Section C

• Agribusiness refers to farms that choose more intensive farming methods or buy modern machinery, to increase crop yield.
• An aquifer is a permeable or porous rock which stores water.
• Biofuel is the burning of crops and vegetation for electricity and heat.
• Biotechnology involves genetically modifying (GM) crops to grow faster or become less vulnerable to pests & disease.
• GM crops are controversial as the side effects to humans and the environment aren’t fully understood.
• Climate Change refers to the changing characteristics of the climate and seasons in regions across the world.
• Decommission is the process of closing and safely disposing waste from a power station, which can cost millions of pounds and take over a year to complete.
• Desalination is the process of converting saltwater into fresh, clean drinking water.
• Drought is the short-term lack of water to meet demand, which can cause dehydration and fatalities.
• Energy Deficit is a country that generates less energy than its population needs, meaning the supply is less than the demand.
• Energy Mix is the composition of a country’s energy sources.
• Energy Security is the ownership and full control of a country’s energy source, production and transportation.
• Energy Surplus is a country that generates more energy than its population needs, meaning the supply is greater than the demand.
• Fairtrade is a charity that ensures farmers are paid a fair wage and safe regulations.
• Famine is a long or short-term shortage of food, resulting in many people becoming malnourished or even starving.
• Fertilisers are compounds that increase plant growth and contain nutrients that are important to plant growth, including compost, manure and peat.
• Food Miles is the journey that food takes from farmer to consumer, with higher food miles indicating a greater distance travelled and greater emissions produced from transport vehicles.
• Food Poverty is a country that grows, produces and imports less food than it needs to feed its population.
• Fossil Fuels are non-renewable sources of fuel that take thousands of years to form underground, from dead vegetation and animals.
• Fracking is the process of releasing trapped natural gas from shale rocks, involving the pushing of high-pressure liquids underground to cause the shale rocks to crack.
• Geothermal Energy involves pumping water deep underground to be heated by magma plumes or radioactive rocks, with the hot water creating steam to turn turbines in generators and produce electricity.
• Greenhouse Emissions are gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) that thicken the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the planet to warm up and climates to change.
• Renewable primary energy can be re-used to produce electricity or has a short lifetime, therefore any used can be replaced quickly, such as Hydroelectric, biomass, solar.
• Obesity is when people are very overweight, often due to an individual consuming too many calories.
• Water Conservation involves reducing the use of fresh, clean water for non-essential uses (toilet flush, dishwater, watering the plants).
• Malnourishment is when a person doesn’t eat either enough food or enough of the right food to get the nutrition they need to be healthy.
• Soil Erosion is when the soil is stripped of nutrients and becomes more dust-like, which won’t grow plants or crops in the future.
• Importing involves buying resources from another country, for example food or goods.
• Water Transfer Scheme involves taking water through pipes from a region of water surplus to a region of water deficit, and if this is across countries, water may be traded for money.
• Nuclear Fusion is the process of joining atomic nuclei together to produce energy.
• Pesticides are chemicals that kill pests (e.g slugs, greenfly) to stop crops becoming damaged and killed off.
• Hydroelectric Energy involves trapping water in a dam and forcing it past turbines in the dam to escape downstream, which turns the turbines to generate electricity.
• Water Stress is when there could be a large enough volume of water to meet demand, but not enough clean, good quality water is available or the water is inaccessible.
• Wave Energy involves generating electricity by small turbines within floating buoys, which float on the surface so passing waves flow through the turbines.
• Secondary Energy is the product of primary energy, mostly electricity.
• Hydroponics is the process of growing crops in water rather than soil, which can increase crop yield and make farming more efficient.
• Sustainability is the process of trying to conserve resources for the future, whilst meeting the demand for goods in the present.
• Water Security is having a clean, reliable source of water that meets demand throughout the year.
• Water Deficit is when the supply of water is less than the demand for water.
• Solar Energy involves using solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity.