Commonly Used Terms

Acid Rain

Acid rain is a generic term used for precipitation that contains an abnormally high concentration of sulfuric and nitric acid. These acids form in the atmosphere when industrial gas emissions combine with water, and have negative impacts on the environment and human health.

Climate Change (UF Global Warming)

Human activities are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the build-up of greenhouse gases that trap heat and reflect it back to the earth's surface. This is resulting in changes to our climate, including a rise in global temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events.

Composting (Recreation)

Using decomposing vegetable matter, including table scraps, grass clippings, leaves, peat and soil to fertilize the soil. Composting reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill, and helps put valuable nutrients back into residential and commercial gardens.

Conservation

Environmental conservation is a general term that refers to the preservation of the natural environment-including wildlife, habitat, and the ecosystems they are a part of.

El Niño

El Niño is a warm surface current that usually appears in the Pacific Ocean off Ecuador and Peru around Christmas, and lasts about three months. Every three to seven years it remains for as long as a year-and-a-half as part of a southern oscillation. In North America, this contributes to warmer temperatures along the Pacific coast and weaker hurricanes on the Atlantic.

Energy

Anything that can be efficiently converted into heat or motion to provide power to run machines and vehicles and to supply heat and light is a source of energy.

Energy Consumption

Energy consumption refers to the amount of energy used by an object, system or process to carry out a particular function.

Enforcement (Law)

Enforcement embodies those activities that compel adherence to legal requirements. These activities include inspection and monitoring; investigation of violations; issuance of notices to individuals or businesses to require them to correct improper practices; issuance of tickets for violations; seizure of wildlife, or their parts and products, and any item that may have been used to commit the offence; and prosecution.

Environmental Assessment

Carrying out an environmental assessment means determining or estimating the value, significance or extent of damage to a particular ecosystem or aspect of it.

Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is the phenomenon whereby certain gases that absorb and trap heat in the atmosphere cause a warming effect on earth.

Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gases are gases that absorb and trap heat in the atmosphere and cause a warming effect on earth. Some occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, hydro fluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons.

Hazardous Waste

Discarded material which, because of its inherent nature and quantity, requires special disposal techniques to avoid crating health hazards, nuisances or environmental pollution. Hazardous waste can physically be solid, liquid, semi-solid or gaseous.

La Niña

La Niña is an extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs less frequently than El Niño and is its climatic opposite. It occurs when easterly trade winds in the tropics strengthen, intensifying the up-welling of cold waters off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. The effects of La Niña are strongest during the Northern Hemisphere winter, and include abundant snowfall from the interior of British Columbia to the Great Lakes region.

Ozone

Ozone is a naturally occurring gas, formed from normal oxygen, that protects the earth by filtering out ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Most of the world's ozone is concentrated in the stratosphere, 10-50 kilometres above the earth's surface.

Pollution (Industry)

Any substance that is present in or has been introduced into the environment and has harmful or unpleasant effects. Pollution comes in many forms, and may be present in air, land, water, or organisms. Although some pollution is from natural sources, most is produced by human activities.

Pollution (Ocean)

Any substance introduced into the ocean that has unpleasant or harmful effects. Although ocean pollution often comes from direct sources, such as sewage or industrial liquid waste emitted by sewage treatment plants, industries, septic tanks, or waste dumped by oceangoing vessels, it may also fall out of the atmosphere or seep in from surrounding land.

Pollution (Water)

Any substance introduced into water or a body of water that has unpleasant or harmful effects. Although water pollution often comes from direct sources, such as effluent emitted into lakes and rivers by industries, it may also fall out of the atmosphere or seep in from surrounding land.

Pollution Prevention

Pollution prevention refers to the use of processes, practices, materials, products or energy that avoid or minimize the creation of pollutants and waste, and reduce the overall risk to human health or the environment.

Sustainable Development

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." In other words, development is essential to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life. At the same time, development must be based on the efficient and environmentally responsible use of all of society's scarce resources - natural, human, and economic.

Waste Management

Disposal, processing, controlling, recycling, and reusing the solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes of plants, animals, humans, and other organisms. It includes control within a closed ecological system to maintain a habitable environment. Some of the waste materials involved are hazardous while others are simply so voluminous that their permanent disposal becomes a problem.

Water Conservation

Water conservation means reducing water usage or using water more efficiently, in order to reduce pollution and health risks, lower water costs, and extends the useful life of the existing supply and waste-treatment facilities.

Water Quality

The quality of water as determined by its chemical and bacterial composition. To ensure the safety of drinking water in Canada, maximum allowable limits exist for all potentially harmful contaminants.

Wetlands

Wetlands are land where the water table is at, near or above the surface, or which is saturated for a long enough period to create such features as wet-altered soils and water-tolerant vegetation. They include bogs, fens, marshes, swamps and shallow open water. Wetlands are threatened by human development and water pollution.

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