Mathematics & Environment

8/10/2019 Mathematics & Environment

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Presented By : Mrunank V. Gajbhiye, Class-IX th AR.S. Mundle English School, Wardha Road, Nagpur


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Mathematics plays a key role inenvironmental studies, modelling, etc. Basicmathematics - calculus, percents, ratios,graphs and charts, sequences, sampling,averages, a population growth model,variability and probability - all relate tocurrent, critical issues such as pollution, the

availability of resources, environmental clean-up, recycling, chlorofluorocarbon(CFC), andpopulation growth.


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We see a diversity of waves in our everyday experience . Among this a typeof water wave known as the solitary wave found by Korteweg and de Vriesin 1895 are often initiated by mid-ocean earthquakes, but also susceptible

To creation by human error, similar waves propagate across oceans at thespeed of a commercial jet and cause devastation when they collide withsolid shore. The mathematical theory of this water waves helped us tounderstand and protect our environment, but its insights have also had asignificant impact on technological development. Although the solitary

wave is now well understood, other water waves still have mysteriouseffects on our environment and remain objects of active mathematicalresearch.


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The health and welfare of Earth relies in large part on the ability toaccurately understand and interpret mathematical environmental data incritical areas, such as pollution, global warming, recycling, population

growth, and weather predicting. Mathematics plays the Key Role inanalyzing and interpreting environmental data.


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Mathematics plays the key role to deal with uncertainty in making environmentaldecisions, focusing on some of the interlocking environmental problems of today:(1) Global Warming;

(2) Biodiversity and Genetic diversity (loss of species);and(3)Impending losses of resources (land, energy, clean air, water).


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Global environmental problems have local and regional causes andconsequences, such as, linkages between photosynthetic dynamics at theleaf level, regional shifts in forest composition, and global changes inclimate and the distribution of greenhouse gases. The fundamental

problem is relating processes that are operating on very different scales ofspace and time. Mathematical methods provide the only way to tacklesuch problems.


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It was a mathematician, JosephFourier (1768-1830), who coinedthe term Greenhouse Effect".

That this term, so commonlyused today to describe humaneffects on the global climate,originated with a mathematicianpoints to the insights thatmathematics can offer into

environmental problems.Three articles in the November2010 issue of theNotices of the

American Mathematical Societyexamine ways in whichmathematics can contribute to

understanding environmentaland ecological issues.


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Some special characteristics are shared by many mathematical models ofenvironmental phenomena:1) the relevant variables (e.g., levels of persistent contamination in a lake) are notknown precisely but evolve over time with some degree of randomness;

2) both the short-term behavior (e.g., day-by-day interaction of toxins in the lake)and longer-term behavior (cumulative effects of repeated winter freezes) areimportant;and3) the system is subject to outside influences from human behavior, such asindustrial pollution and environmental regulations.

Concerning the latter characteristic, ideas from a branch of mathematics calledControl Theory, which studies how systems are affected when they are strategicallyinfluenced from the outside. Interventions for environmental problems caninfluence ecological systems dramatically but are often neglected in development

planning. Control Theoryoffers methods for determining an appropriate level ofintervention and for evaluating its effects. For example we should look at the use ofsolar panels to run a desalination plant. A model using ideas from Control Theorycan guide optimal use of the plant in the sense of maximizing the expected volumeof fresh water produced.


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Galileo :"Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean universe -which stands continuously open to our gaze, but whichcannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehendthe language in which it is written. It is written in thelanguage of mathematics, and its characters are triangles,circles and other geometric figures, without which it is

humanly impossible to understand a single word of it;without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth."


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To save environment we should use Ecotechnology( =technology that works like nature and works with nature)and for sophisticated ecotechnology Mathematics will help

better as we need to pay attention to whats already knownpermaculture, systems ecology and so on.


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Some people claim that the discoveries made by scientists contribute to thedestruction of the natural environment. Professor Louis Gross at theUniversity of Tennessee shows that the case can equally be made for theopposite. He is a mathematical ecologist, applying advanced mathematics to

the problems of managing the natural environment to maximise the benefitsto the whole natural system. The pressures of human life have an effect on therest of nature and by understanding how the relationships work, everyone andeverything might get some of what they want.It turns out that these problems are not trivial mathematically. The flowpattern of a river might have a linear relationship with the rainfall in a

particular place, but what happens when the river bursts its banks? Or if itrains after a period of drought? And how do you know what the rainfall isgoing to be anyway?Not only are many natural processes essentially stochastic they also requirenonlinear algebra to describe them. Getting meaningful results is a hugemathematical and computational exercise. This is why Gross, like many

scientists from other, more conventional fields, has turned his attention to themathematics of the natural world it has some of the most interestingmathematical problems. Mathematical biology has achieved a high profilethrough cell biology and genomics, but at the scale of the whole ecosystem it isstill in its emerging stage and the field has many opportunities to do newthings.


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Mathematics & Environment