jungle
Photo taken on January 19, 2012
Piece #2
Title: Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Artist: Thomas Cole
Date: 1828
Medium: oil on canvas
Questions for piece #2
1.The renewable natural resources that are visible in this work are: sunlight, wave energy, and geothermal energy.
2.The intermediate natural resources visible in this piece are: fresh water, forest products, and soils.
3.The fields of study that could be represented in this piece are: environmental science, biology, chemistry, atmospheric science, geology, archaeology, anthropology, and ecology.
4.The artist’s viewpoint from this painting would probably be ecocentric. This is because in the painting, there are both living and nonliving things as an ecological system. Thomas Cole seems to value entire species, communities, and ecosystems with the amount of nature in this piece. Like in the previous painting, the fact that there are also no humans in the painting shows his holistic approach to preserving these systems.
5.The human influence index seems to be extremely low in this painting. In fact, the landscape seems to be virtually untouched by humans.
6.In this painting, energy flow follows the basic definition: it can be interpreted as a system that “receives inputs of energy, process and transform that energy while cycling matter internally, and produce a variety of outputs that can feed into other ecosystems” (“Essential Environment). In this particular case, producers like plants and trees produce food through photosynthesis, primary customers like grasshoppers or other insects feed on producers, secondary consumers like fish eat those primary consumers, and tertiary consumers like a tiger for example eat those secondary consumers. Then the detitivores or decomposers like water mold or crayfish from this river feed on the nonliving organic matter and they close the cycle by returning the nutrients to the soil or water column for later use.
7.This particular painting would be considered a tropical rainforest. It follows the characteristics of a tropical rainforest through its: warmer than average temperature year-round, greater biodiversity, heavy rainfall, lush vegetation, damp interiors, and several species of insects, birds, amphibians, etc.
8.This painting can give a good description of the carbon cycle. Due to the significant amount of plants and algae present in the painting, we can say that these producers pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and out of the surface of the water to use in photosynthesis. The autotrophs and heterotrophs that consume these plants/producers use the carbohydrates produced in photosynthesis to fuel their respiration and structural growth. The carbon is then released back into the atmosphere and into the waters as carbon dioxide.
9.(in notebook)
10.There really does not seem to be any signs of succession or human disturbance in this landscape. The community of species living here seems to be thriving. The only form of succession that is not really evident in the painting but is possible is the natural process of succession in ecological systems. This river eventually undergoes succession as algae, microbes, and plants grow, gradually filling the body of water with organic matter. Additional organic matter and sediment is acquired through streams and runoff, and it can eventually fill in to become a bog or a terrestrial system.
Reference
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