APES Vocabulary Review

PollutionEarth Systems

Ecology

VOCs

• Volatile Organic Compounds are the most abundant indoor air pollutants, found in carpet, furniture, plastic, oils, paints, adhesives, pesticides, cleaners.

CAFE

• Corporate Average Fuel Economy is set by Department of Transportation (DOT) and intended to reduce both fuel consumption and emissions. The standard today requires that vehicles have a fuel efficiency of 27.5 miles per gallon.

Deep Well Injection

• Drilling a hole in the ground that’s below the water table to hold waste

Dose response analysis

• A process in which an organism is exposed to a toxin at different concentrations, and the dosage that causes death of the organism is recorded

Acid Precipitation

• Acid rain, acid hail, acid snow; all of which occur as a result of pollution in the atmosphere

Primary Treatment

• When physically treated sewage water is passed into a settling tank, where suspended solids settle out as sludge; chemically treated polymers may be added to help the suspended solids separate and settle out.

LC50

• The point at which 50% of the test organisms die from a toxin

SLUDGE

• The solids that remain after the secondary treatment of sewage

Secondary Treatment

• The biological treatment of wastewater in order to continue to remove biodegradable waste. This is where aerobic bacteria digest waste as it seeps over bacteria covered rock beds or in a vat.

Tertiary treatment

• Not all waste water treatment plants do this…it is only done when reclaimed water must be used to more than irrigation and includes further secondary treatment and chlorination

Gray Water

• Treated water from the wastewater treatment plant we visited which has only undergone primary and secondary treatment and one round of chlorination is considered this type of water.

Ozonation and UV radiation

• These are alternatives to chlorination. Chlorination may react with any organic matter left in water and form trihalomethanes (a carcinogen), but these alternatives have not proven as effective or long-lasting as chlorine and are much more expensive…at least at this time.

Primary Pollutants

• Pollutants that are released directly into the lower atmosphere…examples include CO, sulfur dioxide, particulates, nitrogen dioxide, lead

Secondary pollutants

• Pollutants that are formed by the combination of primary pollutants in the atmosphere…an example could be acid rain or ground level ozone

Photochemical Smog

• A certain type of smog formed on hot, sunny days in urban areas. In this smog, nitrous oxides, ozone and VOCs react with the intensity of the sunlight to create a smog with a brownish hue. More ozone is produced in this fog as well. Los Angeles is particularly susceptible to this fog and has pushed urban planners to try new strategies to reduce cars on the road during this weather.

Industrial smog or Gray smog

• Smog resulting in emissions from industry and other sources of gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal.

Stationary sources

• Non moving sources of pollution, such as factories.

Poison

• Any substance that has an LD50 or 50mg or less per kg of body weight.

Pathogen

• Bacteria, virus, or other microorganisms that can cause disease

Point Source Pollution

• A specific location from which pollution is released; an example would be a factory where coal is burned, or a pipe releasing sewage into stream.

Global Warming

• An intensification of the Greenhouse Effect due to the increased presence of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere

Greenhouse gases

• Carbon dioxide• Methane• Nitrous oxide• Water vapor• Ozone

Heat Island

• Urban areas with higher temperatures because of heat absorbing parking lots and asphalt, heat producing cars, and buildings. This is also in part because of less green space, so less transpiration, less shade, and more runoff.

Leachate

• The liquid that percolates to the bottom of a landfill. This is different from water that runs off the top of covered landfill that never comes in contact with waste…that’s stormwater runoff.

Waste to Energy Program (WTE)

• When energy released from waste incineration or from a sanitary landfill is used to generate electricity.

Superfund Program

• A program funded by the federal government and a trust that’s funded by taxes on chemicals; identifies pollutants and cleans up hazardous waste sites.

Toxin

• Any substance that is inhaled, ingested, or absorbed at dosages sufficient to damage a living organism.

Vector

• The carrier organism through which a pathogen can attack, such as mosquitoes of Borneo carrying malaria

Troposphere

• Ground level ozone is found in the ____ of the atmosphere

El Nino

• A climate variation that takes place in the tropical Pacific about every three to seven years, for a duration of about one year.

Estuary

• The part of the wide lower course of a river where its current is met by the tides

• Aka: where the river meets the sea

Divergent Boundary

• A plate boundary at which plates are moving away from each other. This causes an upwelling of magma from the mantle to cool and form new crust

A layer

• The soil horizon under O layer. This layer is formed of weathered rock, with some organic material; often referred to as topsoil.

B horizon or layer

• This is the soil horizon that receives minerals and organic materials that are leached from above. It is often called the zone of illuviation.

O horizon

• This soil layer is the uppermost, containing primarily organic material, including waste from organisms, bodies of decomposing organisms, and live organisms. Humus would be found here.

R horizon

• Bedrock

Green Revolution

• Agriculture movement that uses pesticides, irrigation technology, fertilizer and GMOs to produce more food in limited space. While certainly averting a world wide famine as the world population grows exponentially, it has also contributed to many detrimental environmental effects such as pollution, erosion, soil depravation, use of monoculture, and pesticide resistance.

Convection

• The vertical movement of a mass of matter due to heating and cooling; this can happen in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and Earth’s mantle. This movement creates a type of current.

Fault

• The place where two plates touch each other