chapter 5

Endemic

(of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area.

Nonrenewable resource

A nonrenewable resource is a resource of economic value that cannot be readily replaced by natural means on a level equal to its consumption. Most fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal are considered nonrenewable resources in that their use is not sustainable because their formation takes billions of years.

Renewable resource

A renewable resource (Risorsa rinnovabile) is a resource which can be used repeatedly and replaced naturally. Examples include oxygen, fresh water, solar energy, timber, and biomass. Renewable resources may include goods or commodities such as wood, paper and leather.

Extinction

A term that typically describes a species that no longer has any known living individuals.

Mass extinction

An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms.

Introduced species

An introduced species (alien species, exotic species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species) is a species living outside its native distributional range, which has arrived there by human activity, either deliberate or accidental. ... The impact of introduced species is highly variable.

Background extinction

Background extinction rate, also known as the normal extinction rate, refers to the standard rate of extinction in earth's geological and biological history before humans became a primary contributor to extinctions.

Biological augmentation

Biological augmentation is the addition of archaea or bacterial cultures required to speed up the rate of degradation of a contaminant.

Biological magnification

Biomagnification, also known as bioamplification or biological magnification, is the increasing concentration of a substance, such as a toxic chemical, in the tissues of organisms at successively higher levels in a food chain.

Bioremediation

Bioremediation is the use of microbes to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater. Microbes are very small organisms, such as bacteria, that live naturally in the environment. Bioremediation stimulates the growth of certain microbes that use contaminants as a source of food and energy.

Ecosystem diversity

Ecological diversity is a type of biodiversity. It is the variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the whole planet.

Genetic diversity

Genetic diversity is the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species.

Edge effect

In ecology, edge effects are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of five or more habitats.

Overexploitation

Overexploitation means harvesting species from the wild at rates faster than natural populations can recover. Overfishing and overhunting are both types of overexploitation. Currently, about a third of the world's endangered vertebrates are threatened by overexploitation.

Species diversity

Species diversity is the number of different species that are represented in a given community (a dataset).

Sustainable use

Sustainable use means the use of components of biological diversity in a way and at a rate that does not lead to the long-term decline of biological diversity, thereby maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations.Oct 16, 2014

Habitat fragmentation

at fragmentation is an umbrella term describing the complete process by which habitat loss results in the division of large

Eutrophication

excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water, frequently due to runoff from the land, which causes a dense growth of plant life and death of animal life from lack of oxygen.

Natural resources

materials or substances such as minerals, forests, water, and fertile land that occur in nature and can be used for economic gain.

Biodiversity

the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem.