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Chapter 5
Vocabulary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Biodiversity | number of different species living in a specific area. |
| Ecosystem | biological community and all the nonliving factors that affect it. |
| Extinction | the dissappearance of a species when the last of its members dies. |
| Genetic Diversity | variety of inheritable characteristics or genes in an interbreeding population. |
| Species Diversity | in a biological community, the number and abundance of different species. |
| Background Extinction | gradula process of a species becoming extinct. |
| Biological Magnification | increasing concentration of toxic substances, such as DDT, in organisms as trophic levels increase in food chains or food webs. |
| Edge Effect | any different environmental conditon occuring along an ecosystem's boundaries. |
| Eutrophication | water pollution from nitrogen-rich and phosphorus-rich substances flowing into waterways, casuing algal overgrowth. |
| Habitat Fragmentation | habitat loss from separation of an ecoystem into small pieces of land. |
| Introduced Species | nonnative species deliberately or accidentally introduced into a new habitat. |
| Mass Extinction | a large - scale dying out of a large percentage of all living organisims in an area within a short time. |
| Natural Resource | any material or organism in the biosphere, including water, soil, fuel, and plants and animals. |
| Overexploitation | overuse of species with economic value- a factor in species extinction. |
| Biological Augmentation | technique of adding essentail materials to a degraded ecosystem. |
| Bioremediation | tecnique using living organisms to detoxify a polluted area. |
| Endemic | found only in one specific geographic area. |
| Nonrenewable Resource | any natural resource available inlimited amounts or replaced extremely slowly by natural processes. |
| Renewable Resource | any resource replaced by natural processes more quickly than it is consumed. |
| Sustainable | use of resources at a rate that they can be replaced or recycled. |