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Regions of Earth occupied by living organisms, made up of all the ecozones |
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Careful management of resources to ensure that they are sustainable |
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Subsoil that remains frozen all year long |
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The largest population that an encironment can support |
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The process of destroying a forest and replacing it with something else |
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The observed and projected increase in the earth's average temperature due to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation |
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The science concerned with the relationship between living things and their environment |
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Any form of precipitation that is high in sulfuric and nitric acids as a result of pollution in the air |
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Water beneath Earth's surface in underground streams and other forms |
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Water that is readily acailable on Earth's surface in streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and oceans |
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Water that has been used in homes or industries and, as a result, contains waste products |
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A plant that grows and spreads quickly, choking out native plants, affecting spawning areas for fish, and posing a safety problem if it grows around public beaches |
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An underground layer of rock, gravel, etc., from which water can be drawn for wells and which is a source of springs |
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Wetlands with soil formed mostly from decomposing plants |
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Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, causing Earth's temperature to rise |
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A reservoir that can absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including forests, peat, and oceans |
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Melted snow or ice, including ice from glaciers |
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Water from rain and melting snow that cannot be held in the soil so makes its way into strams, rivers, lakes, and oceans |
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United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) |
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The UN's plan to keep greenhouse gas concentrations from increasing, created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio, Brazil |
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An international agreement that sets binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; the average target is 5% of 1990 levels by 2008- 2012 |
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If an organization produces more greenhouse gases than it is allowed, it can purchase a credit from an organization that is below its taget emission levels |
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