AP Environmental Science - Chapter 1

Sustainability

Ability of the earth’s various systems, including human cultural systems and economies, to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely.

Environment

All external conditions, factors, matter, and energy, living and nonliving, that affect any living organism or other specified system.

Environmental science

Interdisciplinary study that uses information and ideas from the physical sciences (such as biology, chemistry, and geology) with those from the social sciences (such as economics, politics, and ethics) to learn how nature works, how we interact with the environment, and how we can help to deal with environmental problems.

Ecology

Biological science that studies relationships between living organisms and their environment.

Species

Groups of similar organisms. For sexually reproducing organisms, they are a set of individuals that can mate and produce fertile offspring. Every organism is a member of a certain species.

Ecosystem

One or more communities of different species interacting with one another and with the chemical and physical factors making up their nonliving environment.

Biosphere

The parts of the earth’s air, water, and soil where life is found.

Environmentalism/Environmental Activism

Social movement dedicated to protecting the earth’s life-support systems for us and other species.

Nutrient

Any chemical an organism must take in to live, grow, or reproduce.

Biodiversity

Variety of different species (species diversity), genetic variability among individuals within each species (genetic diversity), variety of ecosystems (ecological diversity), and functions such as energy flow and matter cycling needed for the survival of species and biological communities.

Nutrient/Chemical Cycling

The circulation of chemicals necessary for life, from the environment through organisms and back to the environment.

Natural Capital

Natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support our economies.

Inexhaustible/Perpetual Resource

Essentially inexhaustible resource such as solar energy because it is renewed continuously.

Renewable Resource

Resource that can be replenished rapidly (hours to several decades) through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is replaced.

Sustainable Yield

Highest rate at which a potentially renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing available supply.

Nonrenewable/Exhaustible Resource

Resource that exists in a fixed amount (stock) in the earth’s crust and has the potential for renewal by geological, physical, and chemical processes taking place over hundreds of millions to billions of years.

Ecosystem Services

Natural services or natural capital that support life on earth and are essential to the quality of human life and the functioning of the world’s economies.

Full-Cost Pricing

Ways to include the harmful environmental and health costs of producing and using goods and services in their market prices.

Win-Win Solutions

Solutions to environmental problems based on cooperation and compromise that will benefit the largest number of people as well as the environment.

Responsibility to Future Generations

Leaving the planet’s life-support systems in a condition that is as good as or better than it is now as our responsibility to future generations.

More-Developed Countries

Country that is highly industrialized and has a high per capita GDP.

Less-Developed Countries

Country that has low-to-moderate industrialization and low-to-moderate per capita GDP.

Biomimicry

The scientific effort to understand, mimic, and catalog the ingenious ways in which nature has sustained life on the earth for 3.8 billion years.

Environmental Degradation/Natural Capital Degradation

Depletion or destruction of a potentially renewable resource.

Private Lands

Lands owned by individuals and businesses.

Public Lands

Lands typically owned jointly by the citizens of a country, but managed by the government.

Ecological Footprint

Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply a population with the renewable resources it uses and to absorb or dispose of the pollution and wastes from such resource use.

Biocapacity

The ability of a productive ecosystem to regenerate renewable resources.

Per Capita Ecological Footprint

Average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area.

IPAT Model

Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

Sustainability Revolution

A possible future event, we could learn to live more sustainably during this century.

Exponential Growth

Growth in which some quantity, such as population size or economic output, increases at a constant rate per unit of time.

Poverty

Inability of people to meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.