IB ESS Unit 1 - Foundations of Environmental Systems and Societies, Top Exam Questions coverage, rated A+

IB ESS Unit 1 - Foundations of Environmental Systems and Societies, Top Exam Questions coverage, rated A+ environmental value system (EVS) - -a world view or paradigm that shapes the way an individual or group of people perceive and evaluate environmental issues. This is influenced by cultural, religious, economic, and socio-political context. ecocentric worlview - -puts ecology and nature as central to humanity anthropocentric worldview - -believes humans must sustainably manage the global system technocentric worldview - -believes that technological developments can provide solutions to environmental problems cornucopians - -extreme technocentrists who see the world as having infinite resources to benefit humanity environmental managers - -moderate technocentrists who see the Earth as a garden that needs tending - the stewardship worldview. biocentric worlview - -see all life as having inherent value - value for its own sake, not just for humans deep ecologists - -put more value on nature than humanity. They believe in biorights - universal rights where all species and ecosystems have an inherent value and humans have no right to interfere with this system - -a set of inter-related parts working together to make a complex whole open system - -exchanges matter and energy with its surroundings closed system - -exchanges energy but not matter with its surroundings isolated system - -exchanges neither matter nor energy with its surroundings transfer - -occurs when energy or matter flows and changes location but does not change its state transformation - -occurs when energy or matter flows and changes its state - a change in the chemical nature, a change in state or a change in energy systems approach - -a way of visualizing a complex set of interactions which may be ecological or societal model - -a simplified version of reality that can be used to understand how a system works and predict how it will respond to change 1st Law of Thermodynamics - -Principle of conservation of energy, which states that energy in an isolated system can be transformed but cannot be created nor destroyed 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - -Energy is transformed through energy transfers. An increase in entropy arising from energy transformations reduces the energy available to do work. entropy - -a measure of the amount of disorder in a system efficiency - -the useful energy, the work or output produced by a process divided by the amount of energy consumed negative feedback loops - -Stabilizing systems that occur when the output of a process inhibits or reverses the operation of the same process in such a way to reduce change - it counteracts deviation steady-state equilibrium - -characteristics of open systems where there are continuous inputs and outputs of energy and matter, but the system as a whole remains in a more-or-less constant state static equilibrium - -no change over time