APES Flashcards

7965283173	Average residence time	The time it takes for a given part of the total reservoir of a particular material to be cycled through the system	0
7965283174	Biosphere	part of Earth in which life exists including land, water, and air or atmosphere	1
7965283175	Biota	Term used to refer to all living things	2
7965283176	closed system	no such movements take place	3
7965283177	Doubling time	Time necessary for the quantity being measured to double	4
7965283178	Ecosystem	A community of organisms and its local nonliving environment in which matter cycles and energy flows	5
7965283179	Environmental Unity	Means that it's impossible to change only one thing; everything affects everything else	6
7965283180	exponential growth	A particularly important example of positive feedback	7
7965283181	Feedback	When the output of the system also serves as an input and leads to further changes in the system	8
7965283182	Gaia Hypothesis	The hypothesis states that life manipulates the environment for the maintenance of life	9
7965283183	Lag time	The time between a stimulus and the response of a system	10
7965283184	negative feedback	Self regulating, or stabilizing; it usually keeps a system in a relatively constant condition	11
7965283185	Open system	Not generally contained within boundaries, and some energy or material moves into or out the system	12
7965283186	overshoot and collapse	the result of long lag times or delays from exponential growth	13
7965283187	positive feedback	Occurs when an increase in output leads to a further increase in the output	14
7965283188	Steady state	Where the input into a system is equal to the output	15
7965283189	System	A set of components or parts that function together to act as a whole	16
7965283190	Uniformitarianism	The principle that mechanisms of change are constant over time	17