We Love the Earth | Aquatic Biomes | Climate | Eat or Get Eaten | Vocab |
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What is an ecological footprint?
Estimate of the area of land and water required to sustain one person.
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What is the intertidal zone?
The marine ecosystem between low and high tide lines.
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What is weather?
Specific atmospheric conditions over a short period of time at a specific location.
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What is parasitism?
A tick living on and benefiting from a human scalp.
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What is a biome?
Large regions characterized by unique climate characteristics & distinctive communities
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What are greenhouse gases?
Airborn chemicals that capture and hold heat within Earth's atmosphere
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What is an estuary?
Where the river meets the sea.
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What is climate?
Prevailing long term weather conditions over a large region
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What is mutualism?
A shrimp gets food from the teeth of an eel while the eel has the benefit of receiving this cleaning.
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What is an adaptation?
An inherited characteristic that enables an organism to survive and reproduce better than individuals without this characteristic.
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What is thermal expansion?
As heat is absorbed by the ocean, water molecules expand and cause this phenomenon to occur.
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What is the oceanic region?
Water beyond the continental shelf is considered a part of this region.
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What is climate change?
long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns
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What is commensalism?
A barnacle that lives on a whale gets habitat area and nutrients from the water as the whale swims while the whale is unaffected.
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What is commensalism?
Interaction in which one population benefits, while the other is unaffected.
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What is carbon dioxide?
Ocean acidification occurs due to excess amounts of this greenhouse gas being absorbed by the ocean.
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What is aphotic zone?
The zone of the ocean below 200m where light does not reach.
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What is the greenhouse effect?
How heat gets trapped close to Earth's surface.
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What is a consumer? (heterotroph)
Obtains energy from eating other organisms
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What is productivity?
Rate of biomass (energy) generation by plants & some bacteria in an ecosystem .
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What is sustainable development?
The goal of this is to maintain the productivity of Earth's ecosystems indefinitely through the responsible management and conservation of Earth's resources.
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What is chemosynthesis?
A process by which organisms use chemical reactions to produce sugars and energy, typically in the absence of sunlight.
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What are fossil fuels?
Since the 1800s human activities have been the main driver of the expedited rate of global climate change, primarily due to burning of these.
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What are nutrients?
Chemical substances found in every living thing on Earth that get cycled through a system.
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What is trophic structure?
Describes the feeding relationships within a community
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