Environmental Science Notes Essay Example for Free

Environmental Science Notes Essay 1. Green revolution: intro of scientifically bred or selected varieties of grain that can greatly increase crop yields. 2. Things that cause seasons on earth: earth tilted on axis, sun distribution 3. Large scale hydroelectric projects around the world: 3 gorges dam, dams going on in india 4. Age distribution diagrams: ZPG=looks like a building that doesn’t change, bottom same as top. Slow growth=base a bit longer than top but not quite a pyramid. Rapid growth=WIDE base, narrow top, like a pyramid 5. Waste water treatment process: get water, drain out sludge, have sludge area, water goes through process to get more sludge out, water gets aerated, water gets filtered with Cl to remove bacteria. 6. Human pop on earth: 6.8 billion. US pop: 300 million. Most populated countries: china, india, US 7. Soil horizons: O,A,B,C. O is organic material and leaf litter and such. A is top soil and humus. B is parent material. C is bedrock, solid rock 8. Rule of 70: 70/percent=time it will take to double population 9. Replacement level fertility: reproducing enough babies to replace yourself(in developed countries, it’s 2.1, but in developing, it’s 2.5 because of infant mortality) 10. Waste created by nuclear power plants: radioactive waste in solid liquid or gas state 11. Biggest threats to biodiversity: HIPPO, habitat loss, invasive species, population growth, pollution, and overexploitation 12. Integrated pest management: people come in and solve your pest problem without using harmful chemicals or pesticides. Situations are situation specific and take a longer time to solve. 13. Aquaculture: trapping fish in a coast, or netted fenced area of water to use for produce and food or commercial use 14. Demographic transition model: preindustrial, transitional, industrial, postindustrial. Pre- high birth and death rates. Trans- high birth rates and low death rates. Ind- lower birth rates, and same death rates. Post- birth and death rates equal 15. Photosynthesis: CO2+H2OO2+C6H12O6. Needs solar energy 16. Half life: radioactive decay of how long it takes for half of material to decay 17. Tragedy of the commons: when a renewable available to everyone resource is depleted 18. Population growth rate equation: (births-deaths)/10 19. Genetic engineering: getting genes from one organism and putting them in other organisms to get desired trait 20. 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics: 1st states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. 2nd states that as energy is changed and moves up trophic levels, it decreases 21. Where is coal located around world: US in mountainous areas, Russia, china, and Australia 22. Denitrification: ammonium to N gas. Assimilation: when plants and animals turn nitrates into amino acids and proteins. Ammonification: nitrates to ammonium. Nitrification: N gas to nitrates and nitrites. Nitrogen fixation: Nitrogen to nitrogen gas that is ready to go to nitrites 23. Montreal protocol: when they noticed that ozone was disappearing, they banned chlorofluorocarbons in industries and anything else in 1987 24. Antarctic treaty of 1961: countries could only use Antarctica for peaceful matters 25. Pop growth curves: irruptive- overshootdieback. Cyclic: predator and prey’s pop patterns change together. Logistic: exponential to carrying capacity then moves around the carrying patterns a little. 26. Carrying capacity: biotic potential + environmental resistance, what population the environment can withstand What I kind of know 1. Cons of mining: removes 90% of nonfuel mineral and rock recourses, 60% of coal used in US destroys forests, contaminates streams and groundwater, leaves highly erodible hills of rubble, susceptible to chemical weathering, slow vegetation regrowth, damages and buries streams below, toxic wastewater, produces air pollution 2. Ways to reduce soil erosion: terracing (growing food on slopes), no till farming, windbreaks of trees, strip cropping, contour farming 3. Cause of fluctuation of CO2 levels during a year: amount of trees, photosynthetic activity, burning fossil fuels, trash, power generation and transport 4. Surface mining: to remove mineral deposits found fairly close to the earth’s surface, removing soil, subsoil and other strata. 5. Types of irrigation: drip-delivers small amts of water onto crop roots (best). Flood-delivers more water than needed for a crop to grow. Centro pivotal- spray attachments water crops 6. Consequences of global temperature increase: melting ice and snow, less sunlight reflected back into space, rising sea levels, changing ocean currents, more acidic seas, change in precipitation and weather extremes, and disrupting ecosystems, more radiation 7. Pros and cons of dams: pros-cheap electricity, reduces downstream flooding, provide year round water for irrigation. Cons: displace people, disrupt aquatic systems, and prevent fish to swim upstream and get caught in it and die 8. Ozone layer function: filter out most of sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation 9. Cause of stratospheric ozone loss: chlorofluorocarbons use, ODCs, halons, hydrobromofluorocarbons, methyl bromide, HCl, carbochluorides, methyl chloroform, n-propyl bromide, hexachlorobutadicine. 