Environment
The sum of all the conditions surrounding us that influence life.
Environmental Science
The field that looks at interactions among human systems and those found in nature.
System
Any set of interacting components that influence one another by exchanging energy or materials.
Ecosystem
Particular location on Earth whose interacting components include living components or nonliving components.
Biotic
living components.
Abiotic
nonliving components.
Environmentalist
A person who participates in environmentalism.
Environmental Studies
Includes subjects such as environmental policy, economics, literature, and ethics.
Ecosystem Services
Process by which life-supporting resources such as clean water, timber, fisheries, and agricultural crops are produced.
Environmental Indicators
Describe the current state of an environmental system.
Sustainability
Living on Earth in a way that allows us to use its resources without depriving future generations of those resources.
Biodiversity
Diversity of life forms in an environment.
Species
A group of organisms that is distinct from other groups in its morphology, behavior, or biochemical properties.
Speciation
The evolution of new species.
Background Extinction Rate
The average rate at which species go extinct over the long term.
Greenhouse Gases
Help keep Earths surface within the range of tempuratures at which life can flourish.
Anthropogenic
Derived from human activities.
Development
Improvement in human well-being through economic advancement.
Sustainable Devolpment
Development that balances current human well-being and economic advancement with resource management for the benefit of future generations.
Biophilia
Love of life.
Ecological Footprint
A meaure of how uch that person consumes, expressed in area of land.
Scientific Method
Objective way to explore the natural world, draw inferences from it, and predict the outcome of certain events, processes, or changes.
Hypothesis
Testable conjecture about how something works.
Null Hypothesis
A statement or idea that can be falsified, or proved wrong.
Replication
Several sets of meaurements.
Sample Size
The number of times a measurement is replicated.
Accuracy
Refers to how close a measured value is to the actual or true value.
Precision
How close to one another the repeated meausurements of the same sample are.
Uncertainty
An estimate of how much a measured or calculated value differs from a true value.
Inductive Reasoning
Process of making general statements from specific facts or examples.
Deductive Reasoning
Process of applying a general statement to specific facts or situations.
Critical Thinking
Questioning the source of information, consider methods or processes that were used to obtain the information, and draw your conclusions.
Theory
A hypothesis that has been repeatedly tested and confirmed by multiple groups of researchers and has reached wide acceptance.
Natural Law
A theory to which there are no known excpetions and which has withstood rigrous testing.
Control Group
A group that experiences exactly the same conditions as the expiremental group, except for the single variable under study.
Natural Experiment
Occurs when a natural event acts as an experimental treatment in an ecosystem.
Environmental Justice
Social movement and field of study that words toward equal enforcement of environmental laws and elimination of desparities, whether intended or not, in how pollutants and other environmental harms are distributed among the various ethnic and socioeconomi