Impact Journal#1

I watched the movie, "Vanishing Wetlands" (Bullfrog Film)in 1997, directed by Ray Burley, and hosted by the biologist, David Suzuki.
This film talks about the aspect of the wetland in North America in environmental way, and shows how important it is for not only species that are involved in the community but also our industries and living environments. Also at the end, two of major restoring project was interviewed.
Wetland has a reputation of dirty and waisted place that can be used for our industrial activities, and actually its location is perfect for resorts, so in 1997, 80% of wetlands in North America is gone caused by industrial establishments such as building roads, bridges, houses and agricultural field; however, wetlands provide opportunities for million kinds of species for their survival, and its ecosystem to be unique. The submarge condition allows plants to grow under the water and gave species options where to settle. It has marsh grass, nutrious mad, and shallow and clean water that store the energy from the sun. it's perfest place for various species to hatch, nest, and feed. For instance, migrate birds come as their distination or rest of their migration because it's enrich in nutrition and location. It often times becomes forest by expanding the plants and the habitats. In northern Mississippi river in Illinois, the native species are still exist there. It implies that those species are so well adopted to the ecosystem that they didn't have to make themselves better for survival.
Another factor of why marshes have such nutriants is because of the flood that comes annuary. The water from the mountain brings the nutrition. Even though we think flood is a disater that destroy our house and environment, it brings all the benefits for the community along the river. Our protection from the flood with the insight doesn't work everytime. In summer of 1993 in Mississippi river, after heavyly rainy days lasted, the swalen river let the flood drain 28000 cubic meter per second and caused $12billion of damage. The biologists found from their research on the flood. first, the levees which were supposed to protect our "community" was not only destroyed by the pressure and the magnitude of the flood but also made the situation worse to not let the water out. Because it blocked and let the water stay, the flooding lasted longer in the city. Secondary, they found enormous variety of species after the flood which suggested that many species converged when the river become enriched in nutritions by bringing a new layer of soil from the mountain. The stability in wetland is low in Consistency and Inertia but High in Renewal. After the floot came, the same native plant came back soon after as well as the insects and birds. Everytime the flood came, it fostered the habitat change and that allowed more species to live in the biodiversity in Mississippi river area.
However, as I mentioned that 80% of the wetland is gone by 1997 include Mississippi area by functioning the area agriculturally and industrially, the wetland community had been destroyed and led enourmous number of species to their extinction. At one of the marsh area in Coots Paradise at Hamilton bay (Ontario lake in The Great Lake) was the one of places had been eliminated its size and functions as the ecosystem in the community. 15% of reduction was recorded in 1930's, but before that, it was 100% covered with animals, insects and migraters looking for a food and a shelter. But 85% of original plants were gone by 1985. People had been causing by building the city, make it into crop field and industrializing it. In the film, the biologist, Pat Franzer researched the marsh at Coots Paradise and found that because the cemented city roads let the rain and snow to drain so fast that it didn't give a time for the nutrious water to stop at the marsh which was even decreasing. Moreover, some introduced fish like carp from China dominated and eliminated the native species that are important for the community. Franzer's project for getting back the marsh was to collect seeds from the marsh in fall and grows separately at school they get bigger enough to stabilize in the fasted drained water. Her idea was if it gets more stable marsh grasses back, it helps to slow the water to drain as well as restablish the wetland community. In the film, she commented that it would take two or three decades to restore.
So after I watched the film, I searched what happened after 10 years in Coots Paradise. The environmental organization, Royal Botanical Garden (RBG) http://www.rbg.ca undertook Franzer's project started in 2001 and has had good results from it. I only found the report till 2005, but that year, they planted 8000 and recorded some important species such as bigmouth baffalo (non found in 2004), a walleye, grater red horses and golden red horses. Also, 73,519 fish of 34 different species documented, and 5,500 non-native species prevented from entering the marsh. The total nunmer of the carp has been decreasing every year, and also amoung the marsh, they rediscovered slender naiad after 50 years of absent. Others are yellow spotted salamanders, leopard frogs, american toads and green frods, and most of them regulary encountered. In 2006, RBG was the major focus of Environmental Canada at Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.
My response
After we focused on the forest and marine biodiversity at ENVSC class, it was interesting to learn about another kind of habitat, wetland. But it's always the same that every single object involed in the community is important to function the ecosystem. One's waist becomes other's benefit. "Nothing is waisted" as the host of the film, Suzuki was saying. As I think of the sensitiveness of the nature, I get discouraged and ashamed by the unpleasant human activities. Even though most of us feel attached to the nature in some way like having a memory of our childfood exploring, playing and creating with the nature, the way of our society works keep our mind-set away from what should we be doing as a part of nature. I have to deal with my hater of human beings being errogant to work for "being a part of the nature" In other words, just to be logical and think what I should do as I'm a menber of this planet, Earth.