10. Ways to reduce atmospheric CO2: cut fossil fuel use, shift from coal to natural gas, improve energy efficiency, shift to renewable energy resources, transfer energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to developing contries, reduce deforestation, use sustainable agriculture and forestry, reduce poverty, slow population growth 11. Season when ozone hole is most noticeable: October, Antarctic spring (winter) 12. DDT, mercury: pesticides that are toxic to humans and are very persistent and a lot of the time they go to the wrong species and they disrupt the ecosystem. They are broad spectrum pesticides. 13. P cycle: P circulates through water, earth’s crust, and living things, it is the most limiting because it does not become gaseous. C cycle: C circulated through earth’s air, water, soil, and living things and it depends on photosynthesis and respiration. N cycle: bacteria helps recycle N through the earth’s air, water, soil and living organisms (N fixationnitrificationassimilationammonificationdenitrificationN fixation). Water cycle: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, percolation 14. Importance of genetic diversity: resistance to mass extinctions, monocultures, and inbreeding 15. Biomes, locations, reasons for why they are located in certain areas: 1. Gasification: agricultural wastes, including wood wastes any of various processes by which coal is turned into low, medium or high BTU gases 2. Cogeneration: production of 2 useful forms of energy, such as high temp heat or steam and electricity, from the same fuel source 3. Cultural eutrophication: human activities that greatly accelerate the input of plant nutrients to a lake (mostly NO3 and phosphate). 4. Sand: low porosity and high permeability. Clay: low permeability and high porosity. Porosity is the volume of pore space. Silt has low to average porosity and average permeability. Permeability is the ability of water to flow through the soil 5. Incinerating trash: burning trash, boiling water to make steam for heating water of space for producing electricity. Cons: expensive to build, costs more than short distance hauling to landfills, difficult to site because of citizen opposition, some air pollution, older poorly managed facilities can release large amts of air pollution, output approach that encourages waste production, competes with recycling for burnable materials like newspaper. Pros: reduces trash volumes, less need for landfills, low water pollution, concentrates hazardous substances into ash for burial or use as landfill cover, sale of energy reduces cost, modern controls reduce air pollution, some facilities recover and sell metals. 6. Sun angle, fewer daylight hours, tropospheric length has not enough solar radiation to reach the surface, high Albeao and less water vapor causes polar areas to get really cold. 7. Integrated waste management: variety of strategies for waste reduction and management to deal with our produced solid wasted reduce, reuse and recycle 8. Layers of atmosphere: troposphere is closest to earth’s surface and contains 90% of mass of entire atmosphere. Stratosphere has the ozone layer that absorbs UV rays from sun and protects life on earth. Mesosphere is the coldest layer of the atmosphere. The mesopause is the boundary between mesosphere and thermosphere. Thermosphere is the last layer of atmosphere and it is warmer than mesosphere and has a little O2 and has a layer of ionized gases 9. Waste created by coal power plants: heat to troposphere, CO2 and air pollution 10. Pros and cons of coal power: pros- ample supply, high net energy, low cost, well developed mining and combustion technology, air pollution can be reduced with improved technologies. Cons: severe land disturbance, air pollution, water pollution, high land use, severe threats to human health, high CO2 emissions, radioactive particles and toxi mercury into air 11. Pros and cons of nuclear power: pros- large fuel supply, low envir. Impact, emits 1/6 as much CO2 as coal, moderate land use and disruption and water pollution, and Low risk of accidents. Cons- expensive, low net energy yield, catastrophic accidents, no solution for radioactive waste storage, terrorist attacks, weapons 12. Source of radon: some soil and rock 13. Tropospheric ozone: air pollutant, bad ozone because it can damage living tissue and break down certain materials 14. Acid rain: caused by coal burning power plants, ore