Conservation and Environmentalism

An Encyclopedia

Robert C. Paehlke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781884964145
• eBook ISBN: 9781136640070
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Focusing on both problems and solutions, this authoritative reference work maintains a healthy balance between science and the social sciences in its coverage of all aspects of the environment. The book is arranged alphabetically and is divided into three major sections: Ecology, Pollution, and Sustainability. The list of 240 contributors reads like a who's who of the world's leading conservation and environmental professionals.Best Reference SourceOutstanding Reference Source

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Abbey, Edward

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) is a novelist, essayist, polemicist, and activist whose contribution to the environmental movement is greater than most writers because of his status as a cult figure. Born in Pennsylvania, Abbey fell in love with the desert southwest while on a hitchhiking trip. From 1956 to 1971 he worked as a park ranger for the National Park Service while writing on the side. During the 1950s he worked at the largely undeveloped Arches National Monument in Utah. His experiences there as he watched both the unspoiled desert and the efforts of those trying to make it more “accessible” (i.e., in Abbey's view, more like the city and less like the desert), are described in his most famous nonfiction work, Desert Solitaire (1968). In addition to describing the beauty and mystery of the desert he sees as he sits on the step of the trailer he calls his home, Abbey also presents its roughness and sheer terror; he describes waiting for hours to fill his canteen at a spring in the mountains that gives only one drop at a time, while fighting off a swarm of gnats.

To Abbey, such painful experiences are important and valuable because they reflect a reality absent from the automated, mechanized, “labor-saving” (Abbey would say “life-destroying”) unchallenging ways of the city. His writing is unflinching in its recognition of the harshness of nature when seen from a human perspective and of the inevitability of failure and death. For example, the resourceful hero of his novel The Brave Cowboy (1956), which was made into the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), is run down with his own horse by a truck loaded with toilets. Nonetheless, it is precisely Abbey's insistence on fighting for. a cause that may already be lost—the preservation of the wilderness—which endears him to his readers.

Jim Baird

Further Readings

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. 1968.

——. The Monkey Wrench Gang. 1975.

——. Abbey's Road. 1979.

See also EARTH FIRST!; KRUTCH, JOSEPH WOOD; RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Acid Precipitation: Aquatic Impacts

The term “acid rain” was first coined in 1872 by R.A. Smith, a chemist in England who iden-tified effects such as corrosion of metal and health effects suffered by vegetation which he suggested had been caused by factory smoke. During the course of the twentieth century other scientists identified the phenomenon of acidified waters which had been affected by airborne pollutants. Effects of acidity on fish populations in Ontario were identified by Dr. Harold Harvey in 1966. The term is used today to refer to the deposition of two primary substances of concern—sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Acid precipitation includes both all forms of wet precipitation (rain, snow, and fog) and dry precipitation in the form of dust. The brief discussion which follows is limited to a description of these pollutants and their effects on ecological health of aquatic ecosystems.

“Acidity” is a measure of the hydrogen ion concentration in a solution. It is measured on a “pH” scale which increases logarithmically in ten-fold increases from 1, the most acidic, to 14, the most alkaline. The neutral balance point is 7. There are a number of natural factors, however, which influence the acidity of unpolluted precipitation and receiving waters, which means they are seldom found at precisely 7. “Pure” natural water has a pH in the order of 5.6, since atmospheric carbon dioxide enters the water and disassociates to carbonate and hydrogen. On a global basis, precipitation is usually slightly acidic, with a pH of 5.6 to 5. Waters are considered to be acidified if the pH is 5 or less. Central Ontario, an area which suffers from acid rain damage, has an average precipitation pH of 4.2.

Historically, the aquatic impacts of acid rain have been concentrated in the industrialized regions of Europe and North America. More recently, however, acidification levels in parts of China have approached those found in the United States and acid rain damage has been detected in Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, and Australia.

Over 90 percent of annual sulfur and nitrogen emissions have anthropogenic sources, primarily the smelting and refining of metals which contain sulfur and the combustion of fossil fuels as an energy source. Sulfur emis-sions, associated primarily with the burning of oil or coal to generate electricity, tend to be clustered in a limited number of locations, while nitrogen emissions, a significant portion of which are associated with motor vehicles, tend to be more widely dispersed. These pollutants are then carried by air currents, in some cases for hundreds of miles. This long-range transport has historically hampered policy development, since effects felt in one country, such as Sweden, may have been caused by sources beyond the authority of that country's courts, for instance in England or Germany.

As noted, some waters may be slightly acidic in their natural state. By the same token, some waters, due to the presence of natural buffers in the soil and rock of the lake or riverbed, will be better able to withstand the effects of acid rain than others. Aquatic impacts, therefore, are influenced by factors associated with both the incoming pollution and the state of the receiving water. Such impacts may be permanent or transitory. Acidification may gradually increase over time, and may also take the form of episodic events, such as sudden increases caused by spring run-off of acidic snow. When waters first begin to be acidified the effects are neutralized by the bicarbonate present in vegetation, soils, and sediments. When that available bicarbonate has been exhausted, pH begins to drop below 5.

