Urban Experience

 Urban Experience: Babcock Ranch

For this weeks field trip our class engaged in a virtual tour of the Babcock Ranch. The Babcock ranch is a sustainable city constructed on state road 31 in Southwest Florida. The urban infrastructure is designed to create an eco-friendly, safe, and functioning environment for all whom inhabit the area. 
 In Sustainability, Principles and Practice, we have discussed the concept of natural capital. Humans have already overshot Earth’s carrying capacity and are living by depleting its natural capital and overfilling its waste sinks. Natural capital consists of the resources and services provided by ecosystems. Renewable resources can support human activities indefinitely as long as we do not use them more rapidly than they can regenerate

 

The Babcock Ranch engaged in this concept when developing this estate which is home to native wildlife and agriculture by providing many resources for sustainability in the process. For example, there are water aquifers, solar panels, educational institutions, health facilities, and job opportunities within its 18,000-acre living facility.

  

 

In class readings, we have discussed the topics of ecosystem conservation and restoration being an important focus of sustainability work. Conserving or restoring ecosystem health involves three broad fields of endeavor: Conservation refers to protecting biodiversity; it is about minimizing damage. Restoration is about repairing damage, returning the condition of an ecosystem to a state of health. Reconciliation involves acknowledging that humans are part of the natural world and finding ways to live together, weaving into the fabric of the biosphere the activities of its most visible and ubiquitous species, Homo sapiens.   

Babcock Ranch provides its community with the opportunity to participate in something bigger than the individual experience. This promotes civic engagement between the population, the environment, the ecosystem, and prosperity. This can be exemplified through job opportunities, recreational activities, educational prospects, and more!  

A conclusion we have come to in our class readings is that within the modern era of growing human population, urban development, habitat destruction, and changing climate, we need to find ways to integrate ourselves with the rest of the biosphere, to fuse the bits and pieces together into a larger, coherent living whole. The use of solar panels, flat road infrastructure, the founders square is the MVP of the Babcock Ranch design.   

Social sustainability is important because there is no sense in creating a perfect living space in which the citizens must travel away from to experience life. Whether that experience is monetary, educational, or recreational. In the state of global warming that we all currently inhabit, social sustainability is essential to the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions, recycling of natural elements, and more!

Marine Experience

THE MARINE EXPERIENCE

              In this week’s virtual field trip experience, we traveled into Florida estuaries, ecosystem, and open ocean  environments to learn more about the connection between them. Also, we learned that there is a direct relationship between local economy and our environment 

 

In class readings we often discuss the human species impact on the rest of the globe. While scientific advancements are useful to developing survival tactics on this planet, some methods are harmful to the natural cycles and patterns of our planet.  In Sustainability Principles and Practice we discovered that the more readily a contaminant is transported and the more resistant it is to being transformed, the greater its pollution potential. The greatest health risks come from contaminants that are highly mobile, highly persistent, and highly toxic. This is said regarding products and chemicals used for construction, technological advancement, and environmental manipulation, such as man-made dams. During the field trip we learned that storm water runoff carrying loads of sediment, nutrients, and chemical pollutants can cause significant damage to estuaries and the organisms that live within them, in areas like southern Florida.  

 

While virtually observing, we realized that climate change poses several threats to coastal communities, primarily through sea level rise. Rising seas have already begun flooding some coastal areas, particularly during times of extreme high tides. As we learned in Sustainability Principles and Practice, environmental preservation methods will vary based on different climates and landmarks. It is not an easy subject to tackle in one conversation. However, sitting idly and continuing to use our sources on the global scale that we do, is not an option. 

 

The land and water that is home to our natural wildlife must be preserved if we are to stand a chance at saving our planet. For instance, the local Eastern oyster serves the important role of filtering sediments from the water. This is an essential component for the life cycle of marine life. As we discovered in the Robertson text, the problem is not that Earth is running out of water; the problem is that humans pull it from the hydrologic cycle faster than it can be purified and replaced and that human activities pollute some of the remaining water so that it is not safe to use. If we risk effecting sea levels, we risk the survival of fundamental species like the Eastern Oyster.