Environmental Geography: Global Food Crisis, Climate Change, and Pollution

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering agricultural systems, food security, climatology, global warming, and environmental pollution from Lectures 4, 5, and 6.

Subsistence Farming

A farming system intended to provide a self-sufficient lifestyle that meets the basic survival needs of the farm family, without producing any significant surplus for commercial sale.

Commercial Farming

An agricultural system involving the raising of crops and livestock primarily to sell for a profit, where consumer demand and market forces determine crop selection.

Intensive Agriculture

An agricultural approach designed to maximize yields from available land through high labour and capital inputs, mechanization, factory farming, and heavy reliance on synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Extensive Agriculture

An agricultural system characterized by small inputs of labour, fertilizers, pesticides, and capital relative to the large land area being farmed, typified by open-range livestock grazing and vast grain operations.

Desertification

The degradation of land in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, primarily overgrazing, unsustainable agricultural tillage, deforestation, overdrafting of groundwater, and climate change.

Eutrophication

The excessive nutrient enrichment of a body of water—frequently caused by agricultural runoff containing nitrogen and phosphorus—which spurs dense algal blooms and leads to oxygen depletion (hypoxia or anoxia) as the biomass decomposes.

Dead Zone

A hypoxic or anoxic aquatic region (typically where dissolved oxygen drops below $2\,\text{mg/L}$) created by nutrient runoff, excessive microscopic organism blooms, and subsequent bacterial decomposition that cannot support marine life.

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture conducted on corporate principles using advanced technology, encompassing the entire economic sector that supplies farm inputs (seeds, machinery, agrochemicals) and manages the processing, storage, transport, and retail of food products.

Drip Irrigation

A precision irrigation method that conserves water and fertilizers by allowing water to drip slowly to plant roots—either at the soil surface or subsurface into the root zone—reducing evaporation, runoff, and nutrient leaching.

$F_1$ Hybrid Seeds

First-generation seeds created through the controlled cross-pollination of two distinct inbred parental lines to yield specific advantageous traits; their seeds do not reproduce true to type in the subsequent second generation.

Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)

An organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques, specifically by artificially inserting genes from one species into the DNA of another plant or animal.

Terminator Seed Technology

A genetically engineered trait designed to switch off a plant's ability to produce fertile seeds in the second generation, preventing farmers from saving and replanting harvested seed.

Golden Rice

A biofortified, genetically engineered rice variety modified to biosynthesize beta-carotene (a precursor to Vitamin A) in the edible endosperm, created to combat preventable blindness and Vitamin A deficiency in developing nations.

Industrial Crop

An agricultural crop grown primarily as a market commodity or raw material for industrial products and biofuels (such as corn ethanol or cotton fiber) rather than for direct human consumption.

Aquaculture

The controlled cultivation and farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and aquatic plants, in marine or freshwater environments as opposed to harvesting wild populations.

Aquaponics

A sustainable, recirculating food production system combining aquaculture and hydroponics, in which aquatic animal waste (ammonia) is converted by nitrifying bacteria into nitrites and nitrates to nourish cultivated plants, which in turn filter the water.

Aeroponics

A soil-less plant cultivation technique where plant roots hang suspended in an enclosed chamber and are periodically misted directly with a nutrient-rich water solution, utilizing up to 95% less water than conventional soil farming.

Urban Sprawl

The outward spreading of low-density urban or suburban residential and commercial land uses into surrounding rural and agricultural land, expanding at a rate exceeding the rate of population growth.

Greenbelt

A land-use policy and designated zone of permanently protected countryside, agricultural land, and natural ecosystems surrounding an urban area, intended to restrict urban sprawl and safeguard local food production.

Food Security

A condition in which all community residents can obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, and nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes self-reliance and social justice.

Food Desert

A geographic area characterized by socioeconomic deprivation and compound social exclusion that has limited or poor access to retail stores offering healthy, affordable, and nutritious food.

Fair Trade

A social and market-based certification movement that guarantees small-scale agricultural producers in developing countries a stable, pre-negotiated floor price above market rates to secure rural livelihoods.

Weather

The specific state of the atmosphere at a particular place and short-term point in time, measured by elements such as temperature, precipitation, wind, atmospheric pressure, and humidity.

Climate

The long-term statistical pattern and prevailing atmospheric conditions of a region observed over extended multi-decadal periods.

Thermohaline Circulation

A global deep-ocean conveyor belt circulation driven by differences in water density, controlled by temperature ('thermo') and salinity ('haline'), which transports heat from the tropics toward polar latitudes.

El Niño

A periodic climate phenomenon occurring every 2 to 7 years characterized by abnormal warming of equatorial Pacific surface waters off Peru and Ecuador, causing significant global disruptions in temperature and precipitation patterns.

La Niña

A cyclical climate phenomenon characterized by unusually cold equatorial Pacific surface temperatures that lasts 1 to 2 years, often favouring Atlantic hurricane development and bringing colder winters to western Canada.

Greenhouse Effect

The natural planetary atmospheric process wherein long-wave infrared radiation emitted by Earth's surface is absorbed and reradiated by trace gases, elevating the temperature of the lower troposphere to sustain life.

