| Question | Answer |
| Half-Life | time needed foro one-half of the nuclei in a radioisotope to emit their radiation. Each radioisotpe has a characteristic half life, which may range from a few millionths of a second to several billion years |
| Multiple use public land | use of an ecosystem such as forests for a variety of purposes such as timber harvesting, wildlife habitat, watershed protection and recreation |
| Teratogen | chemical, agent that causes birth defects |
| Mutagen | chemical or form of radiation that causes inheritable changes (mutations in DNA molecules in genes) |
| LD50 | amount of a toxic material per unit of body weight of test animals that kill half test population in certain time |
| Greenhouse Gases | gases in the earth's lower atmospher(troposhere) that cause the greenhouse effect (CO2, CFCs, Ozone, CO, NO, H20 vapor) |
| Ozone | colorless and highly reactive gas, major component of photochemical smog, and also found in stratospher where it protects life by filtering out most harmful UV radiation from sun |
| Nitrogen Oxides | colorless gas that forms when nitrogen and oxygen gas in air react aat high combustion temperatures in automobile engines and coal burning plants |
| Secondary pollutants | primary pollutants react with one another or with the basic components of air to form new harmful pollutants |
| Primary Air Pollutants | harmful substances emitted directly into air |
| Eutrophication | physical, chemcial, and biological changes sthat take place after a lake, etc receives inputs of plant nutrients (nitrates and phossphates) from natural erosion and runoff from surrounding land base |
| Non-Point Source | large or dispersed land areas such as cropfields, streets, and lawns that discharge pollutnats in environment over large areas |
| Point Source | single identificable source that discharges pollutnats into enviro. Ex. smokestalks of power plant |
| Doubling time | time it takes for the quantity of something growing exponentially to double. calculated by dividing annual % growth rate into 70 |
| K-stragist | species that produces a few, often fairly large offspring but invest a great deal of time and energy to ensure that most of those offspring reach reproductive age |
| r-strategist | species that reproduce early in their life span and produce large numbers of usually small and short lived offsspring in a short period |
| Carrying Capacity | maximum population of a particular species that a given habitat can support over a given period |
| Commensalism | Interaction between organisms of different species in which one type benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped |
| Primary succession | Ecological succession in a bare area that has never been occupied by a community of organisms |
| Producer | organism that uses solar energy or chemical enrgy to mnanufacture the organic compounds it needs as nutrients from simple inorganic compuonds obtained from its environment |
| Photosynthesis | complex process that takes pllace in cells of green plants. Radiant energy from sun is used. |
| Denitrification | nitrogen leaves the soil as specialized bacteria in waterlogged soil and bottom of lakes, oceans, and swamps |
| Aquifer | Porous water saturated layers of sand , gravel, or bedrock that can yield an economically significant amount of water |
| Ore | Part of a metal yielding material that can be economically and legally extracted at a given time. it contains the ore minerial (desired) and the waste mineral material (gangue) |
| First Law of Thermodynamics | In any physical or chemcial change, no detectable amount of energy is created or destroyed but energy can be changed from one foorm to another |
25 cards - created apr 27, 2:16pm