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APES Chapter 1 - Environmental Science Study Review
environment - -the sum of all the conditions
surrounding us that influence life
environmental science - -the field that looks at
interactions among human systems and those found in
nature
system - -any set of interacting components that
influence one another by exchanging energy or materials
ecosystem - -a particular location on Earth whose
interacting components include living or nonliving
components
biotic - -living
abiotic - -nonliving
environmentalist - -a person who participates in
environmentalism
environmentalism - -a social movement that seeks
to protect the environment through lobbying, activism, and
education
environmental studies - -a broader field that
environmental science is a subset of which it also
includes, environmental policy, economics, literature, and
ethics
ecosystem services - -the processes by which life-
supporting resources such as clean water, timber,
fisheries, and agricultural crops are produced
environmental indicators - -describe the current
state of an environmental system
sustainability - -living on Earth in a way that allows
us to use its resources without depriving future
generations of those resources
biodiversity - -the diversity of life forms in an
environment
speciation - -the evolution of new species
background extinction rate - -the average rate at
which species go extinct over the long term
greenhouse gases - -heat-trapping gases in the
atmosphere
anthropogenic - -effects derived from human
activities
development - -improvement in human hell-being
through economic advancement
sustainable development - -development that
balances current human well-being and economic
advancement with resource management for the benefit of
future generations
ecological footprint - -a measure of how much that
person consumes, expressed in area of land
scientific method - -an objective way to explore the
natural world, draw inferences from it, and predict the
outcome of certain events, processes, or changes
hypothesis - -a testable conjecture about how
something works
null hypothesis - -a statement or idea that can
falsified, or proved wrong
replication - -the process of taking several sets of
measurements
sample size - -number of times a measurement is
replicated or the number of sets of measurements
