Environmental Science Unit One Exam

Which is NOT considered a threat to amphibians? A. Habitat loss and fragmentation B. Starvation from lack of food C. Chytrid fungus disease D. Over hunting for leg meat E. arasites

B. Starvation from lack of food

Specialist

A ______ species, such as the giant panda, occupies a narrow niche. Such species may be able to live in only one type of habitat, eat only one or a few types of food, or tolerate a narrow range of environmental conditions.

Tertiary consumer

A carnivore that eats secondary consumers; top of the food chart

Soil

A complex mixture of rock pieces and particles, decaying matter, water, and living organisms.

What is a sequence of organisms, with each serving as a source of nutrients or energy for directly for the next level of organism?

A food chain

What is the term used to describe animals feeding at more than one level, in a more complex network than a simple chain?

A food web

Renewable

A natural resource that can be replaced; forest

Every use and transfer of energy by organisms involves a loss of some high-quality energy to the environment as low-quality energy in the form of heat, as required by the second law of thermodynamics. A graphic display of the energy loss at each trophic level is called a ____________. The given figure illustrates this energy loss for a food chain, assuming a 90% energy loss for each level of the chain.

A pyramid of energy flow

arly in the 20th century, the conservation movement split into two factions that differed over how to use U.S. public lands owned jointly by all American citizens. The preservationist view, led by naturalist John Muir, wanted wilderness areas on some public lands to be left untouched so they would be preserved indefinitely. The ______, promoted by President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, held that all public lands should be managed wisely and scientifically, primarily to provide resources for people.

Conservationist view

Geosphere

Crust, mantle, core

Which consumers get their nutrients by breaking down the wastes or remains of plants and animals on a molecular level?

Decomposers

Earthworms, termites, millipedes, dung beetles, and some crabs are all good examples of what? Feed on the wastes of dead bodies.

Detritivores

According to this worldview, people are part of and dependent on nature, and the earth's natural capital exists for all species, not just humans.

Earth-centered

The effects of environmental degradation by human activities can be described as an ______ —a rough measure of the total harmful environmental impacts of individuals, cities, and countries on Earth's natural resources, ecosystem services, and life-support system.

Ecological footprint

Inexhaustible

unlimited; windmill energy

Infiltration/Percolation

water on the ground surface enters the soil

Runoff

water that flows over the ground surface rather than soaking into the ground

This additional principle of sustainability is related to economics.

Full-cost pricing

Whose name is associated with tragedy of the commons?

Garrett Hardin

The new cultural change emerging now, helping us try to reduce our ecological footprint.

The sustainability revolution

Genetic Diversity

The variety of genes within a given species or population

Generalist

A _____ species such as the raccoon has a broad niche. They can live in many different places, eat a variety of foods, and often tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions.

Scientific Method Steps

1. Identify a problem and research what is known about the problem. This involves conducting a review of existing literature and understanding what is known and what questions remain. 2. Ask a research question that can be investigated, perform a preliminary study to answer the question, and collect and analyze that data. This step helps to identify patterns. 3. Propose a scientific hypothesis to explain these data and use it to form a testable prediction. Hypotheses can be written as 'if, then' questions. Then perform an experiment to test these predictions. 4. If your data supports your prediction you accept your hypothesis. A limitation of the scientific method is that it cannot prove a scientific theory is absolutely true. Reject your hypothesis if data does not support it, revise it and test it again.

Levels of Organization of Life in Nature

1. Population - A group of individuals of the same species living in a particular place. 2. Community - Populations of different species living in a particular place and potentially interacting with each other. 3. Ecosystem - a community of different species interacting with one another and with their nonliving environment of matter and energy. 4. Biosphere - parts of the earth's air, water, and soil where life is found.

Even though the United States represents only 4.4% of the total world population, what percent of the global ecological footprint is the U.S. responsible for?

23% to 25%

Using the doubling time rule of 70: if the world's population is growing at about 1% per year, how long will it take our population to double?

70 years Double time (years) = 70 / annual growth rate %

Hydrosphere

All the water on earth

Niche

An organism's particular role in an ecosystem, or how it makes its living.

A system

Any set of components that function and interact in some regular way.

Stratosphere

Atmospheric layer that houses the ozone layer.

