Environmental Biology

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain air pollution in terms of the main sources of pollutants, the impact, the management policies, and the steps that are being taken to bring back the ozone layer.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the basic needs of living things must have in order to survive and thrive including related laws, systems, cycles, and methods of study.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe economic and political factors that shape environmental policy including the current controversies and challenges.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain how matter and energy flow through ecosystems including the characteristics of major biomes, the effects of ecological disturbances, and the effects of humans on ecosystems.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain how crude oil, natural gas, and coal is used as energy sources including how they were developed, their impact on the economy, their advantages and disadvantages, and impact of related supply-side and demand-side energy policies.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the classes of environmental hazards for humans including their impact, the risk factors, the methods of risk assessment, and management strategies.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain global climate change including the related science, the evidence, the methods of evaluation, and the US and international response measures.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain chemical hazards including the toxicology, the methods of hazardous waste disposal, methods for cleaning up hazardous waste sites, and related policy.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain solid waste pollution including issues related to municipal solid waste and landfills, the effectiveness of reduction and recycling, and current and needed policy.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the use of nuclear power as an energy source including its historical development, its benefits and disadvantages, its basic science, and factors that impact its current and future use.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the major groups of pests, problems they cause, methods used to control them including federal and international policies for controlling pests and pesticides.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain the main schools of thought about the causes of demographic transition including how the factors relate to each other, the impact of development on fertility, the needs for sustainable actions, and potential strategies for improvement.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain models for how populations grow including potential limiting factors, types of interactions between species, theories of evolution, and impact of humans.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe use of renewable energy sources including the basic science of viable options, the advantages and disadvantages, and factors that impact renewable energy policy.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain how science is involved in sustainability strategies and stewardship of the earth's resources.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe soil parts, communities, and profiles as well as how soils are degraded and how they can be conserved.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain how science is involved in sustainability strategies and stewardship of the earth's resources.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to explain how humans are subject to natural laws and ecological processes including the relationship between income and fertility, the impact of population growth, the impact of unlimited use of natural resources, and factors that are used to predict future population trends.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe how agriculture relates to food security including historical transformations of farming, impact of genetically modified crops, causes of hunger and malnutrition, and needed changes in order to achieve sustainable agriculture systems.

This badge demonstrates the earner's ability to describe the value of natural ecosystems including consumptive and productive uses, the impact of various pressures on ecosystems, and ways that effective management can protect them.