Saving our environment by cooking our food#2

I called the closest grocery store from my house, Trader Joe's in Kirkland to find our about GM products. Their vegetables, fruits and anything that's under the label of Trader Joe's are not genetically modified. I asked about the corn and the bean which are two of the major GM products that are made. and the answer was no GMs. That's was a good news. But the store person I talked to added that he wasn't sure about not Trader Joe's products that are at the store. In another words, even if you trust one particuler store that doesn't deal with GM plants, if you strictly want to avoid GMs, you have to make sure to each products weather or not genetically modified. It made me come to the conclusion of cooking what I eat instead of buying pre-made food. More you involved to the process from growing till eating is more ability to avoid artificial or unecessary substance in your food. Simply, pre-made food products takes a lot of energy and produce packages that will be trash and pollute the environment. so try not to buy packaged food is theone way that we can take for the less impact on the environment.

Marine Biodiversity

From the discussion about marine biodiversity in the class last Thursday, I have two topic that I missed a chance to share, so I would like to talk about them here. One is about the education. Aaron pointed out the education is important for keeping us tied to sea animals and ocean itself. Growing up with it makes us care about it. I believe that this is the first step to think about what is right thing to do to solve enormous number of issues. But, even if we are educated and understand the aspects of sea animals, everyone has different idea when we make a "right" decision. Do you choose wild fish or farmed fish? Do you choose wild fish because it's healthier and tastier than farmed fish? Do you choose farmed fish because of evironmental reason? Both reasons are seem to be concerned and correct, but altimately we have to agree with what is the most significant thing to do. Since we can't force people, how much individuals care about the issues makes difference.
Another thing is weather we can take fish out of our diet or not. The answer from Japanese people is NO. That implys the abandonment of Japanese food culture because fish are tied with the traditional food. But what we can do is make less for everything. Our text book, The Principles of Environmental Science states that we come up with the idea of making things as products is when we start destroy our "mother." I agree with this idea. We value too much on money and enrich your life by being rich which I think it's wrong. Everybody should be happy with decent amount of money and not being selfish. Eat less fish suggests less restaurant, according to our discussion, they throw tons of fish away. So my conclusion is that make a boom of cooking at our house and convince them to get involved with fish market industry. More people become smart on what is the best way to eat or choose fish makes more effective to the whole aspects of fishary industry.

oh, zoo....

First, I have to start off from my opinion about a zoo to let my concerns out.
I honestly don't like the idea of putting animals into the little isolated spaces that aren't even appropriate place for them to live. I think people love animals in an impertive way that takes their life away. Even if some zoos save endangered species to survive, it's primarily under the situation that human activities have made. so they deserve it. Going back to my disagreement on zoo, I only remember myself being intimidated by the depressed animals at the local zoo that I went a couple years ago. Instead, when I was little, I liked to hang around a zoo because I got to watch, touch and feed the animals and it was just fun to see them. But as I became aware of the news about zoo animals and even privates' pets being threatened and abused by the owner, I was no longer attracted by the depressed animals in uncomfortable lives, so I stopped going there. At the time, media has taken up the incidents relating to animals. A lion breaking off the cage and wondering around the city was the one of the incidents. and then I went to the local zoo to see how is the zoo now. I was curious to see if the things have been improving or not. Unfortunately, I saw discouraging facts. I could tell right away that the animals weren't happy with their lives by hearing their noise and watching their actions when I stood by, By the all of monkey's cages, there were signs that said something like, " Keep 3feet away from the animals. They might grab your bag, head or arms, and hart you." or " Don't feed them because they might not only eat the food but bite you." I was actually surprized that I didn't see any happy signs. and also there was a sign with a long anecdot about the elephant being fed trash by the visitor and almost died. It was worse than what I expected to see, but I was glad to know how terribly animals being treated. As I said above, I think people love animals, but it hasn't come out in a right way that let them fulfill their life in their way. I don't know how much people aware of that.
When I talk about the pros about zoos, I intentionally ignore the fact that there is no pros without the situation we've made.
At this point, the pros are; We can examine how the animals physically and mentally function.
We can foster the animals that are endangered.
We can study them for environmental development.
In my opinion, we should be in a cage to see the animals at a zoo and free them among the zoo just like a national park. This is a LITTLE BIT better idea.

Ecosystem surrounding me

The specific interactions that I observed was:
1, a mosquito and myself; A big mosquito (about 2inches long) was flying around me in my room. Because it was so big that I realized before I'm bitten by it.
2. a squirrel and a bird in the back yard: My host family has a bird, and because every time we refill the bird food in a container, we just throw some left over into the outside, I've captured some squirrel eating sunflower seeds in the bird food.

My observation in the back yard,
1.First of all, I had no idea how much junk were scattering all over in the backyard until I pay attention to what's really there. As you can see from the pictures, there are blue tarps, horses, cups, chairs and other junk. Those are apparently "straged" and setting there.

2.The major interaction that I captured was bird food. As I mentioned above, the birds share or compete among the bird food which could be Competition or Symbiosis. In a mean while, occasionally, some cats from the neighbors(foreigner) come to get the food. If the cats come and take the most of the food, the bird might not come.

3.Even if there are a big trampoline and jangle gym, we barley use them and also we don't take care of them and the backyard itself, so in fact, except the junk setting all over, it looked the backyard made a own community and I thought it might not too bad to just leave it as it is as supposed to taken care by the land owner who might use chemicals to "clean it up." Are weeding and sweeping just for better look? Can the species in the community make living easier?

My primary trophic level

The list of the food that I eat almost everyday.
The primary producer
- Brown rice
- Seaweed (sulted, dried,,,,etc)
- Miso (w/ soy beans, sult, sake lees)
- vegetables (especially spinach, carrots, avocados and tomatos)
- Tofu (processed beans)
The primary consumer
- Eggs,
- Little fish
- Chicken
The secondary consumer
None
The tertiary consumer
None

As you can see from the above, I don't eat the secondary and tertiary consumer as a diet. This has two reasons that I found by examining my health. After I eat pizza or any other greasy meat that are in upper trophic level, I feel sick in my stomach because it too much work for my stomach to digest heavy meat, and also just because I've grown up with Japanese food which doesn't have greasy meat dishes, so my body don't get used to absorb it.
However, I heavily rely on Japanese food implies that I need outside sources to get what I want rather than try the local foods and adapt my diet. The benefit of buying locally distributed products is that it doen't have longer process in other wars, cut shipping, tracking and straging process and its cost. My salted seaweed that I bought "Nama-wakame" is imported by JFC international inc., and produced by Korea. It's shipped directry from Korea to Seattle. But my Miso "Hikari Miso" is sent from Japan first off to L.A. where the JFC head quarter is at. The ploblem with this mass production is that concentrating the needs from not only inside the country but also outside of country to the local farmers, so the farmers have to fertilize their seaweeds and beans, They put emphasis on great inprovement of sharing ethnic food and emarging cultural diversity. But we have to remind ourselves that more economy demand we have distruct more nature that can't be fixed right away.

How much do I waste and use.

What living things did I use last week?
- Toilet paper is the major thing that I use no matter where I am.
- My high heals are leather.
- My bass guiter's body is made out of maple wood and the neck is redwood.
- My most of paint brushes are hair from pig, racoon, and horse.