An important measure of sustainability is _____ - the ability of an area's ecosystems to regenerate the renewable resources used by a population, city, region, country, or the world in a given time period and to absorb the resulting wastes and pollution.

Biocapacity

Functional Diversity

Biological and chemical processes or functions such as energy flow and matter cycling needed for the survival of species and biological communities

The biosphere and its ecosystems are made up of living (_____) and nonliving (abiotic) components. Examples of living components include plants, animals, and microbes. Nonliving components include water, air, nutrients, rocks, heat, and solar energy.

Biotic

Which of the following is NOT a keystone species? A. Honey Bees B. Southern Sea Otter C. Sea Urchin D. Yellowstone Gray Wolves E. American Alligator

C. Sea Urchin

When a chemical change, or chemical reaction, takes place, there is a change in the chemical composition of the substances involved. Chemists use a ______ to show how chemicals are rearranged in a chemical reaction. For example, coal is made up almost entirely of the element carbon (C). When coal is burned completely in a power plant, the solid carbon in the coal combines with oxygen gas (O2) from the atmosphere to form the gaseous compound carbon dioxide (CO2).

Chemical equation

A key component of environmental science is _________ , the branch of biology that focuses on how living organisms interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment. Each organism, or living thing, belongs to a species—a group of organisms having a unique set of characteristics that set it apart from other groups.

Ecology

Atoms are incredibly small. More than 3 million hydrogen atoms could sit side by side on the period at the end of this sentence. If you could view atoms with a super microscope, you would find that each different type of atom contains a certain number of three types of subatomic particles: neutrons, with no electrical charge; protons, each with a positive electrical charge (+); and ______, each with a negative electrical charge (−)

Electrons

Some matter is composed of one ______, such as carbon (C) and oxygen gas (O2). However, most matter consists of compounds, which are combinations of two or more different elements held together in fixed proportions. For example, water (H2O) is a compound containing the elements hydrogen and oxygen, and sodium chloride (NaCL) contains the elements sodium and chlorine.

Element

Electromagnetic Radiation

Energy traveling from one place to another via waves formed from changes in electrical and magnetic fields

Everything around you, including all living and nonliving things.

Environment

Your _____________________ is your set of assumptions and values about how the natural world works and how you think you should interact with the environment. Your _____________________ is determined partly by your environmental ethics—what you believe about what is right and what is wrong in your behavior toward the environment.

Environmental worldview

A purely social movement dedicated to protecting the earth's life support systems for us and other species.

Environmentalism

How is environmentalism different from environmental science?

Environmentalism is a social movement

Atomic Number

Equal to the number of protons

Atomic Mass

Equal to the number of protons plus neutrons.

Transpiration

Evaporation of water from the leaves of a plant

A type of growth that occurs when a quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time.

Exponential growth

Ecologists use a variety of methods for ______, including collecting water and soil samples, identifying and studying the species in an area, and live observation of feeding behaviors.

Field Research

What is produced in the process of photosynthesis when carbon dioxide and water interact with solar energy?

Glucose and oxygen

The worldview sees the natural world primarily as a support system for human life.

Human-centered

Most systems have three key components: ______ of matter, energy, and information from the environment, flows or throughput of matter, energy, and information within the system, and outputs of products, wastes, and degraded energy (usually heat) to the environment.

Inputs

Which class are most animal species identified as?

Insects

Ecological Diversity

The variety of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems found in an area or on the earth

Which best describes the study of environmental science?

It is interdisciplinary

Second Law of Thermodynamics

It states that when energy is changed from one for to another, it always goes from a more useful to a less useful form.

First law of Thermodynamics

It states that when energy is converted from one form to another, in either a physical or chemical change, no energy is created or destroyed.

There are two major types of energy: moving energy (called ______ energy) and stored energy (called potential energy).

Kinetic

The worldview recognizes that all species have value in fulfilling their ecological roles, regardless of their potential or actual use to society.

Life-centered

Evaporation

Liquid to gas

Biosphere

Living organism; soil and rock

Environmental degradation in poor countries can have severe health effects. In some cases, even though people can get enough calories to survive they lack a balanced diet. What condition does this cause?

Malnutrition

Anything that has mass and takes up space.

Matter

Sustainability, the integrating theme of this book, has several key components that we use as subthemes. One is ______ —natural resources and ecosystem services that keep humans and other species alive and that support human economies.

