I = P * A * T

impacts of settlements on land, air, & water.

Environmental History is the study of how settlements alter ecological conditions and how those changes influence each era’s ideas about nature with respect to responsible resource use from one period to the next.

The impacts are on water, energy, air and land or WEAL.

Ideas meaning those concepts associated with the perception, ideology and values that contribute to methods of discovery with respect to our surrounding land, air and water when contrasted with an Earth’s eye view of the past.

Siry, Worster, Merchant

Perception, ideology, and values

Environmental history provides a double vision of human ambitions.

Geography

Beavers as a keystone species, water tables, reservoirs, forests.

Natives as diverse beyond our experience, farmers, horses.

Settlement of nationalities and churches from Europe.

Revolution and nationalism: uniformity and commercial-agrarian tension.

America's watersheds are the engines of the ecological systems we need as we are all dwellers's downstream on round river.

Changes in scale with respect to means of altering surroundings

Economic patterns: impact quotient

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Subsistence 1 one

Commercial 10 10

Manufacturing 100 10²

Urban 1000 10³

Industrial 10000 10⁴

Metropolitan (suburban) 100000 10⁵

Hyper-industrial 1000000 10⁶

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Examples of the changes in landscape:

Jeffersonian Agrarianism

characteristics of the periods

River – based 1600-1900:

Fur trade

Settlement

Timber

Planting - production oriented

Railroad – 1830-1950:

Cattle

Mining

Industry

Urban concentration – production to consuming oriented

Roads –1917-2009:

Birth of metro-areas SMSA

Commercial centers

Hyper-industrial (high water & electrical use)

Consumption oriented

Changes in populations

 Amount of people                           Year             Number of years elapsed

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Population -- 3 million 1790 base

30 million 1860 + 27

100 million 1900 + 70

300 million 2000 +200

in 2012 ?

Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology I=PAT

Any impact is proportional to the number of people, their level of affluence, and the equipment they use to supply themselves and others with a means to make a living.

• technological change, qualities of.

• Conservation.

• Preservation diverges from Conservation as protection.

search site

Emerson| Merchant | Worster | Cronin | Reisner | Jackson | Siry | Leopold | Diamond | Williams | Austin | Mumford | Marx

society

Siry II, Worster, Merchant, Emerson II, Olmsted, Mumford II, Egan, Rome