HEI: Land and Water
How has human interactions affected the land and water?
HEI on Land
HEI stands for Human Environmental Organizations, which means, simply how humans affect the environment. What does HEI have to do with land? A lot. Humans have grown more and more modern with each passing year. We have built skyscrapers that reach higher than any bird could ever fly. It seems great, and let's be honest, the skyscrapers make beautiful sightseeing, but it's destroying the earth. The concrete jungle has been conquering what should be fertile land for agriculture. The stone and steel suffocate the earth's topsoil, killing it slowly. Soil has living organism so it is able to die (just in case you were wondering). Our beautiful and monumental skyscrapers that we built, a symbol of becoming a modernized place, are killing what should be a beautiful landscape.
HEI on Water
Ok, so now we know that big cities such as Dallas, New York, and Chicago are killing off our soil with the concrete jungles. But, what does that have to do with HEI on water? Again, mostly everything. In the big cities, when it rains, where does the water go to? It certainly doesn't get absorbed by the soil since there's concrete over it. The concrete can't absorb the water which runs off somewhere else, then it's gone. The water that's being wasted could be used to refill our aquifers and we could use the clean water because our lakes and bodies are currently drying out (that lake in California could be gone in our lifetimes). But, ever since humans have build magnificent cities, it seems like it's been both affecting our land and our precious water, which is also the basic need for survival. It can be that becoming modern can kill the land we live on.
Conclusion
Now, I'm not saying that everybody's ok with cities killing the earth, but if this continues, places like the US could run out of water from lakes. Even the ones right here in the Dallas area are drying up. And also, the cities make it almost impossible to grow crops for ourselves. If building concrete jungles continue at the rate it is now, then we'll run out of space to grow crops and it'll cause the need to depend on other countries for crops.
Questions
1. How has human life affected earth?
2. Cities are taking over nature, how do you feel most people think about that? Why?
Julie Kim
Killough, 3rd