Topic 1: Foundations and EVS
These are the living and nonliving aspects of an ecosystem.
What are biotic and abiotic factors?
This list is a comprehensive account of threatened and endangered species worldwide.
IUCN Red List.
This process occurs when excess nutrients enter a water source, leading to algae blooms and oxygen depletion.
What is eutrophication?
This is the wearing away of surface soil by water and wind.
What is soil erosion?
This atmospheric layer contains the "good" ozone that protects Earth from UV radiation.
What is the stratosphere?
This environmental value system would suggest using genetically modified organisms and advanced technology to solve environmental issues.
What is a Technocentric EVS?
This type of population growth is represented by a J-shaped curve.
What is exponential growth?
List one human-driven strategies for meeting increasing freshwater demands.
What are desalination, rainwater harvesting, or artificially recharging aquifers?
the ratio of these three soil particles are used to determine soil texture.
What are sand, silt, clay
This term refers to the area of land and water required to sustainably provide all the resources at the rate at which they are being consumed by a given population.
What is an ecological footprint?
This term describes development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
What is sustainable development?
This formula is used to estimate the population size of motile species in mark-recapture studies.
What is the Lincoln Index?
This concept refers to the "hidden" volume of freshwater used to produce a consumer product, such as the estimated 15,000 liters of water required to produce just 1kg of beef.
What is virtual water (or embedded water)?
This soil threat involves flipping the soil, which often results in increased wind erosion.
What is tilling?
This term describes strategies designed to reduce the causes of climate change, such as carbon sequestration.
What is mitigation?
This phenomenon occurs when a system’s feedback mechanisms can no longer buffer it from change, leading to a permanent shift into a new state or equilibrium.
What is a Tipping Point?
This term describes the range of abiotic conditions under which a species can survive, grow, and reproduce.
What is a niche
This mathematical model is used to determine the maximum amount of a fish stock that can be harvested without depleting the population's ability to regenerate, ideally calculated as the point of highest growth rate on an S-shaped curve.
What is Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY)?
This agricultural technique involves turning steep slopes into "stairs" to minimize erosion.
What is terracing? (Also Accept Contour Plowing)
This weather phenomenon involves the warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting global weather patterns.
What is El Niño?
This ethical framework focuses on the inherent rights of nature and the moral obligation to protect it regardless of its use to humans.
What is Ecocentrism
This conservation strategy aims to restore natural processes and ecosystem functions by reducing human intervention, reconnecting fragmented habitats, and reintroducing apex predators or keystone species to allow nature to manage itself.
What is Rewilding?
Rising atmospheric Carbon Dioxide leads to this chemical process, directly impairs the ability of "calcifiers" like corals and mollusks to build their skeletons.
Soil is the second-largest active store of this element on Earth; name the process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is captured and held within the soil profile, and identify one specific land-management practice that increases this storage.
What is soil carbon Sequestration AND No-till farming, use of cover crops, application of compost/biochar, or restoring wetlands/peatlands.)
This economic model aims to eliminate waste and promote the continual use of resources.
What is a circular economy?