Ecology 111 Midterm Flashcards

Everything in the textbook up to chapter 5 + the slideshow notes. There are so many of these, I am so sorry.

Anthropocene

A new epoch introduced by scientists to describe the human effect on the environment. Changes like climate change, pollution, and extinctions are the result of human activity (greenhouse gas emissions, etc)

Anthropocentric View

Values that are defined by human interests, wants, and needs

Biosphere

A section of the environment that includes the parts of Earth where life exists

Consumption

The use of a good or service. The obtaining and use of consumer goods are often used as the standard or ideal against which individuals or families assess their quality of life. Marketing and promotions encourage individuals to purchase non-essential goods, which often places pressure on the environment and natural resources.

Crude Birth Rate

The number of births in a population per 1000 individuals per year

Crude Death Rate

The number of deaths in a population per 1000 individuals per year

Crude Growth Rate

CBR - CDR

Cryosphere

Based on the Greek word kryos meaning “cold,” those parts of the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form as ice or snow. The cryosphere includes sea, lake, and river ice; snow cover; glaciers; ice caps; and ice sheets, as well as frozen ground (permafrost).

Demographic Transition

The transition of a human population from high birth rate and high death rate to low birth rate and low death rate.

Ecocentric View

The view that a natural order governs relationships between living things and that a harmony and balance reflect this natural order, which humankind tends to disrupt.

Environment

The combination of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere in which humans, other living species, and non-animate phenomena exist.

Environmental Migration

The movement of people motivated to leave their home area as a result of abrupt or long-term negative alterations to their local environment. Drivers of environmental migration include serious droughts, desertification, coastal flooding, and sea level rise. Environmental migrants may move to another place in their own country, often the nearest largest city, or to another country.

Epidemiological Transition

A change in mortality rates from high to low in a human population.

Exponential Growth

The growth of a population increasing by a certain percentage rather than an absolute amount, producing a J-shaped curve.

Gross National Product

The total value of all goods and services produced for final consumption in an economy, used by economists as an index or indicator to compare national economies or periods of time within a single national economy.

Kuznet Curve

A hypothesized relationship between income per capita and environmental degradation. During initial economic growth, it suggests that environmental degradation increases. However, at some level of per capita income this pattern reverses, resulting in enhancement of the environment.

Migration

A movement, often involving a large group, of people or animals from one place to another. Migration of people usually is triggered by a desire to achieve greater economic opportunities or to escape violence or conflict. Migration of animals is often motivated by access to food or for breeding.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

A UN program to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and to establish the scientific basis for actions needed to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being.

Planetary Carrying Capacity

The ability of Earth and its various systems to sustain the number of people and other organisms on the planet and their effects on these systems.

Population Age Structure

The relative distribution of age cohorts in the population.

Replacement Level Fertility

The fertility rate that will sustain a population. Theoretically valued at 2.0.

Resilience

The ability of an ecosystem to return to normal after a disturbance.

Resources

Such things as forests, wildlife, oceans, rivers and lakes, minerals, and petroleum.

Sustainable Development

Economic development that meets current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, a concept popularized by the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development headed by Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Three Waves

Distinct ways of thinking about resource and environmental management. The first wave appeared in the late nineteenth century in North America, and focused on rediscovering and protecting wilderness areas, leading to national parks. The second wave began in the twentieth century, and sought to identify and publicize environmental degradation and advocate reduction of such damage through new environmental laws, policies, and ministries. The third wave emerged late in the twentieth century, building on the second wave, and advocated repairing and remediating environmental degradation and seeking sustainable development. International and local coalitions have been created to address environmental problems.

Total Fertility Rates

The average number of children each woman has over her lifetime.

Triple Bottom Line

Also called the 3Ps (people, planet, and profit), an approach that goes beyond the traditional private sector focus on profits, return on investment, and shareholder value to include attention to both environmental and social considerations.

Wicked Problems

An issue characterized by changing and complex relationships that are challenging to identify and difficult to resolve because of incomplete and/or contradictory understanding. Ill-defined with incomplete information.

100 Mile Diet

A term introduced in 2005 for buying and eating food grown, manufactured, or produced entirely within a 100-mile radius of one’s residence.

Biocapacity

The amount of biologically productive area—cropland, pasture, forest, and fisheries—available to meet humanity’s needs.

Consumerism

The wasteful consumption of resources to satisfy wants rather than needs.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Efforts made by corporations to include social, ethical, and environmental concerns in business practices. Initiatives revolve around reducing the environmental impact of operations, improving labour practices, donating funds to environmental groups, and encouraging employees to volunteer.

Eco Labelling

Products being identified as ecologically friendly due to adherence to specified environmental standards and practices.

Ecological Footprint

The land area a community needs to provide its consumptive requirements for food, water, and other products and to dispose of the wastes from this consumption.

Extended Producer Responsibility

The concept underlying laws or regulations that require manufacturers and importers to accept responsibility for their products at the end of their useful lifespan. It provides an incentive for companies to design their products so that they can be recycled or reused and to eliminate toxic materials, since the company would otherwise have to dispose of them.

Greenwashing

Making deceptive or manipulative claims about the environmental benefits of a product, service, or company, to make it appear environmentally friendly.

Happy Planet Index

An index that attempts to provide a perspective on human well-being and environmental impact and to focus on achieving sustainability. Each country’s HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita.

Indicators

A specific facet of a particular system, such as the population of a key species within an ecosystem, that tells us something about the current state of the system but does not help us understand why the system is in that state.

Law of Everybody

The understanding that if everyone did many small things of a conserving and environmentally aware nature, major environmental problems, threats, and dangers would be ameliorated or alleviated.

Light Living

Treading as lightly as possible, to minimize our ecological footprints, often characterized by the four R’s: refuse, reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Living Planet Index

An index that quantifies the overall state of planetary ecosystems.

Montreal Protocol

Signed in 1987 by 32 nations, an agreement that established a schedule for reducing use of chlorofluorocarbons and halons to reduce the rate of depletion of the ozone layer.

Nature Deficit Disorder

The increasing gap in understanding of the “real world” on the part of the younger generation. Instead of playing outdoors in fields, woods, streams, lakes, or the ocean, an increasing proportion of children today are glued to their computer or TV screens. They seldom visit the outside world, especially areas dominated by nature rather than human activities.

Non Governmental Organizations

An organization outside of the government and private sectors, usually established to address a specific societal issue or need; also referred to as a “not-for-profit” or “social profit” organization. They are one element of “civil society” and when focused on environmental matters can be referred to as an environmental non-governmental organization (ENGO).

Ozone

An atmospheric gas that when present in the stratosphere helps to protect the Earth from ultraviolet rays. However, when present near the Earth’s surface, it is a primary component of urban smog and has detrimental effects on both vegetation and human respiratory systems.

Ozone Layer

A thin layer of ozone molecules in the stratosphere that absorbs ultraviolet light and converts it into infrared radiation, effectively screening out 99 per cent of the ultraviolet light.

Subsidiarity

A policy and management approach stipulating that decisions should be taken at the level closest to where consequences are most noticeable or have the most direct impact.

Sustainable Development Goals

Globally accepted goals for achieving sustainability and well-being, agreed to by member states of the UN as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Abiotic Components

Non-living parts of the ecosystem, including chemical and physical factors, such as light, temperature, wind, water, and soil characteristics.

Aerobic

Requiring oxygen.

Aichi Targets

The proportions of terrestrial (and freshwater) and marine ecosystems to be designated as protected areas by the year 2020, agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Anaerobic

Lacking oxygen.

Apex Predators

A super-predator at the very top of the food chain.

Atmosphere

The layer of air surrounding the Earth.

Autotrophs

An organism, such as a plant, that produces its own food, generally via photosynthesis.

Biodiversity

The variety of life forms that inhabit the Earth. Includes the genetic diversity among members of a population or species as well as the diversity of species and ecosystems.

Biodiversity Hot Spots

An area with high numbers of endemic species, such as a tropical forest.

Biomass

The sum of all living material, or of all living material of particular species, in a given environment.

Biomes

A major ecological community of organisms, both plant and animal, that is usually characterized by the dominant vegetation type; examples include a tundra biome and a tropical rain forest biome.

