Energy
The unit of power equivalent to one joule per second.
What is a Watt?
The continuous circulation of water as it evaporates from the land and sea, enters the atmosphere, condenses and precipitates to the earth's surface, then moves underground by infiltration.
What is the Water Cycle?
The primary greenhouse gas released through human activities like burning fossil fuels.
What is Carbon Dioxide (CO2)?
Although these chemicals promote plant growth on farms, gardens, and golf courses they become extremely harmful when they enter the atmosphere and waterways.
What are Fertilizers or Pesticides?
Measure of an individual's impact on the environment by calculating greenhouse gas emissions from their lifestyle.
What is Carbon Footprint?
The energy source that is produced by splitting uranium atoms through a process called fission that produces heat which creates steam and is used to power a turbine.
What is Nuclear Power?
The process by which water is absorbed by plant roots and released into the atmosphere through their leaves.
What is Transpiration?
This compound is the 3rd most abundant greenhouse gas in the earth's atmosphere, also known as CH4.
What is Methane?
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted from industries and cars combine with precipitation in the atmosphere to form this.
What is Acid Rain?
Female biologist from Pittsburgh that is often credited for advancing the environmental movement through her book Silent Spring.
Who is Rachel Carson?
The renewable energy source that harnesses heat from beneath the Earth's surface to generate electricity.
What is Geothermal Energy?
The word that refers to the study of the movement and distribution of water around the earth.
What is Hydrology?
The atmospheric layer where UV radiation from the sun is absorbed.
What is the Ozone Layer?
In 1952 in London, 4000 people died in just a few days due to exposure from this pollutant.
What is Smog?
The policy tool that uses tradable permits to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
What is Cap-and-Trade?
The dam that produces enough hydroelectric power to serve 1.3 million people in Nevada, California, and Arizona.
What is the Hoover Dam?
An area of land where any groundwater underneath of it or precipitation that falls on it drains into one river, basin, or sea.
What is a Watershed?
The name of the lowest layer of the earth's atmosphere - where most weather phenomena occurs.
What is the Troposphere?
An increase in the concentration of chemical nutrients (i.e. phosphates and nitrates) in a body of water that promotes excessive algae growth which then depletes the amount of oxygen available to other organisms.
What is Eutrophication?
International treaty signed in 1997 in Japan that binds industrialized nations to reduce their CO2 emissions
What is the Kyoto Protocol?
The process by which energy is released in the sun's core through nuclear fusion.
What is the Proton-Proton Chain Reaction?
The federal law passed in 1972 and placed limits on the amounts of toxic chemicals that can be discharged into a body of water.
What is the Clean Water Act?
The organic compound responsible for ozone depletion commonly used in refrigerants, aerosols, and solvents.
What are Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)?
Term used to describe cities that have consistently higher temperatures than surrounding areas because of a greater retention of heat from buildings, concrete, and asphalt.
What is the Heat Island Effect?
Theory developed by Garrett Hardin that shared common resources are more likely to be overused and degraded when individuals act to fulfill their own short-term self interests over the interests of the group.
What is Tragedy of the Commons?