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Ecosystems Midterm
Terms, People, Events, Species, and Legislature
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Biotic and abiotic components in any given area with a defined boundary. (Pond, lake, field, forest) |
| Sustainable | to sustain the patterns and process of ecosystems for the benefit of future generations, while providing goods and services for each generation. |
| Bruntland Report | 1987 UN's World Commission on Environment and Development Report defined sustainable development. |
| Stakeholders | the individuals and groups affected by the policy |
| Northwest Forest Plan | Spotted Owl: To work together to create a sustainable ecosystem that protected all of the wildlife while still provided for human and economic necessities. |
| Adaptive Management | Multistep process- establish goals, create criteria, implement the plan, monitor the plan, evaluate the results, adjust the plan to make it better. |
| Metropolitan Area | The densely populated urban core and the less populated surrounding region |
| Factors influencing urban development | cities were trade centers and people needed to walk to work. |
| Romantic or Arcadian Movement | fostered an interest in family and countryside Thoreau- Industrial revolution made the cities gross |
| Andrew Jackson Downing | Great American Landscape Artist idealized country life in his writing. |
| Urban Pollution | Waste of all sorts was a problem- human, horse, bird. The search for clean water was a very large problem as well. |
| Cesspool and privy vault system | = systems for human waste treatment, night soil was dumped in water or farms |
| miasma | impure air from decaying material |
| Edwin Chadwick | English Lawyer who promoted the idea that disease is related to the lack of sanitation |
| Pasteur and Koch | scientists who worked to improve knowledge of disease. flies were found to be carriers. |
| Sand Filtration and Chlorine | reduced disease by the 1920s |
| St. Louis vs. Chicago Sanitary District | St. Lois took Chicago to court because Chicago was polluting all of the water upstream to it was unusable by the time it got to St. Lois |
| Primary Sewage treatment | mechanical removal of solids |
| Secondary treatment | Elminates BOD (biological oxygen demand)with activated sludge or trickle filter technique |
| Tertiary treatment | removes nutrients |
| Solid Waste Disposal (1900) | Disposal= hogs, water, and landfills= rats and roaches |
| City Beautiful | progressive reform and civic improvement sought to improve the urban environment |
| Horace McFarland | Head of American Civic Association- pushed civic improvement |
| Myra Loyd Dock | A writer who compared Harrisburg with the less developed cities on the Rhine in terms of filth |
| George Waring Jr. | NYC sanitary engineer, developed the white wings to clean up the city. = recycling |
| Sanitary Landfill | Ashes alternated with organic material |
| Air inversion | Cold air trapped below warm air trapping the pollutants in a valley. = harsh smog and haze |
| Clean Air Act of 1970 | Established air quality standards and also later established emission standards for automobiles and power plants. |
| Urban Heat Island | The urban areas are warmer than forested or rural ares because of human activities (heating the homes and such) |
| energy budget= (l-r)S=H+(lambda)E+G | r= reflected radiation (l-r)=absorbed radiation S=Solar Radiation H=Convection (Sensible Heat loss) (Lambda)= latent heat of vaporization E= Latent heat exchange G= Conduction to the ground |
| Bowden Ration | sendible heat loss/ latent heat loss |
| macropores | large pores (in soil they hold water and oxygen) |
| Bulk Density | Urban soils are very compacted (have a high bulk density) and it limits the soils ability to absorb water |
| hydrophobic | repels water (in soils it is due to the deposition of hydrocarbons) |
| Impervious surfaces | Roads, parking lots, roofs, that changes the fate of water. Storm drains push water straight into streams (it is not detained in the soil at all)= more flash floods. |
| BMP | Best Management Practices |
| Detention Storage | stores water in collection basins |
| Bio-retention | wetland areas with plants and microbes absorb and break down toxic substances |
| Street Tree Commissions | The people who are responsible for the planting and care of the street trees |
