ENVS 202 First Homework Assignment

Date Due: Thursday Jan 28

Turn in the Assignment via email into one of the following addresses:

Leslie (vanallen@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

Patrick (phurley@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

Tony (ecotone)@darkwing.uoregon.edu)

Important Information: Since the campus network allows student-to-student communication and since this network is part of the on campus learning infrastructure, students should make use of it. Past experience shows that students won't make use of it unless they are assigned to do so. You may make use of the classroom discussion group to discuss this assignment among yourselves.

For this homework assignment, you may work with 1 or 2 other students in class to complete it.

OPTIONAL

If you want to prepare a web page in response to this assignment that would be great. This is not required however.

Questions:

1. Give an overview of the utilization of the Colorado river over the last 60 years. Explain why the Colorado is such a precious resource for economic development in the West, the historical circumstances that lead to the construction of Hoover Dam and how the environmental movement really started with the issue of "who owns the Colorado River?". Finally, see if you can determine where the Colorado river used to end (pre 20th century) and where it ends now.

2. Go Here and take the Pop quiz. We don't care how many you get correct. However, of the questions there, explain which one had an answer that most surprised you and how should that answer affect our future policies?

3. In the year 2000, the world's population will be about 6 billion people. If the world's population continues to grow at the rate of 2% per year, what will the world population be in the year 3000?

4. The Following Table shows the population of Oregon Counties from The period of 1950 to 1995. You have just been giving a job as resource manager for the state of Oregon and you need to examine the population base as a function of county within the state. This is your first day on the job and your boss gives you a bunch of data to distill to answer the following questions:

• a) What would the projected population of Lane County be in the year 2010?

• b) What is the fastest growing county (in terms of percentage not raw population) in Oregon since 1960?

• c) Where are the regions of fastest and slowest growth in Oregon. To help you, here is the county map of Oregon:
  

• d) Compare the growth rates from 1970 to 1980 with those from 1980 to 1990 for Lane and Douglas counties. What do you see and do you have an explanation for this result? That is, was the growth rate the same between decades, higher, lower or what.

• e) Using the exponential growth tool determine the average growth rates from 1950-1995 for the following counties: Deschutes, Jackson, Lane Lincoln, Marion and Multnomah.

THE DATA

  County        1995     1990     1980       1970      1960    1950  

Baker        16471    15317     16134     14919     17295   16175
Benton       75235    70811     68211     53776     39165   31570
Clackamas   316428   278850    241919    166088    113038   86716
Clatsop      35372    33301     32489     28473     27380   30776
Columbia     41816    37557     35646     28790     22379   22967
Coos         62822    60273     64047     56515     54955   42265
Crook        16386    14111     13091      9985      9430    8991
Curry        21243    19327     16992     13006     13983    6048
Deschutes    94974    74958     62142     30442     23100   21812
Douglas      99906    94649     93748     71743     68458   54549
Gilliam       1861     1717      2057      2342      3069    2817
Grant         7976     7853      8210      6996      7726    8329
Harney        7075     7060      8314      7215      6744    6113
Hood River   18589    16903     15835     13187     13395   12749
Jackson     166060   146389    132456     94533     73962   58510
Jefferson    15969    13676     11599      8548      7130    5536
Josephine    71335    62649     58855     35746     29917   26452
Klamath      61043    57702     59117     50021     47475   42150
Lake          7421     7186      7532      6343      7158    6649
Lane        303426   282912    275226    213358    162890  125776
Lincoln      44347    38889     35264     25755     24635   21308
Linn        100130    91227     89495     71914     58867   54317
Malheur      27860    26038     26896     23169     22764   23223
Marion      255044   228483    204692    151309    120888  101401
Morrow        8922     7625      7519      4465      4871    4783
Multnomah   614104   583887    562640    556667    522813  471537
Polk         56678    49541     45203     35349     26523   26317
Sherman       1886     1918      2172      2139      2446    2271
Tillamook    23767    21570     21164     17930     18955   18606
Umatilla     64040    59249     58861     44923     44352   41703
Union        24948    23598     23921     19377     18180   17962
Wallowa       7535     6911      7273      6247      7102    7264
Wasco        22737    21683     21732     20133     20205   15552
Washington  370197   311554    245808    157920     92237   61269
Wheeler       1539     1396      1513      1849      2722    3313
Yamhill      75443    65551     55332     40213     32478   33484

5. Currently there seems to be some kind of discussion in this class about the value of journalism. Some students have taken extreme exception of my characterization of journalism. Okay, here is your chance to prove the professor wrong. Your assignment here is to identify what you consider to be a responsible piece of journalism on an environmental issue. This could be a newspaper article, an ON line magazine, a video tape of a News broadcast, whatever. Identify it and give it to the professor.

Here are the elements of a "responsible piece of journalism"

• The story is objective and does not draw a conclusion for the reader.
• The story reports a range of informed opinion on the matter and delivers those opinions in a way that isn't just some sound byte.
• The story contains the raw data about the issue and explains to the reader what the data is.

Good Luck!

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