How to Contextualize our Effects on the Environment

“Forests and How We Can Protect Them” Wood is essential to human life; it provides structure to our houses and paper for our education. Most wood we use does come from forests, learning about these forests can help us better understand how the wood we use is grown, processed, and how its harvest affects the environment. There are three types of forests; natural forests, semi-natural forests, and plantation forests. Each of these have their benefits and drawbacks that determine their efficiency, the basic explanations of these forests can be seen in the following image (Lesson 8). Short rotation cropping is another huge part of forest harvesting as it is an efficient way to grow genetically superior trees and harvest them. What separates this method from the others is that these trees are grown to produce and other energy sources. The sustainability of short rotation crops is much higher in comparison but can be hard to maintain due to a variety of factors (Zalesny).  Plantation for...

 In our day to day life we often don't think too hard about the things we use and what happens to them after we are done using them. To use we are simply just completing our tasks and going about our lives, but there is always so much more to it. The resources used to create the things we use from start to finish of their usage can fall into three categories. Non renewable resources which are more of a one and done situation some do not reform on the earth or it can take a very long time for this to happen. Renewable resources renew quickly and can be used over and over again. Lastly is bio renewable resources which are living in organisms that also renew themselves through various processes (Lesson 1). My hope is that this blog post can help you, citizens of Minnesota, open your eyes about many tough consumer situations we face today and how we can make mindful decisions going into the future.  Global consumption of metals and other resources is often something that we imagin...