Topic

Topic, and Reading

1 Intro

10,000 years to 2008, Humans Become City Dwellers

· Urbanization, compiled by Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization

· Pages with Data from UNFPA State of the World Population 2021 http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/english/introduction.html or https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard

· “The Scope of Ecology” Chapter 44.1 at in Biology-2e. openstax.org, online published by Rice University, USA. https://openstax.org/details/books/biology-2e

1 Intro

Introduction: Cities are Ecosystems? The Anthropocene.

· Text: Articles by Crutzen, Carey, Steffen all in Moodle

1 & 2

Human Population

For this class: learn the main characteristics/terms used to describe population and its changes.

· 21 minute video “2018 World Urbanization Prospects” from United Nations: https://youtu.be/XN92srq5jwg

· Lancet, World Population, 2020 and Pew Research, World Population, 2019 [Moodle]

· Article: C. Haub and J. Gribble, “The World at 7 Billion,” Population, Bulletin 66, no. 2. This is professional level article, but readable for our class. Concentrate on the vocabulary. There are also specific country examples. The article is from 2011, so it’s interesting to think what projections were correct. [Moodle]

· Article: Norman Myers, “How we covered the world at 5 billion…” These are two short articles, interesting from the recent historical perspective, since we are now approaching 8 billion. [Moodle]

· Population Histograms: understand basic terminology, refer to Pop_Ref_Bureau_background pptx [Moodle]

Assignment 1: Population

3 ES, CC, Commons

Ecosystem Services, Carrying Capacity, and “The Commons”

· Text: “The Tragedy of the Commons,” by Garrett Hardin, a classic from 1968, <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full>, and Perspectives on Commons [Moodle]

· “Carrying Capacity concept”, see http://www.csus.edu/indiv/l/loom/lect%2031-32%20s07.htm

· Text: ESA Definition of Ecosystem Services, 2012, https://www.esa.org/esa/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ecosystemservices.pdf (this is just one page). A longer explanation for a general audience, and written by key researchers of the topic (Daily, Alexander, Ehrlich,... Schneider, Tilman, Woodwell) is Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems, 1997, at https://www.esa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/issue2.pdf

· in class: Constanza et al., 1997 (in Moodle and at http://www.esd.ornl.gov/benefits_conference/nature_paper.pdf )

4 Water Supply

Intro to Water Supply: groundwater, rainwater, glaciers, & rivers, precipitation (mean, anomaly)

· “Water Cycle Diagrams” by Water Science School, USGS, October 3, 2022, https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/water-cycle-diagrams. Duncombe, J. (2022)

· “Not your childhood water cycle,” Eos, 103, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220499. Published on 13 October 2022.

· “Water Use and Stress” by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, 2018 or most recent year, Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress

· “Reassessing the projections of the World Water Development Report,” by Boretti, A., Rosa, L. npj Clean Water 2, 15 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-019-0039-9 > In this article, read the sections: Introduction, Water demand by 2050, Water Resources by 2050, and Water Quality by 2050, in order to understand major trends in water demand.

· “How NYC gets its Water”: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/24/nyregion/how-nyc-gets-its-water-new-york-101.html

· Optional: the UN SDG and MDG viewpoints: read WESTRATE and related articles, in the Moodle folder, for an introduction to the Policy of the UN with respect to water goals.

· Optional: for global-level Policy: “The What, Why and How of the World Water Crisis: Global Commission on the Economics of Water Phase 1 Review and Findings,” March 2023. This is a research document that reviews and updates data and knowledge relating to the global water crisis, was formulated by the Lead Experts of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and draws likewise on the contributions of the Commissioners and Advisors. Access it here https://turningthetide.watercommission.org/

· Optional: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_the_United_States

· Just keyword search, e.g. <nytimes water supply> !!

Assignment 2: Water Quality & Exposure Pathway

4 Groundwater Supply

Transboundary Water

· Read Famiglietti: “Global Groundwater Crisis,” Nature, 2014 [Moodle]

· Read “Libya Groundwater” [Moodle]

· Read: M Rodell, JS Famiglietti, “Emerging trends in global freshwater availability ...” 2018/2019. This is a research article, it updates the Famiglietti 2014 article and is a large review on current groundwater knowledge, and is likely difficult to read [Moodle].

