Sec 2-4 glossary ecological planning terms Flashcards
Abiotic
those aspects dealing with nonliving matter.
Adaptation
A genetically determined characteristic that enhances the ability of an organism to better adjust to its surroundings.
Adiabatic lapse rate
A variation in temperature of a parcel of air up or down a change in elevation. This does not take into account exchanges of heat between the air parcel and the environment.
Administration
Execution of an organizational policy to reach predetermined objectives.
Advection
The transfer of an atmospheric property due to mass air motion along a gradient of the property in question; the horizontal spreading of local effects by wind.
Agricultural lands
Places used for crop or animal production or for silviculture.
Air mass
A widespread body of air that gains certain characteristics while set in one location. The characteristics change as it moves away.
Air parcel
A space of air over a certain area of land.
Air pollution areas
Places that require restraints on air pollution emissions due to periods of poor vertical air mixing and the subsequent entrapment of polluting substances.
Albedo
Reflected solar radiation factor.
Alluvium
the soil material deposited by running water.
Analysis
The examination of individual parts to find out their nature, function, and interrelationship with other parts.
Annexation
The addition of new territory to the jurisdiction of a municipality.
Aquifer
A water-bearing layer of permeable rock, sand, or gravel.
Aspect
Orientation toward some direction.
Basalt
A hard, fine-grained igneous rock caused by volcanism.
Base map
A reproducible map used to display various types of information.
Biogeochemical cycles
Mineral and nutrient cycles that are important to the biological community.
Biological
Those aspects dealing with living matter.
Biomass
The amount of living matter in a given unit of the environment.
Biophysical
Biological and physical factors.
Biosphere
The portion of earth and its atmosphere that can support life.
Biota
All living organisms that exist in an area.
Biotic Community
An assemblage of plants and animals living in the same community, forming a system that is mutually sustaining and interdependent and influenced by the abiotic factors of the ecosystem. A biotic community is generally characterized by the dominant vegetation.
Board of Adjustment
An independent board created to handle conditional uses, variances, and special applications of regulations established by a zoning ordinance and to hear and act on appeals.
Building Code
The legal requirements pertaining to the building of structures.
Canopy Layer
The uppermost layer of forest vegetation.
Capability
An evaluation based on a resource’s inherent, natural, or intrinsic ability to provide for use and includes that existing ability which is the result of past alterations or current management practices. Often capability is used interchangeably with suitability.
Capability Class
An evaluation made by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service concerning the agricultural management of a soil type.
Capital improvement programming (CIP)
The multi year scheduling of public physical improvements. The scheduling is based on studies of fiscal resources available and the choice of specific improvements to be constructed for a period of 5 or 6 years in the future.
Carnivores
Animals that feed on other animals.
Carrying capacity
1) In ecology, the number of individuals that the resources of a habitat can support. (2) In wildlife, the maximum number of animals an area can support during a given period of the year. (3) In recreation, the amount of use a recreation area can sustain without deterioration of its quality.
Citizen participation
The involvement of the public in the planning process.
Citizens advisory committee (CAC)
A group of citizens called together by an agency to represent the ideas and attitudes of their community in advising and giving consultation to the agency.
Clay
Soil particles smaller than 0.002 millimeters in diameter.
Climate
The set of meteorological conditions characteristic of an area over a given length of time.
Cognitive mapping
A process by which people acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in the everyday spatial environment.
Cohort-survival method
Popular method for making population projections based on fertility, mortality, and net migration.
Community
(1) In sociology, a variety of physical and social areas and institutions within which and with which people live. (2) In ecology, an association of interacting populations, usually determined by their interactions or by spatial occurrence.
Compensating Wind
Wind originating above plains and flowing toward nearby mountains along a pressure gradient.
Competition
The use or defense of a resource by one individual which reduces the availability of that resource to other individuals.
Comprehensive plan
A document setting forth official governmental policy for the long-term future development of an area that considers all major determinants of growth and change—economic, political, social, and biophysical.
Comprehensive planning
A process for coordinating and establishing the policies set forth in a comprehensive plan.
Conditional use
A permitted use allowed in zoning ordinances that requires review by a board of adjustment or similar review agency.
Conifer
A cone-bearing plant whose needles remain on the tree all year.
Conservation
The management of human use of the biosphere to yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations.
Critical Areas
Places significantly affected by, or having an effect on, an existing or proposed major facility or other areas of major public investment; or containing or having a significant impact on historical, natural, or environmental resources of regional or statewide importance.
Cropland
Land regularly used for production of crops, except forestland and rangeland, including permanent pasture.
