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| Ability of earth's various systems, including human cultural systems andeconomies, to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely. |
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| All external conditions, factors, matter, and energy, living and nonliving, that affect any living organism or other specified system. |
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| Interdisciplinary study that uses information and ideas from the physical sciences (such as biology, chemistry, and geology) with those from the social sciences and humanities (such as economics, politics, and ethics) to learn how nature works, how we interact with the environment, and how we can to help deal with environmental problems. |
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| the interdisciplinary academic field which systematically studies human interaction with the environment in the interests of solving complex problems. |
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| Biological science that studies the relationships between living organisms and their environment; study of the structure and functions of nature. |
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| Three Principles of Sustainability |
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Definition
-Protecting Biodiversity
-Chemical/Nutrient Cycling
-Reliance on Solar Energy |
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| Social movement dedicated to protecting the earth's life support systems for us and other species. |
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| Group of similar organisms, and for sexually reproducing organisms, they are a set of individuals that can mate and produce fertile offspring. Every organism is a member of a certain species. |
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| One or more communities of different species interacting with one another and with the chemical and physical factors making up their nonliving environment. |
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| Natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support our economies. See natural resources, natural services. |
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| Materials such as air, water, and soil and energy in nature that are essential or useful to humans. See natural capital. |
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Processes of nature, such as purification of air and water and pest control, which support life and human economies. |
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| The circulation of chemicals necessary for life, from the environment (mostly from soil and water) through organisms and back to the environment. |
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| Essentially inexhaustible resource on a human time scale because it is renewed continuously. Solar energy is an example. |
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| Resource that can be replenished rapidly (hours to several decades) through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is replaced. Examples include trees in forests, grasses in grasslands, wild animals, fresh surface water in lakes and streams, most groundwater, fresh air, and fertile soil. If such a resource is used faster than it is replenished, it can be depleted and converted into a nonrenewable resource. |
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| Highest rate at which a potentially renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply. |
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| Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population with the renewable resources it uses and to absorb or dispose of the wastes from such resource use. It is a measure of the average environmental impact of populations in different countries and areas. |
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| Per Capita Ecological Footprint |
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| Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply each person or population with the renewable resources they use and to absorb or dispose of the wastes from such resource use. It measures the average environmental impact of individuals or populations in different countries and areas. |
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| Point at which an environmental problem reaches a threshold level, which causes an often irreversible shift in the behavior of a natural system. |
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| Whole of a society's knowledge, beliefs, technology, and practices. |
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| Growth in which some quantity, such as population size or economic output, increases at a constant rate per unit of time. An example is the growth sequence 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and so on, which increases by 100% at each interval. When the increase in quantity over time is plotted, this type of growth yields a curve shaped like the letter J. Compare linear growth. |
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| wealth that results in high levels of consumption and unnecessary waste of resources, based mostly on the assumption that buying more and more material goods will bring fulfillment and happiness. |
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| Inability of people to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. |
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| Set of assumptions and beliefs about how people think the world works, what they think their role in the world should be, and what they believe is right and wrong environmental behavior (environmental ethics). |
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| Human beliefs about what is right or wrong with how we treat the environment. |
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| Renewable resources such as plants, animals, and soil provided by natural capital. |
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Result of getting people with different views and values to talk and listen to one another, find common ground based on understanding and trust, and work together to solve environmental and other problems.
