Human Impacts on the Environment Questions Exam 1 Flashcards

6323584166	What are some examples of biological adaptations to the environment?	change in an organism's genome that helps it to better live in its environment	0
6323584167	What are examples of cultural responses to the environment?	responses to environmental change that is influenced by an individual with a certain set of learned behaviors, concepts, beliefs (technology, social/class networks, economic settlement and subsistence patterns, religious/political systems)	1
6323584168	What are the three components of the environment?	biological, non-biotic, cultural	2
6323584169	How has our perception of the environment changed over the last century or so?	environmental determinism, cultural evolution, possibilism, cultural ecology, political ecology, historical ecology	3
6323584170	What types of impacts do humans have on the environment?	active, passive, environmental manipulation, resource management	4
6323584171	What specific effects do human impacts have on animals and plants?	deforestation, domestication, dispersal, community restructuring, burning, construction, extinction, selective hunting	5
6323584172	In what ways is our traditional concept of domestication too limited?	domestication is not a single event but a process that happens over time, multiple reasons and factors going into domestication	6
6323584173	How do human populations effect the dispersal of animal/plant species across the globe?	significantly increases dispersal rate	7
6323584174	What are three examples of animals that have a commensal relationship with people?	dogs, cats, pigs, chicken, turkey	8
6323584175	What's an example of an active and passive human impact on the environment?	active: intentionally cutting down all the trees in your town passive: unintentionally making palm tree forests extinct because you released rats onto an island	9
6323584176	How is it possible that passive human impacts can have beneficial affects to the environment?	some can be good or just lessen the effects of other more majorly negative impacts, like in resource management, a human could construct a feature to reduce erosion	10
6323584177	What is the western perspective of human's place in nature?	comes from Christian roots that humans are special and are in dominion over nature, it's their job to rule over nature and protect it, and its resources are for human use	11
6323584178	How does the western European intellectual tradition view humanity and nature as different?	humans are specially made from God and so they get to rule over everything, humans are separate from nature, active humanity, passive nature	12
6323584179	How is the non-western perspective on the environment different from the western European perspective?	non-western is more "people are one with nature", they are a part of nature, nature rules over all and upsetting it will be bad, environment is alive	13
6323584180	How does our perspective on the environment influence our behavior?	ideas influence action, comes into play when establishing conservation strategies, continuing problematic human-animal encounters	14
6323584181	What is meant by "noble savage" and how has our acceptance/rejection of that notion changed through time?	indigenous people lived in "harmony" with nature and didn't cause damage like state level societies. Today, it's changed to indigenous have a detailed knowledge of nature and use that knowledge to establish sustainable systems	15
6323584182	How has modern conservation practices affected the lives of indigenous populations?	removing them from their communities restricts their access to resources and changes their diet/rituals, changes key processes in environmental health	16
6323584183	What is meant by the Ice Age extinction?	the extinction of numerous megafauna at the end of the pleistocene era	17
6323584184	How is the global expansion of modern humans thought to be related to the mass extinction of large bodied Ice Age land mammals?	timing of extinctions happened around what was thought to be the same time as the appearance of humans there	18
6323584185	How is the extinction event at the end of the last Ice Age thought to be different from earlier extinction events?	differ from 7 previous extinction events over last 10 million years; number of extinct species, types of animals that went extinct, speed of extinction, appearance of new predator	19
6323584186	What are the three different explanations for the Ice Age extinction event?	overkill hypothesis, climate change, ET impact	20
6323584187	How has hunting changed through time?		21
6323584188	In what ways does modern human hunting differ from that of our earlier ancestors?	lower/middle paleolithic: simple tools, large-medium prey, at prime age and healthy upper paleolithic: hunting was group effort, more technology, different, smaller, more difficult prey, plant/food storage	22
6323584189	What is the overkill hypothesis?	belief that most animal extinctions can be directly or indirectly attributed to predation by humans	23
6323584190	How has the overkill hypothesis changed over the last couple decades?	Blitzkrieg: rapid expansion of human population, skilled hunters meet naive prey and carnivores extinct due to loss of food source	24
6323584191	What is the main criticism for the overkill hypothesis?	humans were present way before this and of the megafauna that humans hunted, only a small portion were part of the extinction, timing in different stages and the extinct that were hunted most survived the longest	25
6323584192	What environmental changes are thought to be important for explaining the extinction of the Ice Age megafauna?	decrease precipitation, increase annual temperature, decrease growing season length, decrease plant density	26
6323584193	Why do critics not support the Clovis Comet hypothesis?	can't replicate the results	27
