| A | B |
|---|
| environment | The nonliving components of the earth, as well as all of the organisms that depend upon them. |
| environmental science | investigators of nature and the interactions of both abiotic & biotic factors in ecosystems; these investigators are objective, use scientific experiments, and evidence from experiments to explain the operations of ecosystems |
| environmentalism | a social movement directed at increasing awareness and protectiveness for the environment; these people are NOT always objective or scientificially accurate |
| natural resource | any material or service provided by the environment and used to meet human needs |
| renewable natural resource | materials that the environment provides either constantly (like waves. wind, sunlight) or with a short cycle of regeneration (like plant regrowth, the water cycle, the C cycle) |
| nonrenewable natural resource | e.g., fossil fuels, nuclear energy, metals; materials provided by the environment, but that are either never regenerated OR regenerated at a rate far longer than a human lifespan |
| resource | any material or service that humans require to survive |
| environmentally sustainable | use of resources at a rate lower than they are renewed and production of waste at a rate lower than the rate at which natural processes absorb or recycle them |
| fossil fuel | nonrenewable energy resources including coal, oil, and gas |
| ecological footprint | the amount of earth's land needed to absorb all of a person's waste and to provide all of that person's natural resources |
| tradgedy of the commons | the suffering of all people who share an unregulated resource because resources have been used or waste has been generated at an unsustainable rate |
| biotic | an organism--living thing |
| abiotic | a nonliving thing, like the soil or water or atmosphere |
| quantitative data | observations that are measured and expressed in numbers (like 30 ml of volume or 3.2 cm) |
| qualitative data | observations or evidence that is not measurable in a totally objective way, like more or less or blue or red or smells good or bad) |
| objective | evidence supported reasoning not influenced by emotions or background |
| subjective | reasoning that is NOT evidence based and is likely to be influenced by personal emotions or background |
