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What is Environmental Science?
an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography to study the environment and the solution of environmental problems.
What are the 4 main categories of islands in the Pacific?
Volcanic, low limestone islands, raised limestone, and continental.
What is a volcanic island?
consist of a single volcanic peak rising from the sea floor. A ring of coral forms a fringing reef and sometimes also a barrier reef around the island. Ex. are Hawaiian islands, Bora Bora
What is a low limestone island?
made of reef material-coral remains. There may be only a single small island; however there are generally several on a barrier reef, forming an atoll. Tips of sunken volcanoes. Ex are Marshall islands and Coco Island.
What is a raised limestone island?
Formed when old coral reefs or atolls are pushed up above sea level. Ex are southern marianas (Guam to Saipan) and the rock islands of Palau
What is a continental island?
Made up of rock characteristics of continents( often old, metamorphic and mineral rich), rather than formed from isolated volcanoes. Ex. are The islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and the Philippines.
How old is Guam?
Guam is 44 millions years old
What is a monsoon?
seasonally reversing winds that bring alternately strong rains and a distinct dry season. Occurs in India and southeast Asia
What does climate affect?
Climate especially rainfall, affect the kinds of plants that can survive on each island.
What does vegetation affect?
Vegetation has a major influence on the species of animals that can live there.
What is a habitat?
Climate and all other factors that affect organisms of a particular place.
oceanic islands (aka volcanic islands)
islands far from continents and not part of the continental crust; usually formed from undersea volcanoes. ( Plants/animals get here via accident/travel. Generally have fewer species)
What is a ecosystem?
A biological community, or several interacting communities plus their environment. (E.g coral reefs, wetlands and forest)
What is an endemic species?
species that occur only on single islands or island groups because they evolved there. (Ex. Guam rail and Hawaiian goose)
How did human alteration of island ecosystems occur with first settlers?
They used fire to clear the forests for farms, created and extended wetlands for their taro patches. Europeans dramatically accelerated the rate of species introduction, habitat destruction, and extinctions.
What is a hypothesis(plural hypotheses)?
A scientific questions or explanation expressed in a way that it can be tested through observations or controlled experiments.
What is volcanic rock?
A gray or dark dark brown mixture of minerals from deep in the Earth.
What is a fringing reef?
The coral reef along the shore of a high island.
How are coral reefs made?
Coral reefs are made by algae and animals living and dying together. Skeletons build up layer by layer and become limestone rock, which is white and composed chiefly of calcium carbonate. Exposure to air at low tide stops growth.
What is a lagoon?
The shallow water between a fringing reef and a barrier reef, or in the middle of an atoll.
What are the two approaches to answering biological questions?
Ultimate and proximate questions
What is a ultimate question?
Scientific questions that include a historical component and usually cannot be answered by experiments in the present.
What is a proximate question?
Scientific questions about processes happening in the present, or that can be answered with experiments in the present.
What is competition?
is when different individuals are trying to get the same resource.
What are experimental controls?
is an essential part of a scientific experiment, in which the test condition or factor is left out but all other conditions are the same.
What is the factor?
A condition that may influence species.
What are the 2 types of competition?
Exploitation and interference
What is exploitation competition?
individuals use the same resource but don't interaction (two competing species have = access to a resource, but differ in how fast and how efficiently they use it.)
What is interference competition?
one individual prevents another from using the resource or limits its access to that resource, for instance by fighting off or threating that individual.
What are the two possible outcomes of competition between species?
Either the 2 species will share the resources (resource partitioning) or 2. one species will so severely outcompete the other that the other species dies out (competitive exclusion)
What is a theory?
An explanation of a fairly broad or widespread phenomenon that is widely supported by the results of various experiments and observations, and that accounts for all the relevant data.
What is deductive reasoning?
A logical argument in which the conclusion is contained in the premises. (E.g. all butterflies are insects, this animal is a butterfly; therefore this animals is an insect.) (Contrast inductive reasoning)
What is inductive reasoning?
A logical argument in which the conclusion goes beyond the premises and is therefore only true with some degree of probability or confidence. (E.g. By observation of a sample of beans from a barrel, 75% of the sample are grade A, therefore argument that 75% of all the beans in the barrel are grade A.)
What is sampling?
Portions taken for analysis, such as samples of a population. In order to get good estimates, scientist strive to take representative and statistically sound samples.
What is analogy?
An argument that because two things are similar in some ways, they are therefore probably similar in some additional way. A type of inductive reasoning.
What is a correlations?
when two events are related, but without indication of cause- effect relations. (If A and B are correlated, A may cause B or vice versa, or they may occur together because both are caused by something else.)
Coincidence
The occurrence of two events of things at the same time and place by chance alone.
What is biological organization?
The arrangement of parts into ever larger systems, in which each system has new characters (emergent properties) not seen in its component parts. (E.g. an organism is made up of organs.)
What is the levels of biological organization from smallest to largest?
1.molecules 2.cells 3.organs 4.individuals (organisms) 5.population 6.communities 7.ecosystems.
What is a biological community?
consists of all the populations of different species living in the same habitat or geographic place.
What is tentative language?
Words and phrases used by scientist to convey the level of confidence in their conclusions. (Ex. may, probability, tend to be and usually.)
Name 3 Environmental issues on Guam?
Population, resources and environmental changes
What are utilitarian values?
Are based on the usefulness of something to human welfare.
What are ecological values?
are related to the utility of something to both humans and other species, as well as natural ecosystems.
What are aesthetic values?
are based on appreciation of beauty, including that of natural world.
What are intrinsic values?
insists that all entities have inherent worth and a right to exist, regardless of the needs of people.
What are the steps in the scientific method?
Identify the Question 2. Form testable hypothesis 3. Collect data to test hypothesis 4. Interpret results 5. Report from peer review 6. Publish findings.
What is replication?
Multiple cases of the same test, control, or observations, to provide statistical reliability in the results.
What is ecology?
is the study of the relationship of organisms and their environment (Factors that influence, where, when, and how many is the physical, biotic, and abiotic environment
What it the Abiotic environment?
Environment influence by non-living entities such as temperature, pH, radiation, water and pressure
What is ecological footprints?
is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystem.
What are the 3 layers of the Earth?
Core, Mantle and Crust
What is the core aka innermost layer?
approximately 3,500 km thick and is divided into two sub layers, inner core and outer core. The inner core is solid and composed mostly of iron and nickel surrounded by a liquid outer core.
What is the mantle?
Geologically, the layer of the Earth between the solid crust (lithosphere) and the hot, dense core. The upper part of it, the asthenosphere, is plastic and circulates very slowly, causing plate tectonics.(approximately 2,900 km thick and it, too has an inner fluid part and a solid outer layer, directly under the crust. Believed that the mantle near the Earth's core rises and expands as it becomes heated and then descends after it cools. )
What is the crust?
The solid outer layer of the planet. It is fragmented into 14 major plates. These plates rest on top of the mantle and are buoyed along in part by the movements of the mantle below and by more complex forces related to the thickness and density of the plate itself.
What is plate tectonics?
the scientific theory that describes the movement of crustal plates and the underlying lithosphere.
What are the two types of crust?
Oceanic and continental crust.
What is oceanic crust?
denser than continental crust and contains a greater average concentration of heavier chemical elements such as iron than continental crust. 7km thick, 3.0g/cm^3 density of rock, probable composition is basalt, and age is 190 million years old.
What is Continental crust?
30-50 km thick, 2.7g/cm^3 density of rock, probable composition is granite and is 3.964 billion years old.
What is subduction?
process in plate tectonics in which one plate moves down under another where they meet. It is one kind of convergent boundary between plates.
What is the Cenozoic period?
New/recent animals
Paleocene
early recent
Holocene
wholly/ really recent
mid-Eocene
dawn of the new
What are the 3 volcanic formations that dominate southern Guam?
Facpi, Alutom, and Umatac
What are the two types of northern limestone?
Barrigada limestone and Mariana limestone
What is climate?
the long term patterns in factors such as temperature, rainfall, day length, and their seasonal changes.
