Environmental Sciences Midterm

What is Anthropocene

Widely used term for the period in which human activities have become a major influence on Earth’s systems.

What is Ecological footprint?

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

Ecological footprints vary for different countries based on two factors. Which two factors are they?

population size and per capital impact.

What is carrying capacity?

Population size that an area can support indefinitely

Why did the Viking society on Greenland collapse?

1. mini ice-age

2. overgrazing, overharvesting

3. would not eat fish

4. refused Inuit’s help

5. European supplies stopped arriving

What are Jared Diamond’s Five Factors

1. Natural climate change

2. Self-inflicted environmental damage

3. Failure to respond to the natural environment

4. Hostile neighbours

5. Loss of friendly neighbours

What are the Montreal protocol and amendments?

International treaty designed to protect Earth’s ozone layer.

What was the course correction of ozone layer?

• Planetary-scale environmental problem

• Detected scientifically

• Identified causation

• Negotiated international action

• Substituted technologies

• Monitored the response

• Changed the trajectory

What are the four characteristics of a sustainable ecosystem?

1. Rely on renewable energy

2. Recycle matter

3. Have population control

4. Depend on local biodiversity

What does relying on renewable energy mean?

• Ecosystem must rely on sources of energy that are replenished daily because energy used by one organism is “used up” and cannot be used by another; energy is NOT recycled. This means new inputs are constantly needed.

What does having population control mean?

The sizes of the various populations in an ecosystem are kept in check by disease, predators, and competitors. This prevents a population from eating too large and damaging the ecosystem it, and others, depends on.

Why does recycling matter for a sustainable ecosystem?

No new matter arrives on Earth, so ecosystems must make do with what they have. Fortunately, matter can be recycled, and organisms in ecosystems use matter resources over and over again; the waste of one becomes resource of the next.

Why do we need to depend on local biodiversity for a sustainable ecosystem?

• Ecosystems access energy, recycle matter, and control population sizes largely through the actions of the resident species. The. more species present, the better these jobs get done.

What is environmental literacy?

Understanding ecosystems, human-environment relationships, causes, consequences, connections.

What is scientific literacy?

Questions, evidence, hypotheses, testing, uncertainty.

What is information literacy?

Sources, claims, evidence, expertise, bias, context.

What is environment?

• Living things

• Animals, plants, forests, fungi

• Nonliving thigns

• Continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks,

• Built environment

• Buildings, human-created living centers

• Social relationships and institutions

What is environmentalism?

A social movement dedicated to protecting the natural world

What are environmental problems?

• The perception of what constitutes a problem varies between individuals and societies

• In developing countries: welcome because it kills malaria-carrying mosquitos

• In developed countries: not welcome, due to health risks

Who is Wangari Maathai?

Kenya environmental activist founded green belt movement first African woman to win Nobel peace prize.

What is anthropocentrism?

Human centred: Only humans have intrinsic value and resources are here to meet human needs and wants.

What is biocentrism?

Life centred: Humans and other species have a right to exist and are worthy of protection.

Ecocentrism

System centered: Value is given to the importance of th ecosystem as a whole, including interactions such as those between wind and soil and between species (predators and their prey, for instance), as well as natural processes (such as water cycle).

What is environmental science?

Interdisciplinary field of research that draws on natural, social sciences, and humanities to better understand our relationship to th natural world.

What is empirical science?

Aims to understand how natural world works by gathering data through direct observation, experiments, and measurements.

What is applied science?

Takes data and uses it to build practical tools, models, and solutions for real-world environmental problems.

Empirical or Applied?: Soil studies that reveal the composition of water-retention abilities of soil.

Empirical

Empirical or Applied?: Determining the suitability of soil for agriculture to help farmers make choices about which crops to plant/

Applied

Empirical or Applied: Applying a dye to a glacier and measuring the distance it travels over time to study the speeds at which glaciers flow to shed light on glacier melt rates.

Empirical

Empirical or Applied: Using flowing water’s potential energy to produce hydroelectric power.

Applied

Empirical or Applied: Assessing the best way to restore coastal wetlands to protect cities from flooding.

Applied

Empirical or Applied: Calculating the rate at which a fishery can be sustainably harvested.

Applied

What is the scientific method?

A technique for testing ideas with observations

What are the assumptions we make with the scientific method?

• the universe works according to unchanging natural laws

• Events arise form causes, and cause other events

• We use our sense and reason to understand nature’s laws

What are the steps to the scientific method?

1. Observe and question

2. Form testable hypothesis/prediction

3. Collect data/conduct experiment to test prediction

4. Interpret results

5. Disseminate findings

What were the two hypotheses generated about the white nose syndrome fungal disease?

1. The white-nose infection caused by the fungus was secondary and opportunistic; it was able to grow on the bats only because their defences had been weakened by another pathogen.

2. The fungus had been transported from hem other place and was new to the region.

What are the three requirements of good hypotheses

1. Testable

2. Replicable

3. Falsifiable

What is a hypothesis?

The answer to your research question.

What is a prediction?

Specific to the study and experiment designed to test the hypothesis. The outcome observed if hypothesis is supported.

What are observational studies?

They show real-world complexity

what are experimental studies?

Yield strongest evidence (but lots of things cannot be manipulated)

Replication in collecting data

recreating the measurement many times

sample size in collecting data

the number of times the measurements is repeated

accuracy in collecting data

how close a measured value is to the actual or true value.

