The ability of ecosystems to survive, thrive, and adapt to changes over time.
What is Sustainability?
100
This is necessary in a good Experiment to ensure that you have something to compare your results to.
What is a Control?
100
These are living things which make their own energy/food, usually from the sun via the process of Photosynthesis.
What are Producers?
100
A group of the same species living together in a specific area.
What is a Population?
100
An interaction in which both species derive some benefit.
What is Mutualism?
200
All energy on earth is ultimately derived directly from this.
What is the sun?
200
This law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can only change form.
What is the First Law of Thermodynamics?
200
These living things directly consume the producers (usually plants) for their energy needs.
What are Primary Consumers?
200
The overall variety of genes and genetic material found in a species.
What is Genetic Diversity?
200
This is the most common type of species interaction and occurs when two species’ niches overlap and they must utilize the same food or resources.
What is Interspecific Competition?
300
Resources such as solar energy or wind that are not presumed to disappear or decrease in availability for humans regardless of how much we use them.
What are inexhaustible resources?
300
This is a widely-tested, useful explanation of some phenomenon that has been consistently supported by extensive scientific evidence.
What is a Scientific Theory?
300
This consists of many overlapping and interacting Food Chains and contains many different producers, primary, secondary, tertiary, and higher consumers.
What is a Food Web?
300
A group of populations of species living together in a specific area.
What is a Community?
300
Species exhibiting this trait tend to blend in to their environment and are often hard to spot.
What is Cryptic Coloration?
400
This "Father of American Forestry" was instrumental in the creation of the US Forest Service and had a human-centered world view in which Conservation was used to ensure that timber production could be sustainable for humans to use over many years.
Who is Gifford Pinchot?
400
This term describes the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that all energy in the universe is being converted to a less useful form (ie. Heat) over time.
What is Entropy?
400
These organisms break down dead or decaying plant and animal matter, returning nutrients to the ecosystem and releasing some energy as heat in the process.
What are Decomposers?
400
These species live in very specific environments and are usually adapted to consuming only one particular food.
What are Specialists?
400
When this occurs two species are constantly changing and adapting in response to each other over long periods of time and usually develop a specialized relationship.
What is Coevolution?
500
This involves including the environmental costs associated with obtaining a product or service directly in its price.
What is full-cost pricing?
500
These are alternate forms of the same element which have different numbers of neutrons.
What are isotopes?
500
These three cycles are crucial to the overall functioning of Ecosystems.
What are the Hydrologic (Water), Carbon, and Nitrogen Cycles?
500
These species tend to occupy a central position in the food web of an Ecosystem and their loss would likely have devastating effects on the overall Community.
What are Keystone Species?
500
This is what is occurring in most Michigan forests today after settlers a couple hundred years ago initially cleared them for farmland.