ENSC 101 was a course taught by Dr. Labosier and this course focused on the basics and introduction to environmental science. The document below is a study guide that I wrote myself to help study for the class final. It has a bunch of terms along with their definitions. I enjoyed this class a lot because it made me even more interested in my major and I believe that it was a great introductory course.
ENSC Study Guide
Final
- Scientific Method: Method/Procedure to organize a scientific experiment
- Peer Review: Evaluation of scientific works by others to confirm validity
- Weather: Daily Weather
- Climate: Seasonal weather, not day-to-day
- Greenhouse Effect: Trapping of the sun’s warmth, causes warming of the atmosphere
- Orbital Variations: change in the Earth’s movement on its climate
- Biosphere: Surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere
- Ecosystem: living organisms in their physical environment
- Population: number of organisms in an area
- Trophic System: levels in an ecosystem
- Food Web: stages of consumers/predation
- Environmental Systems: life interacts with various abiotic components found.
- Positive Feedback Loops: continue again and again making things worse and worse
- Population Pyramids: Pyramid off population growth of an adult, infant, and elderly
- Malthusian: Earth’s resources on supply the population
- Cornucopian: continue to grow if we resupply resources
- Scientific Consensus: Opinion or Judgement
- Greenhouse Gasses: Gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation (carbon dioxide)
- Solar Variability: change in solar activity
- Internal Variability: Variation in natural or anthropogenic external forcing
- Landscape: geography of an area
- Community: All of the organisms in an area interacting with one another
- Organism: living thing
- Trophic Cascade: keystone species
- Keystone Species: Highest consumer in the food web, an important species that if taken away can affect the entire ecosystem
- Negative Feedback Loops: don’t have a cycle
- Dynamic Equilibrium: balance between continuing processes
- Physical Hazard: can cause harm or danger with or without contact
- Chemical Hazard: harm by chemicals in the air, can cause long-term health effects
- Biological Hazards: cause harm in the organisms such as a virus or disease
- Cultural Hazards: certain behaviors or actions that cause types of health issues
- Toxicology: study the effects and nature of poisons
- Toxicant: toxic substance introduced into the environment such as a pesticide
- Carcinogen: cause cancer
- Mutagen: cause mutations
- Allergens: cause allergic reactions
- Neurotoxins: poisons that act in the nervous system
- Endocrine Disruptors: affect the endocrine system
- Biomagnifications: concentration of toxins in an organism
- Bioaccumulation: substance gets accumulated in an organism such as pesticides
- Dose and Response: how an organism responds to certain doses
- LD50: Amount of a toxic substance
- ED50: Amount of a dose of a certain drug given
- Threshold Dose: lowest given dose that causes effects
- Precautionary Principle: lack of full scientific certainty will not be used to prevent environmental degradation
- Waste: trash/litter/pollutants
- Recycle: turn objects into other things
- Reuse: reuse object again and again
- Reduce: reduce the use of this object overall
- Municipal Solid Waste: common trash people have
- Industrial Waste: Waste created from industries
- Hazardous Waste: waste that can cause harm to organisms or the environment
- Superfund: funds to finance a long-term project or experiment
- Brownfield: former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination
- E-Waste: Electronic Waste
- Industrial Ecology: study of material and flow of energy through industrial systems
- Biodiversity: variety of life
- Species Diversity: Variety of species in an environment
- Genetic Diversity: total number of genetic characteristics in an organism
- Ecosystem Diversity: variety of ecosystems in a given environment
- Extinction: no more of that species alive in the world
- Extirpation: species is no longer in that one area but is somewhere else in the world
- Endangered Species: under recovery, close to extinction
- Threatened Species: close to endangerment
- Watershed: ridge of land that separates waterways
- Hypoxia: deficiency of oxygen reaching the tissues
- Runoff: flow of nutrients running off land into a waterway
- Eutrophication: excessive richness of nutrients in a lake or other body of water
- Primary Productivity: synthesis of organic compounds from atmosphere or aqueous carbon dioxide
- Major cause for the loss of biodiversity: habitat destruction
- Eutrophication? Why?: Eutrophication is excess in rich nutrients caused from runoff from farms and land