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12 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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shifting cultivation
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a kind of subsistence farming, sometimes referred to a slash-and-burn, or swidden, agriculture, in which trees are cut down and then burned away
sail fertility usually diminishes to the point where adequate crop production is no onger possible the patches are then abandoned and new natural vegetation must be cleared pg 180 |
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desertification
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many biological communities in seasonally dry climates are degraded by human activities into man-made deserts
pg187 |
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habitat fragmentation
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a process whereby a large, continuous area of habitat is both reduced in area and divided into two or more fragments
pg189 |
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edge effect
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fragments are often isolated from one another by a highly modified or degraded landscape, and their edges experience an altered set of conditions
pg 189-190 |
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biomagnification
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effecting the bottom of the food chain and moving to the top; DDT: no metabolic machinery to break it down ever
pg197 |
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eutrophication
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human sewage, agricultural fertilizers, detergents, and industrial processed often release large amounts of nitrates and phosphates into aquatic systems initiates this process with results of human activity
pg 200 |
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photochemical smog
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in the presence of sunlight, collectively these chemicals react with the atmosphere to produce ozone and other secondary chemicals
pg 203 |
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greenhouse gases
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gases in the atmosphere, primarily carbon dioxide, that are transparent to sunlight but traps heat near the Earth's surface
pg 204 |
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greenhouse effect
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the warming effect of Earth by its atmospheric gases
pg 204 |
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global warming
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the current and future increases in average surface temperatures caused by higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activities
pg 204 |
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global climate change
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the complete set of climate characteristics that are changing now and will continue to change in the future, incl patterns of wind and precipitation
pg 204 |
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intergovernmental panel and climate change (ipcc)
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a group of leading scientists organized by the UN to study the impacts and implications of human activity on climate and ecosystems
pg 206 |
