Investigation into the Interconnected Nature of Environmental Problems and Identifying Keystone Environmental Problems

The study depicts the links between man-made environmental issues based on cause-and-effectrelationships from real-world examples. For instance, climate change is caused primarily bydeforestation, draining of wetlands, intensive farming, and air pollution (greenhouse gas emission).Besides, every anthropogenic problem may cause various other problems,such as causes ocean acidification, ozone depletion, acid rain, disease, visual pollution(smog). Similarly, deforestation biodiversity loss, land degradation, human-animal conflict.About 255 were examined among 40 identified issues. In this web, certain causativeenvironmental problems establish keystone links. Keystone fromthe concept map criteria given by following approach. When mitigating a man-madeenvironmental problem, if it results in permanent disappearance one or more problems, then that mitigated can be considered environmentalproblem. To specific, complete dependency resulting problem/s parentenvironmental has enabled parent to keystoneenvironmental problem. This because causative issue gets solved, resultingoffspring/s cannot exist. Eight found keystones, such airpollution, deforestation, population explosion, overexploitation natural resources, global energy crisis,intensive water pollution-water scarcity, urbanization (industrialization)-urban sprawlsettlements.
 Keywords: environment, manmade interconnected