1 - Earth Systems & Literacy
Day 1 - In Class on 8/26(A) & 8/27(B)
Reading Assignment:
Earth's long history tells a story of constant environmental change and of close connections between physical and biological environments. It also demonstrates the robustness of life. Simple organisms first appeared on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago, and complex life forms emerged approximately 2 billion years ago. Life on Earth has endured through many intense stresses, including ice ages, warm episodes, high and low oxygen levels, mass extinctions, huge volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts. Untold numbers of species have come and gone, but life has survived even the most extreme fluxes. To understand why Earth has been so conducive to life, we need to identify key conditions that make it habitable and ask why they exist here but not on neighboring planets. We will address that in concept 1.2.
Even though humans have been present on Earth for a relatively short time, our actions are changing the environment in many ways. Life on Earth will persist in spite of these human impacts. But it remains to be seen how our species will manage broad-scale challenges to our habitable planet, especially those that we create. As history shows, Earth has maintained conditions over billions of years that are uniquely suitable for life on Earth, but those conditions can fluctuate widely. Human impacts add to a natural level of ongoing environmental change
Earth's long history tells a story of constant environmental change and of close connections between physical and biological environments. It also demonstrates the robustness of life. Simple organisms first appeared on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago, and complex life forms emerged approximately 2 billion years ago. Life on Earth has endured through many intense stresses, including ice ages, warm episodes, high and low oxygen levels, mass extinctions, huge volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts. Untold numbers of species have come and gone, but life has survived even the most extreme fluxes. To understand why Earth has been so conducive to life, we need to identify key conditions that make it habitable and ask why they exist here but not on neighboring planets. We will address that in concept 1.2.
Even though humans have been present on Earth for a relatively short time, our actions are changing the environment in many ways. Life on Earth will persist in spite of these human impacts. But it remains to be seen how our species will manage broad-scale challenges to our habitable planet, especially those that we create. As history shows, Earth has maintained conditions over billions of years that are uniquely suitable for life on Earth, but those conditions can fluctuate widely. Human impacts add to a natural level of ongoing environmental change