Environmental Systems and Societies Review

Flashcards for reviewing lecture notes on Environmental Systems and Societies.

Worldviews

Lenses shared by groups of people through which they perceive, make sense of, and act within their environment, shaping values and perspectives through culture, philosophy, ideology, religion, and politics.

Environmental Value System

A model showing the inputs affecting our perspectives and the outputs resulting from our perspectives, with inputs like media, education, and worldviews, and outputs like judgments, positions, choices, and actions.

Technocentrism

The belief that all environmental issues can be resolved through technology.

Anthropocentrism

The view that humankind is the central and most important element of existence.

Ecocentrism

The perspective that sees the natural world as having pre-eminent importance and intrinsic value.

Systems

Sets of interacting or interdependent components organized to create a functional whole.

Systems Approach

A holistic way of visualizing a complex set of interactions applicable to ecological or societal situations, involving storages and flows of energy and matter.

Storages (in Systems Diagrams)

Represented as rectangular boxes, these indicate accumulations of energy or matter within a system.

Flows (in Systems Diagrams)

Represented as arrows, indicate the direction of movement of energy or matter.

Transfers

Involve a change in location of energy or matter.

Transformations

Involve a change in the chemical nature, state, or energy of matter.

Open System

A system that exchanges both energy and matter across its boundary.

Closed System

A system that exchanges only energy across its boundary.

Gaia Hypothesis

A model of the Earth as a single integrated system, explaining how atmospheric composition and temperatures are interrelated through feedback control mechanisms.

Negative Feedback Loops

Occur when the output of a process inhibits or reverses the operation of the same process, reducing change and stabilizing the system.

Stable Equilibrium

The condition of a system in which there is a tendency for it to return to the previous equilibrium following disturbance.

Steady-State Equilibrium

The condition of an open system in which flows are still occurring but inputs are constantly balanced with outputs.

Positive Feedback Loops

Occur when a disturbance leads to an amplification of that disturbance, destabilizing the system and driving it away from its equilibrium.

Tipping Point

The minimum amount of change that will cause destabilization within a system, leading to a shift to a new equilibrium or stable state.

Model

A simplified representation of reality used to understand how a system works and to predict how it will respond to change.

Emergent Properties

Properties that appear as individual system components interact, which the components themselves do not have.

Resilience

The tendency of a system, ecological or social, to avoid tipping points and maintain stability; the capacity to resist damage and recover from disturbance.

Sustainability

A measure of the extent to which practices allow for the long-term viability of a system, referring to the responsible maintenance of socio-ecological systems.

Environmental Sustainability

The use and management of natural resources that allows for replacement of the resources, and recovery and regeneration of ecosystems, focusing on resource depletion, pollution, and conserving biodiversity.

Social Sustainability

Focuses on creating the structures and systems, such as health, education, equity, community, that support human well-being.

Economic Sustainability

Focuses on creating the economic structures and systems to support production and consumption of goods and services that will support human needs into the future.

Sustainable Development

Meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Environmental Justice

Refers to the right of all people to live in a pollution-free environment and to have equitable access to natural resources, regardless of issues such as race, gender, socio-economic status, nationality.

Ecological Footprint

The area of land and water required to sustainably provide all resources at the rate of consumption and absorb all generated waste at the rate of production for a specific population.

Carbon Footprint

Measures the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (in tonnes).

Water Footprint

Measures water use (in cubic meters per year).

Biocapacity

The capacity of a given biologically productive area to generate an ongoing supply of renewable resources and to absorb its resulting wastes.

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

A set of social and environmental goals and targets to guide action on sustainability and environmental justice.

Planetary Boundaries Model

Describes the nine processes and systems that have regulated the stability and resilience of the Earth system in the Holocene epoch.

Doughnut Economics Model

A framework for creating a regenerative and distributive economy in order to meet the needs of all people within the means of the planet.

Circular Economy

A model that promotes decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources, based on eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and regenerating nature.

Biosphere

An ecological system composed of individuals, populations, communities and ecosystems that represents the parts of the Earth where life exists.

Species

A group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

Population

A group of organisms of the same species living in the same area at the same time, and which are capable of interbreeding.

Niche

Describes the particular set of abiotic and biotic conditions and resources upon which an organism or a population depends.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum size of a population determined by competition for limited resources.

Community

A collection of interacting populations within the ecosystem.

Habitat

The location in which a community, species, population or organism lives.

Ecosystem

A community and the physical environment with which it interacts.

Keystone Species

Have a critical role in the sustainability of ecosystems, having a disproportionate impact on community structure; ecosystem collapse is a risk if keystone species are removed.

Fundamental Niche

Describes the range of conditions and resources in which a species could survive and reproduce if there were no limiting factors.

Realized Niche

The actual mode of existence of a species, which results from its adaptations and competition with other species.

Gross Productivity (GP)

The total gain in biomass by an organism.

Net Productivity (NP)

The amount remaining after losses due to cellular respiration.

Food Web

A diagram showing the complexity of trophic relationships in communities; arrows in food chains and food webs indicate the direction of energy flow and transfer of biomass.

Bioaccumulation

The increasing concentration of non-biodegradable pollutants in organisms or trophic levels over time.

