Summary

The principles of hydrology can be understood through direct observations. You, yourself, can make most of these observations. You do not need to rely on complicated algorithms or even, for that matter, someone telling you what is true.

Go out and look for yourself, keeping in mind water flows downhill and it goes somewhere. Keeping track of where water is going is often a first step in examining environment issues.

Understanding the basic principles of hydrology is an important start to understanding environmental issues. For any specific issue involving water volume or flow, you might be able to identify management proposals that are incomplete because they do not follow water fully through its cycle. Often examples of these inadequately designed proposals simply push a problem further downstream or underground.

Guide to Understanding the Principles of Environmental Management 26

Chapter 3

Conservation of mass or

everything goes somewhere

Life plays Tetris with elements, and creates our reality.

—nebulaspage.org We think there is color, we think there is sweet, we think there is bitter,

but in reality there are atoms and a void.

—DEMOCRITUS, C. 460–C. 370 BC In this chapter, we provide an introduction (we presume a refresher) to the core set of concepts critical to understanding the big, sticky environmental and natural resource problems of today. We describe the core set of chemicalelements and molecules from which life and thus our natural world derives. We show how these elements conserve–neither increasing nor decreasing mass –though they may transform and change physical state (gas, liquid, and solid). We introduce these concepts because influencing or controlling where these elements go lies at the core of environmental management.

The key chemical ingredients of life, the chemical elements (atoms) that make up the building blocks that constitute all life, are also among the simplest and most abundant in the universe. But their abundance and hence relative availability does not predispose them to assemble into the components of life. To use an analogy, you may have all the ingredients for a cake, but just tossing them together does not make the cake. The recipe is important –they need to be assembled in the right proportions and the right order for success. This is where chemistry merges into biology.

© IWA Publishing 2021. A Guide to Understanding the Fundamental Principles of Environmental Management. It Ain’t Magic: Everything Goes Somewhere

Authors: Andy Manale and Skip Hyberg doi: 10.2166/9781789060997_0027

Although the ingredients may be abundant, they are not unlimited. The atoms of each chemical element in this world, the physical world in which we live, are of a set number. Except through processes best described and explained by nuclear physics, they cannot be made nor eliminated. In every reaction involving these chemical elements, mass is conserved. The number of atoms of each chemical element that existed before a reaction exists after the transformation has occurred. For our purposes in our day-to-day world, the total number of atoms of a chemical element (say hydrogen or carbon or any other element in our natural world (see the periodic table of chemical elements) that exists is finite (Wise, 2013). You can, if you had the proper equipment and nearly infinite time, count each atom. Atoms connected (or bonded) to other atoms create molecules. Like the atoms, these molecules are finite – they can be counted. Were you to recombine atoms into different molecules or separate them into individual atoms, the original number of atoms of the chemical element will always be the same. This is the most fundamental and important principle of chemistry. This principle is a touchstone we can use to understand the world that we experience. Much of what occurs in environmental management is managing the chemistry to support the biology.

How is this concept important for environmental management? The answer is simple: it is key to understanding and resolving particular environmental or natural resource problems without inadvertently creating new problems that then have to be resolved – everything goes somewhere. In this and the subsequent chapters, we will provide many examples illustrating this fact.

Not all atoms or molecules can interact with other atoms or molecules to create new combinations. They have to be reactive under the conditions in which they exist. An element may be in a form that is not reactive (i.e.,inert) because it exists alone or in combination with another atom in a way that requires large amounts of energy to separate. When the atoms of a chemical element (or a molecule containing more than one chemical element) are non-reactive, they do not combine with the atoms of a different chemical element. Hence, the reactivity of the atom of one chemical element can depend upon what chemical element is its partner.

On the other hand, an atom or molecule that is reactive may visibly change upon contact with another reactive molecule such that it changes its physical state (changes from a solid to a liquid or a liquid to a gas or vice versa). For example, add vinegar (acetic acid) to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and the two different sets of molecules will react, transforming into a third set of chemicals [see the chemical equation below]. The bubbles that form indicate that the carbon in the baking soda (a solid) has been transformed into carbon dioxide, a gas.

Remember that the total number or mass of a chemical element stays the same after the reaction as before, as proven by adding up the individual atoms before and after the reaction.

NaHCO3 (baking soda,solid)+HC2H3O2 (vinegar,liquid)

NaC2H3O2 (sodium acetate,solid)+H2O (water,liquid)+CO2 (gas) Guide to Understanding the Principles of Environmental Management 28

There were five hydrogen atoms (H), three carbon atoms (C), five oxygen atoms (O), and one sodium atom (Na) present before the reaction. After the reaction, the exact same number are present, though in different forms and states. Mass has been conserved. As illustrated by the earlier example, the atoms of a chemical element may change state when it combines with the atoms of other chemical elements. This changing of state along with chemical transformation underlies the dynamic nature of the basic elements of life. Understanding this is critical to the effective management of natural resources.

3.1 THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS THAT COMPRISE