Cross section
A graphic tool that illustrates a vertical section of land.
Cumulative impact assessment
A comprehensive planning process whereby the rate or total amount of development is managed to stay below prestated threshold levels and is halted when such thresholds are reached.
Deadwater
Unflowing stream or river water.
Decomposers
The breakdown of matter by bacteria. It changes the chemical makeup and physical appearance of materials.
Delphi
A method for systematically developing and expressing the views of a panel of experts.
Detritus
Freshly dead or partially decomposed organic matter.
Detritus-feeding animals
Animals that ingest and break down fragments of organic matter.
Detrivores
Animals that obtain energy from decaying plant and animal matter.
Development
The modification of the biosphere and the application of human, financial, living, and nonliving resources to satisfy human needs, and improve the quality of human life.
Dike
Hardened lava extending in a direction other than that of the flow.
Dominant species
A species that has a controlling influence on the local environment.
Drainage Basin
A part of the earth’s surface that is occupied by a drainage system, which consists of a surface stream or a body of impounded surface water together with all tributary surface streams and bodies of impounded surface water.
Drainage Class
The relative terms used to describe natural drainage as follows: Excessive: Commonly very porous and rapidly permeable soils that have low water-holding capacity. Somewhat excessive: Very permeable soils that are free from mottling throughout their profile. Good: Well-drained soils that are nearly free of mottling and are commonly of intermediate texture. Moderately good: Moderately well-drained soils that commonly have a slow permeable layer in or immediate beneath the slum. They have uniform color in the surface layers and upper subsoil and mottling in the lower subsoils and substrata. Somewhat poor: Soils wet for significant periods but not all the time. They commonly have a slowly permeable layer in the profile, a high water table, additions through seepage, or a combination of these conditions. Poor: Soils wet for long periods of time. They are light gray and generally are mottled from the surface downward, although mottling may be absent or nearly so in some soils.
Drainage wind
A wind flowing from a higher elevation to a lower elevation.
Duplex
A detached structure containing two dwelling units.
Dwelling Unit
An independent living space within a structure designed and intended for occupancy by not more than one family and having its own housekeeping and kitchen facilities.
Easement
The purchase of partial rights in a piece of land.
Ecological critical areas
Places containing one or more significant natural resources that could be degraded or lost as a result of uncontrolled or incompatible development. Ecological planning The application of ecological knowledge to community, regional, and resource planning.
Ecology
The reciprocal relationship of living things to one another and to their physical and biological environment.
Economic
Of or having to do with the management of the income and expenditures of a household, business, community, or government.
Economic multiplier
The numerical relationship between an original change in economic activity and the ultimate change in activity that results as the money spent and re-spent through various sectors of the economy.
Ecosystem
The interacting system of a biological community and its nonliving surroundings.
Ecotone
Transitional areas between two ecological communities, generally of greater richness than either of the communities it separates.
Elevation
The height of land (in feet or meters) above sea level.
Energy
That which does or is capable of doing work.
Environment
The sum of all external influences that affect the life, development, and survival of an organism.
Environmental impact statement (EIS)
A document required of federal agencies by the National Environmental Policy Act for major projects or legislative proposals. It is used in making decisions about the positive and negative effects of the undertaking and lists alternatives. Some states and several other nations also require impact statements.
Environmentally sensitive areas
Places vulnerable to negative environmental impacts, such as unstable soils, steep slopes, floodplains, wetlands, and certain plant and animal habitats.
Environmental thresholds
The level beyond which additional stress to an ecosystem results in a marked decrease in the system’s performance or an adaptive change in the system’s structure or both.
Eolian soils
Soils deposited by the wind.
Erosion
The process of diminishing the land by degrees by running water, wind, ice, or other geological agents.
Erosion, bank
The destruction of land areas from active cutting of stream banks.
Erosion, beach
The retrogression of the shoreline of large lakes and coastal waters caused by wave action, shore currents, or natural causes other than subsidence.
Erosion, gully
The widening, deepening, and headcutting of small channels and waterways due to erosion.
Erosion, rill
The removal of soil by running water with formation of shallow channels that can be smoothed out completely by normal cultivation.
Erosion, sheet
The removal of a fairly uniform layer of soil or materials from the land surface by the action of rainfall and runoff water.
Estuary
A semienclosed coastal body of water that has a free connection with the open sea; it is thus strongly affected by tidal action, and within it seawater is mixed (and usually measurably diluted) with fresh water from land drainage.
Evaporation
The loss of water to the atmosphere from the surface of a soil or a body of water.
Evapotranspiration
The sum of evaporation and transpiration during a specific time period.