Biomagnification

The increasing concentration of non-biodegradable pollutants along a food chain.

Climate

Describes atmospheric conditions over relatively long periods of time.

Weather

Describes the conditions in the atmosphere over a short period of time.

Biome

A group of comparable ecosystems that have developed in similar climatic conditions, wherever they occur.

Tricellular Model of Atmospheric Circulation

Explains the behavior of atmospheric systems and the distribution of precipitation and temperature at different latitudes and their influences on the structure and productivity of biomes.

Zonation

Refers to changes in community along an environmental gradient.

Succession

The replacement of one community by another in an area over time due to changes in biotic and abiotic variables.

Primary Succession

Happens on newly formed substratum where there is no soil or pre-existing community.

Secondary Succession

Happens on bare soil where there has been a pre-existing community.

Plagioclimax

The community developing on the land as a result of deflected or interrupted succession.

Biodiversity

The total diversity of living systems and it exists at several levels. It is composed of habitat diversity, species diversity and genetic diversity that contributes to the resilience of ecological systems.

Speciation

gradual change of a species over a long time due to temporal, physical, and behavioural barriers to form a new species.

Simpson’s Reciprocal Index

Used to provide a quantitative measure of species diversity, allowing different ecosystems to be compared and change in a specific ecosystem over time to be monitored.

Keystone Species

Have a critical role in the sustainability of ecosystems, having a disproportionate impact on community structure; ecosystem collapse is a risk if keystone species are removed.

Anthropocene

A proposed geological epoch characterized by rapid environmental change and species extinction due to human activity.

Tragedy of the Commons

Describes possible outcomes of the shared unrestricted use of a resource, with implications for sustainability and the impacts on biodiversity.

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs)

Have been used to identify sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity.

Ex-Situ Measures

Conservation efforts taken outside of the natural environment such as botanic gardens, zoos, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and seed banks.

In-Situ Measures

Conservation efforts taken within the natural environment such as use of national parks, reserves and sanctuaries.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

A UN treaty addressing both species-based and habitat-based conservation focused on developing national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.

Rewilding

The process of regenerating natural processes in ecosystems by reintroduction of apex predators, re-establishment of connectivity of habitats over large areas, cessation of agriculture and resource harvesting, and minimization of human influences including by ecological management.

Hydrosphere

Includes all forms of water (oceans, glaciers, groundwater, surface freshwater, atmosphere and organisms). Movements of water in the hydrosphere are driven by solar radiation and gravity.

Flows

In the cycle are transpiration, sublimation, evaporation, condensation, advection, precipitation, melting, freezing, surface run-off, infiltration, percolation, streamflow and groundwater flow.

Stores

In the cycle are the oceans (96.5%), glaciers and ice caps (1.7%), groundwater (1.7%), surface freshwater (0.02%), atmosphere (0.001%), organisms (0.0001%).

Advection

The wind-blown movement of water vapour or condensed/frozen water droplets (clouds).

Infiltration

Water entering the soil.

Percolation

Water movement in the soil.

Stratification

The formation of layers in a fluid, where each layer has a different temperature or density.

Upwelling

Is the mass, vertical movement of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the depths to the surface in response to displacement of wind-blown surface waters

Water Security

Having access to sufficient amounts of safe drinking water.

Water Scarcity

Refers to the limited availability of water to human societies which may be limited by the actual abundance of water present (physical scarcity) or by the available storage and transport systems (economic scarcity).

Water Footprint

A measure of the use of water by individual humans or nations, or the amount needed to grow crops or livestock or manufacture textiles, steel or other products.

Water Stress

A measure of the limitation of water supply that takes into account the scarcity of availability but also the water quality, environmental flows and accessibility; it is defined as a clean, accessible water supply of less than 1,700 cubic meters per year per capita.

Phytoplankton

A type of microscopic plankton capable of photosynthesis that are found in oceans, seas and freshwater.

Macrophytes

Aquatic plants that are large enough to be visible.

Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY)

Highest possible annual catch that can be sustained over time; used to set caps on fishing quotas.

Aquaculture

The farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants, that is expanding to increase food supplies and support economic development but has associated environmental impacts.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

Can be used to support aquatic food chains and maintain sustainable yields.

Water Quality Index (WQI)

Assessses water quality by measuring of chemical, physical and biological characteristics of water, which is variable.

Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD)

A measure of the amount of dissolved oxygen required by microorganisms to decompose organic material in water.

Eutrophication

Occurs when lakes, estuaries and coastal waters receive inputs of mineral nutrients, especially nitrates and phosphates, often causing excessive growth of phytoplankton which impacts ecosystem services.

Soil

A dynamic system within the larger ecosystem that has its own inputs, outputs, storages and flows.

Soil Horizons

Layers forming the soil profile with transition from organic components in the upper surface to inorganic below.

O Horizon

Organic Layer containing leaves and partially decomposed organic debris.

A Horizon

Mixed Layer richest in organic matter, also known as Topsoil.

B Horizon

Accumulation of silicate clay minerals, iron, aluminum and humus also known as Subsoil.

C Horizon

Weathered parent material; partially broken down inorganic minerals.