At low levels of acidity, effects are often first experienced by crustaceans, insects, algae, and zooplankton species. In many cases, such effects are then transmitted through the food chain. Effects on fish are first experienced as reproductive failures, leading to an aging of the fish stock. Reproduction of amphibians will also be affected. As pH drops below 5 in a given body of water, entire fish species may be killed. Birds are affected both by loss of fish and other organisms on which they rely as food and by release of toxic metals from sediments into the food chain. Humans may be exposed to indirect health threats from toxic metals, such as mercury, which have been released into drinking water as a result of acidification.

During the past twenty years a number of jurisdictions have experimented with methods of neutralizing acidified waters by artificially adding lime. This approach is problematic, since lime, which is not highly soluble, diffuses slowly and is therefore not able to quickly neutralize acidic waters. Repeated additions are needed if precipitation remains acidic. Liming also has adverse effects on the health of some plankton and aquatic plants and in any case runs counter to the generally accepted policy maxim of “anticipate and prevent."

Regulatory action to reduce acid rain emissions has to some extent mitigated the problem in North America and Europe. In those areas, accordingly, annual emissions will likely remain stable over the next half century and aquatic effects, while not eliminated, are not likely to significantly increase. In other parts of the world, however, such as newly industrializing regions of China and some nations of southeast Asia, regulatory action is still in its early stages and aquatic effects are likely to increase significantly in the years ahead.

Doug Macdonald and Irena Creed

Further Readings

Environment Canada. The State of Canada's Environment. 1991.

Paces, Tomas. “Sources of Acidification in Central Europe Estimated from Elemental Budgets in Small Basins.” Nature 315 (May 2, 1985): 31–36.

Woodin, Sarah, and Ute Skiba. “Liming Fails the Acid Test.” New Scientist (March 10, 1990): 50–54.

See also ACID PRECIPITATION: EUROPEAN EXPERIENCES; ACID PRECIPITATION: LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES; ACID PRECIPITATION: TERRESTRIAL IMPACTS; AIR POLLUTION: IMPACTS; AMPHIBIANS: CONSERVATION AND HABITAT; FOOD CHAINS; FRESHWATER WETLANDS; MERCURY

Acid Precipitation: European Experiences

History of Understanding

Europeans today emit about 70 million tonnes of SO₂ and 45 million tonnes of NO_x into the atmosphere every year, about 40 percent of the global anthropogenic emissions. This number has, however, begun to decline significantly for the oxides of sulfur; those of nitrogen remain a major problem.

The scientific understanding of the effect of these gases began in the early nineteenth century. Scottish scientists noted changes in the pH value of rain water and observed damage to plants. Some time later the Norwegian poet Ibsen complained about black smoke drifting from the British Isles over to Norway.

Technological change, fuel substitution in several countries and industries, two major wars, and the political weakness of those most affected by air pollution in cities, meant that “acid rain” received little attention until the late 1960s. In Britain and France the air was becoming cleaner. The Italians and Southern Europeans cared little about pollution in general. Only in Germany was there a growing demand for purer and healthier air by both government and the public. Industry was less keen, fearing losses in competitive advantage, if too heavily regulated.

All this began to change when a Swedish scientist named Oden made serious allegations based on carefully kept records to the effect that acid gases from power stations and vehicles were damaging the Swedish environment. While these sources were by that time regulated in most countries on human health grounds, regulations were not established for the protection of lakes, forests, or natural ecosystems. The way of diminishing the local effects of emissions from stationary sources had been to increase the height of chimney stacks. This resulted, according to Oden, in acid gases as transboundary air pollution, thereby harming Swedish lakes and possibly trees. The polluters were most likely to be found to the south and west of Sweden. This accusation was made at the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and immediately taken up by European researchers paid to either prove or disprove it. Research first emphasized the modeling and measurement of transboundary movements and deposition, then atmospheric chemistry and the understanding of specific damage effects.

Politically, the most important scientific input to the story, however, did not come until the late 1970s when the German scientist Ulrich claimed that acid rain was causing the approaching death of the German forest. Twenty years of research and atmospheric modeling followed and largely substantiated the Swedish allegation of transboundary pollution—the oxides of sulfur and nitrogen are precipitated far from their sources and tend to accumulate in soil. The resulting damage, however, is less readily proven, and is more varied and complex than had been assumed. Acid precipitation is a contributory factor to the stressed state of many European forests. The acidification of fresh waters harms plant and animal life.

Policy Responses

With the help of the OECD and later the UN Economic Commission for Europe, monitoring networks feeding into transport and deposition models were set up and now underpin intergovernmental regulatory efforts. These are based on the “critical load” approach, which combines national and international emissions and aims to control precipitation with reference to the most sensitive receiving ecosystems by cal-culation of emission reductions.

Policy responses reflect political power, energy policies, administrative capacities, and perceptions of the problem, all important variables in Europe that explain the long bargaining process begun in the late 1980s. Energy, environmental, forestry, and industri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Encyclopedia
• Index