Chapter Seven: The Value, Use, and Restoration of Ecosystems

Terms in this set (32)

Ecosystem Capital
The sum of goods and services provided by natural and managed ecosystems, both free of charge and essential to human life and well-being.
Desert Biome
The pattern of living forms and habitat where rainfall is less than 25 centimeters per year.
Tundra Biome
In cold latitudes and high altitudes, the pattern of plants and animals able to live where permafrost persists; dominated by low-growing sedges, shrubs, lichens, misses, and grasses.
Natural Goods
The food, fuel, wood, fibers, oils, alcohols, and the like derived from the natural world, on which the world economy and human well-being depend.
Natural Resources
Features of natural ecosystems and species that are of economic value and that may be exploited. Also, features of particular segments of ecosystems, such as air, water, soil, and minerals.
Public Good
A category of ecosystem services that is not used up when people use it and cannot be marketed, like the air we breathe.
Renewable Resources
Biological resources, such as trees, that may be renewed by reproduction and regrowth. Conservation to prevent overcasting and to protect the environment is still required, however.
Conservation
The management of a resource in such a way as to ensure that it will continue to provide maximum benefit to humans over the long run.
Preservation
In protecting natural areas, the objective of this is to ensure the continuity of species and ecosystems, regardless of their potential utility.
Consumptive Use
The harvesting of natural resources in order to provide for people's immediate needs for food, shelter, fuel, and clothing.
Productive Use
The exploitation of ecosystem resources for economic gains.
Maximum Sustainable Yield
The maximum amount of a renewable resource that can be taken year after year without depleting the resource. This is the maximum rate of use or harvest that will be balanced by the regenerative capacity of the system.
Optimal Population
The population of a harvested biological resource that yields the greatest harvest for exploitation. It is half of the carrying capacity.
Carrying Capacity
The maximum population of a given species that an ecosystem can support without being degraded or destroyed in the long run.
Total Allowable Catch
In fisheries management, a yearly quota set for the harvest of a species by managers of fisheries.
Commons
Resources owned by many people in common or, as in the case of air or the open oceans, owned by no one but open to exploitation.
Precautionary Principle
The principle that says that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage the absence of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Restoration Ecology
The branch of ecology devoted to restoring degraded and altered ecosystems to their natural state.
Deforestation
The process of removing trees and other vegetation covering the soil and converting the forest to another land use, often leading to erosion and loss of soil fertility.
Clear-Cutting
In harvesting timber, the practice of removing an entire stand of trees, leaving an ugly site that takes years to recover.
Shelter-Wood Cutting
In forestry practice, the strategy of cutting the mature trees in groups over a period of years, leaving enough trees to provide seeds and give shelter to growing seedlings.
Sustainable Forest Management
The management of forests as ecosystems wherein the primary objective is to maintain the biodiversity and function of the ecosystem.
Forest Stewardship Council
An alliance of organizations directed toward the certification of sustainable wood products.
Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act
An act passed in 1976 that extended the limits of jurisdiction over coastal waters and fisheries of the US to 200 miles offshore.
Coral Bleaching
A condition, usually brought on by excessively high temperatures, in hard corals where the coral animals expel their symbiotic algae and become white in appearance.
Ocean Acidification
An outcome of the ride of atmospheric carbon dioxide; as the oceans take up more and more of the CO2, the carbonate ion concentration is reduced, making it more difficult for coral animals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons.
Wilderness
Land that is undeveloped and wild.
National Wildlife Refuges
Administers by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, these lands are maintained for the protection and enhancement of wildlife and for the provision of public access.
New Forestry
Now part of the US Forest Service's management practice, a forestry management strategy that places priority on protecting the ecological health and diversity of forests rather than maximizing the harvest of logs.
Private Land Trust
Land that is purchased and held by various private organizations specifically for the purpose of protecting the region's natural environment and the biota that inhabit it.
Easement
In reference to land protection, an arrangement whereby a landowner gives up development rights into the future but retains ownership of the land.
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP)
Multi-billion-dollar plan to restore the Florida Everglades by addressing water flow and storage.
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