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Ehsani APES Chap 1
State of Our Earth
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Environment | The sum of all the conditions surrounding us that influence life. |
| Environmental Science | The field that looks at interactions among human systems and those found in nature. |
| Ecosystem | A particular location on Earth whose interacting components include biotic and abiotic components. |
| Biotic component | A living component |
| Abiotic component | A non-living component |
| Environmentalism | A social movement that seeks to protect the environment through lobbying, activism, and education. |
| Environmentalist | A person who participates in environmentalism. |
| Ecosystem Services | The products of natural environments that are life-supporting resources such as clean water, timber, fisheries, and agricultural crops. |
| Environmental Indicators | The different traits of a natural system that are measured and used to describe the health and quality of the natural system. |
| Sustainability | A philosophy of living that allows us to use the Earth's resources without depriving future generations of those resources. |
| The Five global-scale environmental indicators | 1. Biological Diversity 2. Food Production 3. Average Global Surface Temperature & CO2 Concentration 4. Human Population 5. Resource Depletion |
| Biodiversity | The diversity of life forms in an environment. Includes genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity. |
| Genetic Diversity | A measure of the genetic variation among individuals in a population. |
| Species Diversity | The number of species in a region or in a particular type of habitat. |
| Species | A group of organism that is distinct from other groups and which can breed to produce fertile offspring. |
| Speciation | The evolution of new species. |
| Background Extinction Rate | The average rate at which species go extinct over the long term. |
| Ecosystem Diversity | Measures the diversity of ecosystems or habitats that exist in a given region. |
| Hectare | A measure of land area, 100 meters x 100 meters. Abbreviated ha. |
| Conversion factor for hectare to acres. | 2.47 acres/ha |
| Conversion factor for square mile to acres. | 1 square mile = 640 acres |
| per capita | per person |
| Greenhouse Gases | Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. Most important is CO2. |
| Anthropogenic | Caused by human activities. |
| Greenhouse Effect | Heat-trapping greenhouse gases causes the Earth to be warmer than expectec. |
| Current Human Population | 6.8 billion |
| Projected Human Population in 2050 | 8.1 to 9.6 billion |
| Resource Depletion | The heavy use of natural resources. |
| Development | The improvement in human well-being through economic advancement. |
| Human Needs | Includes our basic physical needs plus our need to be connected to life through access to natural areas for beauty and for social connections |
| Ecological Footprint | Measures how much land is needed to supply the goods and services that an individual uses. |
| Living Sustainably | Our ecological footprint is less than the land available. |
| Living Unsustainably | Our ecological footprint is more than the land available. |
| Scientific Method | An objective way to explore the natural world, draw inferences from it, and predict the outcome of certain events, processes, or changes. |
| Steps of the Scientific Method | 1. Observations & questions 2. Forming hypotheses 3. Collecting data 4. Interpreting results 5. Disseminating findings |
| Hypothesis | A testable conjecture about how something works. |
| Null Hypothesis | A statement or idea that can be falsified or proved wrong. |
| Replication of data | A procedure during data collection where several sets of measurements are taken. |
| Sample size | The number of times a measurement is replicated. |
| Accuracy | How close a measured value is to the actual or true value. |
| Precision | How close to one another the repeated measurements of the same sample are. |
| Uncertainty | An estimate of how much a measured or calculated value differs from a true value. |
| Inductive reasoning | The process of making general statements from specific facts or examples. |
| Deductive reasoning | The process of applying a general statement to specific facts or situations. |
| Critical Thinking | The process used to critique scientific data, how it was collected and if its conclusions are valid. |
| Theory | A repeatedly tested hypothesis that was confirmed by multiple groups of researchers and has reached wide acceptance. |
| Natural Law | A theory to which there are no known exceptions and which has withstood rigorous testing. |
| Control Group | A group that experiences exactly the same conditions as the experimental group, except for the single variable under study. |
| Natural Experiment | An experiment that happens when a natural event acts as an experimental treatment in an ecosystem. Ex. a volcano destroys a forest |
| Environmental Justice | A social movement and field of study that works toward equal enforcement of environmental laws and the elimination of disparities, whether intended or unintended. |
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ehsanip
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