Unit 5- Land and Water Use

Question 1

Acid Drainage

Answer 1

A process in which sulfide minerals in newly exposed rock surfaces react with oxygen and rainwater to produce sulfuric acid, which causes chemical runoff as it leaches metals from the rocks. Acid drainage is a natural phenomenon, but mining greatly accelerate it by exposing many new services.

Question 2

Aquaculture

Answer 2

The cultivation of aquatic organisms for food in controlled environments.

Question 3

Bycatch

Answer 3

(1) The accidental capture of nontarget organisms while fishing for target species.
(2) That portion of a commercial fishing catch consisting of animals caught unintentionally. Bycatch kills many thousands of fish, sharks, marine mammals, and birds each year.

Question 4

Canopy

Answer 4

The upper level of tree leaves and branches in a forest.

Question 5

City Planning/Urban Planning

Answer 5

The professional pursuit that attempts to design cities in such a way as to maximize their efficiency, functionality, and beauty. Also known as urban planning.

Question 6

Clear-cutting

Answer 6

The harvesting of timber by cutting all the trees in an area. Although it is the most cost-efficient method, clear-cutting is also the most ecologically damaging.

Question 7

Compost

Answer 7

A mixture produced when decomposers break down organic matter, such as food and crop waste, in a controlled environment.

Question 8

Conservation Tillage

Answer 8

Agriculture that limits the amount of tilling (plowing, disking, harrowing, or chiseling) of soil.

Question 9

Contour Farming

Answer 9

The practice of plowing furrows sideways across a hillside, perpendicular to its slope, to help prevent the formation of rills and gullies. The technique is so named because the furrows follow the natural contours of the land.

Question 10

Controlled Burns/Prescribed Burns

Answer 10

The practice of burning areas of forest or grassland under carefully controlled conditions to improve the health of ecosystems, return them to a more natural state, reduce fuel loads and help prevent uncontrolled catastrophic fires.

Question 11

Cover Crops

Answer 11

A crop that covers and anchors the soil during times between main crops, intended to reduce erosion.

Question 12

Crop Rotation

Answer 12

The practice of altering the kind of crop grown in a particular field from one season or year to the next.

Question 13

Deforestation

Answer 13

The clearing and loss of forests.

Question 14

Dust Bowl

Answer 14

An area that loses huge amounts of topsoil to wind erosion as a result of drought and/or human impact. First used to name the region in the North American Great Plains severely affected by drought and topsoil loss in the 1930s. The term is now also used to describe that historical event and others like it.

Question 15

Ecological Footprint

Answer 15

The cumulative area of biologically productive land and water required to provide the raw materials a person or population consumes and to dispose of or recycle the waste that is produced.

Question 16

Erosion

Answer 16

The removal of material from one place and its transport to another by the action of wind or water.

Question 17

Fertilizer

Answer 17

A substance that promotes plant growth by supplying essential nutrients such as nitrogen or phosphorus.

Question 18

Food Security

Answer 18

An adequate, reliable, and available food supply to all people at all times.

Question 19

Genetically Modified Organism(GMO)

Answer 19

An organism that has been genetically engineered using recombinant DNA technology.

Question 20

Green Revolution

Answer 20

An intensification of the industrialization of agriculture in the developing world in the latter half of the 20th century that has dramatically increased crop yields produced per unit area of farmland. Practices include devoting large areas to monocultures of crops specially bred for high yields and rapid growth; heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation water; and sewing and harvesting on the same piece of land more than once per year or per season.

Question 21

Greenbelt

Answer 21

A long and wide corridor of parkland, often encircling on entire urban area.

Question 22

Industrial Agriculture

Answer 22

A form of agriculture that uses large-scale mechanization and fossil fuel combustion, enabling farmers to replace horses and oxen with faster and more powerful means of cultivating, harvesting, transporting, and processing crops. Other aspects include irrigation and the use of inorganic fertilizers. Use of chemical herbicides and pesticides reduces competition from weeds and herbivory by insects.

Question 23

Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

Answer 23

The use of multiple techniques and combination to achieve long-term suppression of pests, including biocontrol, use of pesticides, close monitoring of populations, habitat alteration, crop rotation, transgenic crops, alternative tillage methods, and mechanical pest removal.

Question 24

Intercropping

Answer 24

Planting different types of crops in alternating bands or other spatially (in a way that relates to space and the position, area, and space of things within it) mixed arrangements.

Question 25

Irrigation

Answer 25

The artificial provision of water to support agriculture.

Question 26

Longline Fishing

Answer 26

Fishing practice that involves setting out extremely long lines with up to several thousand baited hooks spaced along their lengths. Kills turtles, sharks, and an estimated 300,000 seabirds each year as bycatch.

Question 27

Marine Reserve

Answer 27

An area of the ocean designated as a “no-fishing” zone, allowing no extractive activities.

Question 28

Mass Transit

Answer 28

A public transportation system for a metropolitan area that moves large numbers of people at once. Buses, trains, subways, street cars, trolleys, and light rail are types of mass transit.

Question 29

Maximum Sustainable Yield

Answer 29

The maximal harvest of a particular renewable natural resource that can be accomplished while still keeping the resource available for the future.

Question 30

Monoculture

Answer 30

The uniform planting of a single crop over a large area.

