A pollutant or novel entity is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. These can be both naturally forming or anthropogenic in origin. Pollutant result in environmental pollution or become public health concerns when they reach a concentration high enough to have significant negative impacts.
Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizational levels of research and policy. Concisely, landscape ecology can be described as the science of landscape diversity as the synergetic result of biodiversity and geodiversity.
Urban ecology is the scientific study of the relation of living organisms with each other and their surroundings in the context of an urban environment. The urban environment refers to the environments dominated by high-density residential and commercial buildings, paved surfaces, and other urban-related factors that create a unique landscape dissimilar to most previously studied environments in the field of ecology. The goal of urban ecology is to achieve a balance between human culture and the natural environment.
Bottom trawling is trawling along the seafloor. It is also referred to as "dragging". The scientific community divides bottom trawling into benthic trawling and demersal trawling. Benthic trawling is towing a net at the very bottom of the ocean and demersal trawling is towing a net just above the benthic zone. Bottom trawling can be contrasted with midwater trawling, where a net is towed higher in the water column. Midwater trawling catches pelagic fish such as anchovies and mackerel, whereas bottom trawling targets both bottom-living fish (groundfish) and semi-pelagic species such as cod, squid, shrimp, and rockfish.
The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) is a region that consists of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and some southern states of Mexico. The area acts as a natural land bridge from South America to North America, which is important for species who use the bridge in migration. Due to the extensive unique habitat types, Mesoamerica contains somewhere between 7 and 10% of the world’s known species.
Biomass is plant-based material used as fuel to produce heat or electricity. Examples are wood and wood residues, energy crops, agricultural residues, and waste from industry, farms and households. Since biomass can be used as a fuel directly, some people use the words biomass and biofuel interchangeably. Others subsume one term under the other. Government authorities in the US and the EU define biofuel as a liquid or gaseous fuel, used for transportation. The European Union's Joint Research Centre use the concept solid biofuel and define it as raw or processed organic matter of biological origin used for energy, for instance firewood, wood chips and wood pellets.
Climate change in the US state of Washington is a subject of study and projection today. The major impacts of climate change in Washington State include increase in carbon dioxide levels, increase in temperatures, earlier annual snow melt, sea level rise, and others.
An intact forest landscape (IFL) is an unbroken natural landscape of a forest ecosystem and its habitat–plant community components, in an extant forest zone. An IFL is a natural environment with no signs of significant human activity or habitat fragmentation, and of sufficient size to contain, support, and maintain the complex of indigenous biodiversity of viable populations of a wide range of genera and species, and their ecological effects.
The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, includes all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth.
The environmental impact of agriculture is the effect that different farming practices have on the ecosystems around them, and how those effects can be traced back to those practices. The environmental impact of agriculture varies widely based on practices employed by farmers and by the scale of practice. Farming communities that try to reduce environmental impacts through modifying their practices will adopt sustainable agriculture practices. The negative impact of agriculture is an old issue that remains a concern even as experts design innovative means to reduce destruction and enhance eco-efficiency. Though some pastoralism is environmentally positive, modern animal agriculture practices tend to be more environmentally destructive than agricultural practices focused on fruits, vegetables and other biomass. The emissions of ammonia from cattle waste continues to raise concerns over environmental pollution.
Climate change and fisheries affect one another, the relationship between these affects are backed by strong global evidence. Although these effects vary in the context of each fishery and the many pathways that climate change affects them individually. Rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are radically altering marine aquatic ecosystems, while freshwater ecosystems are being impacted by changes in water temperature, water flow, and fish habitat loss. Climate change is modifying fish distribution and the productivity of marine and freshwater species.
The environmental effects of transport are significant because transport is a major user of energy, and burns most of the world's petroleum. This creates air pollution, including nitrous oxides and particulates, and is a significant contributor to global warming through emission of carbon dioxide. Within the transport sector, road transport is the largest contributor to global warming.
Road ecology is the study of the ecological effects of roads and highways. These effects may include local effects, such as on noise, water pollution, habitat destruction/disturbance and local air quality; and the wider environmental effects of transport such as habitat fragmentation, ecosystem degradation, and climate change from vehicle emissions.
A mire, peatland, or quagmire is a wetland area dominated by living peat-forming plants. Mires arise because of incomplete decomposition of organic matter, usually litter from vegetation, due to water-logging and subsequent anoxia. All types of mires share the common characteristic of being saturated with water, at least seasonally with actively forming peat, while having their own ecosystem. Like coral reefs, mires are unusual landforms that derive mostly from biological rather than physical processes, and can take on characteristic shapes and surface patterning.
The Great Western Woodlands is the largest and healthiest temperate woodland remaining on Earth. Located in the southwest of Australia, the woodlands cover almost 16,000,000 hectares, a region larger in size than England and Wales. The boundary of the Great Western Woodlands runs from the Nullarbor Plain in the east to the Western Australian Wheatbelt in the west; from north of Esperance through to the inland mulga country and deserts that are found north of Kalgoorlie.
Climate change in Connecticut encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Connecticut.
Climate change in Rhode Island encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
Climate change in Vermont encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Vermont.
Anthropocentric climate change has been found to bring about the increase in temperature and precipitation in a range of ecosystems. The drastic change of these climate factors is predicted to progress leading to the destabilization of ecosystems. Human-caused climate change and the rise in invasive species are directly linked through changing of ecosystems. The destabilization of climate factors in these ecosystems can lead to the creation of a more hospitable habitat for invasive species- species that not historically found in the impacted regions. Thus, invasive species are able to spread beyond their original boundaries. This relationship is notable because climate change and invasive species are also considered by the USDA to be two of the top four causes of global biodiversity loss.
