Improving Water Quality
This is an alternative wastewater treatment system in which human wastes break down slowly into fertilizer.
What are composting toilets?
This law...
Protects underground aquifers as important sources of drinking water
Regulates underground injection of wastes to prevent contamination
What is the Safe Water Drinking Act?
These are foreign species whose introduction causes economic or environmental harm.
What are invasive species?
This is a protected area of land in which no human development is permitted.
What is wilderness?
Pollution caused when sulfuric acid and dissolved materials such as lead, arsenic, and cadmium wash from coal and metal mines into nearby lakes and streams.
What is acid mine drainage?
This chemical once allowed citizens to drink water without fear of typhoid, cholera, or dysentery. Later, it was linked to cancer and birth defects.
What is chlorine?
This term refers to the maximum amount of water pollutants permitted to be discharged from a sewage plant, a factory, or other point source.
What are national emissions limitations?
These provide an early warning of environmental damage with the potential to affect other species.
What are indicator species?
This is the use and management of forest ecosystems in a way that meets the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to use the forests.
What is sustainable forestry?
This is the environmental impact of burning coal on a global scale.
What is decreased air and water quality?
In this stage of municipal sewage treatment, microorganisms decompose the suspended organic material in wastewater.
What is secondary treatment?
This term refers to the permissible amount of water pollutant for public consumption, before the pollution might adversely affect human health.
What is the maximum contaminant level?
These are important environmental benefits that ecosystems provide to people; they maintain the living world, which is entirely dependent on them.
What are ecosystem services?
These are protected zones that connect isolated, unlogged, or undeveloped areas.
What are habitat corridors?
This is the process of removing any material from polluted emission or solid waste and selling it as a marketable product.
What is resource recovery?
Name 2 of the 5 ways to dispose of sludge.
What is anaerobic digestion, application to soil as a fertilizer, incineration, ocean dumping, or disposal in a sanitary landfill?
These are the two basic goals of the Clean Water Act.
What is...
Eliminate discharge of pollutants in US waterways
Attain water quality levels that make these waterways safe for fishing and swimming
This type of species is not found anywhere else in the world other than their small range.
What is an endemic species?
This is the temporary or permanent clearance of large expanses of forest for agriculture or other uses.
What is deforestation?
This occurs when natural gas is used to produce both electricity and steam.
What is cogeneration?
In this alternative to chlorine, water is filtered through _____ granules.
What is carbon?
This law directs the storage and disposal of hazardous wastes; helps prevent groundwater contamination.
What is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act?
Name 2 of the 3 causes of mass extinction.
Biological and environmental factors
Major climate change
Catastrophes
When a family produces just enough food to feed itself, their farming practice is called this.
What is subsistence agriculture?
These are materials similar in chemical composition to oil or natural gas, such as tar sands, oil shales, gas hydrates, liquefied coal, and coal gas.
What are synfuels?