Understanding Our Environment
The number and variety of species that live in an area
Biodiversity
The amount of land and ocean area needed to support one person.
Ecological footprint
The mixture of gases that make up the air we breathe
Atmosphere
The layer of Earth’s atmosphere closest to the surface where all of our weather occurs
Troposhere
The continuous movement of water from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to the ocean
Water cycle
The burning the prairies to prevent trees from growing and the spreading plants to areas beyond where they originally grew describes which period in history?
Hunter-gatherer period
According to the law of supply and demand, what would occur if the supply of copper declined but the demand remained the same?
Copper prices would increase.
The removal and transport of surface material by wind or water
Erosion
Layer where the ozone is located
Stratosphere
This is a measure of the amount of dissolved salts in a given amount of liquid
Salinity
Plants and animals were domesticated during this revolutionary period.
Agricultural revolution
May be used to determine how much to spend to control pollution
Cost - benefit analysis
What physical layer of Earth is located beneath the lithosphere?
Asthenosphere
The coldest layer of Earth’s atmosphere where meteoroids burn up
Mesosphere
The Challenger Deep is located east of the Philippine islands at the bottom of the...
Mariana Trench
Earth as a “closed system”
"Spaceship Earth"
Helps determine a product’s worth
Law of supply and demand
Massive, irregularly shaped slabs of Earth's lithosphere that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere and move relative to each other, shaping the planet's surface.
Tectonic plates
The most abundant gas in Earth’s atmosphere?
Nitrogen
All of the oceans are joined in a single large interconnected body of water called the
World ocean
Because environmental science encompasses so many different fields of study, it is said to be a(n) ____________ science.
interdisciplinary
“If I don’t use this resource, someone else will.”
"Tragedy of the Commons"
The 3 main layers of Earth beginning with the least dense layer
Crust, mantle, core
The warming of the surface and lower atmosphere of Earth that occurs when carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases in the air absorb and reradiate infrared radiation.
Greenhouse effect
This is a layer about 300 to 700 m (984-2,296 ft) deep where the temperature falls rapidly
Thermocline