6323584194	What factors were most important for the successful settlement of the Pacific Islands?	proximity to other inhabitable islands, habitable space (flat land), biodiversity, early settlement, continuous human presence, rapid/continual population increase	28
6323584195	How do environmental conditions vary for Pacific Islands?	size of islands, amount of flat land, biodiversity levels, wetness and warmth of island	29
6323584196	What are the major ecological changes associated with human settlement of the Pacific Islands?	faunal extinction, erosion, wild fires, deforestation, major resource management projects, introduction of exotic species	30
6323584197	What are the passive/active human impacts most responsible for the deforestation of Pacific Islands?	faunal extinctions lost the dense palm forests, burning	31
6323584198	How does the presence of humans on the landscape change the rate of forest and wild fires?	major burns 1 in every 10yrs with humans, 1 in every 200yrs without humans	32
6323584199	What effect did the introduction of exotic species have on the environments of the Pacific Islands?	animals ate seeds/leaves and reproductive parts of plants to contribute to deforestation	33
6323584200	What effects did deforestation have on the environments of the Pacific Islands?	decline in soil fertility, drier environment, high levels of erosion	34
6323584201	How did humans respond to the anthropogenic changes to the Pacific Island environments?	intensification of agriculture, resource management, rock gardens to improve growing conditions for root crops	35
6323584202	In what ways was human social organization important in responding to the anthropogenic changes to the Pacific Islands?	social inequality allowed a few to mobilize the labor of many	36
6323584203	How does our modern relationship with agricultural products differ from that of earlier farmers?	earlier farmers: management, horticulture, small-scale farming modern farmers: agriculture, large-scale farming	37
6323584204	What are the important biological and physical changes resulting from plant and animal domestication?	are morphological or phenotypic changes (observable difference to body), allow species to better adapt to anthropogenic environments, increase separation from wild populations in space and genetically, decreased reaction to stimuli, decreased activity and aggression, increased fertility	38
6323584205	Did humans select for "useful" specific phenotypic when creating domesticates?	useful changes either developed by accident or were selected for AFTER domestication	39
6323584206	What are the differences between wild teosinte and domesticate maize?	teosinte: small/few kernels, seeds drop easily, germinate and ripen at different rates maize: large/many kernels, seeds don't drop, uniform germination and ripening	40
6323584207	How quick did the domestication process occur?	initial domesticated traits occur ~30 generations, major physiological/behavior changes take ~100 generations	41
6323584208	What are the centers of prehistoric agriculture?	11 total - mexico, south america, africa, west asia, south asia, east asia, australia	42
6323584209	What are the three global explanations for the origins of agriculture?	climate change, population pressure, aggrandizing behavior/social organization and ideology	43
6323584210	What are the critiques of the global models for the origins of agriculture?	none apply to all domesticates, social and environmental context and timing of domestication is different across globe, domestication is a long-term process not a single event	44
6323584211	What are the benefits derived from the adoption of farming?	increased productivity for unit of land, control location of important resources, non-food benefits, food that is easily consumable and digestible to weaning children	45
6323584212	What are the social and health problems associated with adoption of farming?	greater labor effort, greater risk of catastrophic failure, low quality diet, poorer health, shorter life spans, overpopulation	46
6323584213	What are the environmental impacts of large-scale farming?	more permanent settlements, higher density of domesticates than wild taxa, social organization	47
6323584214	What about the adoption of agriculture in the Near East makes this area an important area to study?	earliest evidence of domesticates, supports aspects of environmental and demographic explanations, example of segment of population intentionally chose not to participate in agriculture	48
6323584215	What is the major human impact association with early farming societies in the Near East?	deteriorating environmental conditions, more sedentary, larger settlements, intensive use of wild plants and appearance of domesticated animals	49
6323584216	What were the first domesticates to appear in the Near East?	rye, wheat, barley, lentils, turkey	50
6323584217	How did social organization, subsistence, mobility, and population size change as a result of the adoption of agriculture in the Near East?	fewer sites but larger in size, concentrated around reliable water sources, changes in architecture, appearance of defensive constructions, highly complex social relationships, trade networks, gradual appearance of domesticated plants, resource management, farming	51
6323584218	What did human hunting affect wild animals through time in the Near East?	over time: overheated wild game, more time/effort spent searching for prey, lower quantity/quality meat chosen, agriculture filled gap left by inefficient hunting	52
6323584219	What were the progressive impacts on the environment change through time in the Near East?	early: depletion of wild game and trees from H/G settlement, lack of game led to increase in reliance on grazing domesticates, further construction led to increased rate of deforestation later: sustain population exploitation had to occur ever farther from settlement	53