5

Water

Quality

Awareness about Water Quality

· Read/Get to Know the site: US EPA perspective on Contaminants (Policy based on Science) in its Drinking Water Regulations: https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/drinking-water-regulations

· Optional Reading: A. Biswas, “Urban water security for developing countries” 2022 https://doi.org/10.1002/rvr2.11 [open access https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rvr2.11]

· Optional, the EU perspective: website https://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-drink/index_en.html or <EU Drinking Water> and try the research Wujits et al., 2021 article “Protection of drinking water resources from agricultural pressures...” [Moodle]

5 Water Quality focus LEAD and Arsenic

Water Quality, continued

· Read: “Flint’s Water Crisis and the ‘Troublemaker’Scientist” by D Hohn, 2016, (NYTimes online site, JCU has access to NYT), and

· “Before Flint: D.C.’s drinking water crisis …” by NAugenstein, WTOP, April 4, 2016 [Moodle] and

· updates (from Sultan, Denchak, and more) on the Lead in drinking water situation. These articles are high quality secondary sources—go to Moodle folder

5 & 6

What is an Exposure Pathway?

Midterm Week 7, approximately before starting Air Pollution ?

6 Air Pollutants, introduction

Air Pollutants, introduction

· Explore & Compare World's Air Pollution shown by 3 different sites: Real-time Air Quality Index http://waqi.info/ , European Air Quality Index https://airindex.eea.europa.eu/Map/AQI/Viewer/ , and IQAir https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality-report

· Required reading, the Opinion piece by David Wallace-Wells, “Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal?” NYTimes, 2022, lists many sites with Air pollution data (excerpt in Moodle, Frohring subscription for full article).

· Other <News Articles Air Pollution>, try N Chestney and B Lewis, “Europe’s toxic air” [Moodle News Articles folder]

· Optional: WHO’s portal for ambient air pollution, you could start here: WHO>Environment and Health>Air Pollution PORTAL which is https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/air-pollution/ambient-air-pollution

· Optional: WHO air quality databases strengths and weaknesses by D. H. Schwela and G. Haq, 2020, at https://aaqr.org/articles/aaqr-19-11-oa-0605

6 Air Pollutants

Air Pollutants starts/continues after Midterm, into Weeks 8 & 9, depending on Current Events

· Reading: You Read and Review the Sites, Articles, Visualized Databases

Assignment 3: Energy and its Air Pollutant

6 Air Pollutants: PMs

Particulate Matter Articles and Sites

· Look at Background Air Quality in Italy, real time: https://www.iqair.com/us/italy, and then look at your Developed and Developing Country. Learn the patterns (locations and values) and think of the sources.

· Look at the “European city air quality viewer” at https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air/urban-air-quality/european-city-air-quality-viewer

· Read the June 21, 2021 news release, “Air pollution in many EU cities ... “ https://euobserver.com/climate/152190

· Look at Air Quality forecasts produced by Copernicus and ECMWF at https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/

· Read the Guardian article: “EU countries could save 238,000 lives a year by meeting WHO air pollution guidelines” by Gary Fuller, February 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/feb/23/eu-countries-could-save-238000-lives-a-year-by-meeting-who-air-pollution-guidelines

· Read BACKGROUND section, Table 1 and Table 4 in Giannadaki, D., Lelieveld, J. & Pozzer, A. Implementing the US air quality standard for PM2.5 worldwide can prevent millions of premature deaths per year. Environ Health 15, 88 (2016), at https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0170-8

Question: How is the Index related to Concentration? Can you determine any cities Not covered by the EU indices? Which air quality viewer would you use in the future, and why?

6 Transboundary

Transboundary Air Pollution, emphasis Forest and Peat Fires

· Look and Try the Visualization at earth.nullschool.net

· Read: News on Southeast Asia fires, articles up to year 2017 [Moodle]

· Read: News and Interactive Maps on Wildfires in North America, as of August 2021 [Moodle].

· August 2021 note: Wildfires became a global issue in years 2018+, so I/we see will try learn about them, from Air Pollution and Ecosystem viewpoints. The information changes fast.

6 Air Pollutants, Lead

Air Pollution: the case of Leaded Gas

· Read: “Lead Blood Level & Map Petrol” docx [Moodle] which contains Adler’s summary of blood lead levels, and the UNEP maps of leaded petrol phaseout.

