AP Environmental Science - Chapter 1 - Vocabulary 11-21

Sustainable yield

The highest rate at which a renewable resource can be harvested or used indefinitely without reducing its available supply

Sustainability

Living on earth in a way that allows humans to use resources without depriving future generations of those same resources

Subsidy

Financial support or tax breaks granted by a government to an industry or business to encourage beneficial economic activity or keep prices low

More economically developed countries

Highly industrialized nations with high GDPS, advanced technology, etc

Less economically developed countries

Opposite of MEDC (sub-Saharan African countries)

Environmental degradation

Destruction of a potentially renewable resource such as soil, or forest by using it faster than it is naturally replenished

Natural capital degradation

The waste, depletion or destruction of earths natural capital

Ecological footprint

A measure of how the biologically productive land and water area needed to supply a population with resources and absorb its generated waste

Exponential growths

Growth in which a quantity increases at a constant rate per unit of time, creating a j shaped curve over time

Planetary management

Human centered worldview that humans are separate from nature, nature exists to meet our needs, and technology can manage earths systems for our benefit

Stewardship

The worldview that humans have an ethical responsibility to be caring and responsible managers for earth

Environmental wisdom

The earth centered worldview that humans are part of and dependent on nature, and that earths resources are limited and exist for all species

Environmental ethics

Human beliefs and moral principles about what is right or wrong regarding how we treat the environment