Precision in collecting data

How close to one another the repeated measurements are.

Interpreting results

• Once results have been obtained, analysis of data begins

• Usually involves plotting the data and running statistical tests to look for correlations or differences between groups

What is correlation?

When two things occur together, but one does not necessarily cause the other.

What is cause and effect?

When two things occur together, but one directly occurs (the effect) in response to, or as a result of th other (the cause)

What is a policy?

• A formalized plan that addresses a desired outcome or goal

  • Needs to be informed by science.

  • Needs to address the triple bottom line

  • Must be flexible and able to adapt to new scientific findings.

How is life organized by ecologists?

1. Individual

2. Population

3. Community

4. Ecosystem

5. Biosphere

what is an individual?

• A single member of a population.

What is a population?

• A group of individuals of the same species living and interacting in the same region.

What is community?

• All the populations (plants, animals, and other species) living and interacting in an area. Communities represent the “living” portion of the ecosystem.

What is an ecosystem?

• A specific portion of a biome consisting of the living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) environmental components that interact.

Biosphere

• the total area on Earth (air, land, or water) where living things are found.

What is a biome?

• A portion of the biosphere characterized by a distinct climate and a particular assemblage of plants and animals adapted to it.

What is the difference between energy and matter?

Energy is used once and then lost, battery cycles use and passed on to other organisms to be used again.

What is a carbon sink?

An area such as a forest, ocean sediment, or soil where accumulated carbon doe snot readily reenter the carbon cycle.

Earth is a closed system for ____ but not ___

matter, energy

Biomes can be separated into three broad categories which are?

1. terrestrial

2. marine

3. freshwater

What are anthromes?

Human-altered terrestrial biome.

What are terrestrial biomes?

• Ecosystesm with characteristic temperature and precipitation conditions

What is an example of an anthrome?

• A wheat field that may have originally been a grassland.

What is photosynthesis?

the chemical reaction performed by producers that use the energy of the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen.

What are producers?

• An organism that converts solar energy to be chemical energy via photosynthesis.

What is a consumer?

• An organism that obtains energy and nutrients by feeding on another organism.

What is cellular respiration?

the chemical reaction in which an organism breaks down sugar to release energy, using oxygen and giving off CO2 as a waste product.

What is nitrogen fixation?

The conversion of atmospheric nitrogen into a biologically usable form, carried out by bacteria found ins oil or via lightning.

What is nitrification?

• Conversion of ammonia to nitrate

What is denitrification

Conversion of nitrate to molecular nitrogen.

What is population distribution?

The location and spacing of individuals within their range.

What is clumped distribution?

A distribution in which individuals are found in groups or patches within the habitat

What is random distribution?

A distribution in which individuals ar spread out over the environment irregularly, with no discernible pattern.

What is uniform distributions?

A distribution in which individuals are spaced evenly, perhaps due to territorial behaviour or mechanisms for suppressing the growth of nearby individuals.

What are population dynamics?

Changes over time in population size and composition.

What is minimum viable population?

The smallest number of individuals that would still allow a population to be able to persist or grow, ensuring long-term survival.

What is carrying capacity?

The maximum population size that a particular environment can support indefinitely; of human populations, it depends on resource availability and the rate of per capital resource use by the population.

What is population density?

The number of individuals per unit area.

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.

birth rate - population of death rate

What are growth factors?

Population growth is dependent on the presence of resources individuals need to survive or reproduce.

What are resistance factors

Things that directly (predators, disease) or indirectly (competitors) reduce population size.

What are biotic potential?

The maximum rate at which the population can grow due to births if each member of the population survives and reproduces.

What is exponential growth?

The kind of growth in which a population becomes proportionally larger each breeding cycle; produces a J curve when plotted over time.

It is typically seen when a species first enters a new environment or when there is an influx of new resources.

What are life-history strategies

Biological characteristics of a species, such as life span and fecundity, that influence how quickly a population can potentially increase in number.

What is high fecundity

Species whose members mature early (can produce many offspring in their lifetime)

What is an R-Selected Species?

Species that have high biotic potential and share other characteristics such as short life span and early maturity, and high fecundity

What are k-selected species

Species that have a low biotic potential and that share characteristics such as long life span, late maturity and low fecundity; generally show logistic population growth.

What is bottom-up regulation?

Population sizes in a community are limited primarily by availability of resources that enhance growth and survival of organisms lower on the food chain.

What is top down regulation?

Population sizes in a community are limited primarily by predation from organisms at the top of the food chain.

What is trophic cascade?

Top-down effects from the presence or absence of a top predator that propagate all the way down a food chain to the ecosystem’s plant communities.

What is biodiversity

What is species diversity

The variety of species, including how many are present and their abundance relative to each other.

What is ecological diversity?

The variety within an ecosystem’s structure including how many communities, habitats, niches, and trophic levels

What does endemic mean?

Describes a species that is native to a particular area and is not naturally found anywhere else.

What is habitat fragmentation?

Produces habitat islands

What is single-species conservation

A management strategy that focuses on protecting one particular species.

What are flagship species?

The focus of public awareness campaigns aimed at generating interest in conversation in general; usually an interesting or charismatic species such as the giant panda or tiger.

What is the ecosystem conservation approach?

A management strategy that focuses on protecting an ecosystem as a whole in an effort to protect the species that live here.

What are surrogate species?

Species that collectively represent all the needs of other species in the area.

What are conservation genetics?

The scientific field that holds species genetics to inform conservation efforts?