· Read: J Kitman, Secret History of Lead, 2000 [online at The Nation, and Moodle has a copy]

· Optional: Nevin, “Understanding international crime trends: The legacy of preschool lead exposure,” 2007 [Moodle]

· Optional: Reyes, Jessica, “Environmental policy as social policy? the impact of childhood lead exposure on crime,” 2007 [Moodle]

6 Optional

Dieselgate, NOx and the Volkwagen emissions control cheat. A great story about how entry-level researchers, with weak financial backing, discover Volkswagen’s illegal “emissions-defeat device.” “Presented to CARB as an emissions fix, the software update was actually designed to better hide VW’s emissions-control-defeating programming from regulators.” Easy to read articles by Bob Sorokanich, Updated: Apr 6, 2022, Road and Track, https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a39035992/the-man-who-unearthed-volkswagens-emissions-cheat/ and Eric Jaffe, September 24, 2015, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-24/the-west-virginia-study-that-started-the-volkswagen-scandal .

7 Global Health

Intro to Global Health

· Scan the WHO’s “World Health Statistics reports: https://www.who.int/data/gho/publications/world-health-statistics. Visual summaries are here: https://www.who.int/data/stories . Learn: communicable vs. non communicable, major pathogenic diseases, regional differences.

· An overall view of life expectancy, disease, and injuries: Chapter 2 of “World Health Statistics 2022” published by WHO with link at https://www.who.int/data/gho/publications/world-health-statistics

· Look at some of the data at this WHO Global Health Observatory site https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/world-health-statistics . Be patient, the Visualisations take seconds to load.

· Summary of the paper, Case and Deaton, "Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century," PNAS, Nov 2 2015 from EurekAlert News and in Moodle.

· Mortality in the US, 2015 and 2019: NHCS Briefs online (keyword search) and in our Moodle folder.

Assignment 4

7 Health, the Microbiome

The Human Microbiome

· See <Human Microbiome Articles> in Moodle

· Fast Facts About The Human Microbiome, U Washington [Moodle]

· Lloyd-Price et al., “The healthy human microbiome,” Genome Medicine (2016) 8:51. DOI 10.1186/s13073-016-0307-y [Moodle]

· American Academy of Microbiology, 2013, Human Microbiome FAQ [Moodle]

7 Health, Bacteria: Cholera

Examples of Epidemics caused by a Bacteria

· Reading: You have a choice between the high quality news article (Deborah Sonntag, 2012) or the research news article by Orata (PLOS, 2014). Sonntag delves more into the situational and political errors. [all in Moodle]

· Read: Katz, 2016--this is the news announcement by UN--its role in the cholera epidemic.

· Optional: News on Antibiotics in Livestock [Moodle]

· Optional: E. coli outbreak in Germany, 2011 [Moodle]

7 Health, Viruses

Influenza and SAR-CoV-2 virus--theInfectious Diseases

· WHO definition of Influenza pandemic/epidemic [Moodle]

· Covid 19 and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, have much similarity from the public health perspective (although the context of the two pandemics differs). Here is one research article which explains, and it’s written at a comprehensible level for non-science majors. “Lessons to be learnt from 100 year old 1918 influenza pandemic viz a viz 2019 corona pandemic with an eye on NTEP” by Matta et al., online here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543972/ Alternatively, here is a news article, still high quality: by Richard Evans, “What can we learn from the 1918 pandemic?” in The Nation, December 2020 https://www.thenation.com/article/society/1918-covid-catharine-arnold/

· Spiegel article on 2009 Swine Flu Panic [Moodle]

· Visit and look around the WHO FLUNET site. FluNet is a global web-based tool for influenza virological surveillance first launched in 1997. https://www.who.int/tools/flunet

· 2013: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/19/coronavirus-how-easily-spread

· The 2019 SAR-CoV 2 began to eclipse all other pathogenic diseases, starting in 2020. We will look at the available information online, given the class time restraints.

· Optional: Ebola Virus, see Moodle Folder: Ebola articles

8 A

Natural Hazards and Cities

· Text: The Economist, “Natural Disasters versus Natural Hazards” 2012 (Moodle)

· Munich Re Loss Events

· Munich Re Geophysical Events [Moodle]

8 A Tectonics

Natural Hazards and Cities

Case Studies: Tokyo and Fukushima, New York City and Sandy

8B

Biodiversity

Baum, D. (2008) Reading a Phylogenetic Tree: The Meaning of Monophyletic Groups. Nature Education 1(1):190 [Moodle]

Koonin,E.V.(2010)The Two Empires and Three Domains of Life in the Postgenomic Age.Nature Education3(9):27

FINAL—the date set by JCU Registrar. NOTE that the FINALS period is in the first part of December! We must take our Final on the scheduled day and time.