Section I
The study of the impacts of human activities on environmental systems
What is environmental science?
The scientist who came up with the theory of natural selection
Who is Charles Darwin?
What is a drought?
The most common unit for the comparison of energy sources
What is the British thermal unit(Btu)?
The rare and valuable resource responsible for the poaching of elements
What is ivory?
The consumption of resources in the present that allows enough for future generation
What is sustainability?
The relative viability and fertility of an organism
What is fitness?
The middle layer of the earth
What is the mantle?
Fuels that have a finite amount present on Earth
What are nonrenewable fuels?
The growth model used to set catch limits for many fish stocks
What is logistic?
The diversity of genes, species, habitats, and ecosystems on Earth
What is biological diversity?
The study of the factors that control the abundance and distribution of species
What is population ecology?
Growth that occurs when there are no limits on a population
What is exponential?
The fuel used in traditional nuclear power plants
What is uranium?
A lake near Los Angeles considered a terminal lake because it is the lowest point in the landscape
What is Mono Lake?
An objective way to explore the natural world, draw inferences from it, and predict the outcome of certain events, processes, or alterations
What is the scientific method?
An alternate form of a gene
What is an allele?
2.1 children per woman of child-bearing age to replace the current population
What is the replacement fertility rate?
A measure of how effective we are at getting useable work from a given input of energy
What is energy efficiency?
Annual layers of snow/ice in ice cores resembles this in trees
What are rings?
The sum total of the conditions and living and nonliving factors the surround and organism
What is the environment?
This type of evolutionary adaptation that is not influenced by a change in the environment; examples of this type of evolutionary process are genetic drift and gene flow
What is nonadaptive?
All water from houses and buildings that is destined for a sewage treatment plant or septic system
What is wastewater?
Human-produced air pollutants that are used and produced in the manufacture of paints, pharmaceuticals, and refrigerants
What are volatile organic compounds?
The Human-Elephant feedback loop is one example of this type of loop
What is a positive feedback loop?
The number of people currently living on Earth
What is 8 billion?
The number of types of genetic diversity
What is four types?
All the harvested trees are of the same age
What is even-age cutting?
A fossil fuel consisting of hydrocarbons, water, and usually sulfur that occurs in underground deposits
What is petroleum?
The hypothesized reason for the decline in number and health of red spruce trees in the eastern United States?
What is acid rain?
A set of living and/or nonliving components connected in such a way that changes in one part affects other parts
What is a system?
Factors whose effects on individuals in a population are directly related to the density of the population
What are density-dependent factor?
All the harvested trees are of various ages
What is uneven-age harvesting?
A reaction that involves an atom splitting and giving off heat
What is a fission reaction?
The state where Organ Cave is located
What is West Virginia?
Measures the environmental health of a system
What is an environmental indicator?
The three building blocks for life
What are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen?
Substances, either natural or synthetic, that kill or control organisms that people consider pests
What are pesticides?
There is an association between exposure to this and the incidence of childhood asthma
What is photochemical smog?
A system that exchanges matter between it and other systems; Earth is an example of this type of system
What is an open system?
Factors whose effect are the same on all members of the population, no matter the population size
What are density-independent factors?
Land suitable for plowing and growing crops
What is arable land?
injecting high-resting streams of water, sand, and chemicals into bedrock to create fractures in the rock formation to extract trapped oil and gas
What is hydraulic fracturing(fracking)?
The primary method of logging for timber is Southeast Asia
What is selective logging?
The two factors that make up the input factor in net population change
What are births and immigration?
The only way a new allele can be produced
What is an allele?
What are aquifers?
Hydro generation where water is diverted from a river, passed through a narrow channel, and directed towards a turbine
the maximum harvest of individuals that will allow maximum profit while preventing the population from going extinct?
What is maximum sustainable yield?
Exceeding the stable set point of a system
What is overshoot?
The scientist who was the first person to understand genetic variation within and among individuals
Who is Gregor Mendel?
The solid rock underlying the soil
What is bedrock?
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, lead, particulate matter, and ground-level ozone
What are criteria pollutants?
A subsystem of the Florida Everglades wetlands consisting of small pools surrounded by mash plants
What are alligator holes?
A feedback loop where the system variable is continuously moved away from the stable point; for example, a gambler who bets more and more money as they begin losing
What is a positive feedback loop?
Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur
What are macronutrients?
The percentage of the total water on earth that is fresh water
A method of hydro generation hat involves storing water in a reservoir behind a dam
What is water impoundment?
A mixture of synthetic organic chemicals that are used in many industrial application because they are inflammable, chemically stable, and have insulating properties
What are polychlorinated biphenyls(PCBs)?
The average time that a portion of a pool remains in a steady-state system
What is mean residence time?
Manganese, iron, copper, zinc, chloride, molybdenum, and boron
What are micronutrients?
The amount of oxygen a defined quantity of water uses up over a specified period of time at a specified temperature
What is biochemical oxygen demand?
The number of degrees in F the global average temperature has increased since 1880 due to atmospheric CO2
What is 2 degrees?
This phenomena is responsible for the collapse of the Peruvian anchovy fishery
What is El Niñ?
This is measured in the number of mammal species per 10,000 species per one hundred years
What is background extinction rate?
The greatest mass extinction on record occurred at the end of this era; roughly 90 to 95% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates went extinct
What is Paleozoic?
The percentage of the atmosphere made up of nitrogen
What is 78%?
The re-radiation and reabsorption of energy by greenhouse gasses
What is radiative forcing?
A type of experiment characterizes by changing the experimental variable of a natural or controlled environment
What is a manipulation experiment?
A single copy of sickle cell allele provides natural protection against this disease
What is Malaria?
What is the third most abundant gas in the atmosphere?
What is argon?(.9%)
The most common biomass fuel
What is ethanol?