Environment Science Keywords
Terms
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- Adaptation
- How organisms change in order to become more suited to their environment
- Bioaccumulation
- The build up of toxic substances in a food chain or the body of an organism
- Biological control
- Natural methods used to prevent pest damage to crops
- Biomass
- The mass of an organism when all of the water has been removed from their tissues
- Breeding
- Mating organisms in order to produce an increase in population size
- Characteristic
- A feature of an organism which can either be inherited or modified by the environment
- Classification
- A systematic way of grouping things
- Competition
- Where two organisms both want the same thing such as food, space or light
- Computer model
- Uses mathematical formulae to work out what might happen if certain changes are made
- Conservation
- Trying to maintain habitats and prevent the loss of species
- Deforestation
- Clearing trees for timber or to make space for grazing animals, raising crops or putting up buildings
- Desertification
- Turning land into desert
- Ecosystem
- A group of plants and animals which live and interact together
- Environment
- The place where an organism lives
- Evolution
- The gradual change in the characteristics of a species over many generations
- Extinct
- When a group of organisms die out because it cannot adapt itself to a new situation
- Factory farming
- Intensive farming which depends on artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides
- Food chain
- A chain to show how energy moves between animals and plants
- Food web
- A group of interlinked food chains
- Fossil
- An imprint in the rock left by the body of an organism which lived millions of years ago
- Genetic engineering
- Transferring genes from one organism to another, or changing genes in an organism by altering their DNA
- Genetically modified
- An organism that has had its characteristics modified by the use of genetic engineering
- Interdependence
- When a change to one organism brings about a change in another
- Inter-species
- Between two different species
- Intra-species
- Between members of the same species
- Kingdom
- A major category of classification, including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and protoctista
- Natural selection
- How environmental factors such as disease or predation alter the characteristics of a species
- Organic (when applied to food)
- Food produced without artificial fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides
- Organic farming
- Labour-intensive farming which uses natural methods to control pests and maintain soil fertility
- Organism
- Any living thing
- Population
- The total number of one species of an organism living in an area
- Predator
- An animal which hunts and kills other animals, such as a lion
- Prey
- An animal which is hunted and killed by a predator, such as a zebra
- Primates
- The order to which humans and apes belong
- Producer
- Organisms which make their own food by photosynthesis, such as a green plant
- Protoctista
- The kingdom to which all single-celled organisms, such as the euglena, belong
- Pyramid of biomass
- A diagram which shows how much living material is found at each link in the food chain
- Pyramid of number
- A diagram which shows the number of living organisms at each link in the food chain
- Quadrat
- A square frame which is placed on the ground to get a sample of the organisms living in a small area
- Quantitative
- Using numbers to describe something
- Reproduction
- Propagation of a species.The process of producing the next generation of individuals
- Scavenger
- An animal which feeds on dead remains or food left by another animal, such as a hyena
- Sedimentary rock
- A rock formed when particles settle together and become compressed to form layers, such as limestone, shale and sandstone
- Selective breeding
- Deliberately mating together organisms to produce a plant or animal which has a useful combination of characteristics
- Species
- A population of organisms which breed together and produce fertile young. The name given to the finest level of grouping in classification. Several species make up a genus
- Sustainable development
- Using methods which do not use up limited resources and so do no harm to the environment. For example, replanting trees to replace ones which are cut down