Water Cycle
This process moves water from the surface to the atmosphere.
What is evaporation and transpiration?
These factors are living components that affect organisms in an ecosystem.
What are biotic factors?
Organisms that make their own food and occupy the bottom of the energy pyramid.
What are producers?
Underground layers of permeable rock or sediment that store water for human and ecological use.
What is an aquifer?
The careful manipulation of variables to fairly test the effects of environmental conditions on plant growth.
What is controlled experimentation?
Plants contribute to the water cycle through this process, releasing water vapor into the air.
What is transpiration?
Nonliving components like temperature, water, and sunlight that influence ecosystem stability.
What are abiotic factors?
Organisms that eat other organisms to gain energy in a food chain.
What are consumers?
Human-made solutions include pipelines and desalination, but some are ineffective like letting shortages continue.
What are ways to address water shortages?
Programs designed to increase populations of endangered species in a controlled environment.
What are captive breeding programs?
This occurs when water vapor cools and changes into liquid droplets.
What is condensation?
This term refers to the variety of life in an ecosystem and why it is important.
What is biodiversity?
The level in the energy pyramid where only 10% of energy is transferred to the next level.
What is energy transfer between trophic levels?
Pollution from a single identifiable source, like a sewage outfall.
What is point pollution?
This concept explains overuse of shared natural resources because individuals act in self-interest.
What is the Tragedy of the Commons?
A form of water that falls from clouds as rain, snow, sleet, or hail.
What is precipitation?
A factor that constrains a population's size and slows or stops it from growing.
What is a limiting factor?
These organisms sit at the top of the food chain and have no natural predators.
What is an apex predator?
Pollution that comes from multiple, diffuse sources, such as fertilizer runoff from many fields.
What is nonpoint source pollution?
In “The Lorax,” this is the environmental problem being highlighted.
What is deforestation / resource depletion?
The movement of water through porous materials underground.
What is percolation?
A non-native organism that spreads and causes harm to its new environment.
What is an invasive species?
The process by which toxins accumulate and increase as they move up a food chain.
What is biomagnification?
This process occurs when excess nutrients in water cause algal blooms and disrupt ecosystems.
What is eutrophication?
The Bar-Ba-loots leaving the forest due to lack of Truffula trees is an example of this ecological concept.
What is resource competition?