Ecosystem Transformations
Health Impacts
In The News
In the News 2
Terminology
100
These ecosystem transformations are occurring with increasing frequency and severity all over the world. They can dramatically impact the lives and livelihoods of the people affected by them, and are often deadly.
What are natural disasters
100
This health impact is highly sensitive to changes in environmental conditions including temperature, rainfall, deforestation, and dams. When it affects large numbers of people at one time, it makes headlines across the world and can incite fear.
What is infectious disease
100
As land use changes lead to increasing interactions between humans and wild animals, this disease occurred recently and resulted in over 28,000 reported cases and 11,000 deaths.
What is the Ebola outbreak
100
Prolonged and unusual drought conditions led to people storing water in open containers, creating the perfect breeding grounds for this event which was driven by globalization. This event was in the news when attendees at a large gathering were at risk of getting sick.
What is Zika virus outbreak
100
These 17 targets provide a framework through which planetary health can be understood and global progress can be measured through 2030. They are the second set of targets since 2000.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals.
200
This ecosystem transformation affects the quality of the air we breath and water we drink, and it can make us sick through a dose-response mechanism.
What is pollution
200
Global environmental changes including rapid urbanization and the destruction or pollution of local areas can significantly affect populations around the world through this 'invisible' health impact.
What is mental health
200
This US event is related to the effects and demands of urbanization and industrialization. Health impacts of this event include impaired cognition, behavioral disorders, hearing problems and delayed puberty in children; reduced fetal growth in pregnant women; and negatively affects everyone's hearts, kidneys and nerves.
What is Flint, Michigan Water Crisis
200
Powerful pesticide use is affecting this event, creating a risk for the future of human nutrition and the agricultural ecosystem. If this keeps happening, the produce and dairy sections at your local supermarket will look much emptier.
What is pollinator decline, bees dying.
200
This is the process of understanding how many things influence one another within a whole, as opposed to a more linear cause-effect model.
What is systems thinking
300
Industrialization, modernization and economic opportunity lead to this ecosystem transformation, which in turn causes health challenges related to water, violence and injury, noncommunicable diseases, unhealthy diets and physical inactivity, harmful use of alcohol and disease outbreaks.
What is urbanization
300
Air pollution, for example, is a widespread problem in urban and peri-urban areas across the globe, increasingly placing massive populations at risk for this group of health impacts.
What is non-communicable disease, chronic disease
300
The burden from the parasitic disease, schistosomiasis, got much worse after this construction project took place that was designed to allow for the expansion of agriculture. Sustainable development and systems thinking have lessened the burden of disease through introducing a predator upstream.
What is the Diama Dam, Senegal River Dam
300
This event has been in the news as it is causing massive increases in cardiopulmonary illnesses in the region where it is occurring.
What is Haze in SE Asia
300
There is growing concern that global environmental change is likely to be a major driver of THIS health-related measure over the coming century.
What is the Global Burden of Disease
400
This ecosystem transformation affects human health in two main ways: (1) by changing the severity or frequency of health problems, and (2) by creating unprecedented or unanticipated health problems or health threats in places where they have not previously occurred. This is the most frequently mentioned ecosystem transformation.
What is climate change
400
Global changes like climate change, pollinator declines, fishery and wildlife declines, and water shortages will pervasively affect this health impact. Much of the global burden of disease is related to the inadequate intake of this health impact.
What is nutrition
400
This aquatic event is particularly affecting people developing nations who rely on this resource for their food and livelihood. It is occurring as the result of population pressures, industrialization and climate change. The main health impact is malnutrition.
What is global fisheries collapse, fishery decline.
400
2016 was the hottest year on record, as was 2015 and 2014 before that. Major contributors to these increasing temperatures include the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land for agriculture and human expansion. These warming effects have resulted in this event making headlines, and this event will contribute to the triggering of larger feedback loops.
What is Arctic melt, glacial melt, 'Big Thaw'
400
This is the name for the field that explores health of human civilization and the natural systems on which it depends.
What is planetary health
500
This ecosystem transformation affects the health of people in their daily lives as the loss of this negatively impacts factors like nutrition, patterns of infectious disease and opportunities for medicinal drug discovery.
What is biodiversity
500
This health impact is caused by increasing global environmental changes, including the increasing incidence of natural disasters and resource scarcity, sometimes leading to conflict. It often most severely affects the most vulnerable populations.
What is human displacement
500
This event has been in the news as it escapes water filtration systems, absorbs toxins, and is ingested into the food chain. In 2015, Obama banned their use by cosmetics companies.
What is microplastic pollution
500
This event is due to rising sea temperatures caused by human activities, and is the result of the sea absorbing some of the excess CO2 in the earth's atmosphere. It has significant socioeconomic impacts as it affects things like tourism and food sources.
What is coral reef bleaching
500
This defines Earth's most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.
What is the Anthropocene
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