HIGH ALTITUDE
1. EFFECT ON HOMEOSTASIS/NEGATIVE IMPACT ON HUMAN SURVIVAL
High altitude disrupts a person's homeostasis by not only making days harsh with sun and nights freezing, but the lower pressure makes it difficult for oxygen to get around the body. This makes bodies go into overdrive with breathing and heart rate increasing by double. Hypoxia is not uncommon and added stress on the lungs, heart, and arteries could cause serious problems for people with heart problems, and in some cases, death can occur.
2. SHORT TERM ADAPTION
Humans have adapted to deal with high altitude by acclimation. For most people, this is a short term adaption, but people such as the mountain people in Peru or the Himalayas, it is a developmental adaptation, where over the generations, more capillaries are produced to carry an increased number of red blood cells around the body. Also, the lungs increase to be able to perform osmosis of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Lastly, there is an increase in the cardiovascular network of the muscles.
3. STUDYING ENVIRONMENTAL CLINES
The benefits of studying and environmental cline is that there is information on a certain trait in many different types of environments - this allows a view of how that trait handles certain environments and where it is most beneficial. The usefulness of clines is that scientists are able to collect info of the same subject and compare the results of many different types of people and conditions with a certain trait. Lastly, Clines can be used to productively see which traits are most useful in which scenarios. They provide clues to why certain traits were adopted in the first place.
4. RACE AND CLINES
I would use race only based on where certain races live to study the environmental influences on adaptations of a certain people. Certain races live in certain areas where certain traits are needed and acquired over generations for survival. The study of environmental influences on adaptation is a better way to understand human variation than by the use of race because race is just a common group of people. It is the environment that has shaped the features certain races have come to be known by.
