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TPO11 Lecture 3 Environmental science
Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.
Professor: When land gets develop for human use, the landscape changes. We don’t seeas many types of vegetation, trees, grasses and so forth. This in turn leads to other losses: the loss of animal that once lived there. Err…but these are the obvious changes, but there are also less obvious changes like the climate. One interesting case of this…of…of changes in the local land use causing changes in climate, specifically the temperature is in Florida. Now what comes to mind when you think of the state of Florida?
Student A: Sunshine, beaches.
Student B: Warm weather, oranges…
Professor: Yes, exactly. Florida has long had a great citric industry; large growth oforanges, lemons and the like. Florida’s winter is very mild; the temperature doesn’t often get below freezing. But there are some areas in Florida that do freeze. So in the early 1900s, farmers moved even further south in Florida, to areas that were even less likely to freeze. Obviously, freezing temperatures are danger to the crops. A bad barrier of cold weather, a long spell of frosts could ruin a farm and the entire crop, anyway, before these citric growers moved south, much of the land in south Florida, was what we called wetlands. Wetlands are areas of marshy, swampy land, areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil for large part of the year. Wetlands have their own unique ecosystem, with plants and animals with special an interesting adaptation. Very exciting, but it’s not what we are talking about today. Emm…where was I?
Student A: Farmers moved south?
Professor: Oh, yes. Farmers moved south. But the land was not suitable for farming. Youcan’t grow orange in wetland, so farmers had to transform the wetlands into lands suitable for farming. To do that, you have to drain the water from the land, move the water elsewhere, and divert to the water sources such as rivers. Hundreds of miles of drainage canals were built in the wetlands. Now these areas, the new areas the farmers moved to, used to be warm and unlikely to freeze, however, recently the area has become susceptible to freezes. And we are trying to understand why.
Student B: Is it some global temperature change or weather pattern like El Ni?o orsomething?
Professor: Well, there are two theories. One idea is as you suggested that major weatherpatterns, something like El Ni?o, are responsible. But the other idea and this is the one that I personally subscribe to, is of the changes in the temperature pattern had been brought about by the loss of wetlands.
Student A: Well, how would the loss of wetlands make a difference?
Professor: Well, think about what we’ve been studying so far. We discussed the impact oflandscapes on temperature, right? What affects does the body of water have on an area?
Student A: Oh, yeah. Bodies of water tend to absorb the heat during the day, and thenthey release the heat at night.
Professor: Yes, exactly. What you just said is what I want you all to understand. Bodies ofwater release heat and moisture back into the environment. So places near large bodies of water are generally milder, err...slightly warmer than those without water. And what I, another think is that the loss of the wetlands has created the situation where the local temperatures in the area are not slightly different, slightly colder than they were 100 years ago, before the wetland were drained.
Student B: Emm…do we know what the temperature was like back then?
Professor: Well, we were able to estimate this. We have data about South Florida’scurrent landscape, emm…the plant cover. And we were able to reconstruct data about the landscape prior to 1900. Then we enter those data, information about what the landscape look like before and after the wetlands were drained. We enter the data into a computer weather model. This model can predict temperatures. And when all the data were entered, an overall cooling trend was predicted by the model.
Student B: How much colder does it get now?
Professor: Well, actually the model shows a drop of only a few degrees Celsius. But this isenough to cause dramatic damage to crops. If temperatures over night are already very close to the freezing point, then this drop of just a few degrees can take the temperature below freezing. And freezing causes frosts, which kill crops. These damaging frosts wouldn’t happen if the wetlands were still in existence, just as the tiny temperature difference can have major consequences.
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