Systems & Models
The inputs and outputs to ecosystems or storage area in ecosystems.
What are flows (or transfer processes)?
Energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed.
What is the 1st law of thermodynamics?
Natural resources that can be harvested and sold to produce natural income.
What is natural capital?
A group of individuals of the same species in the same area.
What is a population?
Producers (autotrophs)
What are types of organisms that make their own food?
A system that exchanges both energy and matter with its surroundings.
What is an open system?
If no change occurs in a system (Note - this is rare in natural systems).
What is static equilibrium?
The largest amount of a resource that can be harvested without reducing long-term availability of that resource.
What is the maximum sustainable yield?
The "niche and full range of living and nonliving things a species needs to survive in its environment.
What are biotic and abiotic components?
On average, only about 10%% of energy is passed between trophic levels.
What is the ecological rule of thumb?
The boxes, reservoirs or "sinks" within an environmental (ecosystem) system.
What are storages?
A dynamic equilibrium with constant inputs and outputs fluctuating around a stable average.
What is steady-state equilibrium?
Ecological footprints, Happiness Index, Carbon Footprint, Air Quality Index, etc.
What are ways to measure ecological or environmental fitness or health?
A graph of the type of growth in a population growing rapidly with no limits.
What is an J-curve?
The Carbon Cycle.
What is the biogeochemical cycle that includes the processes of photosynthesis and combustion?
When the input into a system causes the system to continually move away from equilibrium.
What is positive feedback?
Melting ice decreasing albedo and increasing global temperature average.
What is an example of a system in a positive feedback loop?
long life (chemical persistence), mobile, soluble in fats and chemically active
What are the properties that make a pollutant biomagnify (bioaccumulate)?
Competition, predation, disease, parasitism.
What are two examples of density-dependent limiting factors, i.e. things that affect populations no matter how big or small they are?
The decreasing amount of energy left for the next level after ingestion and respiration.
What limits the trophic levels to 4 or 5 in a pyramid?
The ability to "control" or bring stability back to an ecosystem over time.
What are negative feedback loops?
Predator-Prey Cycles, lynx population increases in response to an increase in prey such as hares, then as hares decrease due to increased predation eventually the lynx population goes back down.
What is an example of a negative feedback loop?
An opinion shaped by one's perspective and world views that determines how individuals or societies manage resources and solve environmental problems.
What is an environmental value systems (EVS)?
The area where a species actually lives because no two species can occupy the same niche indefinitely (one will outcompete the other).
What is competitive exclusion or realized niche.
A change in state or form (e.g., photosynthesis, respiration) of energy or matter as it cycles through an ecosystem.
What is the process of transformation?