Chapter 1 Key Terms

Question 1

Affluence

Answer 1

A country’s wealth

Question 2

Biodiversity

Answer 2

variety of genes, organisms, species, and ecosystems- interactions among species provide ecosystem services, and biodiversity allows life to more easily adapt to changing environmental conditions

Question 3

Biocapacity

Answer 3

Estimate of production of certain biological materials and absorption and filtration of wastes- expressed in global hectares per person, and therefore dependent on human population

Question 4

Biomimicry

Answer 4

The rapidly growing scientific effort to understand, mimic, and catalog the ingenious ways in which nature has sustained life on earth for 3.8 billion years (Janine Benyus,

Question 5

Chemical cycling

Answer 5

Circulation of chemicals necessary for life from the environment (soil, water, air) thru organisms and back to the environment. Wastes from one organisms become the raw materials for another

Question 6

earth-centered environmental worldview

Answer 6

Natural capital exists for all species, not just humans

Question 7

Ecological community

Answer 7

A group or association of populations of two or more different species occupying the same geographic area at the same time.

Question 8

Ecological footprint

Answer 8

Amount of land + water needed to supply a person/area w food, water, etc, and that are needed to absorb and recycle wastes and pollution produced by this resource usage

Question 9

Ecological deficit

Answer 9

When ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity

Question 10

Ecology

Answer 10

Studies how living things interact with each other + environment, and how the interactions determine evenness and richness of species

Question 11

Ecosystem

Answer 11

Set of organisms within a defined area or volume that interact with one another and with their environment of nonliving matter and energy (solar energy, chems in air, water, + soil, plants, animals, decomposers)

Question 12

Ecosystem services

Answer 12

Benefits to humanity provided by healthy ecosystems at no monetary cost to us

Question 13

Environment

Answer 13

Everything around us, including living and nonliving (air, water, E)

Question 14

Environmental degradation

Answer 14

Wasting, depleting, and degrading the earth’s natural capital

Question 15

Environmental ethics

Answer 15

The study of varying beliefs about what is right and wrong with how we treat the environment, provides useful tools for examining worldviews.

Question 16

Environmental science

Answer 16

Draws on math, chem, physics, bio- work together to provide advanced scientific and quantitative understanding of contemporary environmental changes

Question 17

Environmental worldview

Answer 17

Your set of assumptions and values concerning how the natural world works and how you think you should interact with the environment.

Question 18

Environmentalism

Answer 18

Envi activism- social movement dedicated to protecting the earth’s life and resources, supported by environmental science, explores politics and ethics

Question 19

Environmentally sustainable society

Answer 19

Protects natural capital and lives on its income.
Would meet the current and future basic resource needs of its people.
Would not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their basic resource needs.

Question 20

Exhaustable resource

Answer 20

Fossil fuels like oil, coal, natural gas, and minerals like iron, copper, and aluminum.

Question 21

Exponential growth

Answer 21

Occurs when a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time, such as 0.5% or 2% per year
What is happening with the human population

Question 22

Full-cost pricing

Answer 22

Some economists urge us to find ways to include the harmful environmental and health costs of producing and using goods and services in their market prices
This practice would give consumers information about the harmful environmental impacts of products

Question 23

human-centered environmental worldview

Answer 23

Sees the natural world as support system for human life
2 variations – the planetary management worldview and the stewardship worldview
Both these variations say that humans are separate from and in charge of nature; we should manage the earth for our benefit; and if we degrade or deplete a natural resource or ecosystem service, we can use our technological ingenuity to find a substitute.

Question 24

Inexhaustible resource

Answer 24

Solar Energy, Geothermal, Wind, Waves (some are higher quality than others)

Question 25

LDCs

Answer 25

Low industrialization, low GDP per capita

Question 26

life-centered environmental worldview

Answer 26

All species have value in fulfilling their particular role within the biosphere, regardless of their use to humans

Question 27

models (including IPAT)

Answer 27

Simplify systems, generate testable predictions
IPAT- calculation of environmental impact based on population x consumption per person x impact per unit of consumption
(population, affluence, technology)

Question 28

more-developed countries

Answer 28

Highly industrialized, high GDP per capita

Question 29

natural capital

Answer 29

Natural resources + Ecosystem services: keep us and other species alive and support our economies

Question 30

natural resources

Answer 30

Materials and E in nature that are essential or useful to humans- classified as inexhaustible, renewable, or depletable

Question 31

peak coal

Answer 31

The point in which the max global coal production

Question 32

Poverty

Answer 32

People can’t fufill basic needs for food, water, shelter, healthcare, education

Question 33

solar energy

Answer 33

provides heat and light E that plants convert into chem E. Also indirectly powers wind and flowing water that are used for electricity

Question 34

Sustainability

Answer 34

Capacity of earth’s natural systems to support human cultural systems despite changing environmental conditions into the very long term future

Question 35

sustainability revolution

Answer 35

Social change leading to increasingly sustainable policies

Question 36

sustainable yield

Answer 36

Highest rate at which we can use a renewable resource indefinitely without reducing its available supply

Question 37

tragedy of the commons

Answer 37

Cumulative effect of many people exploiting a shared resource which can degrade, exhaust, or ruin it