Natural Capital

The term that is used to describe our shrinking forests, expanding deserts, and eroding topsoil.

Natural Capital Degradation

The waste, depletion, or destruction of any of the earth's natural capital. Also known as environmental degradation.

Natural Capital Degradation

Spending too much time inside and connected to electronic devices has resulted in this phenomenon.

Nature deficit disorder

What gas primarily makes up the air we breathe (approx 78%)?

Nitrogen

What cycles through the biosphere to provide essential chemicals that organisms need to survive?

Nutrients

Habitat

Place where an organism lives

Keystone Species

Plays several critical roles in sustaining an ecosystem, keeping them from changing dramatically or possibly even collapsing.

What eats primary producers?

Primary consumers

Organisms that make their own nutrients from compounds and energy obtained from their environment.

Producers

In the 20th century, the concept of resource conservation was broadened to include preservation of the quality of the planet's air, water, soil, and wildlife. A prominent pioneer in that effort was biologist ______, whose book Silent Spring was published in 1962. Carson's book documented the pollution of air, water, and wildlife from the widespread use of pesticides such as DDT. This influential book heightened public awareness of pollution problems and led to the regulation of several dangerous pesticides.

Rachel Carson

Bioms

Represent regions distinguished by the predominance of certain types of vegetation and other forms of life

his additional principle of sustainability is related to ethics.

Responsibility to future generations.

About 99% of the energy that keeps us warm and supports the plants that we and other organisms eat is electromagnetic radiation that comes from the sun. Without this essentially inexhaustible ______ energy, the earth would be frozen and life as we know it would not exist. Commercial energy—energy that is sold in the marketplace—makes up the remaining 1% of the energy we use to supplement the earth's direct input of solar energy.

Solar

Why is there essentially no waste in nature?

The waste and remains of one organism become food for other organisms.

A key component of environmental science is ecology, the branch of biology that focuses on how living organisms interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment. Each organism, or living thing, belongs to a ______ —a group of organisms having a unique set of characteristics that set it apart from other groups.

Species

Indicator Species

Species that serve as early warnings that a community or ecosystem is being degraded.

A government action to implement full-cost pricing is through the raising or lowering of?

Taxes

Another environmental impact model was developed in the early 1970s by scientists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren. This IPAT model shows that the environmental impact (I) of human activities is the product three factors: population size (P), affluence (A) or resource consumption per person, and the beneficial and harmful environmental effects of ______ Blank (T).

Technologies

A cultural change occurring about 10,000 years ago as humanity shifted away from a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

The agricultural revolution

Atmosphere

The air that surrounds the earth

Energy

The capacity to do work or to transfer heat.

Solar energy interacts with specific atmospheric gases to create the greenhouse effect. What would happen to the earth without this process?

The earth would be too cold to support human life.

Science

The field of study that focuses on discovering how nature works, and then uses this knowledge to describe what is likely to happen in nature.

A cultural change that occurred around 300 years ago.

The industrial-medical revolution

The most recent cultural change, beginning roughly 50 years ago.

The information-globalization revolution.

Troposphere

The innermost layer of the atmosphere that contains the air we breathe.

Temperature

The measure of the average heat or thermal energy of the atoms, ions, molecules in a sample of matter.

Species Diversity

The number of abundance of species in different ecosystems.

Part of the atmosphere that filters out roughly 95% of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation

The ozone layer

Gross Primary Productivity

The rate at which plants and phytoplankton convert solar energy into chemical energy

Ecology

The science that focuses on how organisms interact with one another and their nonliving physical environment of matter and energy.

A feedback loop

What occurs when output of matter, energy, or information is fed back into a system as input and leads to changes in that system?

This additional principle of sustainability is related to political science.

Win-win solutions

Nonrenewable (exhaustible)

a resource that cannot be replaced; oil

Elements and compounds can change from one physical or chemical form to another. However, atoms are never created or destroyed in any physical or chemical change. Instead, atoms, ions, or molecules can only be rearranged into different spatial patterns (physical changes) or chemical combinations (chemical changes). This finding, based on many thousands of measurements, describes an unbreakable scientific law known as the _______.

law of conservation of matter

Precipitation

rain, snow, sleet, or hail that falls to the ground.

Biodiversity

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