Introduction to Environmental Science Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key figures, foundational movements, and core theoretical concepts from the Introduction to Environmental Science lecture.

Environmental Science

An interdisciplinary field that studies how humans interact with the environment, utilizing scientific methods and principles from biology, chemistry, physics, geology, economics, and political science to understand, analyze, and solve environmental problems.

John Muir

A late 19th/early 20th century naturalist and writer known as the 'Father of the National Parks' who helped establish Yosemite National Park, founded the Sierra Club, and advocated for wilderness preservation.

Aldo Leopold

An author and conservationist who wrote A Sand County Almanac (1949) and introduced the concept of the 'land ethic'.

Land Ethic

A philosophy introduced by Aldo Leopold in 1949 arguing that humans should view themselves as part of a community that includes the land, rather than separate from it.

Rachel Carson

A marine biologist and writer who published Silent Spring in 1962, bringing public awareness to the environmental dangers of pesticides such as DDT and launching the modern environmental movement.

DDT

Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane; a chemical pesticide whose environmental hazards were brought to widespread public attention by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

Garrett Hardin

An ecologist and economic theorist who described the 'Tragedy of the Commons' in 1968 to explain how individual self-interest leads to the depletion of shared resources.

Tragedy of the Commons

An economic theory described by Garrett Hardin in 1968 wherein individuals acting independently in their own self-interest overexploit a shared resource, leading to its ultimate degradation or destruction.

External Cost

An uncompensated cost or externality generated by using a shared resource, where the resource user receives all direct economic benefits while transferring the environmental degradation costs to society.

James Lovelock

A scientist who proposed the 'Gaia Hypothesis' in the 1970s, suggesting that Earth's living organisms and inorganic environment function together as a self-regulating system.

Gaia Hypothesis

A theory proposed by James Lovelock in the 1970s stating that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth form a single, self-regulating system that maintains life-supporting conditions.

Sustainability

The ability to meet present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs by balancing environmental, social, and economic factors.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum population size of a biological species that can be sustained continuously by a specific environment given the available resources such as food, water, and space.

Ecological Footprint

A metric measured in global hectares that quantifies humanity's demand on nature by calculating the total land and water area required to produce consumed resources and absorb generated wastes.

Greenhouse Effect

A atmospheric process occurring at the molecular level where gases such as carbon dioxide ($CO_2$), methane ($CH_4$), and nitrous oxide ($N_2O$) absorb and trap infrared radiation, keeping heat from escaping into space.