Three major concepts that came from the movie is how different parts of an ecosystem work together, how the environment can impact a species living within it, and how completely unrelated events can have large impacts on one another.  The scene involving the dolphins and fish was a perfect showcase of how different organisms work together in a food chain.  By performing their own independent actions, the organisms each created a scenario in which everyone was able to obtain food.  This also connects to the third point of unrelated events affecting each other, as does the segment about the desert storm and the flamingoes.  The flamingoes would have migrated to the desert anyway, but the large storm made their hatching process easier.  Finally, the wild dog segments really highlighted the relationship between organism and environment.  By using the environment to their advantage, the prey animals were able to evade their hunters, showing how vital the environment is to their survival.  

This documentary left my view on the environment somewhat frazzled.  While I was pleased to see it, I was confused as to why there were so many abundant organisms around in these places, despite the fact that their populations have been steadily declining.  The final segment about the glaciers made me reflect quite a bit on what we have learned in class. The documentary only addressed the effects of the glaciers melting on local organisms, but background knowledge on human impacts from class helped me place more context into the situation.  Finally, the global importance of this issue is paramount.  Really, it was best summed up by the narrator himself at the beginning of the documentary when he stated: “This series will celebrate the natural wonders that remain, and reveal what we must preserve to ensure that people and nature thrive”.  

The three major concepts presented in this episode were that of spacing, food, and seasonal change.  First, the documentary addressed the issue of how shrinking sea ice takes away much of the space that animals once had.  As exemplified by the walrus segment, shrinking sea ice forces animals closer together, which can lead to paranoia and mass hysteria that gets organisms killed.  The abundance of food sources was also a prominent talking point during the episode, especially when it came to the polar bears.  The shrinking of the ice takes much of the polar bears hunting ground, restricting them from getting food.  Finally, the documentary addresses seasonal change because it continuously talks about how many arctic organisms are safe during the wintertime, but their situations become dire once spring and summer roll around.  

This episode connected pretty solidly back to the climate change unit.  While the documentary never explicitly states this, it is implied that humans are the reason as to why the polar ice retreats so drastically during the summer.  Due to what we learned in class, I already knew that this exponential increase in summer temperatures was due to greenhouse gas emissions and other human caused actions.