Essential Element: Environment and Society
How human actions modify the physical environment.
The geographically informed person must understand the human imprint on the physical environment. Many of the important issues facing modern society are the result of human modifications of the physical environment. Some of these modifications are intended and positive; others unintended and negative. These changes have political, economic, and social implications at all scales, from the global to local.
Therefore, Standard 14 contains these themes: Modification of the Physical Environment, The Use of Technology, and Consequences for People and Environments.
To survive, people depend on the physical environment. They adapt and modify it to suit their changing needs to meet life’s necessities. In the process, they bring knowledge and technology to bear on physical systems. Alterations to the environment have brought economic prosperity to some areas at some times and created environmental crises in others. Resulting modifications that vary in scope, scale, and duration often place enormous demands on the capacity of physical systems to absorb and accommodate such changes. Contrast the benign long-term consequences of terracing hillsides to grow rice for food with the dramatic depletion of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. Because of these significant spatial and temporal variations in impact, students must understand both the potential benefits and costs of changes to an environment.
Understanding global interdependence begins with awareness of the continuous modification of Earth to meet human wants and needs. When successful, the relationship between people and their environment is adaptive in the short- and long-term; when modifications are excessive or inappropriate, the relationship is fractured. Increasingly, students will be required to make decisions about connections between human needs and the physical environment.
Students must understand the consequences their actions have on the physical environment and make informed, sustainable choices as they modify the current physical environment. Understanding these themes enables students to see how human actions modify the physical environment and set those changes in a local to global context that ensures sustainability.