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| Impact= Poverty x Affluence x Technology |
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- Hydrology, including ecosystem water flow, snowfall analysis, and long-term ice-in/ice-out measurements
- Environmental factors encouraging or restricting tree growth, and effects of deforestation on mineral flux
- Effects of environmental changes on bird behavior and insect population, especially regarding reproductive capacity
- Effects of acid rain and resultant soil mineral changes on micro-environments of plant root systems
- Cycling of Nitrogen, Sulfur, Phosphorus, Mercury, Calcium, and Carbon, and effects of pollution on flux of these and other minerals
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| Attempts to discover order in nature and use that knowledge to make predictions about what is likely to happen in nature. |
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| An educated guess that attempts to explain a scientific law or certain scientific observations. |
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| A well-tested and widely accepted scientific hypothesis. |
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| Description of what scientists find happening in nature repeatedly in the same way, without known exception. |
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| Process of scientists reporting details of the methods and models they used, the results of their experiments, and the reasoning behind their hypotheses for other scientists working in the same field (their peers) to examine and criticize. |
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| Mathematical statement about how likely it is that something will happen. |
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| Mathematical tools used to collect, organize, and interpret numerical data. |
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| Statisical hypothesis test in which the test Statistoc follows a student's t distribution if the null hypothesis is supported. |
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| Anything that has mass (the amount of material in an object) and takes up space. On the earth, where gravity is present, we weigh an object to determine its mass. |
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| Chemical, such as hydrogen (H), iron (Fe), sodium (Na), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), or oxygen (O), whose distinctly different atoms serve as the basic building blocks of all matter. Two or more elements combine to form the compounds that make up most of the world's matter. |
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| Combination of atoms, or oppositely charged ions, of two or more elements held together by attractive forces called chemical bonds. Examples are NaCl, CO2, and C6H12O6. |
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| Minute unit made of subatomic particles that is the basic building block of all chemical elements and thus all matter; the smallest unit of an element that can exist and still have the unique characteristics of that element. |
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| Combination of two or more atoms of the same chemical element (such as O2) or different chemical elements (such as H2O) held together by chemical bonds. |
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| Idea that all elements are made up of atoms; the most widely accepted scientific theory in chemistry. |
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| Tiny particle moving around outside the nucleus of an atom. Each electron has one unit of negative charge and almost no mass. |
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| Positively charged particle in the nuclei of all atoms. Each proton has a relative mass of 1 and a single positive charge. |
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| Elementary particle in the nuclei of all atoms (except hydrogen-1). It has a relative mass of 1 and no electric charge. |
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| Extremely tiny center of an atom, making up most of the atom's mass. It contains one or more positively charged protons and one or more neutrons with no electrical charge (except for a hydrogen-1 atom, which has one proton and no neutrons in its nucleus). |
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| Number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. Compare mass number. |
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| Sum of the number of neutrons (n) and the number of protons (p) in the nucleus of an atom. It gives the approximate mass of that atom. |
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the mass of a specific isotope
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| The mass of the given substance divided by its amount of substance. |
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| Numeric value that indicates the relative acidity or alkalinity of a substance on a scale of 0 to 14, with the neutral point at 7. Acid solutions have pH values lower than 7; basic or alkaline solutions have pH values greater than 7. |
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| All compounds not classified as organic compounds. |
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| Compounds containing carbon atoms combined with each other and with atoms of one or more other elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, chlorine, and fluorine. All other compounds are called inorganic compounds. |
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| A component of food that supplies energy (calories) to the body. One of the three macronutrients (along with proteins and fats). Three broad categories of carbohydrates are sugars (also called simple carbohydrates), starches (also called complex carbohydrates), and fiber. |
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| Any of a group of complex organic macromolecules that contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and usually sulfur and are composed of one or more chains of amino acids. Proteins are fundamental components of all living cells and include many substances, such as enzymes, hormones, and antibodies, that are necessary for the proper functioning of an organism. |
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| Any of a class of organic compounds that are fatty acids or their derivatives and are insoluble in water but soluble in organic solvents |
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| A complex organic substance present in living cells, esp. DNA or RNA, whose molecules consist of many nucleotides linked in a long chain. |
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| Law: Conservation of Matter |
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| In any physical or chemical change, matter is neither created nor destroyed but merely changed from one form to another; in physical and chemical changes, existing atoms are rearranged into different spatial patterns (physical changes) or different combinations (chemical changes). |
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Law: Conservation of Energy
First Law of Thermodynamics |
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| Whenever energy is converted from one form to another in a physical or chemical change, no energy is created or destroyed, but energy can be changed from one form to another; you cannot get more energy out of something than you put in; in terms of energy quantity, you cannot get something for nothing. This law does not apply to nuclear changes, in which large amounts of energy can be produced from small amounts of matter. |
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Law: Entropy
Second Law of Thermodynamics |
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| Whenever energy is converted from one form to another in a physical or chemical change, we end up with lower-quality or less usable energy than we started with. In any conversion of heat energy to useful work, some of the initial energy input is always degraded to lower-quality, more dispersed, less useful energy—usually low-temperature heat that flows into the environment; you cannot break even in terms of energy quality. |
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| Capacity to do work by performing mechanical, physical, chemical, or electrical tasks or to cause a heat transfer between two objects at different temperatures. |
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| Energy that matter has because of its mass and speed, or velocity. |
