Environmental Science

The interdisciplinary study of humanity's relationship with other organisms and the nonliving physical environment.

Hypothesis

An educated guess that provides an explanation for an ovbservation that can be tested.

Experiment

A recreation of an event or occurance in a way that enables a scientist to support or disprove a hypothesis.

Extreme Poverty

 A condition in which people cannot meet their basic needs for adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, or health.

<$2/day --Nearly 1 in 4 people.

Ecological Footprint

The amount of productive land, fresh water, and ocean required on a continuous basis to supply that person food, wood, energy, water, housing, clothing, transportation, and waste disposal.

People Overpopulation

• Management of natural resources on a sustainable basis.
• Allows the use of resources in a "responsible" manner to preserver for future generations.

• Keeps the "wilderness" as created or free of human influence.
• "Locks up" the resources.

A document that summarizes the potential and expected adverse impacts on the environment associated with a project, as well as alternatives to the proposed project. They help federal agencies and the public consider the impacts of proposed activities.

• Study of how people use their limited resources to satisfy their unlimited wants.
• "The world is a marketplace and everything has a price."
• Depend on the natural environment as sources for raw materials and sinks for waste products.

The cost, in environmental damage, of a unit of pollution that is emitted into the environment.

• The cost, in terms of giving up goods, of elminating pollution.
• The cost associated with reducing a small additonal amount of pollution.

Concerned with the issue of responsible moral conduct with respect to the natural environment.

• The study of systems that include interactions among organisms and between organisms and their abiotic environment.
• Broadest field in biology.

Biotic

• "Living Environment"
• Includes all organisms

• "Nonliving, or physical surroundings."
• Includes living space, sunlight, soil, precipitation, and wind.

• A community and its physical environments.
• Includes all the biotic interactions of a community as well as the interactions between organisms and their abiotic environment.

• The parts of Earth's atmosphere, ocean, land surface, and soil that contain all living organisms.
• Contains earth's communities, ecosystems and landscapes.

• The ability or capacity to do work.
• Exists as stored (potential) or kinetic (motion).
• Chemical, radiant, thermal, mechanical, nuclear, electrical.

Thermodynamics

• Does not exchange energy with surroundings.
• Rare in nature.

Open system

• Exchanges energy with surroundings.

Photosynthesis

• Biological process by whichh energy from the sun (radiant energy) is transformed into chemical energy of sugar molecules.
• Energy captured by plants via photosythesis is transferred to the organisms that eat the plants.

• The process where the chemical energy captured in photosynthesis is released within cells of plants and animals.
• This energy is then used for biological work...Creating new cells, reproduction, movement, etc.

• Utilize inorganic raw materials (e.g. hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen gas) to produce carbohydrate molecules and energy.
• Bacterica possessing enzymes that cause the inorganic molecule hydrogen sulfide to react with oxygen, producing water and sulfur or sulfate.

• Energy from food passes from one organism to the next in a sequence.
• Each "link" is a trophic level.

• A representation of the interlocking food chains that connect all organisms in an ecosystem.
• A realistic model of the flow of energy and materials through an ecosystem.

• Passage of energy in a one-way direction through an ecosystem.
• Producers
• Primary consumers
• Secondary consumers
• Decomposers

An organism's position in a food chain, which is determined by its feeding relationships.

Graphically represent the relative energy value of each trophic level.

--Important feature is that large amount of energy are lost between trophic levels to heat.

The amount of biomass (biological material) produced in a given area during a given period of time.

Total amount of photosynthetic energy captured.

• Cumulative genetic changes that occur over time in a population of organisms.
• Explains many patterns observed in the natural world.

Biological community

 Primary Succession

• The change in species composition over time in a previously uninhabited environment.
• Starts with a pioneer community--the intial community that devolps.

• The change in species composition that takes place after some disturbance destroys the existing vegetation; soil is already present.
• Begins in an environment following distruction of all or part of the earlier community.

• Any intimate relationship or association between members of two or more species.
• Participants may be benefited, harmed, or unaffected by the relationship.
• Result of coevolution

+,+

A symbiotic relationship in which both partners benefit.

"Sharing Benefits"

Commensalism

+, o

Symbiotic relationship where one species benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped.

"Taking without harming"

+, -

A symbiotic relationship in which one species is benefited and the other is harmed.

"Taking at another's expense."

• The consumption of one species (the prey) by another (the predator).
• Results in an evolutionary "arms race."

• The interaction among organisms that vie for the same resources (such as food or living space) in an ecosystem.
• Intraspecific--competition between individuals in a population.
• Interspecific--competition between individuals in two different species.

• The totality of an organism's adaptations, its use of resources, and the lifestyle to which it is fitted.
• Refers to the fundamental role of an organism in the community.

Any environmental resource that, because it is scarce or at unfavorable levels, restricts the ecological niche of an organism.

EX. soil mineral content, temperature extremes, precipitation.

A species, often a predator, that exerts a profound influence on an entire ecosystem.

If it disappears, other organisms in the ecosystem may become more common, rare, or disappear.

The number of  different species in a community.

**Usually greater at the edge of two communities, than in the center**

A transitional zone where two or more communities meet--contains all or most of the ecological niches or the adjacent community.

• The first step in the nitrogen cycle.
• žN2 to ammonia--

  The conversion of gaseous nitrogen to ammonia.
• The process gets its name from the fact that nitrogen is fixed into a form that organisms can use.

•  Second step in the nitrogen cycle.
•  The conversion of ammonia to nitrate.

•  Third step in the nitrogen cycle.
• Plant roots absorb nitrate and incorporate the nitrogen into plant proteins.
• Animals then consume the plant nitrogen compounds and convert them to animal compounds. (proteins)

• Fourth step in the nitrogen cycle.
• The conversion of biological nitrogen compounds into ammonia and ammonium ions.
• These ammonia produced enter the nitrogen cycle and are once again available for the processes of nitrification and assimilation.

Denitrification

• Final step of the nitrogen cycle.
• The reduction of nitrate to gaseous nitrogen.
• nitrate to N2
• The process recverse the action of nitrogen-fixing and nitrfying bacteria.

The proportional reflectance of solar energy from the Earth's surface, commonly expressed as a percentage.

**Dark surfaces have lower albedo, absorb more.**

• The effect of the earth's rotation on the direction of the wind.
• Tends to turn fluids (air and water) toward the right in the Northern Hemisphere and toward the left in the Southern Hemisphere.

• Large, circular ocean current systems that often encompass an entire ocean basin.

Average weather conditions that occur in a place over a period of years.

Two most important factors include temperature and precipitation.

• Where deeper waters come to the surface, occurs in the Pacific Ocean along the S. America coast.
• Provides nutrietts for microscopic algae, which support a complex food web.
• Weakens considerably during years with El Nino events.

Earth's outermost rigid rock layer composed of seven large plates.

A large, relatively distinct terrestrial region with a similar climate soil, plants, and animals, regardless of where it occurs in the world.

**9 Major Biomes**

Vertical zonation

One of the main categories of aquatic ecosystems.

--Small microscopic organisms that are relatively feeble swimmers. 

--They are carried about at the mercury of currents and waves.

Lands that shallow fresh water covers for at least part of the year.

--Marshes, swamps.

Type of freshwater wetlands, in which grasslike plants dominate.

Type of freshwater wetlands in which woody trees or shrubs dominate.

A chemical with adverse human health effects.

The amount that enters the body of an exposed organism.