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| a social movement dedicated to protecting life support systems for all species. |
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| the natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support our economies. |
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| Natural capital degradation |
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| occurs when human activities use renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. |
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| compromises that are made to resolve conflicts. |
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| earth’s resources and ecological services |
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| Gross domestic product (GDP) |
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| the market value for goods and services produced both within the country |
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Used to calculate doubling time of a population 70/percentage growth rate = doubling time in years |
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| anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants |
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| A resource that is renewed continuously, like solar energy |
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| must not be used up faster than they can be replaced, like grasslands, fresh water and air, fertile soil, etc. |
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| the highest rate of use on an indefinite scale without degradation or depletion. |
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| Environmental degradation |
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| occurs when use of resources exceeds rate of replacement |
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| the overuse or degradation of freely available resources such as ocean pollution, abuse of national parks, air pollution, etc. No one individual owns these free-access resources. |
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| Per capita ecological footprint |
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| the biologically productive land and water needed to supply renewable resources and absorb waste for each individual. |
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| A resource that exists in fixed quantity or stock in the earth’s crust. The resource is economically depleted when it costs too much to obtain what is left. |
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| the addiction to over-consumption of material goods. |
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| results in the combined effects of a process being greater than the sum of the separate effects. |
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| anything that has mass and takes up space, living or not. It comes in chemical forms, as an element or a compound. |
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| the distinctive building block that makes up every substance; chemically, elements are represented by a one- or two-letter symbol. |
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| Material efficiency/resource productivity |
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| the total amount of material needed to produce a unit of good/service. |
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| Law of conservation of matter |
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| no atoms are created/destroyed during a physical or chemical change |
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| the capacity to do work and transfer heat |
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| Electromagnetic radiation |
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| energy that travels as a wave, a result of changing electric and magnetic fields |
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| the range of electromagnetic waves that have different wavelengths and energy content |
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| the total kinetic energy of all moving atoms, ions, or molecules in a substance |
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| the average speed of motion of atoms, ions, or molecules in a sample of matter. |
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| First Law of Thermodynamics |
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| energy can neither be created/destroyed, but can be converted from one form to another. |
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| Second Law of Thermodynamics |
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| when energy is changed from one form to another, there is always less usable energy. Energy quality is depleted. |
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| the study of connections in the natural world |
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| consists of a group of interacting individuals of the same species occupying a specific area |
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| the place where a population or an individual usually lives |
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| the area over which a species may be found |
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| populations of different species living and interacting in a specific area |
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| consists of all the populations of different species interacting and living in a specific area; this is a network of plants, animals, and microorganisms. |
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| a community of different species interacting with each other and with their nonliving environment of matter and energy. All of the earth’s diverse ecosystems comprise the biosphere |
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| the thin membrane of air around the planet. |
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| the air layer about 11 miles above sea level |
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| lies above the troposphere between 11-30 miles; it filters out the sun’s harmful radiation. |
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consists of earth’s water, found in liquid water, ice, and water vapor.
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| the crust and upper mantle of the earth’s soil. It contains nonrenewable fossil fuels, minerals, and soil, and renewable soil chemicals needed for plant life. |
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| includes most of the hydrosphere, parts of the lower atmosphere and upper lithosphere. All parts of the biosphere are interconnected. |
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| The distribution of a species in an ecosystem is determined by the levels of one or more physical or chemical factors’ being within the range tolerated by that species |
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| Limiting factor principle |
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Definition
| too much or too little of any abiotic factor can limit or prevent growth of a population, even if all other factors are at or near the optimum range of tolerance |
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| break down organic detritus (bacteria/fungi) into simpler inorganic compounds |
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| feeds on both plants and animals. |
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| feed on dead organic matter and break it down into smaller molecules |
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the amazing variety of earth’s genes, species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes.
1. The kinds of biodiversity are: genetic diversity, species diversity, ecological diversity and functional diversity.
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| feeding levels for organisms within an ecosystem |
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| complex networks of interconnected food chains |
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| The dry weight of all organic matter within the organisms of a food chain/web |
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| Nutrient cycles/biogeochemical cycles |
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Definition
Global recycling systems that interconnect all organisms These cycles include the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and water cycles. |
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