Ecology - sprawl field trip - Essay Example

Accordingly, this brief essay will consider but a few of these factors with relation to the field trip that was engaged upon by our class outing to the Sprawl site earlier in the semester. The first and most pressing ecological concern is the fundamental way that the Sprawl region and growth of infrastructure and Big Box retailers has fundamental changed the water runoff for the region.1 Although adding parking lots, interchanges, and large multiple thousand square foot warehouses is itself harmful to the ecology and environment of the given region, the particular region in question experiences these negative points in a compound sense due to the overlapping nature of how one big box retailer is practically side by side to another which is side by side to a large highway interchange.

This compound effect causes the drainage and water runoff of the region to be fundamentally changed in a highly negative way. Firstly, such a situation means that not only is water flow disrupted from its normal course but a high number of added pollutants are introduced into the water table as a result of the large number of parking lots that have been added. Although seemingly benign, parking lots serve as collection points for all manner of pollutants and disrupt the flow and absorption of water into the environment in question.

2 Due to the fact that cars leave all manner of fluids behind where they have been parked, it is conceivable for everything from trash associated with packaging from the store, to oil, to brake fluid, to transmission fluid, anti-freeze, and a host of other chemicals to collect on the tarmac and find their way into the water table once a healthy rain has washed over the area. Hence, the disruption of the water flow itself is but the first concern; the larger concern is concentric upon the fact that key pollutants are introduced with the presence of a number of parking lots and highway interchanges within the region.

3 Of course, the issue is further compounded by the topography of the region in question. Whereas a general dilution of these negative environmental aspects would be seen if the topography of the site were more elevated and allowed for a greater diffusion of these pollutants prior to reaching reservoirs of lower lying land, the fact of the matter is that Big Box retailers of course seek the “perfect site” which will invariably be located in a somewhat flat or low-lying region.4 This is generally the case due to the fact that the Big Box retailers, strip malls, and other such firms want to spend as little money as possible on site improvement and grading.

Hence, the ecological impact of this is the fact that the topography of the site and the presence of the pollutants readily find their way directly into the reservoirs and creeks/streams/rivers of the given site. The same can of course be said for the Sprawl site that was visited earlier in the semester. When one considers the map of the site and sees the presence of t