Environmental Science: Population, Water, Health, and Agriculture

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering population dynamics, urbanization, public and environmental health, toxicology, water resources and pollution, and sustainable agriculture from Modules 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 6.1, 6.2, 8.1, and 8.2.

Population growth rate

The change in population size over time that takes into account the number of births and deaths as well as immigration and emigration numbers.

Zero-population growth

The absence of population growth; occurs when birth rates equal death rates, leading to population stabilization.

Demography

The statistical analysis of the characteristics of a population.

Crude birth rate

The number of offspring per 1,000 individuals per year.

Crude death rate

The number of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year.

Desired fertility

The ideal number of children an individual indicates that they would like to have.

Total fertility rate (TFR)

The number of children the average woman has in her lifetime.

Pronatalist pressure

A factor that increases the desire to have children, such as high childhood mortality rates.

Childhood mortality rate

The number of children under 5 years of age who die per every 1,000 live births in that year.

Replacement fertility

The rate at which children must be born to replace those dying in the population, which is $2.1$ children per woman.

Age structure

The percentage of the population that is distributed into various age groups.

Population momentum

The tendency of a population to continue growing even after fertility rates decline to replacement level.

Demographic transition

A theoretical model that describes the expected drop in once-high population growth rates as economic conditions improve the quality of life in a population.

Carrying capacity

The maximum population size that a particular environment can support indefinitely.

Overpopulated

The state when the number of individuals in an area exceeds the carrying capacity of that area.

Ecological footprint

The aquatic and land area needed to provide the resources for, and assimilate the waste of, a person or population.

Urban areas

Densely populated regions that include cities and the suburbs that surround them.

Carbon footprint

The amount of $CO_2$ and other greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere by a person, company, nation, or activity.

Environmental justice

The concept that access to a clean, healthy environment is a basic human right.

Urban flight

The process of people leaving an inner-city area to live in surrounding areas due to factors such as overcrowding, pollution, and high living costs.

Suburban sprawl

Low-population-density developments that are built outside of a city, which are often unplanned and inefficient.

Exurbs

Towns beyond the immediate suburbs whose residents commute into the city for work.

Green space

A natural area such as a park or undeveloped landscape containing grass, trees, or other vegetation in an urban area, usually set aside for recreational use.

Communicable disease

A disease that can spread from one person to another, such as flu, HIV/AIDS, or tuberculosis.

Noncommunicable disease

An illness that is not transmissible between people, such as heart disease or cancer.

Pathogen

An infectious agent that causes illness or disease.

Zoonotic disease

An infectious disease of animals that can be transmitted to humans.

Vector

An agent that transmits a pathogen to an organism.

Emerging infectious disease

A disease new to humans or that has recently increased significantly in incidence.

Public health

The science that deals with the health of human populations, focusing on disease prevention and understanding disease spread.

Epidemiologist

A scientist who studies the causes and patterns of disease in human populations using statistical analysis.

Environmental health

The branch of public health that focuses on factors in the natural world and the human-built environment that impact the health of populations.

Toxic substance

A substance that causes damage when it contacts or enters the body.

Acute effect

An adverse reaction that occurs very rapidly after exposure to a toxic substance has occurred.

Chronic effect

An adverse reaction that happens only after repeated long-term exposure to low doses of a toxic substance.

Potency

The dose required for a chemical to cause harm.

Persistence

A measure of how resistant a chemical is to degradation.

Solubility

The ability of a substance to dissolve in a water- or fat-based liquid or gas.

Bioaccumulation

The buildup of a substance in the tissues of an organism over the course of its lifetime.

Biomagnification

The increased concentration of substances in the tissue of animals at successively higher levels of the food chain.

Surface water

Any body of water found above the ground, such as oceans, rivers, and lakes.

Groundwater

Water found underground trapped in soil or porous rock.

Aquifer

An underground, permeable region of soil or rock that is saturated with water.

Infiltration

The process of water soaking into the ground.

Non-consumptive uses

Water use that returns to streams or aquifers, such as hydroelectric power or septic wastewater.

Consumptive uses

Water use in which water evaporates into the atmosphere, such as through agricultural irrigation.

Water scarcity

Not having access to enough clean water, categorized as either physical or economic scarcity.

