CONTENT STANDARD G:

An important building block in the foundation of environmental literacy is an understanding of the processes and systems that comprise the environment. In addition, environmental literacy depends on an understanding of human processes and systems and their influence on the environment. The guidelines under this theme begin with overarching ideas that are common to the search for knowledge about natural and human systems. Then separate guidelines are specified for the study of natural systems and human systems.

UNDERSTANDING THE ENVIRONMENT:
Basic concepts and approaches

THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING

• Science is a social process of building understanding that is ongoing and changing.
• Scientific understanding is built and revised in certain ways.
• Scientific understanding has limits.

UNIFYING CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES

• Systems.
• Interdependence.
• Change and dynamic balance.

KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS
Knowledge of processes and systems

• Basic insights about the functioning of natural systems (e.g., change, disturbance, recovery, humans are part of the environment, complexity, feedback, and hierarchy, causes and consequences of variability and randomness).
• Physical processes within and among the earth's physical systems: the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere.
• Individuals, populations, and communities.
• Ecosystems -- the interactions of communities of plants, animals, fungi, protists and bacteria with the other components of the physical environment.
• Ecosystem function (e.g., biotic and abiotic limits to growth, size, and distribution of populations, sources and importance of energy, and transfer and energy flow through living systems, cycling of water, nutrients, and materials).
• Understanding of human dependence on the environment.
• Understanding of humans as an ecological variable.

KNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS

• Understanding of a range of aspects of environmental issues.
• Understanding of what shapes individual and group behavior toward the environment, including knowledge of different cultures' perceptions of humans and the environment.
• Knowledge of human cultural activities and their environmental influence, including the relationships between resources and societies and the environmental impact of global developments.
• Knowledge of how governments make and enforce environmental laws.
• Awareness of inequity.