see vocabulary for lectures 9 thru 17
| Lecture | word | short definition |
|---|---|---|
| Lecture 1 | wicked problem | problems that require complex information but have the outcomes have poor alignment of values between different groups or between individual needs and group needs example: whether or not to cover the Portland water reservoirs |
| adaptive management | process of management by treating manipulations as experiments and trying to both improve the outcomes AND decrease uncertainty for future management | |
| scientific paradigm | a set of accepted practices for the discussion and practice of science example: reductionism |
|
| world views | coherent set of values and actions example: cornucopian, industrial ecologist, committed environmentalist, deep ecologist |
|
| problem based science | questions are defined by environmental issues and investigators may be looking for evidence of problems to avoid rather than certainty | |
| curiosity based science | questions arise from desire to understand how the natural world works and investigators need to show strong proof of their results | |
| Lecture 2 | CPR problem | common pool resource in which users can't effectivley be excluded from using the resource and the resource can be depleted example: ocean fishing |
| modernism (with respect to science) | two tenents are important, 1) belief in technology and that bigger, faster and more efficient is better, and 2) because everything can be described by smaller parts, all legitimate descriptions will converge to one general description | |
| traditional science vs. emerging view that is more dynamic | traditional view is static truth and a focus on steady state or fixed processes, dyamic view is that the conditions are always changing and that important processes could pulse example: traditional succession goes to a steady state climax forest but the more dynamic view includes (builds on the traditional view) with patchiness and intermediate disturbances |
|
| Lecture 3 | "solve in the pattern" | |
patterns of interaction |
||
| metaphor | ||
| likelihood vs. proof of cause | ||
| precautionary principle | in the absence of proof or in the face of uncertainty, choose the path that leads to the least damage | |
| risk | calculated from probabilities for exposure and harm | |
| uncertainty | (for this class) the portion of the problem that can't be known | |
| Lecture 4 | logistic model | a particular formulation of a growth model that has rapid initial growth but slows down as the population level reaches the carrying capacity |
| landscape processes | ||
| mosaic | a pattern on the landscape that has irregular patches | |
| cellular automata | a type of model that follows what happens in a set of grid squares based on simple rules from one time point to the next, and repeats to form patterns example: we saw many examples of this, such as the forest fire simulation |
|
| Lecture 5 | metabolism | the balance between the energy and material flow for an organism example: the food a deer eats and the path that the energy and biochemical constituents of that food follow |
| closed system/open system | no interaction with the outside/ internaction with the outside | |
| mass and energy balance | an accounting for the starting and energy mass (such as atoms of C, N, and P) and energy | |
| steady state | the condition of a system that shows a fixed level in the stock because the inputs equal the outputs |
|
| positive or negative feedback | increased input results in control on the input either reinforcing (positive) or reducing (negative) the rate of subsequent input | |
| trophic levels | feeding levels, i.e. distance of an organism from the ultimate energy source (sun energy to plants) example: primary producers, consumers, etc. |
|
| population | an interbreeding group of one species | |
| community | multiple populations of different species and trophic levels that interact at one location | |
| ecosystem | the biological community and the physical environment | |
| Lecture 6 | photosynthesis | biological process that converts light energy to chemical energy in the form of carbohydrates |
| carbon dioxide fixation | the enzymatic process that takes free carbon dioxide molecules and (using photosynthesis) converts them to organic carbon such as carbohydrates - the carbon dioxide is locked into organic molecules instead of being free molecules | |
| co-flow model | using a systems model to link, not combine, the flow of two different entities such as energy and material, carbon and nitrogen | |
| competition | multiple species using the same resource (and the resource is depletable, by definition), within a trophic level | |
| predator-prey interaction | one species uses another species as a food resource, across trophic levels | |
| energy or biomass pyramid | energy use by trophic level is a pyramid because a large amount of usable energy is lost at each predator-prey interaction, most energy is availble to the primary producers and least is available to the top predator - biomass doesn't have to form a pyramid | |
| Lecture 7 | hydrologic cycle | the flow of water from the ocean, to atmosphere, to precipitation over land, to runoff back to the ocean |
| evapotranspiration | water movement through plants to the atmosphere through evaporative loss | |
| C, N, or P cycle | the paths of these elements through different compounds as a result of biological, human, and geological processes | |
| Haber-Bosch process | using electricity to fix N2 gas into ammonia, used to make fertilizer and munitions | |
| fast-slow processes | systems and network description of how there are processes in the same system that can proceed at very different rates, example urban development (fast) vs. build up of toxins in the soil (slow) | |
| tipping point or threshold | a state of a system that is poised to possibliy make a large change | |
| Lecture 8 | boom & bust cycle | population growth pattern in which rapid growth to a high population is followed by a crash back down to a lower (not zero) level |
| irruptions | a population growth pattern that shows extreme growth when conditions are just right, happens infrequently example: tent catepillars |
|
| food webs | multiple species in each trophic level connected through predator-prey relationships | |
| food chain | trophic level simplification of a food web, or simple system with only one species at each trophic level | |
| keystone species | an organism that has a strong influence on the structure of the ecosystem without being the major species or producer, examples are alligators, elephants, otters, fruit bats | |
| stability from weak links | the network concept that ecosystem stability is enhanced by a myriad of non-trophic relationships that have weak but highly specific dependencies such as trees for bird nests. |
|
last modified December 5, 2009 by John Rueter