AP Environmental Science Review Terms: Set 1
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Created by:
basscatcher1 on April 29, 2012
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20 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Renewable Resources | replenished fairly rapidly through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is replaced. Examples include forests, grasslands, wild animals, fresh water, fresh air, and fertile soil |
| Characteristics of Developed Countries | United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and most European countries. Most are highly industrialized and have high average per capita GDP. Have lower population, lower population growth, high amount of wealth and income, and higher amount of resource use and high amount of pollution and waste. |
| Developing Countries | Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some are middle income. |
| Characteristics of Developing Countries | have a higher population, high population growth, lower income and wealth, lower resource use and lower pollution and waste. |
| Resource | anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants. |
| Depletion of Nonrenewable Resources | It costs too much to obtan what is left of natural resources. some can be recycled and reused. |
| Characteristics of Nonrenewable Resources | fixed quantity or stock in the earths crust. Energy resources (coal, oil, and natural gas), metallic mineral resources (iron, copper, aluminum) and nonmetallic mineral resources (salt, clay, sand, and phosphates). |
| Economic depletion of Resources | when the costs of extracting and using what is left exceed its economic value. |
| Recycle | involves collecting waste materials, processing them into new materials, and selling these new products. |
| Reuse | using a resource over and over in the same form. |
| Pollution | the presence of chemicals at high enough levels in air, water, soil, or food to threaten the health, survival, or activities of humans or other living organisms. |
| Soil | a thin covering over most land that is a complex mixture of eroded rock, mineral nutrient, decaying organic matter, water, air, and billions of living organisms, most of them microscopic decomposers. |
| Soil Formation | when bedrock is broken down into fragments and particles of physical, chemical and biological processes (weathering). Soil helps control the earths climate by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it as carbon compounds. |
| Mature Soils | Soils that have developed over a long period of time are arranged in a series of horizontal layers called soil horizons, each with a distinct texture and composition that varies with different types of soils. Most of this kind of soils will have at least three of teh possible horizons. |
| O horizon | the surface little layer: contains freshly fallen undecomposed or partially decomposed leaves, twigs, crop wastes, animal waste, fungi, and other organic material. Normally it is brown or black. |
| A horizon | the topsoil layer. The porous mixture of the partially decomposed bodies of dead plants and animals called humus, and inorganic materials such as clay, silt, and sand. A fertile soil that produces high crop yield and has a thick topsoil layer, with lots of humus, which helps hold water and nutrients taken up by plant roots. The roots of most plants and the majority of a soils organic matter are concentrated in a soils two upper layers. the two top layers are also the most well developed soils teem with bacteria, fungi,earthworms, and small insects that interact in complex food webs. |
| B Horizon | subsoil |
| C Horizon | parent material: contain most of a soils inorganic matter, mostly broken down rock consisting of varying mixtures of sand, silt, clay, and gravel. much of it is transported by water from the A horizon. |
| C- Horizon | lies on a base of unweathered parent material, which is often bedrock. |
| Humus | decomposed bodies of dead plants and animals. |
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