FINALS

• • ToF: Giant reptiles dominate the earth during (cretaceous) period 
  • (False: Jurassic)
• • ToF: It is during (Holocene) epoch that man started to disturb the balance of nature. 
  • (False: Anthropocene)
• • ToF: Ape man appeared and increased in number during (Pliocene epoch). (True)
• • ToF: Geologic time is (not easy) to grasp mentally because of its magnitude (True)
• • ToF: The story of the earth is written in the rocks. (True)
• • Planet Earth
  • The only known planet in the solar system that has all the elements important for our survival.
• • Humans 
  • have the greatest influence in every aspect of the Earth on a scale similar to the great forces of nature.
• The rocks unfold the story of the earth, the geologic events and the succession of life. Its history is very long that geologists feel the need to divide it
• • Earth’s history is divided into a hierarchical series of smaller chunks of time,
  • These divisions, in descending length of time, are called 
  • eons, 
  • eras, 
  • periods, 
  • epochs, and 
  • ages.
• • These units are classified based on Earth’s rock layers, or strata, and the fossils found within them. From examining these fossils, scientists know that certain organisms are characteristic of certain parts of the geologic record. 
  • The study of this correlation is called stratigraphy.
• • Holocene
  • The current epoch is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilization developed
• • Anthropocene Epoch
  • unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
• • Anthropocene Epoch
  • age of the human epoch
• • Anthropocene
  • comes from the Greek terms 
  • human (’anthropo’)
  • new (’cene’). 
• • Anthropocene
  • coined in the 1980s, then popularized in 2000 by atmospheric chemist Paul J Crutzen and diatom researcher Eugene F Stoermer.
• Human activity has:

  1. Pushed extinction rates of animals and plants
  2. Increased levels of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere
  3. Put too much plastic in our waterways and oceans
  4. Doubled the nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils
  5. Left a permanent layer of airborne particulates in sediment and glacial ice
• ToF: Since people’s lifestyles differ, some people use more resources than others. (True)
• • These resources are mostly from lithosphere and hydrosphere.
• • Food, electricity, and other basic amenities for survival must be produced within the confines of nature, using raw natural resources. 
• The processing of raw materials into products that man can use produce pollution that has an impact on our environment.
• • Ecological footprint 
  • the amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply the people in a particular area or country with resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use. 
• • per capita ecological footprint 
  • the average ecological footprint of an individual in given country or area.
  • estimate of how much of the earth’s renewable resources an individual consumes 
• • Ecological deficit
  • if the country’s total ecological footprint is larger than its biological capacity to replace its renewable resources and absorb the resulting waste products and pollution.
• • Among the affluent countries the United States has the world’s total ecological footprint. 
• • United States 
  • has the world’s second largest per capita ecological footprint, 4.5 times the average global footprint per person and 12 times the average per capita footprint in the world’s low – income countries. 
• • Ecological footprint 
  • also measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes
• The per capita ecological footprint is the average ecological footprint of an individual in a given country or area.
• • climate change 
  • a result of producing more carbon  than can be reabsorbed by the forests and seas.
• • According to the Global Footprint Network, humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets worth of resources. This means that it takes the Earth one year and five months to regenerate what we use in a year.
• Footprint standards

  • Standard used in comparing a country’s, city’s, or region’s footprints.
• • The top three countries with the highest ecological footprint per head: 
  • Qatar
  • Kuwait
  • United Arab Emirates
• • Resource
  • Anything obtained from the environment to meet our needs and wants.
• • Conservation
  • Management of natural resources with the goal of minimizing resource waste and sustaining resource supplies for current and future generations
• • Perpetual resource
  • Like solar energy, it is renewed continuously and is expected to last at least 6 billion years as the sun completes its life cycle
  • Also called renewable resources
• • Renewable resource
  • Can be replenisher fairly quickly (from hours to hundreds of years) through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is renewed (forests, grasslands, fisheries, freshwater, fresh air, and fertile soil)
• • Sustainable yield
  • The highest rate at which a renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply.
• • Environmental degradation
  • When we exceed a renewable resource’s natural replacement rate, the available supply begins to shrink
• • Non-renewable resources
  • Exists in a fixed quantity, of stock, in the earth's crust
  • These resources can be depleted much fast than they are formed
  • Such exhaustible resources include energy resources (coal and oil), metallic mineral resources (such as salt and sand)
• • Reuse
  • Using a resource over and over in the same form
• • Recycling
  • Involves collecting waste materials and processing them into new materials.