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APES
Chapter 1 vocabulary
Term | Definition |
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developed countries | country that is highly industrialized and has a high per capita GDP. |
developing countries | country that has low to moderate industrialization and low to moderate peer capita GDP. Most are located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. |
ecological footprint | amount of land and water needed to supply a population w/ the renewable resources it uses 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. |
ecology | biological science that studies the relationships between living organisms and their environments; study of the structure and functions of nature |
economic development | improvement of human living standards by economic growth. |
environment | all external conditions, factors, matter, and energy, living and nonliving, that affect any living organism or other specified systems. |
environmental degradation | depletion or destruction of a potentially renewable resource such as soil, grassland, forest, or wildlife that is used faster than it is naturally replenished. If such use continues, the resource becomes non-renewable or nonexistent. |
environmental ethics | human beliefs about what is right or wrong with how we treat the environment. |
environmental science | interdisciplinary study that uses information and ideas from the physical sciences with those from the social sciences and humanities to learn how nature works, how we interact with the environment , and how we can help deal with environmental problems. |
environmental wisdom worldview | humans are part of and totally dependent on nature and that nature exists for all species, not just for us. Our success depends on learning how the earth sustains itself and integrating such environmental wisdom into the ways we think and act. |
environmental worldview | 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. |
exponential growth | growth in which some quantity, such as population size or economic output, increases at a constant rate per unit of time. |
gross domestic product (GDP) | annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating with a country. |
input pollution control | AKA: POLLUTION PREVENTION device, process, or strategy, used to prevent a potential pollutant from forming or entering the environment or sharply reduce the amount entering the environment. |
natural capital | natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support our economics. |
non-point sources | broad and diffuse areas, rather than points, from which pollutants enter bodies of surface water on air. |
nonrenewable resource | resource that exists in a fixed amount (stock) in the earth's crust and has the potential for renewal by geological, physical, and chemical process taking place over hundreds of millions to billions of years. |
output pollution control | AKA: POLLUTION CLEANUP device or process that removes or reduces the level of pollutant after it has been produced or has entered the environment. |
per capita ecological footprint | amount of land & water needed to supply each population with the renewable resources they use to absorb & dispose of the waste from such resource use. It measures the average environmental impact of individuals or population in different countries. |
per capita GDP | annual gross domestic product (GDP) of a country divided by its total population at midyear. It gives the average slice of economic pie per person. Used to be called per capita gross national product (GNP). |
perpetual resource | essentially inexhaustible resource on a human time scale because it is renewable continuously. Solar energy is an example. |
planetary management worlview | humans are separate from nature, that nature exists mainly to meet our needs & increasing wants, & that we can use our ingenuity and technology to manage to earth's life-support systems, mostly for our benefit. It assumes the economic growth is unlimited. |
point source | single identifiable source that discharges pollutants into the environment. |
pollution | undesirable change in the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of air, water, soil, or food that can be adversely affect the health, survival, or activities of humans or other living organisms. |
poverty | inability to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. |
recycling | collecting and reprocessing a resource so that it can be made into new products. |
renewable resources | resource that can be replenished rapidly through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is replaced. |
resource | anything obtained from the environment to meet humans needs and wants. It can also be applied to other species. |
reuse | using a product over and over again in the same form. |
social capital | 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. |
solar capital | solar energy that warms the planet & supports photosynthesis, the process that plants use to provide food for themselves & for us and animals. This solar energy also produces indirect forms of renewable solar energy such as wind & flowing water. |
stewardship worldview | that we can manage the earth for our benefit but that we have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers of the earth. It calls for encouraging environmental forms of economic growth and discouraging environmentally harmful forms. |
sustainability | ability of earth"s various systems, including human cultural systems and economics, to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinably. |
sustainable yield | highest rate at which renewable resource can be used indefinably without reducing its available supply. |