Today, we hiked up Sierra Negra and then the majority of the other students went on a bike ride to the wall of tears. Sierra Negra is a shield volcano and it was interesting to hear that it can erupt at any time and there is no efficient way to predetermine when an eruption will occur. Since I opted to stay back from the bike ride to the wall of tears, I read some articles that Tait had provided to me about freshwater management and waste management. Below are the reflections of that:
"Waste management blueprint" assignment -
The topic of waste management has been brought up a few times during our stay in the Galapagos Islands. I did not know that people had partnered to make strides to resolve or at least lighten this issue. I think that the overall goal to have an integrated waste management and recycling system by the year 2020 was a great goal to have. There were also smaller goals and actions that needed to be done in order for this goal to be accomplished. As of today, early in 2020, I do not see a great waste management system. Yes, there are three bins that you can put waste into, but single stream recycling is not enough. The only form of good recycling I found was in the airport in Guayaquil. There, the recycling bins were more specific with a plastics and paper bin. I think that it is interesting to see that Santa Cruz has such higher numbers in a lot of the categories when compared to the other two largely inhabited islands, San Cristobal and Isabela Island. I understand that Santa Cruz is the most populated out of these islands, but to have numbers so high per person is interesting. I wonder if the partners had actually accomplished their goal or if this project is still a work in progress.
"Freshwater reality" assignment -
Today during our hike, Tait had mentioned that the brighter the water the more polluted it is. When we look at the ocean here, we see that the water is a bright, light blue. Although that water is salt water and not freshwater, I was interested to see if the two had any overlapping causes of degradation of the quality. This article discussed that the islands of the Galapagos are all facing different problems in regard to their water abundance or quality. It was interesting to see that all of these islands are so different even though they are in close proximity to one another. I agree that integrated waste management systems are very important when dealing with an issue of contamination and pollution. With this information about the pollution that occurs on all of the inhabited islands, I was able to draw the conclusion that the freshwater and saltwater did have an overlapping contributor of pollution and waste. Saltwater becomes brighter due to the fact that the organisms can no longer survive in such quality of water. Freshwater becomes less usable with an increase in pollution. I would think that legislation and education would be the best option for solving these issues surrounding pollution.
The presentation tonight was given by Taylor and Evan. Their topic of discussion was on the Texaco/Chevron oil industry. Some interesting points that was made was that there were 18.5 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the amazon and that Chevron did not need to pay for all of the harm that they had caused to the indigenous people of ecuador due to bribery and bias from the ecuadorian side when dealing with court information and rulings.
"Waste management blueprint" assignment -
The topic of waste management has been brought up a few times during our stay in the Galapagos Islands. I did not know that people had partnered to make strides to resolve or at least lighten this issue. I think that the overall goal to have an integrated waste management and recycling system by the year 2020 was a great goal to have. There were also smaller goals and actions that needed to be done in order for this goal to be accomplished. As of today, early in 2020, I do not see a great waste management system. Yes, there are three bins that you can put waste into, but single stream recycling is not enough. The only form of good recycling I found was in the airport in Guayaquil. There, the recycling bins were more specific with a plastics and paper bin. I think that it is interesting to see that Santa Cruz has such higher numbers in a lot of the categories when compared to the other two largely inhabited islands, San Cristobal and Isabela Island. I understand that Santa Cruz is the most populated out of these islands, but to have numbers so high per person is interesting. I wonder if the partners had actually accomplished their goal or if this project is still a work in progress.
"Freshwater reality" assignment -
Today during our hike, Tait had mentioned that the brighter the water the more polluted it is. When we look at the ocean here, we see that the water is a bright, light blue. Although that water is salt water and not freshwater, I was interested to see if the two had any overlapping causes of degradation of the quality. This article discussed that the islands of the Galapagos are all facing different problems in regard to their water abundance or quality. It was interesting to see that all of these islands are so different even though they are in close proximity to one another. I agree that integrated waste management systems are very important when dealing with an issue of contamination and pollution. With this information about the pollution that occurs on all of the inhabited islands, I was able to draw the conclusion that the freshwater and saltwater did have an overlapping contributor of pollution and waste. Saltwater becomes brighter due to the fact that the organisms can no longer survive in such quality of water. Freshwater becomes less usable with an increase in pollution. I would think that legislation and education would be the best option for solving these issues surrounding pollution.
The presentation tonight was given by Taylor and Evan. Their topic of discussion was on the Texaco/Chevron oil industry. Some interesting points that was made was that there were 18.5 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the amazon and that Chevron did not need to pay for all of the harm that they had caused to the indigenous people of ecuador due to bribery and bias from the ecuadorian side when dealing with court information and rulings.
Expansion of knowledge
Oil extraction
The article, “The metabolism of oil extraction: A bottom-up approach applied to the case of Ecuador,” discusses an expansion of the topic that was discussed in the presentation of January sixth. Taylor and Evan discussed the conflict with oil extraction in Ecuador. In this article, the authors talk about using a bottom-up approach in order to extract oil. In response to Ecuador’s projected increase in oil extraction, shown in figure one, the authors explained how to deal with this scenario. The overall suggestion was to work to have more efficient extraction methods so that only quality oil is extracted because low quality oil requires more of it to be cost beneficial. Figure two and three show the differences in oil types when extracting oil. The authors explain that Ecuador has been shifting to heavy oil in order to comply with the demands of its communities.
Figure one: A graph of projected oil extraction over an eleven year time period.
Figure two: A graph of the different types of oil that is used in Ecuador.
Figure three: A projection of oil usage with the changing societal needs.
Wall of Tears
Since on this day the group visited the Wall of Tears, I decided to do more research about the history of this memorial. The stones that made up the wall were all volcanic rock which were very heavy. This was done to exhaust the prisoners and if the prisoners were to perish while making the wall, they were buried where they fell. There is not an exact number of prisoners that died during its construction, but it is estimated that thousands fell victim to the cruel punishments of the Isabela Island penal colony. Image one shows a strip of the wall of tears.
Image one: an image of a section of the wall of tears
Works Cited
Devotor, Devotorhttps, Devotor, & Devotor. (2020, February 16). The Historical Wall of Tears in Ecuador. Retrieved from https://charismaticplanet.com/wall-tears-ecuador/
Parra, R., Felice, L. J. D., Giampietro, M., & Ramos-Martin, J. (2018). The metabolism of oil extraction: A bottom-up approach applied to the case of Ecuador. Energy Policy, 122, 63–74. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.07.017
Parra, R., Felice, L. J. D., Giampietro, M., & Ramos-Martin, J. (2018). The metabolism of oil extraction: A bottom-up approach applied to the case of Ecuador. Energy Policy, 122, 63–74. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.07.017