Environmental Studies

Question 1

Edges

Answer 1

Breaks between habitats that may expose sensitive species to predators.

Question 2

Biological Wealth

Answer 2

The life-sustaining combination of commercial, scientific, and aesthetic values imparted to a region by its biota.

Question 3

Instrumental Value

Answer 3

The value that something has as a means to a desired or valued end.

Question 4

Intrinsic Value

Answer 4

The intrinsic value of a human, or any other sentient animal, is the value to confers on itself by desiring its own lived experience as an end in itself.

Question 5

Ethnobotany

Answer 5

The scientific study of the traditional knowledge and customs of a people concerning plants and their medical, religious, and other uses.

Question 6

Ecotourism

Answer 6

The enterprises involved in promoting tourism of unusual or interesting ecological sites.

Question 7

The Land Ethic

Answer 7

A Land Ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold in his A sand county Almanac, a classic text of the environmental movement.

Question 8

HIPPO

Answer 8

An acronym for the major threats to biodiversity; habitat destruction, Invasive Species, Pollution, Population, and Overexploitation.

Question 9

Conservation

Answer 9

The management of a resource in such a way as to ensure that it will continue to provide maximum benefit to humans over the long run.

Question 10

Fragmentation

Answer 10

The division of a landscape into patches of habitat by road construction, agricultural lands, or residential areas.

Question 11

Simplification

Answer 11

The human use of habitats that removes natural objects, such as maintaining a forest to produce one kind of tree or removing fallen logs.

Question 12

Intrusion

Answer 12

The movement of magma from within the earth’s crust into spaces in the overlying strata to form igneous rock.

Question 13

Invasive Species

Answer 13

An introduced species that spreads out and often has harmful ecological effects on other species or ecosystems.

Question 14

Aquaculture

Answer 14

The rearing of aquatic animals or the cultivation of aquatic plants for food.

Question 15

Pollution

Answer 15

The presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.

Question 16

Population

Answer 16

A group within a single species whose individuals can and do freely interbreed.

Question 17

Overexploitation

Answer 17

The over harvesting of a species or ecosystem that leads to its decline.

Question 18

Taxonomy

Answer 18

The branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics.
the classification of something, especially organisms.

Question 19

Lacey Act

Answer 19

The Lacey Act of 1900, or simply the Lacey Act (16 U.S.C. §§ 3371–3378) is a conservation law in the United States that prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold.

Question 20

Endangered Species Act

Answer 20

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is one of the few dozens of US environmental laws passed in the 1970s, and serves as the enacting legislation to carry out the provisions outlined in The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Question 21

Endangered Species

Answer 21

A species of animal or plant that is seriously at risk of extinction.

Question 22

Critical Habitat

Answer 22

Under the Endangered Species Act, an area provided for a listed species where it can be found or could likely spread as it recovers.

Question 23

The Red List

Answer 23

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. It uses a set of quantitative criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species.

Question 24

The Nagoya Protocol

Answer 24

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity, also known as the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) is a 2010 supplementary agreement to the 1992 Convention on Biological …

Question 25

Conservation

Answer 25

Prevention of wasteful use of a resource.

Question 26

Natural Goods

Answer 26

The food, fuel, wood, fibers, oils, alcohols, and the like derived from the natural world, on which the world economy and human well-being depend.

Question 27

Public Goods

Answer 27

A category of ecosystem services that is not consumed when people use it and cannot be marketed; an example is the air we breathe.

Question 28

Renewable Resource

Answer 28

Biological resources, such as trees, that may be renewed by reproduction and regrowth. Conservation to prevent overcasting and and to protect the environment is still required, however.

Question 29

Preservation

Answer 29

In protecting natural areas, the objective of preservation is to ensure the continuity of species and ecosystems, regardless of their potential utility.

Question 30

Consumptive Use

Answer 30

The total seasonal water loss from an area of land due to plant growth and evaporation usually being expressed in acre-feet.

Question 31

Productive Use

Answer 31

The word productive often describes a person’s capability to do a lot of work, but is can refer to anything that produces a lot. The land in your area might be the most productive in the state, meaning crops grow very well there. Productive can be used more broadly to describe something that produces a positive result.

Question 32

Maximum Sustainable Yield

Answer 32

The size of a natural population at which it produces a maximum rate of increase, typically at half the carrying capacity.

Question 33

Carrying Capacity

Answer 33

The maximum, equilibrium number of organisms of a particular species that can be supported indefinitely in a given environment

Question 34

Optimal Population

Answer 34

Optimum population refers to the size of a population that produces the best results according to chosen end targets. One text from 1926 presented a single end target as being “…the largest per capita income of consumers’ goods possible under the given conditions”.

Question 35

Precautionary Principle

Answer 35

The principle that the introduction of a new product or process whose ultimate effects are disputed or unknown should be resisted. It has mainly been used to prohibit the importation of genetically modified organisms and food.

Question 36

Commons

Answer 36

The tragedy of the commons is an economic problem in which every individual tries to reap the greatest benefit from a given resource. As the demand for the resource overwhelms the supply, every individual who consumes an additional unit directly harms others who can no longer enjoy the benefits.

Question 37

Deforestation

Answer 37

The action of clearing a wide area of trees.

Question 38

Silviculture

Answer 38

The growing and cultivation of trees.

Question 39

Sustained Yield

Answer 39

A level of exploitation or crop production which is maintained by restricting the quantity harvested to avoid long-term depletion.

Question 40

Bycatch

Answer 40

The unwanted fish and other marine creatures caught during commercial fishing for a different species.

Question 41

Law Of the Sea

Answer 41

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea treaty, is the international agreement that resulted from the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which took place between 1973 and 1982.

Question 42

Zooxanthellac

Answer 42

A yellowish-brown symbiotic dinoflagellate present in large numbers in the cytoplasm of many marine invertebrates.

Question 43

Ocean Acidification

Answer 43

Ocean Acidification (OA) is a term used to describe significant changes to the chemistry of the ocean. It occurs when carbon dioxide gas (or CO2) is absorbed by the ocean and reacts with seawater to produce acid.

Question 44

Wilderness

Answer 44

An uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region.

Question 45

National Wildlife Refuges

Answer 45

National Wildlife Refuge System is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America’s fish, wildlife and plants.

Question 46

Fires

Answer 46

Wildfires are unplanned fires that burn in forests and other wildlands, such as shrub or grass communities. Preventing and fighting unwanted fires begins with understanding the science of how they start, and why they continue to be such a big problem.

Question 47

Private Land Trust

Answer 47

A land trust is a private legal contract in which the owner of real estate transfers the title of the property to a trustee.

Question 48

Restoration Ecology

Answer 48

Restoration ecology is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological restoration, which is the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action.