Motivations for 12.000

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The Coming Food Crisis Global food security is
stretched to the breaking point, and Russia's
fires and Pakistan's floods are only making a bad
situation worse.
http//www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/26/t
he_coming_food_crisis?page0,1
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Terrascope Guiding Principles

• The Earth system provides a context for learning
  basic science and engineering concepts
• Students put those concepts to use in creative
  ways to understand the interdependency of
  physical, chemical, and biological processes that
  shape our planet
• Students explore how these concepts may be used
  to design protocols to ensure a sustainable
  environment
• Program emphasizes both theory and practice, and
  puts a premium on active learning

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Terrascope Structure
First Semester

• Solving Complex Problems--Mission 2xxx

Second Semester

• 1.016
• Terrascope Field Experience (Spring Break)
• Terrascope Radio

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Solving Complex Problems

• Multidisciplinary, project-based learning
  experience
• Students work toward a solution to a deceptively
  simple problem related to Earths environment
• Each years theme is different and referred to as
  Mission XXXX, where XXXX refers to the
  graduation year of the class involved

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Solving Complex Problems--Motivation

• To build in you the capacity to tackle the
  big
• problems that confront society
• To encourage you to take charge of the learning
• process
• To show you how to do independent
• research, to evaluate the quality of
  information
• sources, and to synthesize different
  information
• streams

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Solving Complex Problems--Motivation

• To encourage you to think about optimal
  solutions rather than correct solutions
• To help you learn how to work effectively as
• part of a team
• To improve your communication skills using two
• media the web site and the formal oral
• presentation
• To convince you of your potential!!

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Past Missions

• Develop a viable plan for the exploration of Mars
  with the aim of finding evidence for life
• Design permanent, manned, underwater research
  laboratories and develop detailed research plans
  for the first six months of their operation
• Design the most environmentally sensitive
  strategy for hydrocarbon resource extraction from
  the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and determine
  whether or not the value of the resource exceeds
  its financial and environmental cost

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Past Missions

• To develop strategies for developing countries in
  the Pacific basin to cope with tsunami hazards
  and disasters. Due to the unique needs of each
  country, we specifically focused on developing
  plans for Peru and Micronesia.
• To develop a plan for the reconstruction of New
  Orleans and the management of the Mississippi
  River and the Gulf coast. The reconstruction of
  New Orleans and the management of the Mississippi
  River and the Gulf coast.

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Past Missions

• To develop strategies to deal with the collapse
  of the global fisheries and the general health of
  the oceans
• To develop a plan to ensure the availability of
  fresh clean water for western North America for
  the next 100 years.
• Propose an integrated global solution to the
  rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 that will stabilize
  concentrations at an economically viable and
  internationally acceptable level.

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Subject Structure

• Problem divided into approximately ten tasks
  students divided into teams
• Each team assigned a Teaching Fellow, Alumni
  Mentors, and Disciplinary Mentors
• Four meeting styles
• Presentations on methodology
• Case-study discussions
• Team workshops
• Coordination meetings

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Subject Deliverables

• Each student develops a personal wiki
• Each team will communicate through wiki-based
  structure
• Each class describes and justifies its overall
  plan in a web site
• Each class explains the design in a two-hour
  presentation before a panel of experts and a
  general audience

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Mission 2011
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Mission 2012
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What I have learned is that passion, along with
curiosity, drives science. Passion is the
mysterious force behind nearly every scientific
breakthrough. Perhaps its because without it you
might never be able to tolerate the huge amount
of hard work and frustration that scientific
discovery entails.For the next four years
you will get to poke around the corridors of your
college, listen to any lecture you choose, work
in a lab. The field of science you fall in love
with may be so new it doesnt even have a name
yet. You may be the person who constructs a new
biological species, or figures out how to stop
global warming, or aging. Maybe youll discover
life on another planet. My advice to you is this
Dont settle for anything less.Nancy
Hopkins, a professor of biology at M.I.T., has
been teaching since 1973.Extracted from OP-ED
contribution in New York Times, September 5 2009
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Subject Grading
Individual performance (30) Team performance
(30) Class accomplishment (40)
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Wikis

• Share files in teams, class
• Avoid large attachments (please!)
• All files online
• Set permissions - who can read, edit
• Know about others work
• Avoid doubling up, missing topics
• Get good quality writing early
• Youll be happy later, we promise

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Wikis - structure

• One wiki
• One section per team
• All read, team read/write
• One section per student inside team
• All read, student read/write

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Wiki - requirements

• Each student
• Keep ongoing journal as a wiki page
• Ideas, progress, problems
• One or two paragraphs
• UPDATE EVERY WEEK!!!!
• Each team
• Write research online, different pages per topics
• Show progress every week

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Mission 2014

• Your mission is to design a plan that will
  produce and distribute enough food to feed the
  planet over the next century, while ensuring that
  efficiency and equity are maximized with minimal
  disruption to the environment.

