Unit 5B Land and Water Use Flashcards
What is clearcutting?
Practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down.
2) What are four environmental problems associated with clearcutting?
- Soil Erosion: caused by loss of stability in root structure (removes nutrients from forests)
- Increased soil and stream temp: loss of tree shade warms the area
- Flooding & Landslides: logging machinery compacts soil
- Lowers biodiversity: same tree species are repeatedly grown
3) What are some of the ecosystem services that forest provide?
- Filtration of air pollution: stomata removes pollutants (VOCs, NO2, PM) from air and stores them in tree or soil
- Removal and storage of CO2 from atm: Trees take in CO2, store carbon as sugar, wood, other tissue and release O2
- Habitat for organisms: many org. live in forests
5) Why is meat production inefficient?
It requires masses of grain, water and land
6) Who eats more meat, developed or developing countries? Why?
Developed countries eat more meat because meat is more expensive to produce.
7) Compare overgrazing to free grazing meat production methods. How can overgrazing lead to desertification?
Overgrazing occurs when farmers allow livestock to graze to the point where they damage the vegetation.
Free grazing is allowing cows to graze freely in the fields close to farms and dairies.
They remove or damage the vegetation that is protecting the land and keeping it moist and fertile.
8) What are the negative effects of CAFOs?
- Given antibiotics & growth hormones to prevent disease outbreak & speed meat production
- Animals produce large volume of waste which can contaminate nearby surface or groundwater
- Produces large amounts of CO2, CH4 (methane), and N2O (greenhouse gasses → climate change)
Positive benefits of CAFOs?
+ Minimizes cost of meat for consumers
+ Maximizes land use and profit (most meat production per/unit of area)
Bottom Trawling
is a technique typically used to harvest scallops, crabs, and shrimp from the sea floor by using a net to drag them.
9) What happened in the fishing industry between 1975 and 1985? What were the consequences?
Overfishing in period of 1975 - 1985 leads to sharp loss of profits from 1985 - 2018
10) What is bycatch
Bycatch is anything that is caught that is not the intended catch.
What are ghost nets?
Ghost nets are nets left behind by fishermen that cause entanglement
11) What is urban sprawl?
The uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into surrounding suburbs
12) What are three environmental negative effects of urban sprawl?
Increased water pollution
Increased air pollution due to increased traffic
Loss of agricultural capacity due to development
13) What are the environmental advantages to urbanization?
Increase in jobs, entertainment and cultural attractions
Minimize driving and land use
14) Why do citizens leave rural areas to live in urban areas?
Rural areas lack academic and economic opportunity compared to metropolises.
15) What is salt water intrusion?
Population growth in coastal cities leads to salt water intrusion - as sea levels rise along the coasts due to warming of the ocean, saltwater can move onto the land and as excessive groundwater withdrawal near the coast, saltwater seeps into the ocean
Sea level rise due to warming of ocean and melting of ice caps can contaminate fresh groundwater with salt. Excessive groundwater withdrawal near coast lowering water table pressure, allowing saltwater to seep into groundwater
16) What is Smart Growth?
an approach to achieving communities that are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable
covers a range of development and conservation strategies that help protect our health and natural environment and make our communities more attractive, economically stronger, and more socially diverse.
CAFOs
Also called feedlots - densely crowded method where animals are fed grain (corn) to raise them to as quickly as possible
Manure Lagoons
Large, open storage pits for animal waste (manure)
- manure lagoons
-Heavy rain can flood lagoons & contaminate nearby surface and ground water with runoff
-e. Coli → toxic to humans
-Ammonia (N) → eutrophication
-Antibiotics & growth hormones → alter endocrine (hormonal system) of humans
Free Range Grazing
Animals (usually cows) graze on grass & grow at a natural rate without growth hormones
- free range grazing
- Requires more total land use/pound of meat produced
- More expensive to consumer
+ free range grazing
+ No need for antibiotics with dispersed pop.
+ Doesn’t require production of corn to feed animals
+ Waste is dispersed over land naturally, acting as fertilizer instead of building up in lagoons
+ Animals can graze on land too dry for most crop growth
Depletion of smaller fish pop. ____ fishery recovery and ___ food supply of marine mammals & seabirds
Limits
decreases
Propose a solution to address the issue of fishery depletion.
Limit fish catching to allow fish population to remain abundant and overfished populations to recover
Explain an environmental benefit of eating a plant-based diet, rather than a meat-based diet, using the data below.
Smaller carbon footprint because carbon is emitted a lot when needing to make fertilizers, clear lands, transport animals, feed animals, and housing the animals
Describe TWO ecosystem services provided for humans by forests.
provides oxygen for humans to live
provide food products for human consumption
Explain how clear-cutting would affect each ecosystem service you describe.
loss of oxygen
loss of habitat for animals
urban sprawl causes
Cheaper property in suburbs than in cities (larger home for same price)
Cars make it easy to still get from the suburbs into the city for work, entertainment, cultural attractions
Domino effect (neighbors leave, so you leave)
Fewer residents in cities leads to decline in tax revenue for city (decrease in city services)
Residents leave, so businesses follow
Abandoned homes + businesses create blight (unsightly, rundown infrastructure) so more people leave
Describe a possible solution to the issue of urban sprawl.
Mixed land use: residential, business, and entertainment buildings all located in the same area of a city
Enables walkability & sense of place
Identify one possible economic consequence of this urban sprawl solution
Increasing local tax revenue
