Earth Science

Front 1

The Solar System was created about how many years ago?

Back 1

4.56 billion years

Front 2

What is known as the greenhouse gas?

Back 2

Carbon dioxide

Front 3

Why is Venus hotter than earth?

Back 3

The atmosphere is thicker

Front 4

Why has Earth maintained a habitable climate?

Back 4

The Carbon Cycle

Front 5

What was it called when Earth froze completely over?

Back 5

Snowball Earth

Front 6

Why did oxygen level increase on Earth?

Back 6

Photosynthesis

Front 7

Cyanobacteria

Back 7

First organisms to produce oxygen by photosynthesis

Front 8

heretotroph

Back 8

Organisms the CANNOT make their own food

Front 9

What were the first life on earth?

Back 9

bacteria and archaea

Front 10

Eukaryotes

Back 10

Organisms with complex cells

Front 11

what triggered the Cambrian Cycle?

Back 11

A rise in atmospheric and oceanic oxygen

Front 12

What is Dynamic Balance?

Back 12

A Leaky bucket under a faucet. (equal balance in entering and leaving heat in atmosphere)

Front 13

What part of the atmosphere does weather occur?

Back 13

Troposphere

Front 14

albedo

Back 14

only 30%of incoming solar radiation from the sun to the earth is reflected back to space.

Front 15

relative humidity

Back 15

comparison to the amount of water vapor in the air to the maximum amount of water vapor the air can hold

Front 16

Coriolis Effect

Back 16

why winds over long distances appear to curve.

Front 17

Geostrophic flow

Back 17

where pressure gradient force and and the Coriolis force exactly balance

Front 18

Climate

Back 18

Long term weather year to year

Front 19

What are the atmospheric levels of CO2 controlled by?

Back 19

A dynamic balance among biological and inorganic processes that make the carbon cycle

Front 20

What pandemic has dramatically reduced life expectancy across Africa?

Back 20

HIV/AIDS

Front 21

For generations people have tried to estimate Earth's ________, or the maximum population that it can support on a continuing basis.

Back 21

Carrying Capacity

Front 22

Fertility is a function of a woman's _________ (her physiological ability to conceive and bear children).

Back 22

fecundity

Front 23

What area within a city is defined as a contiguous settlement where the inhabitants are characterized as having inadequate housing and basic services such as drinking water and sanitation?

Back 23

Slum

Front 24

Mega-cities have a population of more than 10 million people and _________ have a population of more than 20 million people

Back 24

Meta-cities

Front 25

Fertility levels are lower in developing countries or developed countries?

Back 25

Developing Countries

Front 26

The industrial era changed many factors that affected birth and death rates, and in doing so, it triggered what?

Back 26

a dramatic decrease of the world's population

Front 27

Many chronic diseases develop ---------, and many are linked to personal choices such as diet and smoking

Back 27

Slowly

Front 28

According to current scientific estimates, modern human beings (Homo sapiens) evolved roughly

Back 28

130,000 to 160,000 years ago

Front 29

What happened In the year 2007?

Back 29

the worldwide human population living in cities exceeded that of rural areas for the first time in human history

Front 30

Healthy Public Health Initiative (HPHI)

Back 30

Helped children with asthma in Boston

Front 31

risk assessment

Back 31

An analytical study of the probabilities and magnitude of harm to human health or the environment associated with a physical or chemical agent, activity, or occurrence.

Front 32

risk management

Back 32

The human activity that integrates recognition of risk, risk assessment, development of strategies to manage it, and mitigation of risk using managerial resources.

Front 33

4 steps of environmental risk assessments

Back 33

-Hazard Identification
-Dose-response assessment
-Exposure assessment
-Risk characterization

Front 34

Healthy Public Health Initiative (HPHI)

Back 34

Helped children with asthma in Boston

Front 35

potential dose

Back 35

The amount of contaminant that is inhaled or ingested into an exposed person's body or applied to skin

Front 36

potential dose

Back 36

The amount of contaminant that is inhaled or ingested into an exposed person's body or applied to skin

Front 37

Physiological ecology

Back 37

Study of the relationship between organisms and their physical environment

Front 38

Population ecology

Back 38

Study of the the relationship between organisms of the same species

Front 39

Community ecology

Back 39

Study of the relationship between organisms of different species.

Front 40

ecosystem ecology

Back 40

Study of the relationship between organisms and the fluxes of matter and energy through are biological systems.

Front 41

Ecology

Back 41

The study between the relationships in the natural world

Front 42

Rain forests cover only______ of the planet but are home to over half of the Earth's plant and animal species.

Back 42

6 percent

Front 43

Applied ecology

Back 43

Uses information found in relationships to address issues

Front 44

Important factors of ecology

Back 44

-temperature ranges
-moisture availability
-light
-nutrient availability

Front 45

biomes

Back 45

Broad regional areas characterized by a distinctive climate, soil type, and biological community.

Front 46

Tropics

Back 46

warm, wet regions

Front 47

Subtropical High pressure

Back 47

Dry regions

Front 48

species richness

Back 48

A type of approach to assessing biodiversity that examines the distribution of all resident terrestrial vertebrates: amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Front 49

latitudinal biodiversity gradient

Back 49

The increase in species richness or biodiversity that occurs from the poles to the tropics, often referred to as the latitudinal gradient in species diversity.

