From Exam 1
This term describes broad individual or societal preferences concerning appropriateness (e.g. morality) of outcomes, and a sense of right and wrong (what “ought” to be)
Values
Which process naturally adds phosphorus to the soil?
Weathering
Please answer in the form of a question:
This is what makes ‘clean coal’ more clean than dirty coal.
What is lower sulfur content?
What typically happens to population growth when (on average) women have their first child later in life?
In which century did the study of earth's climate and climate change begin?
The 18th century (1700s)
I am unpriced costs/damages (negative) or benefits (positive) that exist within a transaction between buyer and seller, or an action that affects someone else without consent or compensation. What am I?
An externality
If increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide stimulate greater plant growth and allow plants to assimilate and store more carbon in their biomass, would that be an example of a positive or negative feedback on atmospheric CO2?
Negative feedback
Please answer in the form of a question:
Carbon released from this type of fuel was recently fixed by plant photosynthesis and therefore does not change net atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
What is a biofuel?
What does the total fertility rate refer to?
The total number of children a woman has in her lifetime.
Which two elements of the Kaya Identity are the simplest to focus on in order to reduce human impact on the environment?
Consumption and energy use
Which index used to measure human progress takes into account the distribution of incomes across society, natural resource depletion, and environmental damage?
Genuine Progress Indicator
What two human activities are the major causes of increasing concentrations of reactive nitrogen?
The combustion of fossil fuels and the industrial production of fertilizers
Please answer in the form of a question:
In the United States, this fuel is primarily used for HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) activities and for cooking.
What is natural gas?
How large is the current human population on planet Earth?
~7.7 billion
According to Prof Carol Wessman, what are the major component(s) of an ecosystem?
a combination of biotic and abiotic components
The _____ _______ framework takes into account how issues like land-system change, biochemical flows, stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change risk exceeding a safe operating space for humanity.
Planetary Boundaries
What does the Keeling Curve represent?
CO2 atmospheric concentration over time
Please answer in the form of a question:
A gas that absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation.
What is a greenhouse gas?
What is a ‘dependency ratio’?
The ratio of non-working people to working people
Which principle states that prices of products should include the costs of environmental damage and those who pollute should have to pay the costs for the environmental externalities they cause?
The polluter pays principle.
What are the two factors that most significantly limit biological production in marine environments?
Light and nutrient availability
What is the study of the interaction between changing environments and the socio-economy, in which landscapes and physiographic processes acting upon them are seen to have dialectical, historically- derived and iterative relations with resource use and the socio-economic and political sets of relations that shape them?
Political ecology
Please answer in the form of a question:
This convention had the goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
What is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change?
The IPAT relationship suggests that the impact (I) of humans on the environment is a function which three variables?
Population, Affluence, and Technology
In the United States, (in terms of demand through land area) the average ecological footprint is about 24 acres per person. What is global carrying capacity?
4.5 acres per person