How much wastes did I make last weeK?
The total of my waste would be a half of a bag that holds 13gallons. but What makes hard to caliculate is that I have to consider the wastes from other house holders who aren't really guilty to waste things as least they don't seem like it. so the total wastes from the whole house would be the 5 gabbage bag of packages, papers, food wastes, and on which I think is way too much. There are 4 households include me, but we have visiters almost everyday, so it's the part of reason why we have so much wastes but I totally believe that we can reduce them by little change on how we buy food. First thing we can do is not go to Costco. Things are cheaper there, but because one package is too big to finish it before it gets bad, we end up throwing them away. I understand that my host mother wants to go there not to warry about when many people come over, but otherwise she could have gone to PCC which si her favorite organic supermarket and little amount of good quality of food. Even if those are pricier, it's a lot better for the environment. so the first thing that I have to work on for me is that talk to my host mother to make her undertand and convince her to go to PCC more.

Impact on the carbon cycles.

The emition of carbon dioxide from cars is a major issues that distruct the carbon cycle. The carbon cycle between Biosphere and Atmosphere needs less carbon dioxide to function better. But my life now doesn't work without driving my car wishing there is much better transpotation system around pugetsound area. so what I can do now is driving as little as possible. Specifically, when I commute to school, I avoid driving around a parking lot finding a best spot. I rather go far away where I definitely can find a spot. The important thing to do this here is not about saving gas. It's about my attitude toward the environment. If my decision making is based on what is good for the environment, it became normal to avoid the crowded parking lot even if it's closer to my class rooms. With the mentality, I can refer to other things like carpooling and avoiding trafic jam.

Humans Creation

I'm taking Art history class while I'm taking this ENVSC class and it's been interesting to see how different emotion I get from those classes. In ENVSC, I get depressed by humans' disruptions that have contaminated the earth and I'd become almost anti-human activities. I actually already hated how human behave to the nature. but in a meanwhile, in the Art class, I appreciate the artwork that the ancient people did back in 3000B.C. and impressed by them and I felt as same quality of the imaginations as we have. They are impressively expressed and I felt even closer to those anciant artists who invented how to paint and created ormantal or spiritual objects maybe because those are simply showing what they see. I just kind the attitude, I would say. Without their imagination, we would have no idea what the earth's shape is and what the universe made out of and so on. Thinking about those brings me back to where I can be sympathetic to human beings. I'm glad that I take those classes at the same to balance my mental conditions. lol.( but I'm kind of serious..)

Journal week#1

Five of the most important issues I think are global warming, declining of energy resources, population growth, destrying the environment and the money based structure of our society itself. People must be ashamed to kill altimately themsevles. I think a war is the most obvious reason why we have such enormous issues. People seems to have forgotten a war's environmental effect as well as political effect. Significantly, it kills people literally and directly rather than causes them to death through surrounding environments. Think about how much distruction to nature a war cause by bombing, driving a tank, flying an air force and experimenting of bombing effect. No matter how much individuals care the nature and try to reduce, reuse and recycle things, it's nothing as long as we have a war going on. For instance, a tank uses a gallon to just drive 0.6miles (globalsecurity.org). I have been trying not to drive too much and convincing people to carpool, but that fact discouraged me. Things that happeneds in a war are opposet of what we are appearantly trying to achieve. In a war, using enormous amount of gas, consumption and making wastes are essencial fact.
Bring the environmental issues down to an individual level, I take some actions everyday try not to make it worse. I carry handkerchief whenever I go out to used it when I go to the bathroom. In fact, I used to do that when I lived in Japan, but since I came to the United States and saw people were using a piece or sometimes roll of peper to dry out their hands, I unconsciously cordswitched and started using it just like other people do. Even though I excrusively took as little piece as I could, it meant that I made extra wastes. But as I saw the people taking too much paper for just wiping off their hands and the garbages there were full of paper that are not even dirty, I felt uncomfortable looking at it and do nothing for it. and then I thought it should be easy for me not to be the one of causing person because all I had to do was go back to what I used to be doing in Japan. It's amazing to think how little changes can become your habit that's good for the environment.
Thinking of how many other people who interconnect amoung this society. I personally think that people shouldn't be created regradless of how effective, creative, imaginative and smart we are, if we are destroying other species. I've been disgusted about people's self-centeredness and competitiveness. I think is we are being errogant and rude to other creatures, we are the least value in this world no matter how smart and "developed" we are.