Front 50

trophic level

Back 50

A feeding level within a food web.

Front 51

primary producers

Back 51

Organisms that produce organic compounds from atmospheric or aquatic carbon dioxide, principally through the process of photosynthesis. Primary production is distinguished as either net or gross. All life on earth is directly or indirectly reliant on primary production.

Front 52

who are at the first tropic level?

Back 52

Primary producers; Algae, plants, etc

Front 53

gross primary productivity (GPP)

Back 53

The rate at which an ecosystem accumulates biomass, including the energy it uses for the process of respiration.

Front 54

net primary productivity (NPP)

Back 54

The rate at which new biomass accrues in an ecosystem.

Front 55

bioaccumulation

Back 55

The increase in concentration of a chemical in organisms that reside in environments contaminated with low concentrations of various organic compounds.

Front 56

The most important biochemical cycles affecting ecosystem health are...

Back 56

-water
-carbon
-nitrogen
-phosphorus cycles

Front 57

The average resident time that a molecule of carbon spends in a terrestrial ecosystem is...

Back 57

17.5 years

Front 58

nitrogen fixing

Back 58

The conversion of nitrogen in the atmosphere (N2) to a reduced form (e.g., amino groups of amino acids) that can be used as a nitrogen source by organisms.

Front 59

denitrification

Back 59

Process of reducing nitrate and nitrite, highly oxidised forms of nitrogen available for consumption by many groups of organisms, into gaseous nitrogen, which is far less accessible to life forms but makes up the bulk of our atmosphere.

Front 60

life history strategy

Back 60

An organism's allocation of energy throughout its lifetime among three competing goals: growing, surviving, and reproducing.

Front 61

Every organism in an ecosystem divides its energy among three competing goals

Back 61

-growing
-surviving
-reproducing

Front 62

what happened as a result of wolves returning to Yellowstone park?

Back 62

the elk population has drastically decreased from 20,000 in the 1990s to less than 10,000 today.

Front 63

trophic cascades

Back 63

Occur when predators in a food chain suppress the abundance of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate trophic level is an herbivore). Trophic cascades may also be important for understanding the effects of removing top predators from food webs, as humans have done in many places through hunting and fishing activities.

Front 64

keystone species

Back 64

A single kind of organism or a small collection of different kinds of organisms that occupy a vital ecological niche in a given location.

Front 65

Each species in a ecosystem occupies a _____,which comprises the sum total of its relationships with the biotic and abiotic elements of it's environment; what it needs to survive

Back 65

Niche

Front 66

succession

Back 66

A fundamental concept in ecology that refers to the more or less predictable and orderly changes in the composition or structure of an ecological community.

Front 67

Autogenic succession

Back 67

change driven by inhabitants of an ecosystem; forest re-growing on abandoned agricultural fields

Front 68

Allogenic succession

Back 68

change driven by new external geophysical conditions such as a rising average temperature resulting from global climate change.

Front 69

Atmospheric pressure at sea level is _____ per square inch, and pressure increasing by an additional "one atmosphere" by every _____.

Back 69

14.7 pounds; 10 meters

Front 70

Oceans zones (Top to bottom)

Back 70

-Epipelagic
-Mesopelagic (twilight zone)
-Bathypelagic
-The abyss
-The trenches

Front 71

Deepest trench known to date

Back 71

Marianna's Trench

Front 72

What creates currents and exchanges between cold, deep waters and warmer surface waters?

Back 72

Mixing

Front 73

gyre

Back 73

A circular or spiral motion, especially a circular ocean current.

Front 74

Gyres rotate _____ in the northern Hemisphere

Back 74

Clockwise

Front 75

the ______ is a fast moving western boundary current that flows north through the Atlantic ocean and makes Europe much warmer than Canada provinces lying on the same latitudes.

Back 75

The Gulf Stream

Front 76

Ocean waters are warmest at the tropics and coldest at the poles because...

Back 76

The sun heats the equator more strongly than higher latitudes

Front 77

what is responsible for large temperature variations across the tropical Pacific, even though both ends of the ocean receive about the same amount of energy from sunlight.

Back 77

Wind

Front 78

___________ is often referred as the global conveyor belt because it moves large volumes of water along a course through the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Back 78

Thermohaline Circulation

Front 79

The thermohaline circulation is driven by _______ differences that arise from temperature differences and Salinity differences

Back 79

Buoyancy

Front 80

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)

Back 80

The best known multi-annual climate cycle that which is caused every three to seven years by changes in atmospheric and ocean conditions over the pacific ocean

Front 81

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

Back 81

A pattern of Pacific climate variability that shifts phases on at least inter-decadal time scale, usually about 20 to 30 years.

Front 82

phytoplankton

Back 82

microorganisms that typically measure 1/20 of a milliliter across at the largest and live for 1 to 5 days

Front 83

blooms

Back 83

A relatively rapid increase in the population of (usually) phytoplankton algae in an aquatic system. Algal blooms may occur in freshwater or marine environments.

Front 84

marine snow

Back 84

The tiny leftovers of animals, plants, and non-living matter in the ocean's sun-suffused upper zones

Front 85

biological pump

Back 85

The sum of a suite of biologically-mediated processes that transport carbon from the surface euphotic zone (the depth of the water that is exposed to sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis to occur) to the ocean's interior.