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Biome
A collection of ecosystems sharing similar climatic conditions
r-strategist
Species that tend to spread their reproductive investment among a large number of offspring so that they are well adapted to colonize new habitats rapidly and make opportunistic use of short-lived resources.
Water budget
Quantitative estimate of the amounts off water in storages and flows of the water cycle
Three main greenhouse gasses
Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane
EVS
A worldwide view that shapes the way an individual or group of people perceive and evaluate environmental issues.
Ecosystem
A community of interdependent organisms and the physical environment they inhabit.
Speciation
The process through which new species form. See also evolution .
Closed System
Only exchanges energy across a boundary
Weather vs climate
Weather is short term
Climate is long term
Parasitism
A relationship between two species in which one species (the parasite) lives in or on another (the host),
Tipping Point
the critical threshold when even a small change can have dramatic effects and cause a disproportionately large resource in the overall system
MPA
Marine Protected Area
Cornucopians
See the world as having infinite resources to benefit humanity/ Extreme technocentrists
Isolated system
Hypothetical concept in which neither energy nor matter is exchanged
Non-point source pollution
The release of pollutants from numerous, widely dispersed origins
Niche
A species’ share of a habitat and the resources in it. An organism’s ecological niche depends not only on where it lives but also on what it does.
Resilience
tendency to avoid such tipping points and maintain stability
Keystone Species
Plays a critical role in maintaining their ecosystem
Doubling time
The number of years it would take a population to double its size at its current growth rate.
Succession
The orderly process of change over time in a community
Productivity
The total gain in energy or biomass per unit area per unit time,
Species
Group of organisms sharing common characteristics and can produce fertile offspring
Indicator species
plants and animals that show something about the environment by their presence, absence, abundance and scarcity
Evolution
The cumulative, gradual change in the genetic characteristics of successive generations of a species or race of an organism, ultimately giving rise to species
The Total Fertility Rate
A demographic indicator that estimates the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime