Environmental Systems and Societies · Topic 1: Foundation

ES1.2 — Systems

Environmental Systems and Societies · SL / HL · syllabus-mapped notes

1. Systems and the systems approach

   Systems, storages and flows, the diagram convention, and the difference between transfers and transformations.

2. Open and closed systems, Earth and scale

   What crosses a boundary, Earth as one integrated system (Gaia), and applying the concept from a bromeliad to the globe.

3. Feedback loops and equilibrium

   Stabilizing negative feedback, amplifying positive feedback, and the equilibria they maintain or disrupt.

4. Tipping points and regime shifts

   How positive feedback drives a system past a threshold into a new stable state.

5. Models and emergent properties

   Models as simplified reality, the accuracy lost in simplification, and properties that arise only from interaction.

6. Resilience of systems

   How diversity and storage size build resilience and set response times, and how humans erode it.