Laws & Energy
This law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
What is the Law of Conservation of Energy?
This sphere contains all the water on Earth.
What is the hydrosphere?
This process occurs when any rock breaks down into smaller pieces and is moved by natural forces.
What is weathering and erosion?
The maximum population size that an environment can sustain indefinitely.
What is carrying capacity?
These resources can be replenished, while other resources are finite and cannot be replaced.
What are renewable resources?
These restoration projects in the Chesapeake Bay aim to stabilize shorelines and improve water filtration.
What are oyster reef restoration projects?
This mechanism involves a rare blue color variation appearing in a bird population due to a random change in DNA sequence.
What is mutation?
This law states that matter cannot be created or destroyed.
What is the Law of Conservation of Mass?
During this process, plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.
What is photosynthesis?
This type of weathering occurs when water freezes in cracks, causing rock to break apart.
What is ice wedging?
This type of competition occurs when male walruses fight over territory during mating season.
What is intraspecific competition?
This energy technology uses the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water to generate electricity.
What is OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion)?
This historic Virginia waterman community is losing land rapidly and could become uninhabitable within 25-50 years.
What is Tangier Island?
When interacting species evolve in response to each other's adaptations, this is called this.
What is coevolution?
In this type of reaction, products have more stored chemical energy than reactants, and energy is absorbed.
What is an endothermic reaction?
Unlike carbon and nitrogen, this element does NOT move through the atmosphere as a gas.
What is phosphorus?
This type of weathering involves minerals reacting with oxygen, causing rusting.
What is oxidation?
This species plays a critical role in maintaining ecosystem structure, and its removal causes major changes.
What is a keystone species?
This major drawback of nuclear power involves radioactive material that is difficult to safely dispose of long-term.
What is nuclear waste?
This area hosts major military installations facing strategic vulnerabilities and experiences frequent "sunny day flooding."
What is Hampton Roads?
A glacier retreating and leaving behind bare rock would lead to this type of succession.
What is primary succession?
This type of molecule has hydrogen atoms with a relative positive charge and oxygen with a relative negative charge.
What is a polar molecule?
Carbon can be stored underground for millions of years in this form.
What are fossil fuels?
At this type of plate boundary, two plates move apart from each other.
What is a divergent boundary?
This aquatic problem is caused by excessive nutrients that stimulate algal growth and deplete oxygen.
What is eutrophication?
This natural gas extraction method can lead to groundwater contamination and induced seismic activity.
What is hydraulic fracturing (or fracking)?
Selective logging with replanting and forest regeneration describes this type of practice.
What is sustainable forestry?
A forest fire clearing half the trees would lead to this type of succession.
What is secondary succession?
This type of heat transfer occurs when electromagnetic waves carry energy from the sun to Earth without requiring a medium.
What is radiation?
This process allows animals and plants to release energy by using oxygen, and it releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.
What is cellular respiration?
This type of weathering occurs when water chemically reacts with minerals, breaking them down into new compounds.
What is hydrolysis?
Parasites differ from predators in this fundamental way: they typically do this to their hosts while predators do not do this to their prey.
What is "do not kill their hosts immediately" or "maintain long-term relationships with their hosts"?
When making environmental decisions, these two types of interests must be balanced: immediate economic benefits versus this longer-term concern.
What is long-term environmental welfare (or long-term costs like environmental damage and resource depletion)?
Virginia's Eastern Shore and Barrier Islands face these three specific challenges from sea level rise.
What are shoreline erosion, saltwater intrusion into farmland, and loss of productive salt marshes?
This evolutionary mechanism occurs when a small cheetah population experiences reduced genetic diversity after a wildfire significantly reduces their numbers.
What is genetic drift?