Ess definitions-2

Ess definitions-2

1. Topic 5

   • Soil: a complex system made up of mineral, organic materials, gases and liquid which forms habitats or many plants and animals
   • translocation: when the water carries the particles up or down the soil
   • Farming
     • Subsistence farming: provision of food by farmers for their own families or local communities
     • Commercial farming: large scale profit making by maximising yield per hectare.
     • Extensive farming: uses more land with lower density of stocking and lower inputs with their corresponding outputs
     • intensive farming: uses more land with higher level of output and input
   • salinization: when water evaporates and leaves minerals in the surface
   • Leaching: when more rain, so water moves the minerals down

2. Topic 6

   • Greenhouse effect: natural and necessary phenomenon maintaining suitable temperature for living system
   • ODS: result of air pollution by chemicals that are mostly human made
   • particulates is the formation of small particles due to burning OM or FF
   • Photochemical smog: formed when nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons from vehicles reacts with sunlight
   • acid deposition: general term for acid coming down from the air

3. Topic 7

   • Energy security:
   • Global warming: increasing average temperature of the Earth
   • Weather: daily result of changes of temperature, pressure and precipitation in our atmosphere
   • climate is the average weather pattern over many years for a location on Earth
   • Climate change: long term change
   • Mitigation: involves reduction or stabilisation of greenhouse gases emissions and their removal from the atmosphere
   • adaptation: is the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities

4. Topic 8

   • biotic potential: population capacity for growth
   • environmental resistance consists of all the factors acting jointly to limit the growth of a population
   • Carrying capacity: the number of individuals of a given species that can be sustained indefinitely in a given space
   • exponential growth: process that starts slowly and then proceeds faster as the population increases
   • Logistic growth: involves exponential population growth with time, but then levels off as an environmental resistance
   • r-selected species: species that reproduce early and put most of their energy into reproduction
   • k-slected species: species that put fairly little in reproduction, tend to reproduce late, have few offspring and protect their offspring
   • crude birth rate: number of live births per 1,000 people in a population in a given year
   • crude death rate: number of deaths per 1,000 people in a population in a given year
   • total fertility rate: an estimate of the average number of children a woman will have during her childbearing years
   • natural increase: the form in which human population growth rates are usually expressed: CBR-CDR/10
   • natural capital: another term for natural resources, can produce a natural income of goods and services, the natural capital of a forest might provide continuing natural income of timber
     • non-renewable: natural resources that cannot be replenished within a timescale of the same order as that at which they are taken from the environment
     • renewable: natural resources that have a sustainable yield or harvest equal to or less than their natural productivity
     • replenishable: nonliving natural resources that depend on te energy of he sun for their replenishment
   • instrumental value: value of an organism, species ecosystem or the Earths biodiversity based on its usefulness to humans
   • Limting factor: simple factor that limits the growth, abundance or distribution of a species in an ecosystem.
   • Carrying capacity: maximum number of specie sor load that can be sustainably supported by a given environment
   • Demography: the study of the dynamics of population change
   • Malthusian: he says that population increase is listed by certain checks, also that population can never increase beyond the food supplies necessary to support it.
   • Boserup: increase in population would stimulate technologists to increase food production
   • Demographic transition model is the pattern decline in mortality and fertility of a country as a result of social and comic development