Exotics
Plants or animals introduced into a community that are not normally constituents of that community.
Fault
A fracture line along which movements have occurred, causing the geologic units on either side to be mismatched.
Fauna
Animal life
Fire Hazard Areas
Places identified by the U.S. Forest Service and state wildfire management agencies as being particularly susceptible to forest fires.
Flooding
The general and temporary condition of partial or complete inundation of normal dryland areas from the overflow of streams, rivers, and other inland water or from abnormally high tidal water resulting from severe storms, hurricanes, or tsunamis. Also, any relatively high stream flow overtopping the natural or artificial banks in any reach of a stream, or a relatively high flow as measured by either gauge height or discharge quantity.
Floodplain
The area of land adjoining a body of water “ that has been or may be covered by floodwater.
Flood-prone areas
Places identified on the basis of the frequency of flooding.
floodway
The channel of a river or other watercourse and the adjacent land areas required to carry and discharge a flood of a given magnitude.
Flora
Plant life
Fog
Suspended liquid particles formed by condensation of vapor.
Food Chain
The interconnected feeding relationships of various species that transfer energy from an initial source through a series of organisms.
Forb
Herbs other than true grasses, sedges, and rushes and nonaggressive plants having little or no woody material
Forestland
Land that is at least 10 percent stocked by trees of any size and land from which the trees have been removed to less than 10 percent stocking but that has not been developed for other use.
Frost pocket
A hollow in the topography into which cold air will flow, thereby lowering temperatures in the bottom of the hollow.
Geological hazard areas
Places characterized by a high frequency of earthquake shaking, landslides, fault displacements, volcanic activity, subsidence, or severe erosion.
geology
The science dealing with the study of rocks, often in an attempt to learn more about the history of the earth.
geomorphology
The science dealing with the interpretation of the relief features of the surface of the earth.
goal
A concise statement of a community or organization’s central aspirations in addressing a problem or an opportunity expressed in terms of a desired state or process that operating programs are designed to achieve.
grass
Plant species with narrow leaves and jointed stems.
greenbelts
Buffer zones created by restricting development from certain land areas.
groundcover
Plants grown to keep soil from eroding.
Groundwater
The mass of gravity water that occupies the subsoil and upper bedrock zone; the water occupying the zone saturation b elbow the soil water zone.
groundwater Recharge
Areas where additions are made to an aquifer by infiltration of water through the land surface.
Group dynamics
A generic term classifying a variety of interpersonal techniques used to foster group interaction and achievement of group goals and problem-solving techniques designed to clarify substantive issues.
Habitat
The sum of environmental conditions in a specific place that is occupied by an organism, population, or community.
Hedgerow
A group or row of trees and shrubs separating two grassy areas.
Herb
Any flowering plant that does not develop a persistent woody stem above ground, including forbs, grasses, and glasslike plants.
Herbicide
A chemical that controls or destroys undesirable plants.
herbivores
Primary consumers or animals that obtain energy from plants.
Historic, Archeological, and Cultural Areas
Sites important to the heritage of the community, region, state, or nation.
Human ecology
The interdisciplinary’ study of human-ecosystem relationships.
Humus
The semistable fraction of the soil organic matter remaining after the major portion of added plant and animal residues has decomposed, usually dark-colored.
Hydrograph
A streamflow graph which shows the change in discharge over time, usually hours or days. See also Hydrograph method.
Hydrologic Cycle
The planet’s water system, described by the movement of water from the oceans to the atmosphere to the continents and back to the sea.
Hydrology
The science dealing with the study of groundwater and surface water and the changes that occur during the hydrologic cycle.
Impact fees
A growth management technique that requires a developer to pay for public services necessary for new urban development.
Indicator species
A species (either plant or animal) generally limited to a particular environment so that its presence will usually indicate that environment or life zone.
Infiltration Rate
The rate of speed at which water flows into soil through small pores.
Insolation
Incoming solar radiation that is absorbed by the land, largely dependent on landforms and wind direction.
Intrinsic suitability
The inherent capability of an area to support a particular land use with the least detriment to the economy and the environment.
Introduced species
A species brought into an area by people; one that is not a native.
Inventory
The gathering of data for future use.
Inversion
An atmospheric condition caused by a layer of warm air preventing the rise of cool air trapped beneath it.
Landscape
All the natural features such as fields, hills, forests, and water that distinguish one part of the surface of the earth from another part. Usually a landscape is that portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all its natural characteristics.
Landscape Architecture
The art and science of arranging land so as to adapt it most conveniently, economically, functionally, and gracefully to any of the varied wants of people.