smelters and industrial plants that use tall smokestacks to emit SO2 and NO2 into troposphere. Consequences: 2-14 day persistence, ruins sensitive soil, worsens respiratory disease, attacks metallic and stone, decreases atmospheric visibility, kills fish, depletes soil of vital plant nutrients and harms crops and plants. Solutions: improving energy efficiency, reduce coal use, increase natural gas use and renewable energy resourcs, burn low sulfur coal, remove SO2 and NO2 from smokestack gases, remove NO2 from motor vehicular exhaust, tax emissions of SO2, add lime to neutralize acidified lakes and add phosphate fertilizer to neutralize acidified lakes. pH of rain: 5.6 or less. Problem in eastern US. 15. Greenhouse gases and their sources: water vapor, CO2, CH4, NO2, O3. Sources are burning fossil fuels, electricity production, transportation, industry, commercial and residential, agriculture, land use and forestry. 16. LD-50: median lethal dose of a toxin, radiation or pathogen is dose required to kill  ½ the members of a tested pop after specified test duration 17. Radon: Rn-222 is a natural occurring gas that is colorless and odorless and radioactive found in some soil and rock, seeps into homes and buildings and can cause lung cancer. Lichen can indicate it 18. Clean water act: attempt to control efforts of pollution of country’s surface waters. Standards for allowed levels of key water pollutants and requires polluters to get permits limiting how much of various pollutants can discharge into aquatic systems 19. Clean air act: causes lakes to be acidic. Made to prevent smog and prevent more air pollution disasters, air pollutant regulations for key pollutants 20. How carbon is removed from the atmosphere: remove from smokestack and vehicle emissions, store by planting trees, sequester deep underground, sequester in soil by using no till conservation and taking cropland out of production, sequester CO2 deep in ocean, repair leaky gas pipelines and facilities, use animal feeds that reduce methane emissions by belching cows. 21. UN conference of the human environment: expanding understanding of envir. Issues, gathering and evaluation envir. Data, develop and monitor international envir. Treaties, provide grants and loans for sustainable econ. Devel. And reducing poverty, help more than 1—nations develop envir. Laws and institutions 22. Reclamation of disturbed lands: process of creating new land from ocean, riverbeds or lake. Stabilized against the hazards of water and wind erosion 23. RCRA: resource conservation and recovery act regulates hazardous waste produced in the US passed in 1976 amended in 1984. Goal to prevent unsafe and il legal disposal of hazardous wastes on the land. 24. Uranium-235: isotope of uranium making up about .72% of the natural uranium sustains fission chain reaction 25. Biomagnifications: increase in concentration of DDT, PCBs, and other slowly degradable far soluble chemicals in organisms at successively higher trophic levels of a food chain or web. 26. Efficiency of an incandescent lightbulb (5%), photosynthesis (1%), coal power (33%) 27. Fecal coliform bacteria: various strains of E. Coli to detect the presence of infectious agents in water 28. Consequences of SO2, lead, O3 in troposphere, and particulates: SO2- breathing problems, visibility reduction and aggravation of asthma, damages crops, trees, soils, and lake aquatic life, corrodes metals and damages paint, paper, and leather and stone on buildings. O3- coughing, breathing problems, reduces resistance to colds and pneumonia, irritates eyes, nose, and throat, aggravates asthma, bronchitis, emphysema and heart disease and damages plants, rubber in tires, fabrics and paints. Particulates- irritate the nose and throat, damage lungs, aggravate asthma and bronchitis, shortens life. Lead- mutations, reproductive problems, cancer, nervous system damage, mental retardation and digestive and other health problems, reduce visibility and corrode metals and discolor clothes and paints. 29. CERCLA: requires parties responsible for creating a hazardous waste site to be responsible for its cleanup 30. NAFTA: goal to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between US, Canada and Mexico to eliminate tariffs on more than  ½ of Mexico’s exports to the US. Try to pressure countries to improve envir. Protection mechanism 31. Electrostatic precipitators: to remove particulates, after they are in smokestack gas, it gives them a negative charge, they are attracted to a positively charged precipitator wall and fall off the wall into a collector, they maintain and remove 99% of particulate, but use a lot of electricity and do not remove hazardous ultrafine particles and produce a toxic dust that must be disposed of safely. 32. Alternatives to chlorine in waste water treatment: microfiltration, ultrafiltration, ion exchange