Understanding Exponential Growth and Wildlife Corridor.

1. Approximately when was the bottle half full? 12pm
2. How much closer? 11:59
3. If you were one of the bacteria, when do you suppose you’d start to worry about overcrowding?

 A quarter to halfway full in the bottle. 1-2 min.

4. Would that leave you enough time to do anything about it?

If it kept replicating it did, no it would not.

5.      Did anything surprise you about these two parts? If so, what?

I was surprised at how fast the bottle filled up.

6. Why do you think people might have trouble or resistance to understanding exponential growth?

It becomes such an immense figure so fast, which can be hard to comprehend. People don’t want to think about the possibilities of how that could affect us.

7.Whenever you hear that something is growing by some percentage, or that something is growing steadily, what rule should you remember in order to understand the rate of growth? Explain this rule.

Rule of 70. 70 divided by the percentage of growth gives the doubling time (the amount it grows exponentially). 

8. “When our consumption of a resource (energy, for instance) grows steadily, the doubling time takes on an even scarier meaning.” What is that scarier meaning?

We use up more of the resources than ever before. 

9. “…if we keep increasing our energy consumption like this, we’ll use more energy in the next 25 years than we’ve produced _in all of history up till now._____________.”

10. “There are those who say we don’t need to worry about running out of oil, because there’s still lots of oil left in the ground. Experts believe that over the past 150 years we have used up about half the total oil on Earth. In other words, our oil supply “bottle” is still half full.” But if we keep doubling our population, what will happen?

We will consume all of the oil and there will be none left. 




Part Two:

For my corridor to help stop the habitat fragmentation of natural land and the impediments it places on the diversity of the area, I decided to build something to connect the Granite Dells above the highway (a bridge over crossing). The Granite Dells are a rocky outcropping of tan colored rocks that have a road slicing through the middle of them. It is a desert-like area with not much vegetation. I would build a rock bridge formation to connect both sides of the dells, using sculpted rocks and concrete, with natural grasses on top of the corridor bridge. The bridge would be made out of granite rock and it would have concrete running along the edges with grass along the sides to help obscure the concrete and make it look more natural. This process is all part of adaptive management.     

For this report, I chose to use the Ring-tailed Cat as my target species. Its binomial name is Bassariscus astutus.

My species needs a corridor for a couple of reasons. It is a threatened species. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says that, “The ringtail is legally trapped for fur in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas, where it is also caught incidentally in traps set for valuable fur-bearers such as foxes and raccoons. In recent years about 4,000 have been taken annually in Arizona, and about 1,000 in New Mexico. In Texas 45,000~50,000 ringtails were trapped each year from 1979-1985. As in the case with raccoons, the number of ringtails trapped for fur has declined since a peak in 1979, when approximately 135,000 pelts were sold. Ringtail fur is of poor quality (thin, non-durable, and subject to fading), and pelts have usually sold for less than $5 each although they have brought as much as $12. The justification for trapping ringtails for fur is weak, especially since in none of the states where trapping is legal is there sufficient knowledge of population levels and trends on which to base valid harvest regulations (Glatston, 1994). Threats to the ringtail include also automobiles (Glatston, 1994).” If the ring-tailed cat has the corridor to use and cross, it will have far of a less chance of getting hit by cars. The Ring-tailed cat can have up to four babies but two is most common amount (http://bigbearzoo.org/ringtail/), so they would benefit from a corridor because I would think it would help keep the babies safer, thus producing more offspring in the long run. This helps with maintaining a healthy birthrate for the species. Also with a road cutting through their core habitat it lessens the amount of space available to them and most like increases their inbreeding and it increases geographic isolation. If the Corridor is built is will hopefully increase the amount of genetic interchange between individuals in the population that would have not have had the opportunity without the corridor. Building the corridor in this area will help with the mitigation of the land that has been commercialized and prevent further harm around the temporal and spatial area.        

The design of my Wildlife Corridor is fairly simple. The bridge itself will be about 1000 feet wide and made of sculpted granite, concrete and natural grasses. It high enough up that that there will be little to no light pollution on the bridge and the Dells are also pretty good shelter from light pollution. I would put signs along the side of the road, warning people of the existence of the Corridor, hopefully to avoid any damaging edge effects. There is very little of my plan that doesn’t involve abiotic structures.   

This species is a rock-dwelling species, therefore the corridor will provide more nesting places for the animal and allow it to cross safely from one side to the other to find food and water. They are small, so I doubt they can travel very far at one time. They most likely will venture further into the rock outcroppings.

  

Works Cited.

"Bassariscus Astutus." (Ringtail). International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources., 18 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.

"Ringtail." Big Bear Alpine Zoo. Big Bear Alpine Zoo, 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.



Below is a drawing of my Wildlife Corridor. It includes the warning signs, concrete wall, natural grasses and granite rocks, with the road passing underneath.

 

Below is my poster for the Watchdog Campaign: