AP Environmental Science Term Set #8

Endangered Species Act

(1973) Authorizes the determination and listing of species as endangered and threatened; prohibits unauthorized taking, possession, sale and transport of endangered species; requires federal agencies to ensure that actions they authorize do not jeopardize the existence of the listed threatened species.

CITES

(1973) International agreement among governments that prohibits the trade of certain species due to their near extinction status. The mistreatment of these species, along with habitat loss, increases the chance of their extinction in the wild. There are varying levels of protection to more than 33,000 species of plants and animals; 900 of which cannot be traded at all due to their protection status.

HIPPCO

(H)abitat destruction, degradation and fragmentation; (I)nvasive species; (P)opulation and resource use growth; (P)ollution; (C)limate change; (O)verexploitation.

Clear-Cutting

A harvesting technique in which all the trees in an area are harvested, leaving a wide expanse of stumps. The most ecologically harmful, yet economically beneficial.

Seed-Tree Cutting

A logging method in which mature trees with good genetic characteristics and high seed production are preserved to promote regeneration of the forest. It is an alternative to clear-cutting.

Extinction

A process in which an entire species ceases to exist. All species eventually become extinct, but drastic changes in environmental conditions can eliminate large groups of species.

Habitat Destruction

A process that results in the devastation of a natural habitat causing the displacement or death of plants and animals in the region. The habitat is changed or destroyed so it can no longer support the organisms in their growth and survival.

Mass Extinction

A significant rise in extinction rates above the background level. In such a catastrophic, widespread event, large groups of species are wiped out in a geological period lasting up to 5 million years. Fossil and geological evidence indicate that the earth's species have experienced five mass extinctions during the past 500 million years. Some biologists argue that mass extinction should be distinguished by a low speciation rate as well as by a high rate of extinction. Under this more strict definition, there have been only three mass extinctions. A mass extinction provides an opportunity for the evolution of new species that can fill unoccupied ecological roles or newly created ones.

Endangered Species

A species that has so few individual survivors that the species could soon become extinct over all or most of its natural range. Like the passenger pigeon, and several other bird species, they may soon disappear from the earth.

Instrumental Value

A species usefulness to us in providing many of the ecological and economic services that make up the earth's natural capital. Instrumental value takes two forms. One is use values, which benefit us in the form of economic goods and services, ecological services, recreation, scientific information and the continuation of such uses for future generations. The other major form of instrumental values is nonuse values, of which there are several types. For example, there is existence value--the satisfaction of knowing that a redwood forest, a wilderness, orangutans, and wolf packs exist, even if we will never see them or get direct use from them. For many people, biodiversity holds aesthetic value. For example, we can appreciate a tree, an orangutan, or a tropical bird for its beauty.

Strip Cutting

A variation of clear-cutting in which a strip of trees is clear-cut along the contour of the land, with the corridor narrow enough to allow natural regeneration within a few years. After regeneration, another strip is cut above the first, and so on.

Wilderness

An area where there are no people living; an area still in its natural state.

National Parks

British used initiative in 1949. Every park is free to get into, and is run by its own NPA (National Park Authority). Every year, an average of 110,000,000 people visit Britain's national parks. They are chosen because of their natural beauty and heritage.

Selective Cutting

Cutting of intermediate-aged, mature, or diseased trees in an uneven-aged forest stand, either singly or in small groups. This encourages the growth of younger trees and maintains an uneven-aged stand.

Commercial Extinction

Depletion of the population of a wild species used as a resource to a level at which it is no longer profitable to harvest the species.

Ecological Restoration

Efforts to reduce the effects of human disruption of ecological systems and to restore communities to their condition before the disruption. The practice that applies the principle of restoration ecology.

Habitat Corridors

Establishing these between isolated reserves can help support more species and allow for migration of vertebrates that need large ranges. These allow for migration and there are other benefits. There are also drawbacks, such as threatening isolated populations.

Crown Fire

Extremely hot fire that leaps from treetop to treetop - occurs in forests with no surface fires for several decades (an excessive amount of deadwood has built up) - this kills most vegetation, wildlife, buildings and creates soil erosion.