What is weather?
short-term changes in temperature, rainfall, wind, etc., at a particular place
What is phytoplankton?
Algae that drift in marine or freshwater; may have limited ability to swim. (E.g. some diatoms and dinoflagellates.) The primary producers of the ocean
What is a typhoon(same thing as cyclone and hurricane)?
a powerful spiral (cyclonic) tropical storms (sustained wind speed more than 74 mph)
What is upwelling?
The process by which deep, nutrient-rich water is pulled up to replace water blown along the surface by winds.
What is volcanic (igneous) rock?
Rocks that originated from magma, usually rising through the Earth's crust as volcano. This includes basalt, as well as a variety of other rock types.
What is Hotspot volcanism?
another type of volcanic activity associated with pacific island formation. are focused areas of volcanic activity that are believed to be the result of superheated mantle plumes from deep within the Earth.
What are the 2 periods in the Cenozoic?
Tertiary and Quaternary
Which period, was the volcano which is now Guam?
The mid-Eocene (dawn of the new)
What is orographic rainfall?
When the winds meets mountains, they must go over or around them. As the air rises, it cools and cannot hold as much water, so that water falls as rain. (resulting in the other side getting less rain=rain shadow)
What two factors shape pacific islands environment?
1.Geological nature of the island (high/low; volcanic/carbonate) 2. The geographic location and therefore rainfall patterns.
What is ENSO?
El Nino and Southern Oscillation which is a vast weather pattern involving the ocean and the atmosphere
What is the El Nino?
make deserts green/ summers wet/ but made the sea warm (driving out the anchovies and sardines). Atmospheric pressure is normally high over the southern Pacific Ocean and low over the Indian Ocean. This difference in pressure between the air over the Pacific and Indian ocean is what causes the trade winds to blow across the Pacific. When the easterties weaken, the islands experience heavy rains. When the easterly winds are strong (in what we still refer to as "normal years), there is little or no rain.
Effects of El Nino?
trade winds weaken in the easter Pacific. Warm water is not pushed as far across the ocean, and the upwelling is reduced. Without deep upwelling, there are no nutrients at the surface, therefore no phytoplankton and no fish. Warm water warms the air above it, and more evaporation causes clouds to form. These changes in the air affect the winds.
What are the Factors that causes typhoons?
Water, heat, air pressure and moisture
What is a tropical depression?
A tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 38 mph (33 nots) or less.
What is a tropical storm?
A tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds 39-73 mph (34-63 nots)
What are the effects of typhoons on island communities?
Modify terrestrial communities by increasing leaf littering and opening forest gaps. Reefs may experience damage from waves and surge. Atolls may become flooded, and groundwater from the aquifer may become contaminated with salt.
What is plankton?
A whole community of floating organisms.
What is a surge?
Waves produce strong back and forth currents.
What is streamlining?
is a way to reduce the force of water or air
What is the intertidal zone?
The part of the seashore between the high and low tides, whter marine organisms are periodically out of water. Where there are large changes in salinity.
What color penetrate farther into the water?
Blue and Green light (photosynthesis pigments absorbs primary red and blue light, leaving green and yellow to be reflected or transmitted)
What is larvae?
Immature stages in the life cycle of an animal when they do not resemble the adults.
What are benthic aquatic organisms?
have little or no mobility for mating or dispersal but overcome this limitation by shedding planktonic eggs or larva that can drift or swim.
What is a zonation?
The gradual changes in vegetation ( a visual clue that factors are changing, even though we may not be able to see the factor itself) (caused by both gradients in abiotic and biotic factors)
What is the littoral zone?
The area between the high and low tide (anything beyond is the pelagic (deep water) zone.
What is the photic zone?
Where sunlight reaches the ocean (40-600m)
What is the aphotic zone?
the area where sunlight does not penetrate (>600m)
What is the Hadopelagic zone?
water that is below 6,000 meters
What temperature is water at its most dense?
When it hits 4 degrees Celsius. (when water gets colder it becomes denser)
What is the Pycnocline?
Depths of rapid density changes
What is the Thermocline?
rapid temperature change
What is the Halocline?
Rapid salinity changes
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