Ecosystem Services, System Limits, and Uncertainty Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards generated from lecture materials on ecosystem services, thermodynamic system limits, resource categories, and framework responses to scientific uncertainty.

Ecosystem Services

The free natural processes provided by healthy natural ecosystems that benefit human society, categorized into provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services.

Environmental Kuznets Curve

A hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship suggesting environmental degradation initially rises with economic growth, but peaks and declines as higher income enables environmental policy and technological improvements.

Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974

Federal law mandating filtration of public surface water supplies, under which New York City chose watershed protection costing $1.5\text{ billion}$ rather than building a filtration facility costing $6\text{ billion}$ with $250\text{--}300\text{ million}$ annual operating expenses.

Helicoverpa zea

An agricultural pest species commonly known as the corn earworm or cotton bollworm, whose population is regulated by Brazilian free-tailed bats (T. brasiliensis) in the Winter Garden region.

Refugia

An ecosystem service category representing habitats that provide sanctuary, protection, or shelter for species to survive and reproduce.

Built Capital

Manufactured objects, tools, factories, infrastructure, and processed raw materials used within human society to produce goods and services.

Human Capital

Individual attributes including health, education, knowledge, skills, and labor capabilities that enable economic and social productivity.

Social Capital

Societal networks, communication, mobility, and human interconnections that build institutional trust and enhance collaborative efficiency.

Natural Capital

The world's stock of natural assets, including geology, soil, air, water, biodiversity, and ecosystem services that generate essential natural benefits.

Daly's Triangle

An integrating conceptual framework created by Herman Daly that arranges resources and human goals hierarchically from Ultimate Means (natural capital) to Ultimate Ends (human well-being and equity).

Keystone Species

A species that has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance, maintaining overall ecosystem structure and service flow.

Functionally Redundant Species

Multiple distinct species within an ecosystem that perform similar ecological functions, providing biological insurance and system resilience against disturbances.

Law of Conservation of Matter

A physical law stating that matter cannot be created or destroyed, establishing Earth as a closed system for material elements where all wastes remain in the environment.

First Law of Thermodynamics

A physical principle establishing that energy cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed, defining Earth as an open system powered continuously by incoming solar energy.

Second Law of Thermodynamics

A thermodynamic law stating that energy conversions inevitably cause energy to degrade from higher usability to lower quality heat, thereby increasing system entropy.

Entropy

A thermodynamic measure of energy degradation and structural disorder in a system; low entropy indicates concentrated, organized energy, while high entropy indicates dispersed, low-quality heat.

Net Primary Production (NPP)

The amount of solar energy stored as plant biomass remaining after primary producers use energy for cellular respiration, forming the energy baseline for consumer organisms.

Efficiency

The ratio calculated as $\text{work output} / \text{energy input}$, which cannot reach $100\%$ in physical systems due to thermal energy loss during conversions.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum population size or resource consumption level of a species that an environment can sustainably support indefinitely without habitat degradation.

Overshoot

The state occurring when resource consumption or population size exceeds environmental carrying capacity, often degrading future carrying capacity or triggering population collapse.

Scientific Uncertainty

Uncertainty regarding the exact magnitudes, rates, or feedback dynamics of natural physical processes, stocks, and ecological flows.

Risk

A condition of uncertainty where the mathematical probability of a future event occurring can be accurately calculated using historical data or empirical records.

Unknown

An uncertain situation where a specific potential outcome or relationship is identified, but its probability cannot be quantified due to insufficient historical evidence.

Unknown Unknown

An environmental hazard or unanticipated side-effect whose potential occurrence is completely unrecognized or unimagined before it manifests.

Thomas Midgley, Jr.

An American chemist who invented tetraethyl lead gasoline additives and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), serving as a primary historical case of unknown unknown pollutants.

Precautionary Principle

A management policy declaring that protective measures should be implemented when an action presents risks of environmental or human health damage, even if causal proof is not fully established scientifically.