Introduction

Environmental Biology  is a free and open textbook that enables students to develop a nuanced understanding of today’s most pressing environmental issues. This text helps students grasp the scientific foundation of environmental topics so they can better understand the world around them and their impact upon it.  This book is a collaboration between various authors and organizations that are committed to providing students with high quality and affordable textbooks. Particularly, this text draws from the following open sources, in addition to new content from the editor, Joni Baumgarten:

• Biology by OpenStax is licensed under CC BY 3.0
• Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation by Tom Theis and Jonathan Tomkin, Editors, is licensed under CC BY 3.0
• Essentials of Environmental Science by Kamala Doršner is licensed under CC BY 4.0
• Environmental Biology, 1st ed. by Matthew R. Fisher is licensed under CC BY 4.0  Matthew R. Fisher is Biology Faculty at Oregon Coast Community College.

Special Note to Instructors:

Lecture slides for all chapters are available via Environmental Biology Lecture Slides.
Note: Currently these are from the first edition of the textbook. Updates to the slides are planned for June thru August, 2023.

Publication and on-going maintenance of this textbook is possible due to grant support from Open Oregon Education Resources. Every time that you use this textbook, please email the editor, Joni Baumgarten, and Open Oregon Educational Resources (jbaumgart1@brynmawr.edu and https://openoregon.org/contact/) and provide the course title and the number of students involved. This allows for the impact of this open textbook to be monitored, and hopefully, it justifies continued financial support for it.

Also, please check with the editor prior to adopting this textbook to see if any substantial revisions or additions are pending.

Major Updates, Spring 2023

The clone of the original textbook was created and edited by Joni Baumgarten between December, 2022 and March 15, 2023. The major changes are now complete. Minor editing to Chapters 8-10 may occur until April 1, 2023. The final completion of this edition will include more comprehensive updates to the “Chapter Resources” sections and questions, as well as the addition of new slide decks for teaching; completion is anticipated for September 1, 2023.

Updates include:

• The addition of “Section Goals” at the top of all sub-sections
• Reorganization of Chapter 1; Additional information added to the environmental ethics section; the addition of the section “Science in the Media”
• Additional detail added to Chapter 2
• Reorganization of Chapter 3
• Major changes in the structure of Chapter 4 and updates to the introduced ecological principles
• Reorganization of Chapter 5 (including renaming the chapter title and section titles) to highlight the connection between biodiversity and evolution
• Additional detail added to Chapter 6. Addition of a section: Pollution and Sustainability.
• Additional detail added to Chapter 7. Section 7.1 reworked to focus on water in the environment (some details moved to section 7.2). Section 7.2 reworked to focus on human use of water.
• Substantial detail added to Chapter 8. Sections 8.2 Global Food Systems and 8.4 Genetically Modified Crops added.
• Detail added to Chapter 9, including how specifically plant roots acquire nutrients from the soil, the topic of the Green Revolution, organic certification of products and additional details about specific practices associated with organic farming can be used to improve farm and ecosystem health even if a farm is not officially certified as organic.
• Substantial detail added to Chapter 10. Section 10.4 split into two sections.
• Substantial detail added to Chapter 11. Sections 11.4 and 11.5 added.