Environmental Science, Physical Systems, and Geology Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts in environmental science, energy and matter transformations, atomic chemistry, plate tectonics, and geology.

Environmental Science

The interdisciplinary study of how the natural world works, how the environment affects humans, and how humans affect the environment.

Inexhaustible Renewable Resource

A renewable natural resource, such as solar, wind, wave, or geothermal energy, that is perpetually renewed and cannot be depleted.

Exhaustible Renewable Resource

A renewable natural resource, such as fresh water, soil, timber, or biodiversity, that regenerates over months to decades but can be depleted if harvested faster than it replenishes.

Nonrenewable Natural Resource

A natural resource formed far more slowly than it is consumed, existing in finite amounts that cannot be replenished on a human timescale, such as crude oil, natural gas, coal, and minerals.

Ecosystem Services

Essential ecological processes arising from normal ecosystem function that purify water and air, cycle nutrients, regulate water flow, prevent floods, and reduce soil erosion.

Agricultural Revolution

The historical transition about 10,000 years ago when humans began growing crops, domesticating animals, and settling in villages, triggering an increase in human population growth.

Industrial Revolution

The historical transition starting in the mid-1700s that shifted society toward urban life powered by fossil fuels, industrialized agriculture, better medicine, and sanitation.

Ecological Footprint

A metric expressing the cumulative area of biologically productive land and water required to supply the resources a person or population consumes and to absorb their waste.

Overshoot

The condition that occurs when human resource consumption surpasses Earth's capacity to sustainably support and regenerate those resources.

Independent Variable

The variable that a scientist actively manipulates in an experiment to observe its effect on an outcome.

Dependent Variable

The variable in an experiment that changes in response to manipulations of the independent variable and is measured by researchers.

Controlled Experiment

An experiment in which two identical groups (a control group and a treatment group) are tested under identical conditions, with only the independent variable manipulated in the treatment group.

Scientific Method

A formalized series of logical steps used to test scientific ideas, including observations, questions, hypotheses, predictions, tests, and results.

Theory

A broad, well-tested explanation for a wide range of natural phenomena that consolidates many tested hypotheses and is widely supported by extensive evidence.

Paradigm Shift

A fundamental change in the dominant scientific view or consensus resulting from accumulated new evidence and theoretical breakthroughs.

Sustainability

A way of living that conserves Earth's natural resources and functional ecological systems so they remain viable for future generations.

Law of Conservation of Matter

A physical principle stating that matter can be transformed from one chemical or physical form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.

Isotope

Atoms of the same element that contain equal numbers of protons but different numbers of neutrons, resulting in different mass numbers.

Radioisotope

An unstable isotope that decays over time, emitting subatomic particles and high-energy ionizing radiation until it reaches a stable state.

Half-Life

The amount of time required for half of the radioactive atoms in a sample of a radioisotope to decay.

Covalent Bond

A chemical bond formed when two atoms share one or more pairs of electrons.

Hydrogen Bond

A weak electrical attraction between an electronegative atom in one polar molecule and a positively charged hydrogen atom in another adjacent molecule.

Ionic Bond

A chemical bond resulting from the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions formed by the transfer of electrons.

Hydrocarbon

An organic compound consisting exclusively of hydrogen and carbon atoms, serving as the primary constituent of fossil fuels and plastics.

Macromolecule

A very large molecule, such as a protein, nucleic acid, lipid, or complex carbohydrate, essential to living organisms.

pH Scale

A logarithmic scale ranging from 0 to 14 used to measure the acidity or alkalinity of an aqueous solution based on its concentration of hydrogen ions ($H^+$).

Potential Energy

The energy stored in an object due to its structural position or chemical bond composition.

Kinetic Energy

The energy associated with motion.

First Law of Thermodynamics

A law stating that energy can change from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.

Second Law of Thermodynamics

A law stating that energy transformations move from a more-ordered state toward a less-ordered state, increasing entropy.

Photosynthesis

The chemical process by which autotrophs convert solar radiation, carbon dioxide ($CO_2$), and water ($H_2O$) into sugars ($C_6H_{12}O_6$) and oxygen ($O_2$), represented by $6CO_2 + 6H_2O + \text{light} \rightarrow C_6H_{12}O_6 + 6O_2$.

Cellular Respiration

The chemical process by which living organisms break down glucose ($C_6H_{12}O_6$) using oxygen ($O_2$) to release energy, producing carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and water ($H_2O$), represented by $C_6H_{12}O_6 + 6O_2 \rightarrow 6CO_2 + 6H_2O + \text{energy}$.

Chemosynthesis

The process by which hydrothermal vent organisms convert the chemical potential energy in hydrogen sulfide ($H_2S$), carbon dioxide ($CO_2$), and water ($H_2O$) into sugars, represented by $6CO_2 + 6H_2O + 3H_2S \rightarrow C_6H_{12}O_6 + 3H_2SO_4$.

Lithosphere

The rigid outer layer of Earth that includes the continental and oceanic crust and the uppermost mantle.

Asthenosphere

A soft, ductile region of the upper mantle located directly below the lithosphere.

Plate Tectonics

The process driven by mantle convection currents that causes large slabs of lithosphere to move across Earth's surface at rates of approximately $2\,cm$ to $15\,cm$ per year.

Divergent Plate Boundary

A tectonic boundary where two plates push apart as magma rises from the mantle and cools to form new lithosphere.

Transform Plate Boundary

A tectonic boundary where two plates slide past each other horizontally, building friction that is released in earthquakes.

Subduction

The tectonic process at a convergent boundary where denser oceanic crust slides downward beneath lighter continental crust into the mantle.

Rock Cycle

The continuous geologic process through which rocks are heated, melted, cooled, weathered, eroded, compacted, and transformed between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic states over deep time.

Igneous Rock

Rock formed from the cooling and crystallization of molten magma beneath the surface (intrusive) or lava on Earth's surface (extrusive).

Sedimentary Rock

Rock formed when accumulated layers of weathered rock fragments or organic debris are compacted and cemented together over time.

Metamorphic Rock

Rock formed when an existing rock's physical appearance and mineral structure are altered by extreme heat and pressure without completely melting.

Anthropocene

A proposed geological epoch marking the era during which human activity has become the dominant driver of global environmental change, soil erosion, and atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions.

Tsunami

A series of massive ocean waves triggered by sudden water displacement from undersea earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or coastal landslides.

Mass Wasting

The downslope movement of soil and rock under the direct influence of gravity, often resulting in landslides.