Environmental indicators Flashcards
How are environmental indicators useful?
If the cause and effect are well understood, indicators can be used as an early warning signal to detect dysfunction in a system.
What are types of environmental indicators?
Physical, biological, chemical, socioeconomic
What are concepts relating to environmental indicators?
Ecological niches, generalist species, specialist species, surivival of an organism, range of tolerance, thershold, limiting factors, indicators and standards,water quality standards for salinity
What is an ecological niche?
An organism’s profession or occupation is its ecological niche.
What are generalist species?
Species that occupy broad ecological niches and feed on many kinds of food are generalists.
Ex. cockroaches, rats, humans
What are speicalist species?
Organisms, which have very specialised ecological niches and feed only on one or very few types of food, are specialists.
Ex. Giant panda, koala
What is the survival of an organism?
The survival of an organism is the condition and health of its environment and habitat.
What is the range of tolerance?
An organism has a limited range of tolerance of chemical and physical conditions within which it will live, grow and function normally.
What are threshold and threshold pollutants?
A threshold is the point at which a certain level or concentration is reached and an effect is observed.
A threshold pollutant is a substance that is harmful to a particular organism once it reaches a certain concentration, or threshold level.
What are limiting factors?
Any condition that approaches or exceeds an organism’s limits of tolerance is called a limiting condition, or limiting factor.
