Chapters 12-15 Review

• Urban air pollution composed of a mixture of smoke and fog produced from industrial pollutants and burning fuels.

Smog

• The atmospheric condition in which warm air traps cooler air near Earth’s surface.

Temperature inversion

• A set of symptoms, such as headache, fatigue, eye irritation, and dizziness, that may affect workers in modern, airtight office buildings.

Sick-building syndrome

• Colorless, tasteless, odorless, and radioactive.

Radon gas

• Any of six silicate minerals that form bundles of minute fibers that are heat resistant, flexible, and durable.

Asbestos

• A sound of any kind.

Noise

• The most common unit used to measure loudness, abbreviated dB.

Decibel

• Precipitation, such as rain, sleet, or snow, that contains a high concentration of acids, often because of the pollution of the atmosphere.

Acid precipitation

• A value that is used to express the acidity or alkalinity (basicity) of a system.

pH number

• The sudden runoff of large amounts of highly acidic water into lakes and streams when snow melts in the spring or when heavy rains follow a drought.

Acid Shock

• The average weather conditions in an area over a long period of time.

Climate

• The distance north and south of the equator; expressed in degrees.

Latitude

• Winds that blow predominately in one direction throughout the year.

Prevailing winds

• Prevailing winds produced between 30˚ and 60˚ south latitude.

Westerlies

• The contamination of the atmosphere by wastes from sources such as industrial burning and automobile exhausts.

Air Pollution

• A pollutant that is put directly into the atmosphere by human or natural activity.

Primary Pollutant

• A pollutant that forms in the atmosphere by chemical reactions with primary air pollutants,

Secondary Pollutant

• Forms when the emission from cars react to the UV rays of the sun and then mix with oxygen in the atmosphere.

Ground level ozone

• A machine that moves gases through a spray of water that dissolves many pollutants.

Scrubber

• A machine used in cement factories and coal-burning power plants to remove dust particles from smokestacks.

Electrostatic precipitator

• A warm phase of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation; the periodic occurrence in the eastern Pacific Ocean in which the surface-water temperature becomes unusually warm.

El Niño

• The cool phase of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation; the periodic occurrence in the eastern Pacific Ocean in which the surface water temperature becomes unusually cool.

La Niña

• A long-term, 20 to 30 year change in the location of warm and cold water masses in the Pacific Ocean.

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

• Effect in which warm air from the ocean blows east, hits the mountains, and rises. As the air rises, it cools, causing it to rain on the western side of the mountain. When air reaches the eastern side of the mountain it is dry.

Rain shadow

• The layer of the atmosphere at an altitude of 15 to 40 km in which ozone absorbs ultraviolet solar radiation.

Ozone layer

• A molecule made up of three oxygen atoms.

Ozone

• Hydrocarbons in which some or all of the hydrogen atoms are replaced by chlorine and fluorine.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

• A thinning of stratospheric ozone that occurs over the poles during the spring.

Ozone hole

• Clouds that form at altitudes of about 21,000 m during the Arctic and Antarctic winter or early spring, when air temperatures drop below -80˚C

Polar Stratospheric Clouds

• The process of warming Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere; sunlight streams through the atmosphere and warms Earth, this energy in the form of heat radiates up from Earth’s surface, some of it escapes into space. The rest is absorbed by gases in the troposphere and warms the air.

Greenhouse effect

• A gas that absorbs and re-radiates infrared radiation from the sun.

Greenhouse gas

• A gradual increase in the average global temperature.

Global warming

• A region that is not cultivated and that is not inhabited by humans.

Wilderness

• Passed in 1964; designated certain lands as wilderness areas.

U.S. Wilderness Act

• The widespread malnutrition and starvation in an area due to a shortage of food, usually caused by a catastrophic event.

Famine

• A disorder or nutrition that results when a person does not consume enough of each of the nutrients that are needed by the human body.

Malnutrition

• The type and amount of food that a person eats.

Diet

• A given type of agriculture is a measure of the quantity of food produced on a given area of land with limited inputs of energy and resources.

Efficiency (agricultural)

• The amount of crops produced per unit of area.

Yield

• A prolonged period during which rainfall is below average, and crops grown without irrigation may produce low yields or fail entirely.

Drought

• The surface layer of the soil, which is usually richer in organic matter than the subsoil.

Top Soil

• A process in which materials of the Earth’s surface are loosened, dissolved, or worn away and transported from one place to another by a natural agent, such as wind, water, ice, or gravity.

Erosion

• Happens when human activity or natural processes damage the land so that it can no longer support the local ecosystem.

Land degradation

• The process by which human activities or climate changes make arid or semiarid areas more desertlike.

Desertification

• A mixture of decomposing organic matter, such as manure and rotting plants, that is used as fertilizer and soil conditioner.

Compost

• The accumulation of salts in the soil.

Salinization

• Any organism that occurs where it is not wanted or that occurs in large enough numbers to cause economic damage.

Pest

• A poison used to destroy pests, such as insects, rodents, or wees.

Pesticide

• The use of certain organisms by humans to eliminate or control pests.

Biological pest control

• A technology in which the genome of a living cell is modified for medical or industrial use.

Genetic engineering

• Farming that conserves natural resources and helps keep the land productive indefinitely.

Sustainable agriculture

• Describes organisms that have been bred and managed for human use.

Domesticated

• The catching of or removing from a population more organisms than the population can replace.

Overharvesting

• The raising of aquatic plants and animals for human use or consumption.

Aquaculture

• The term given to domesticated animals that are raised to be used on a farm or ranch or to be sold for profit.

Livestock

• Cud-chewing mammals that have three- or four-chambered stomachs.

Ruminants

• What is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States?

Radon Gas

• What dB represents the quietest sound the human ear can hear?

0 dB

• What pH number is neutral?

7

• A pH of less than neutral means the substance is what?

Acidic

• A pH of higher than neutral means the substance is what?

Basic (alkaline)

• An international treaty, first negotiated in 1990, in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Kyoto Protocol

• What you find on a patch of land, and it often depends on how the land is used.

Land cover

• An area that contains a city, or an area that contains 2,500 or more people and usually has a governing body, such as a city council.

Urban

• An area of open land that is often used for farming, or any population not classified as urban.

Rural

• The role that organisms play in creating a healthful environment for humans.

Ecosystem service

• An increase in the ratio or density of people living in urban areas rather than in rural areas.

urbanization

• The basic facilities of a country or region, such as roads, bridges, sewers, and railroads.

Infrastructure

• When more people live in a city than its infrastructure can support, the living conditions deteriorate.

Urban crisis

• The rapid spread of a city into adjoining suburbs and rural areas.

Urban Sprawl

• An area in which the air temperature is generally higher than the temperature of surrounding rural areas.

Heat island

• A set of policies and activities related to potential uses of land that is put in place before an area is developed.

Land-planning

• Computerized system for storing, manipulating, and viewing geographic data.

Geographical information system (GIS)

• The depletion of vegetation due to the continuous feeding of too many animals.

Overgrazing

• Forests that have never been cut.

Virgin forests

• Forests that are planted and managed.

Native forests

• Areas where trees are planted in rows and harvested like other crops.

Tree farms

• Process of removing all of the trees from an area of land

Clear-cutting

• The process of cutting and removing only middle-aged or mature trees.

Selective-cutting

• The process of clearing forests

Deforestation

• The re-establishment and development of trees in a forest land.