Chapters 1 and 2 Test Flashcards
What is the Environment?
The sum of all the conditions surrounding us that influence life (“Everything that isn’t me”)
4 Types of Ecosystem Services
Provisioning, Regulating, Supporting, Cultural
Provisioning
describe the material or energy outputs from ecosystems
Regulating
provide by acting as regulators (photosynthesis, pollination)
Supporting
Maintain the conditions for life on Earth (biomass production, maintaining genetic diversity)
Cultural
Benefit humans through spiritual enrichment, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experience
Sustainability
Living on Earth in a way that allows humans to use its resources without depriving future generations of those resources (taking for what is needed, leaving enough to replenish)
5 Global Environmental Indicators
- Biological diversity
- Food production
- Average global surface temperature and CO2 concentration
- Human population
- Resource depletion
Tragedy of the Commons
Resources used by everyone and owned by no one become depleted (Common property and open-access renewable resources degraded from overuse
What entails your ecological footprint?
Measure of how much an individual consumes, expressed in an area of land (growth or production, consumption, getting rid of wastes)
Precision
How close the repeated measurements of a sample are to one another
Accuracy
How close a measured value is to the actual or true value
4 Root Causes of Environmental Problems
- Population Growth
- Unsustainable Resource Use
- Poverty
- Excluding environmental costs from market prices
5 steps of scientific method
- Observe and question
- Hypothesis
- Experimentation/ Data collection
- Interpret results/ draw a conclusion
- Disseminate findings
What is half-life?
Time it takes for one-half of an original radioactive parent atom to decay
First Law of Thermodynamics (Law of Conservation of Energy)
Whenever energy is converted from one form to another in a physical or chemical change, no energy is created or destroyed
Second Law of Thermodynamics (Law of Increased Entropy)
Energy always goes from a more useful to a less useful form when it changes from one form to another
Positive feedback loops
Change in a system is amplified in the same direction
Negative feedback loops
System responds to a change by returning to its original state, or by decreasing the rate at which the change is occurring.
How to fix Tragedy of the Commons?
- Regulate access to resources to decrease yield and promote sustainability
- Convert open-access to private ownership