Biotic Components

Those parts of ecosystems that are living; organisms.

Bottom Up Control

The situation in an ecosystem in which the structure is controlled by factors at low trophic levels, such as nutrient flows and productivity.

Calorie

A unit of heat energy; the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1°C.

Carnivores

An organism that consumes only animals.

Cellular Respiration

Metabolic processes through which living cells produce energy.

Chemoautotrophs

A producer organism that converts inorganic chemical compounds into energy.

Chlorophylls

Pigments of plant cells that absorb sunlight, thus enabling plants to capture solar energy.

Commensalism

An interaction between two species that benefits one species and neither harms nor benefits the other.

Community

Populations in a particular environment.

Competitive Exclusion Principle

The principle that competition between two species with similar requirements will result in the exclusion of one of the species.

Consumers

An organism that cannot produce its own food and must get it by eating or decomposing other organisms; in economics, someone who uses goods and services.

Convention on Biological Diversity

An international treaty that emerged from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 that requires signatories, including Canada, to develop biodiversity strategies, identify and monitor important components of biodiversity, develop endangered species legislation / protected areas systems, and promote environmentally sound and sustainable development in areas adjacent to protected areas.

Corallivores

An animal that feeds on coral.

Decomposer Food Chain

A specific nutrient and energy pathway in an ecosystem in which decomposer organisms (bacteria and fungi) consume dead plants and animals as well as animal wastes; essential for the return of nutrients to soil and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; also called detritus food chain.

Detritus

Organic waste, such as fallen leaves.

Dominant Limiting Factor

The weakest link in the chain of various factors necessary for an organism’s survival.

Ecological Redundancy

The situation, as in a tropical rain forest, where there are many times more species than in more northerly ecosystems and the chance of other species combining to fulfill the ecological role of a depleted one is much higher.

Ecosphere

The entire global ecosystem, which comprises atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere as inseparable components.

Ecosystem

Short for “ecological system”; a community of organisms occupying a given region within a biome, including the physical and chemical environment of that community and all the interactions among and between organisms and their environment.

Ecosystem Diversity

The variety of ecosystems in an area.

Endemic Species

A plant or animal species confined to or exclusive to a specific area.

Energy

The capacity to do work; found in many forms, including heat, light, sound, electricity, coal, oil, and gasoline.

Energy Efficiency

The amount of total energy input of a system that is transformed into work or some other usable form of energy.

Entropy

A measure of disorder. The second law of thermodynamics applied to matter says that all systems proceed to maximum disorder (maximum entropy).

Epiphytes

A plant that use another for support but not nourishment.

Euphotic Zone

The zone of the ocean to which light from the sun reaches.

Extirpated

An official designation assigned by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada to any indigenous species or subspecies or geographically separate population of fauna or flora no longer known to exist in the wild in Canada but occurring elsewhere.

Food Chain

A specific nutrient and energy pathway in an ecosystem proceeding from producer to consumer; along the pathway, organisms in higher trophic levels gain energy and nutrients by consuming organisms at lower trophic levels.

Food Webs

The complex intermeshing of individual food chains in an ecosystem.

Functional Compensation

The situation in which a given role in an ecosystem, e.g., as decomposer or as prey, can be fulfilled by more than one species within that system.

Generalist Species

A species, like the black bear or coyote, with very broad requirements for life’s necessities.

Genetic Diversity

The variability in genetic makeup among individuals of the same species.

Glaciation

A period of global cooling when alpine glaciers increase and continental ice sheets cover and scour vast land masses.

Global Climate Change

The impacts of accumulation of greenhouse gases on the Earth’s climate.

Grazing Food Chains

The energy transfer among organisms that is directly dependent on solar radiation as the primary source of energy; the producers (green plants) are eaten by organisms that are subsequently eaten by other organisms.

Gross Primary Productivity

The total amount of energy produced by autotrophs over a given period of time.

Habitat

The environment in which a population or individual lives.

Heat

The total energy of all moving atoms.

Herbivores

An animal that eats plants—that is, a primary consumer.

Heterotrophs

An organism that feeds on other organisms.

High Quality Energy

Energy that is easy to use, such as a hot fire or coal or gasoline, but that disperses quickly.