Question 31

Mountaintop Removal Mining

Answer 31

A large-scale form of coal mining in which entire mountains are leveled. The technique exerts extreme environmental impact on surrounding ecosystems and human residents.

Question 32

No-till

Answer 32

Agriculture that does not involve telling (plowing, disking, harrowing, chiseling) the soil. The most intensive form of conservation tillage.

Question 33

Open Pit Mining

Answer 33

A mining technique that involves digging a gigantic hole and removing the desired or, along with waste rock that surrounds the ore.

Question 34

Ore

Answer 34

A mineral or a group of minerals from which we extract metals.

Question 35

Overgrazing

Answer 35

The consumption by too many animals of plant cover, impeding plant regrowth and the replacement of biomass. Overgrazing can exacerbate damage to soils, natural communities, and land’s productivity for further grazing.

Question 36

Overnutrition

Answer 36

A condition of excessive food intake in which people receive more than their daily caloric needs.

Question 37

Pest

Answer 37

A pejorative(expressing contempt or disapproval) term for any organism that damages crops that are valuable to us. The term is subjective and defined by our own economic interest and is not biologically meaningful.

Question 38

Pesticide

Answer 38

An artificial chemical used to kill insects (insecticide), plants (herbicide), or fungi (fungicide).

Question 39

Placer Mining

Answer 39

A mining technique that involves sifting through material in modern or ancient riverbed deposits, generally using running water to separate lightweight mud and gravel from heavier minerals of value.

Question 40

Primary Forest

Answer 40

Forest uncut by people.

Question 41

Reclamation

Answer 41

The act of restoring a mining site to an approximation of its pre-mining condition. To reclaim a site, companies are required to remove buildings and other structures used for mining, replace overburden, fills and shafts, and replant the area with vegetation.

Question 42

Salinization

Answer 42

The buildup of salts in surface soil layers.

Question 43

Salvage Logging

Answer 43

The removal of dead trees following a natural disturbance. Although it may be economically beneficial, salvage logging can be ecologically destructive, because snags provide food and shelter for wildlife and because removing timber from recently burned land can cause erosion and damage to soil.

Question 44

Shelterbelts

Answer 44

A row of trees or other tall perennial plants that are planted along the edges of farm fields to break the wind and thereby minimize wind erosion.

Question 45

Smart Growth

Answer 45

A city planning concept in which a community’s growth is managed in ways intended to limit sprawl and maintain or improve residents’ quality of life.

Question 46

Smelting

Answer 46

A process in which ore is heated beyond its melting point and combined with other metals or chemicals, in order to form metal with desired characteristics. Steel is created by smelting iron ore with carbon, for example.

Question 47

Sprawl

Answer 47

The unrestrained spread of urban or suburban development outword from a city center and across the landscape. Often specified as growth in which an area of development outpaces population growth.

Question 48

Strip Mining

Answer 48

The use of heavy machinery to remove huge amounts of earth to expose coal or minerals, which are mined out directly.

Question 49

Subsistence Agriculture

Answer 49

Agriculture that can be practiced in the same way and in the same place far into the future. Sustainable agriculture does not deplete soils faster than they form, nor reduce the clean water and genetic diversity essential to long-term crop and livestock production.

Question 50

Subsurface Mining

Answer 50

Method of mining underground deposits of coal, minerals, or fuels, in which shafts are dug deeply into the ground and networks of tunnels are dug or blasted out to follow coal seams.

Question 51

Surface Impoundments

Answer 51

(1) A disposal method for hazardous waste or mining waste in which waste and liquid or slurry form is placed into a shallow depression line with impervious material such as clay and allowed to evaporate, leaving a solid residue on the bottom.
(2) The site of such disposal.

Question 52

Tailings

Answer 52

Portions of ore left over after metals have been extracted in mining.

Question 53

Terracing

Answer 53

The cutting of level platforms, sometimes with raised edges, into steep hillside to contain water from irrigation and precipitation. Terracing transforms slopes into series of steps like staircase, enabling farmers to cultivate hilly land while minimizing their loss of soil to water erosion.

Question 54

Tragedy of the Commons

Answer 54

The process by which publicly accessible resources open to unregulated use tend to become damaged and depleted through overuse. Coined by Garrett Hardin and widely applicable to resource issues.

Question 55

Trawling

Answer 55

Fishing method that entails dragging immense cone-shaped nets through the water, with weights at the bottom and floats at the top to keep the nets open.

Question 56

Undernutrition

Answer 56

A condition of insufficient nutrition in which people receive less than 90% of their daily caloric needs.

Question 57

Understory

Answer 57

A layer of a forest consisting of small shrubs and trees above the forest floor and below the subcanopy.

Question 58

Urban Heat Island Effect

Answer 58

The phenomenon whereby a city becomes warmer than outlying areas because of the concentration of heat-generating buildings, vehicles, and people, because buildings and dark paved surfaces absorbed heat and release it at night.

Question 59

Urbanization

Answer 59

A population’s shift from rural living to city and Suburban living.

Question 60

Waterlogging

Answer 60

The saturation of soil by water, in which the water table is raised to the point that water bathes plant roots. Waterlogging deprives the roots of access to gases, essentially suffocating them and eventually damaging or killing the plants.