| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Clear cutting | cutting every tree in a given area, regardless of species or size |
| Debt for nature swap | forgiveness of international debt in exchange for nature protection in developing countries |
| Desertification | conversion of productive lands to desert |
| Forest Management | scientific planning and administration of forest resources for sustainable harvest, multiple use, regeneration, and maintenance of a health biological community |
| Fuelwood | branches, twigs, logs, wood chips, and other wood products harvested for use as fuel |
| Industrial Timber | tress used for lumber, plywood, veneer, particleboard, chipboard, and paper, also called round wood |
| Land Reform | democratic redistribution of landownership to recognize the rights of those who actually work the land to a fair share of the products of their labor |
| Milpa agriculture | an ancient farming system in which small patches of tropical forests are cleared and perennial polyculture agriculture practiced and is then followed by many years of fallow to restore the soil (swidden agriculture) |
| Mixed perennial polyculture | growing a mixture of different perennial crop species (where the same plant persists for more than one year) together in the same plot |
| Monoculture forestry | intensive planting of single species; an efficient wood production approach, but one that encourages pests |
| Old-growth Forest | forests free from disturbance for long enough to have mature trees, physical conditions, species diversity and other characteristics of equilibrium ecosystems |
| Pasture | grazing lands suitable for domestic livestock |
| Rangelands | grasslands and open woodlands suitable for livestock grazing |
| Rotational grazing | confining animals to a small area for a short time before shifting them to a new location |
| Salvage logging | harvesting timber killed by fire, disease, or wind throw |
| Selective cutting | harvesting only mature trees of certain species and size; usually more expensive than clear-cutting but it is less disruptive for wildlife and often better for forest regeneration |
| Core | the dense, intensely hot mass of molten metal, mostly iron and nickel, thousands of kilometers in diameter at the earth's center |
| Crust | the cool, lightweight, outermost layer of the earth's surface that floats on the soft, pliable underlying layers |
| Earthquakes | sudden, violent movement of the earth's crust |
| Heap-leach extraction | a technique for separating gold from extremely low-grade ores |
| Igneous rocks | crystalline minerals solidified from molten magma from deep in the earth's interior |
| Magma | molten rock form deep in the earth's interior |
| Mantle | a hot, pliable layer of rock that surrounds the earth's core and underlies the cool, outer crust |
| Mass Wasting | mass movement of geologic materials downhill caused by rockslides, avalanches or simple slumping |
| Metamorphic rock | igneous and sedimentary rocks modified by heat, pressure, and chemical reaction |
| Mineral | a naturally occurring, inorganic, crystalline solid with definite chemical composition and characteristic physical properties |
| Rock | a solid, cohesive, aggregate of one of more crystalline minerals |
| Rock cycle | the process whereby rocks are broken down by chemical and physical forces; sediments are moved by wind, water, and gravity, sediment and reformed into rock |
| Sedimentary rock | deposited material that remains in a long enough or is covered with enough material to compact into stone |
| Sedimentation | the deposition of organic materials or minerals by chemical, physical, or biological processes |
| Smelting | heating ores to extract metal |
| Tectonic plates | huge blocks of the earth's crust that slide around slowly, pulling apart to open new ocean basins or crashing ponderously into each other to create new, larger boundaries |
| Tsunami | giant seismic sea swells that move rapidly from the center of an earthquake |
| Volcanoes | vents in the earth' surface through which gases, ash, or molten lava are ejected |
| Weathering | changes in rocks brought about by exposure to air, water, changing temperatures, and reactive chemical agents |
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