| Street tree considerations | Plant small trees in narrow tree lawns where they will require less water (callery peary and flowering Crab) -Disease free, pest free, pollutant tolerant (Norway Maple, little-leaf linden) |
| What trees should not be planted? | Fast growing trees- Silver Maples, poplars, aspens- they break easily due to the weather |
| What trees are good for growing grass? What trees are bad for that? | Honey Locust = good. Norway Maple=bad |
| Remnant forests | patches of natural forest that survive in urban areas but are subject to frequent disturbances like pollution, fire,and trampling. |
| Value of Street trees | Micro-climate modifications (latent heat loss, shade, reduce wind speeds, reduce runoff, reduce air pollutants, reduce noise |
| William Kent and Lancelot "Capability" Brown | 18th Century English tastes- country estates created by these two people |
| Ecological Costs of the lawn | Requires large amounts of energy to maintain a lawn, need to apply large quantities of herbicides and pesticides, |
| Energy Efficient House | South facing, mid-slope, evergreens to the west to reduce winter wind and cooling, deciduous in the shouth provides shade |
| Heat Transfer equation= q=U*A*(deltaT) | q= heat loss due to conduction, convection, and radiation U= coefficient of transmittance A= area in ft squared (delta T)= dif. between inside and outside temp |
| What labor saving devices in the early 1800s improved the grain harvest? | Hand and horse drawn implements (sickle, cradle scythe, and horse drawn reaper) |
| Problems of overproduction of crops? | high production is beneficial during wartime= more collateral for loans (debt increases) -prices drop during slows in demand =bankruptcies |
| Farm Service Agency | government agency in the USDA that assists farmers in numerous ways. -Commodity Credit Corporation- created to stabilize and support farm incomes and prices. = Loans with crops as collateral. -If prices fall below target prices FSA makes up the dif. |
| Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996 | 1. Eliminate acreage control on crops 2. eliminate store food surpluses 3. reduce distorting price support systems |
| Edward Faulkner | Wrote Plowman's Folly- pointed out harmful effects of plowing (high erosion rates) |
| Conservation Tillage | Strives to keep most plant material on the surfaces (Chisel plow and no-till) = Less soil erosion, cheaper labor, fewer trips. Increases herbicide and fertilizer. |
| Soil Organic Matter (SOM) | The amount of living and dead organic matter in the soil= best indicators of soil quality and fertility |
| Value of SOM? | Microbial energy source, humus colloids have a negative charged edge that attracts positive charged nutrients=cation exchange capacity of the soil |
| More SOM value? | Source of nutrients, increases absorb-able water for plants, promotes clumping, increases yield for each 1% carbon |
| volatilization | because it is a gas it escapes into the atmosphere |
| nitrification | bacteria change NH4 into NO3 that can be leached |
| denitrification | changes NO3 into N2 gas and N20 runoff |
| hypoxia | nitrogen runoff stimulates algae growth, bacteria feed on the algae and use up the oxygen. |
| Pest Resurgence | pesticides destroy natural predators, pest recover more quickly |
| Characteristics of Weeds | 1. produce lots of seeds 2. effective seed dispersal through space 3. large amount of seeds 4. plastic growth and seed production patterns |
| 10 Worst Weeds | Goosefoot, Redroot pigweed, Green foxtail, common ragweed, creeping buttercup, curley dock, canada thistle, field bindweed, quack grass, yellow nuts edge, |
| Landscape Ecology | Studies the movement of organisms, nutrients, and energy between different landscape units |
| Riparian Ecosystem | An ecotonal area where terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems meet. |
| Riparian Buffer Strips | act as sinks for nutrients from runoff and groundwater |
| Vegetated Buffer strips | Removes sediment in overland flow and nutrients in ground water |
| Agricultural security areas | Farmers owning more than 500 acres of land can petition for tax relief, exemption from nuisance ordinances |
| Agricultural protection zoning (APZ) | zoning is established by township to protect farmland on prime soils by limiting percentage of hte amount of land that can be developed if it were to be sold. |
| Agricultural Conservation Easement | gov't purchase development rights from the farmer on the conditions that the farm with be used for agricultural production forever. Very profitable for the farmer. |