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In 2009, gt 1 billion people went undernourished.
Undernourishment tracks with poverty--not
necessarily with lack of food.
Nature v. 466, p. 546-547
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The number of hungry people had been dropping
steadily for decades until the food price crisis
in 2008 reversed the trend.
Population growth is slowing and overall
availability of calories per person is rising.
Producing enough food is possible, but not
without sapping other resources, like water.
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It is possible, but likely not advisable to
nearly double the amount of arable land--Most of
it in Latin America and Africa.
Need to do more and use less. Increased public
investment in agricultural research is crucial
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Phosphate-based fertilizers have helped grow Ag
in the past century, but supplies are
limited. Phosphate is often THE limiting
nutrient to plant growth Possible that reserves
will vanish within the century if growth
continues at 3 per year Phosphate shortage MORE
important than oil shortage?
Phosphate mining generates 10s of billions of
dollars annually
In the case of some finite resources, such
as oil, alternatives can be found. But there are
currently no substitutes for phosphates.
Nature v. 461, p. 716-718
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• Global food production is increasing but farming
  systems remain unchanged, undermining long-term
  productivity.
• Immediate need to evaluate the impact of
  different farming systems--on more than just
  yield and productivity-based grounds.
• Current monitoring focuses on narrow criteria
  that are region-specific, not global.
• Does the practice
• Produce greenhouse gasses
• use space efficiently
• limit pesticides
• limit runoff
• maximize yield

We need a global system to assess and compare
farming practices.
The structure would be similar to that of the
Human Genome Project in which hundreds of
scientists at dozens of sequencing centres
worldwide harmonized their work while maintaining
their independence and specialized focus.
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In Mozambique, 13 people were killed and 150
arrested in riots resulting from a 30 hike bread
prices. What alters bread prices? drought
flooding fires commodity traders driving up
prices
Overall food prices on the global market have
increased 5 since July.
Their food security is excessively dependent on
food imports whose prices are increasingly high
and volatile.
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• Climate change could change the way plants are
  pollinated and how crops are irrigated, which
  will affect food security
• plants flowering before bees are awake for the
  season
• erratic rainfall leads to drought, flood, and fire

"We are getting to a point where we are getting
more water, more rainy days, but it's more
variable, so it leads to droughts and it leads to
floods,"
Non-irrigated crops are most severely hit 66 in
Asia 94 in Africa
http//news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Flooded-farm-land-so
uthern-Punjab-Pakistan-Eight-million-people-Pakist
an
http//content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse
/post/2010/09/climate-change-threatens-bees-flower
s-food/1
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Mission 2014

• Recent studies by the the UN Food and Agriculture
  Organization suggest that the world will need at
  least 70 more food by 2050 and will have to
  produce it on less land.
• Fertilizer and pesticide use is rapidly
  increasing
• Climate change and patterns of precipitation are
  changing our ability to grow crops

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Mission 2014

• Enhanced agriculture means greater environmental
  impact including increased energy use, greenhouse
  gas production, reliance on pest management,
  nutrient run-off, biodiversity loss from land
  conversion and monocultures, soil loss, and
  overall water usage. We must utilize advanced
  cropping techniques, and possibly even an
  entirely new approach to agriculture, in order to
  mitigate those impacts.

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Mission 2014

• Recently, fisheries' experts have warned that
  three quarters of the worlds fish stocks are in
  distress and nearing collapse, all the while
  overall marine ecosystems are rapidly
  deteriorating, making it more difficult for them
  to bounce back even if fishing were stopped.
  Given that fish provide more than 2.9 billion
  people with at least 15 per cent of their average
  animal protein intake, an contribute more than 50
  per cent of total animal protein in many small
  island countries, the collapse of the fisheries
  will have a huge impact.

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Important Questions to Address

• What are the consequences of doing nothing?
• Is access to food and clean water a basic human
  right?

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Class Structure

• We will present possible team topics and allow
  you to self-organize
• Each of you will be assigned to a team, and each
  team will be assigned at least one upperclass
  teaching fellow (UTF), a library liaison, and
  multiple alumni mentors
• Each team will be responsible for proposing to
  the class one or more options for its assigned
  part of the solution
• Teams will work independently and will be
  responsible for their own solutions, although
  mentors and volunteer faculty resources may be
  called upon as sounding boards.

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Important Contacts

• Sam Bowring sbowring_at_mit.edu
• Seth Burgess sburgess_at_mit.edu

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First Assignment (Due this Friday by 2 PM)

• Do wealthy countries buy farmland in poor
  countries? Should this be allowed under
  international law?
• What country has the most number of people
  threatened by chronic hunger?
• Is there a conflict between growing biofuels and
  feeding the world?
• Do you think we should do more as a species to
  limit population growth?
• Why are crop subsidies an issue for food
  security?
• Send me a brief email (sbowring_at_mit.edu) with
  your answers

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Meeting Places

• Class will meet in three different places, so
  consult the Syllabus page before each class
  meeting to see where you will go
• THIS FRIDAY WE MEET in 3-270
• http//web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2014/

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