Surface Fire

Fires that typically burn only the forest's underbrush and do little damage to mature trees. These fires actually serve to protect the forest from more harmful fires by removing underbrush and dead materials that would burn quickly and at high temperatures. These fires also return nutrients to soil and cause trees that need heat to release seeds to germinate.

Fragmentation

Fragmentation of habitat by roads, logging, agriculture, and urban development--occurs when a large, contiguous area of habitat is reduced in area and divided into smaller, more scattered, and isolated patches, or habitat islands.

Poaching

Illegal hunting of protected animals

Kudzu Vine

Imported from Japan to stop soil erosion; rapid reproduction rate and very prolific- engulfs hillsides, gardens, trees, and even abandoned houses.

IUCN

International Union for the Conservation of the Nature and Natural Resources--also known as the World Conservation Union--is a collation of the world's leading conservation groups

Threatened Species

Is still abundant in its natural range but, because of declining numbers, is likely to become endangered in the near future.

Uneven-Aged Management

Method of forest management in which trees of different species in a given stand are maintained at many ages and sizes to permit continuous natural regeneration.

Even-Aged Management

Method of forest management in which trees, sometimes of a single species in a given stand, are maintained at about the same age and size and are harvested all at once.

Biophilia

Our inherent genetic kinship with the natural world, due to the billions of years of biological connections leading to the evolution of the human species.

Tree Farm

Site planted with one or only a few tree species in an even-aged stand. When the stand matures it is usually harvested by clear-cutting and then replanted. These farms normally are used to grow rapidly growing tree species for fuelwood, timber, or pulpwood.

Overgrazing

Slows the growth of the vegetation, reduces the diversity of plant species, leads to dominance by plant species that are relatively undesirable to the cattle, hastens the loss of soil by erosion as the plant cover is reduced, and subjects the land to further damage from the cattle's trampling on it.

Applied Ecology

Solves loss of biodiversity, habitat fragmentation, eutrophication, global warming, water quality and quantity through conservation, restoration, enhancement, and management of ecosystems

Riparian Zone

The area of land adjacent to a body of water, stream, river, marsh, or shoreline. These areas form the transition between the aquatic and the terrestrial environment.

Controlled Burning

The burning of unwanted vegetation with the consent of the owner of the property on which the vegetation is located and in such a manner that the fire is controlled and limited to a designated area.

Deforestation

The loss of forest cover in a region that results from the trees in a forest being destroyed faster than they can grow back.

Existence Value

The satisfaction of knowing that a redwood forest, a wilderness, orangutans, and wolf packs exist, even if we will never see them or get direct use from them. Based on this view, we have an ethical responsibility to protect species from becoming prematurely extinct as a result of human activities and to prevent the degradation of the world's ecosystems and its overall biodiversity.

Red List

The world standard for listing the world's threatened species.

Economic Value

This benefits us in the form of economic goods and services, ecological services, recreation, scientific information and the continuation of such uses for future generations.

Second-Growth Forest

This is a collection of trees resulting from secondary ecological succession. These forests develop after the trees in an area have been removed by human activities, such as clear-cutting for timber or cropland, or by natural forces such as fire, hurricanes, or volcanic eruption.

Buffer Zones

Transitional area between a natural environment and human development

Old-Growth Forest

Virgin and old, second-growth forests containing trees that are often hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old. Examples include forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock, giant sequoia, and coastal redwoods in the western United States.

Ecotourism

Wildlife tourism, which generates between $950,000 and $1.8 million per minute in tourist expenditures worldwide.

Seed Bank

gene banks, hold more than 3 million samples of seeds, safe from habitat distrubition, climate change, and general neglect.

Overexploitaion

hunting and harvesting a species too much. In extreme cases this may result in the extinction of said species.

Rangeland

land on which the plant community is comprised of predominately native or indigenous grasses, grasslikes (e.g. sedges), forbs and/or shrubs. Rangeland includes natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, most deserts, tundra, alpine communities, coastal marshes and wet meadows.

Captive Breeding

some or all wild individuals of a critically endangered species captured for breeding in captivity, with the aim of reintroducing the offspring into the wild