Midterm Study Guide

Chapter 1

Case Study: Living in an Exponential

  1. Environment, Ecology, environmentalism
  2. Solar Capital to Natural Capital
  3. What is environmental sustainable society
  4. Economic growth: GDP, per capita GDP
  5. Characteristics of developed and developing countries
  6. Resources: renewable, non renewable, and perpetual
  7. Sustainable yield vs environmental degradation
  8. Concept behind Tragedy of the Commons
  9. Major Environmental Problems
  10. Causes of environmental problems
  11. Environmental Impact
  12. Types of worldviews

Chapter 2

Case Study: Near Extinction of the American Bison

  1. Agricultural Revolution: when and the good and bad
  2. Industrial Revolution: when and the good and bad
  3. Globalization Revolution: when and the good and bad
  4. Frontier Era: major events and important people
  5. Early Conservation Era: major events and important people
  6. Environmental Era: major events and important people
  7. Important people against the environmental movement

Chapter 3

Case Study: An Environmental Lesson from Easter Island

  1. Differences between positive feedback loop and negative feedback loop
  2. Laws of thermodynamics
  3. Nuclear Changes
  4. Nuclear Fusion and Fission

Chapter 4

Case Study: Have You Thanked the Insects Today?

  1. Ecological Organization
  2. Percentages of organisms
  3. Earth’s Life Support Systems
  4. One flow energy, cycling of matter, and gravity
  5. Abiotic vs biotic
  6. Range of tolerance, law of tolerance, limiting factor principle
  7. Food web and food chain with all its components (trophic levels)
  8. Photosynthesis description and formula
  9. Aerobic respiration and formula
  10. Different types of diversity
  11. Soil horizons, soil triangle, soil composition, 4 P’s of soil
  12. Earth Environmental Cycles

Chapter 5

Case Study: Earth: The Just-Right Resilient Planet

  1. Theory of Evolution
  2. Natural Selection: adaptations, mutations, coevolution
  3. Niche: fundamental niche and realized niche
  4. Generalist species vs specialized species
  5. Geographic Isolation, reproductive isolation, and extinction
  6. Future of Evolution:
  7. Artificial selection, genetic engineering, GMO’s, biopharming

Chapter 6

Case Study: Blowing in the Wind: A Story of Connections

  1. Biomes: descriptions, differences, elevation change

Chapter 8

Case Study: Flying Foxes: Keystone Species in Tropical Forests

  1. Forestry Biodiversity
  2. Theory of Island Biogeography
  3. Native, nonnative, invasive species
  4. Indicator Species
  5. Keystone Species
  6. Competition: interspecific, intraspecific, resource overlap
  7. Resource Partitioning
  8. Symbiosis (types, description, and example)
  9. Ecological Succession
  10. Persistence, constancy, and resilience: environmental sustainability

Chapter 9

Case Study: Sea Otters: Are They Back from the Brink of Extinction?

  1. Population Dynamics
  2. Population Dispersion
  3. Biotic potential and environmental resistant factors
  4. Carrying capacity, logistic growth, exponential growth
  5. Population change equation
  6. Population age structures
  7. Intrinsic rate of increase
  8. Density dependent and independent controls
  9. Population change curves
  10. Up down control predation and bottom up control predation
  11. K and r selected species (characteristics and examples)
  12. Survivorship curves (description and examples)
  13. Founder effect, demographic bottleneck, genetic drift, metapopulations
  14. Ways of destroying/reducing biodiversity (human impact)

Chapter 10

Case Study: Slowing Population Growth in Thailand: A success story

  1. Calculating population growth rate
  2. Doubling calculation
  3. Fertility , replacement level fertility, and total fertility rate
  4. Change in United States based on birth rates
  5. Factors affecting birth rates
  6. Population Pyramids and population trends
  7. United States, India, China (policy, trends, pyramids)
  8. Demographic Transition Model
  9. Problems we will face with growing population
  10. Solutions for population problem

Chapter 11

Case Study: Reintroducing Wolves to Yellowstone

  1. Old growth, new growth, tree plantations
  2. Ecological and economical benefits for forestry
  3. Even age management and uneven aged manegment
  4. Life cycle of cutting and growth
  5. Types of cutting techniques
  6. Pros and cons of clear cutting
  7. Deforestation effects
  8. Solutions for sustainable forestry
  9. Harmful effects on insects and disease on our forests (examples)
  10. Crown, surface, and ground fires
  11. Tropical deforestation (why so important and top 5 causes
  12. Wasting trees (pg 210)
  13. Logging in the US National Forest (pros cons)

Chapter 14

Case Study: Growing Perennial Crops on the Kansas Prairie by Copying Nature

  1. 3 systems of food supply and percentages
  2. Net primary productivity
  3. Types of food production: industrialized, high input, plantation traditional subsistence, traditional intensive
  4. Both Green revolutions (what countries and what did it do)
  5. Growing techniques: interplanting, polyvarietal cultivation, intercropping, agroforestry, alley cropping, polyculture
  6. Causes of soil erosion and degradation
  7. Historic soil erosion problems
  8. Desertification: areas of concern and causes
  9. Water logging and salinization of soil
  10. Soil conservation techniques
  11. Chronic undernutrition, malnutrition (difference examples)
  12. Environmental effects of food production
  13. Pros cons of GMO’s