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| Energy stored in an object because of its position or the position of its parts. |
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| One or more communities of different species interacting with one another and with the chemical and physical factors making up their nonliving environment. |
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| A tropical rainforest is an ecosystem type that occurs roughly within the latitudes 28 degrees north or south of the equator.This ecosystem experiences high average temperatures and a significant amount of rainfall. Hot spot for biodiveristy. |
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| Whole mass of air surrounding the earth. |
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| Natural effect that releases heat in the atmosphere near the earth's surface. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, and other gases in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) absorb some of the infrared radiation (heat) radiated by the earth's surface. Their molecules vibrate and transform the absorbed energy into longer-wavelength infrared radiation in the troposphere. If the atmospheric concentrations of these greenhouse gases increase and other natural processes do not remove them, the average temperature of the lower atmosphere will increase. |
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| Earth's intensely hot core, thick mantle composed mostly of rock, and thin outer crust that contains most of the earth's rock, soil, and sediment. |
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| Earth's liquid water (oceans, lakes, other bodies of surface water, and underground water), frozen water (polar ice caps, floating ice caps, and ice in soil, known as permafrost), and water vapor in the atmosphere. |
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| Zone of the earth where life is found. It consists of parts of the atmosphere (the troposphere), hydrosphere (mostly surface water and groundwater), and lithosphere (mostly soil and surface rocks and sediments on the bottoms of oceans and other bodies of water) where life is found. |
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| Organism that uses solar energy (green plants) or chemical energy (some bacteria) to manufacture the organic compounds it needs as nutrients from simple inorganic compounds obtained from its environment. |
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| Organism that cannot synthesize the organic nutrients it needs and gets its organic nutrients by feeding on the tissues of producers or of other consumers; generally divided into primary consumers (herbivores), secondary consumers (carnivores), tertiary (higher-level) consumers, omnivores, and detritivores (decomposers and detritus feeders). In economics, one who uses economic goods. |
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| Organism that digests parts of dead organisms, and cast-off fragments and wastes of living organisms by breaking down the complex organic molecules in those materials into simpler inorganic compounds and then absorbing the soluble nutrients. Producers return most of these chemicals to the soil and water for reuse. Decomposers consist of various bacteria and fungi. |
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| Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) |
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| Rate at which an ecosystem's producers capture and store a given amount of chemical energy as biomass in a given length of time. |
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| Net Primary Productivity (NPP) |
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| Rate at which all the plants in an ecosystem produce net useful chemical energy; equal to the difference between the rate at which the plants in an ecosystem produce useful chemical energy (gross primary productivity) and the rate at which they use some of that energy through cellular respiration. |
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| Organic matter produced by plants and other photosynthetic producers; total dry weight of all living organisms that can be supported at each trophic level in a food chain or web; dry weight of all organic matter in plants and animals in an ecosystem; plant materials and animal wastes used as fuel. |
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| Cyclic movement of carbon in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment. |
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| Cyclic movement of nitrogen in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment. |
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| Biogeochemical cycle that collects, purifies, and distributes the earth's fixed supply of water from the environment to living organisms and then back to the environment. |
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| Species that play roles affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem. |
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| Variety of different species (species diversity), genetic variability among individuals within each species (genetic diversity), variety of ecosystems (ecological diversity), and functions such as energy flow and matter cycling needed for the survival of species and biological communities (functional diversity). |
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| Normal extinction of various species as a result of changes in local environmental conditions. |
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| Change in the genetic makeup of a population of a species in successive generations. If continued long enough, it can lead to the formation of a new species. Note that populations, not individuals, evolve. |
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| Process by which a particular beneficial gene (or set of genes) is reproduced in succeeding generations more than other genes. The result of natural selection is a population that contains a greater proportion of organisms better adapted to certain environmental conditions. |
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| Timeline of Life on Earth |
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| Separation of populations of a species into different areas for long periods of time. |
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| Species with a broad ecological niche. They can live in many different places, eat a variety of foods, and tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions. |
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| Species with a narrow ecological niche. They may be able to live in only one type of habitat, tolerate only a narrow range of climatic and other environmental conditions, or use only one type or a few types of food. |
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| Single factor that limits the growth, abundance, or distribution of the population of a species in an ecosystem. |
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| Pattern in which exponential population growth occurs when the population is small, and population growth decreases steadily with time as the population approaches the carrying capacity. S-shaped curve. |
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| Irruptive or Malthusian Growth |
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| Total amount of useful energy available from an energy resource or energy system over its lifetime, minus the amount of energy used (the first energy law), automatically wasted (the second energy law), and unnecessarily wasted in finding, processing, concentrating, and transporting it to users. |
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| Plant materials and animal wastes used as fuel. |
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| Set of assumptions and beliefs about how people think the world works, what they think their role in the world should be, and what they believe is right and wrong environmental behavior (environmental ethics). |
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| Decrease in concentration of ozone (O3) in the stratosphere. |
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| The falling of acids and acid-forming compounds from the atmosphere to the earth's surface. Acid deposition is commonly known as acid rain, a term that refers to the wet deposition of droplets of acids and acid-forming compounds. |
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