Temperature Anomaly

The calculated departure of an observed temperature reading from a designated long-term baseline average recorded at a specific location and calendar date.

Global Warming Potential (GWP)

A relative measure of how much heat a specific greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a defined timescale (typically 100 years) compared to an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide ($\text{CO}_2$), which has a baseline GWP of 1.

Proxy Indicator

An indirect, preserved physical record of past environmental conditions—such as ice cores, tree rings, lake and ocean sediment cores, or fossil pollen—used in paleoclimatology to reconstruct historical climate prior to instrumental logs.

Keeling Curve

A continuous graph documenting the ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide ($\text{CO}_2$) concentration measured atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory since 1957, initiated under Charles David Keeling.

Ocean Deoxygenation

The climate-induced depletion of dissolved oxygen in ocean waters caused by decreased gas solubility in warming surface layers and reduced vertical mixing from increased thermal stratification.

Ocean Acidification

The chemical lowering of ocean water pH resulting from the absorption of excess anthropogenic $\text{CO}_2$, which reacts with water to form carbonic acid, inhibiting calcification and shell formation in marine species.

Polar Vortex

A large, persistent, low-pressure pool of dense, cold air rotating counter-clockwise near Earth's poles that can weaken or split, allowing frigid Arctic air to spill southward into mid-latitudes.

Cap and Trade

A market-based environmental regulatory mechanism that sets an aggregate limit ('cap') on total greenhouse gas emissions and allocates tradable allowances that emitters can buy or sell based on their operational output.

Kyoto Protocol

A 1997 international climate treaty that established legally binding greenhouse gas reduction commitments for industrialized nations during its initial commitment periods.

Paris Agreement

A universal, legally binding 2015 global climate accord wherein 195 nations committed via a 'bottom-up' framework to limit global average temperature rise to well below $2^\circ\text{C}$ above pre-industrial levels.

Carbon Footprint

The total volume of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions produced by an individual, event, organization, or product, quantified as carbon dioxide equivalent ($\text{CO}_2\text{e}$).

Toxic Pollutant

Contaminating substances introduced into the environment that induce mortality, pathological disease, physiological mutations, or reproductive and developmental birth defects in organisms absorbing or ingesting them.

Ozone Layer

A protective band of trioxygen ($\text{O}_3$) gas situated within the stratosphere 15 to 30 kilometers above Earth that absorbs harmful solar ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation.

Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS)

Halogenated synthetic chemicals—such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and halons—that migrate to the stratosphere and catalytic destroy protective ozone molecules.

Montreal Protocol

A 1987 international treaty (ratified by 197 parties) that mandated the systematic global phase-out of the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances.

Photochemical Smog

A noxious secondary air pollution haze formed when primary emissions of nitrogen oxides ($\text{NO}_x$) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) react under sunlight to produce ground-level ozone ($\text{O}_3$) and peroxyacetyl nitrates.

Temperature Inversion

A meteorological condition characterized by a reversal of the normal temperature lapse rate, wherein a layer of warm air overlies a colder surface layer, trapping airborne pollutants beneath it.

Air Quality Index (AQI)

A standardized numerical scale and public health metric used by regulatory agencies to quantify and report ambient air pollutant concentrations and their associated human health risk tiers.

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

Toxic, carbon-based chemical compounds—such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)—that resist chemical, biological, and photolytic breakdown and bioaccumulate in fatty tissues across the food web.

Sick Building Syndrome

A medical condition affecting building occupants who experience acute, non-specific symptoms such as headaches and mucous membrane irritation, linked to inadequate ventilation and accumulated indoor pollutants.

Point-Source Pollution

Pollution originating from a single, discrete, identifiable location or physical conveyance, such as a factory discharge pipe, municipal sewage outfall, or oil tanker rupture.

Non-Point-Source Pollution

Diffuse, unconfined pollution resulting from runoff over extensive land surfaces—including agricultural fields, lawns, construction sites, and paved roadways—carrying diverse contaminants into waterways.

Sanitary Landfill

An engineered waste disposal facility equipped with impermeable clay and synthetic plastic liners, leachate extraction piping, and methane collection wells to safely isolate municipal solid waste from surrounding groundwater and the atmosphere.

Leachate

A contaminated, toxic liquid generated when percolating precipitation leaches soluble organic and inorganic chemicals out of decomposing solid waste in a landfill.

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard)

A term describing sociopolitical opposition by local community residents to the siting of locally undesirable facilities, such as landfills, incinerators, or chemical waste plants, in their immediate vicinity.

Electronic Waste (E-Waste)

Discarded electronic and electrical devices containing hazardous materials—including heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead, alongside flame retardants—which pose toxic recovery and export challenges.

Love Canal Disaster

A prominent 1978 hazardous waste disaster in Niagara Falls, NY, where approximately 22,000 tons of industrial toxic chemicals buried by Hooker Chemical leaked into basements and school grounds, prompting mass evacuations and the federal Superfund program.

Mycoremediation

A specialized branch of bioremediation that deploys fungal mycelium and fruiting bodies to biochemically break down, extract, or immobilize toxic pollutants such as hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and pesticides.

Brownfield

An abandoned, idle, or underutilized commercial or industrial site where active expansion or redevelopment is hindered by real or suspected environmental contamination.