Managing the Environment is a challenge, and requires a significant amount of information and careful planning.

In our classes on Environmental Resource Management, our professor has asked us to write mini blogs regarding our thoughts on the subject, and a “tag line” for the classes. So, here goes: class one.

Managing the Environment is a challenge, and requires a significant amount of information and careful planning.

In our first classes, we discussed our goals for the class and spoke about some interesting examples of resource and environmental management.

Did you know that Spain and Portugal are some of the biggest producers of cork? And that the cork, which is the “bark” of the tree, when extracted may actually have some benefit to the ecosystem in which these trees live?

The extraction of the bark, to produce cork stoppers and other cork products does not actually harm the trees, in fact, it regrows, making it a sustainable resource – when harvested properly. Studies have found that is actually is good for the ecosystem to harvest, properly, the think bark layer. Our professor is to try and help maintain the wine industry’s interest in cork stoppers, which are much more expensive than their new, plastic, competitors.

Who would have thought?

We also spoke about several technical terms, and their challenges in terms of environmental management. One that particularly interested me was the idea of habitat fragmentation.

A habitat is the conditions required for one species to survive.When a species habitat is fragmented, often by human infrastructure and development, species can be greatly affected, as groups may be separated or they could lose all together their optimal habitat for survival:

What can we do about it?  Work on making connections between these habitats:

And make sure that connectivity is incorporated in construction planning when infrastructure is placed within animal habitats.

6 comentarios / 11 Jan 2013 por Amy Blyth
IMSD /

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