Towards Balance with the Earth:
Key Natural Resources and How We Use Them
Wednesdays 1 – 3 p.m. at the Cooperage, Sonoma State University, April 5 – May 10, 2017
Instructor:
Email:
Website:
Sarah Andrews, M.S. Geology
[email protected]
www.SarahAndrews.net
Week 1: Land, Water, and Air
What key earth resources are where and why?
Introduction to geologic, hydrologic, and climate cycles that produce the environment that make life
possible on Planet Earth.
Week 2: Our Built Environment
What earth resources go into building our homes and other structures?
Where are these resources grown—or, regarding what can’t be grown, where are they mined? And how
are they refined and transported to us?
Week 3: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
What metals, plastics, and other mined materials go into making a car?
What resources are used to support our other modes of transportation and the roads, rails, and runways
on which they move?
Week 4: Power
Where does our energy come from? What’s involved in extracting global oil resources and how much oil
is left? What resources are necessary to develop alternative energy sources?
Week 5: Other Key Resources
What minerals and rocks go into creating the other tools and ornaments we use and love? What are
those “strategic minerals” we keep hearing about? And how are we using them?
Week 6: Supply and Disposal
How does the international system of transportation and supply function? And where do materials go
when we are done using them? What adjustments and choices will we make as our climate changes,
our population continues to grow, and key supplies diminish?
Additional YouTube viewing for week 1:
Plate Tectonics, 540Ma - Modern World - Scotese Animation 022116b
Continental Drift: 3.3 Billion Years Algol
The Water Cycle – National Science Foundation/NBC
What Is Groundwater? - KQED QUEST
How Climate Works – a series presented at Princeton University
Towards Balance with the Earth:
Key Natural Resources and How We Use Them
Week 1: Water, Air, and Land
Earth resources that humans need and use:
Exploitation: defining and redefining the term; non-renewable vs. renewable resources
Stone Age to Information Age requirements
Land, water, and climate
Rocks, metals and other minerals
How the Earth’s cycles provide these needs:
Our planet’s strategic position in our solar system
The making of stars, planets and subsequent distribution of minerals
Layers of the Earth, heat transfer to outer space
Why the continents are shaped and positioned as they are
Plate tectonics theory
Impact of plate collisions on distribution of useful rocks and minerals
Water (hydrologic) cycle
Rain, water flowing and stored above and under the ground, oceans, and ice
Why rain and snow fall where they do but not in other places
Influence of latitude and Earth’s rotation on air movement
Influence of continent shapes on rainfall and ocean currents
Groundwater
Climate, and how it influences our lives and lifestyles
Factors that cause climate to vary
Impact of our place in the solar system/revolution of Earth around the Sun
Reviewing impact of positions of continents, latitude, Earth’s rotation
Impact of large extraterrestrial objects
Hadley cells
Feedback loops between
Human contributions
Greenhouse effect
Desertification
How the above factors influence the distribution of key resources
Arable and buildable land
Dimensional stone
Minerals
Rise and fall of sea levels