Sustainability Principles and Practice
Fourth Edition
Anthropocene
An informal term for the most recent period in Earth’s history during which human activities have had significant impact on climate and ecosystems.
carrying capacity
The maximum number of individuals that a given environment can support indefinitely.
complex adaptive system
A self-organizing system of interacting elements, regulated by feedbacks and resulting in emergent behavior.
ecological footprint
A measure of the demand a person, population, or activity places on nature in order to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, usually expressed as acres or hectares of productive land and water.
ecosystem
A system of living organisms interacting with each other and their physical environment.
ecosystem services
The essential benefits people obtain from ecosystem processes.
emergence
The spontaneous appearance of novel properties at the level of a system that cannot be predicted by knowledge of the system’s parts.
equilibrium
The state of a system in which opposing influences are balanced and in which the system will remain unless disturbed.
feedback
A circular mechanism in which the result of an initial process triggers changes in a second process that in turn influence the initial process.
monoculture
The planting of a single crop over a large area.
natural capital
Environmental resources and ecosystem services that make all economic activity possible.
niche
The role an organism plays in its ecosystem.
overshoot
The amount by which resource consumption and waste production exceed nature’s capacity to create new resources and absorb waste.
resilience
The capacity of a system to accommodate change and still retain the same function and structure.
sustainability
The state in which the needs of all members of the biosphere are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
sustainability science
An interdisciplinary field of study of the interactions between natural, social, and human systems and with how those interactions impact sustainable development.
sustainable development
Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
system
An integrated whole made of interconnected parts.
tipping point
The critical transition at which accumulated small changes a cause a system to shift abruptly and irreversibly into a new state.