Baseline water stress

Total annual water withdrawals expressed as a percentage of annual flow in a given region.

Desalination

The removal of salt and minerals from seawater to make it suitable for consumption.

Wastewater

Used and contaminated water that is released after use by households, businesses, industry, or agriculture.

Water footprint

The water consumed by a given group or appropriated and/or polluted by industry to produce products or energy.

Water pollution

The addition of any substance to a body of water that might degrade its quality.

Point source pollution

Pollution from easily identified discharge sources, such as wastewater treatment plants or industrial discharge pipes and smokestacks.

Nonpoint source pollution

Runoff that enters water from overland flow without an easily identifiable, single point of origin.

Storm-water runoff

Water from precipitation that flows over the surface of the land, picking up nutrients, pesticides, sediments, and trash.

Hypoxia

A situation in which a body of water contains inadequate levels of oxygen, compromising the health of aquatic organisms.

Eutrophication

A process by which excess nutrients in aquatic ecosystems feed biological productivity, ultimately lowering the oxygen content in the water.

Watershed

The land area surrounding a body of water over which water, such as rain, can flow and potentially enter that body of water.

Biological assessment

The process of sampling an area to see what lives there as a tool to determine how healthy the aquatic area is.

Clean Water Act (CWA)

U.S. federal legislation enacted in 1972 that regulates the release of point source pollution into surface waters and sets water quality standards.

Performance standards

The levels of pollutants allowed to be present in the environment or released over a certain time period.

Total maximum daily loads (TMDLs)

The maximum amount of a pollutant allowed to enter a water body so that it continues to meet water quality standards.

Riparian areas

The land areas close enough to a body of water to be affected by the water's presence and that directly affect the water itself.

Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

Federal law enacted in 1974 that protects public drinking water supplies in the United States.

Food security

Having physical, social, and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food.

Food desert

A locale where access to affordable, fresh, and nutritious food is limited or nonexistent.

Malnutrition

A state of poor health that results from an inappropriate caloric intake (too many or too few calories) or a deficiency in one or more nutrients.

Undernutrition

A form of malnutrition that occurs when a person does not have enough food to eat.

Overnutrition

The consumption of too many calories or too much of a specific nutrient, such as fat or sugar.

Green Revolution

A plant-breeding program initiated in the mid-1900s that dramatically increased crop yields and paved the way for mechanized, large-scale agriculture.

Industrial agriculture

Farming methods that rely on technology, synthetic chemical inputs, and economies of scale to increase productivity and profits.

Monoculture

A farming method in which a single variety of one crop is planted over huge swaths of land with large inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and water.

Genetic diversity

The heritable variation among individuals of a single population or within the species as a whole.

Pesticide resistance

The ability of a pest to withstand exposure to a given pesticide as a result of natural selection favoring surviving individuals.

HT crops

Crops engineered with an herbicide-tolerant gene added to their genome to allow them to withstand high doses of herbicides.

Bt crops

Crops that contain a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a toxin that kills specific insect pests.

Food self-sufficiency

The ability of an individual nation to grow enough food to feed its own people.

Food sovereignty

The ability of an individual nation to control its own food system.

Cash crops

Food and fiber crops grown to sell for profit rather than for consumption by local families or communities.

Sustainable agriculture

Farming methods that can be used indefinitely because they do not deplete resources, such as soil and water, faster than they are replaced.

Organic agriculture

Farming that does not use synthetic fertilizer, synthetic pesticides, GMOs, or other chemical additives such as hormones.

Soil

A complex ecosystem of mineral and organic material, including living organisms, that supports the growth of plants and is affected by those plants.

Soil erosion

The process in which soil is moved from one location to another, most often by the action of wind or water.

Agroecology

A scientific field that considers local ecology and indigenous knowledge to favor agricultural methods that protect the environment and meet local human needs.

Polyculture

A farming method in which multiple crops and/or animals are reared together on one plot of land.

Integrated pest management (IPM)

The use of a variety of methods to control a pest population, with the goal of minimizing or eliminating the use of chemical toxins.

Perennial crops

Crops that do not die at the end of the growing season but live for several years, allowing annual harvesting without replanting.

Food miles

The distance a food travels from its site of production to the consumer.