Term
| Energy-capturing technology |
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Definition
| refers to how people apply human labor and technology to natural resources. |
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Term
| Features of the environment |
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Definition
| consist of sunlight, rainfall, soil quality, forests, and mineral deposits. |
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Term
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Definition
| materials such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas derived from decomposed remains of prehistoric organisms over a period of hundreds of millions of years. |
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Term
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Definition
| is concerned with cultural and biological responses that affect or are affected by the survival, reproduction, and health and spatial distribution of human populations. |
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Term
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Definition
| the upper limit on production and population in a given environment under a given technology, without degrading the resource base |
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Term
| The point of diminishing returns |
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Definition
| the point at which the amount of food produced per unit of effort begins to fall. |
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Term
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Definition
| an increase in labor output (using more people, working longer hours, or working faster) to produce greater yields without expanding the amount of land used. |
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Term
| Maximum sustainable yield |
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Definition
| the level of production immediately prior to the point of diminishing returns. |
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Term
| Liebig's law of the minimum |
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Definition
| a population will be limited by critical resources that are in the shortest supply. |
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Term
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Definition
| hunters or collectors will pursue or harvest only those species that give them the maximum energy return for the time spent foraging. |
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Term
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Definition
| requires large stretched of fallow land because long periods are necessary for the soil to be replenished. |
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Term
| Plow agriculture vs. slash-and burn agriculture |
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Definition
| Plow agriculture is more labor intensive than slash-and-burn agriculture but requires less farmland to support a given population (also, fields are left fallow for only a year in plow agriculture as manure is used to enrich the soil). |
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Term
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Definition
| yields more calories per unit of land than any other preindustrial mode of production (when it is under favorable circumstances of course). |
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Term
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Definition
| people who raise domesticated animals and who do not depend on hunting, gathering, or planting their own crops for a significant portion of their diets. They use their animals for milk, blood, wool, and traction and get their nutrients by trading. |
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Term
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Definition
| a form of pastoralism organized around the seasonal migration of livestock between mountain pastures in warm seasons and lower altitudes the rest of the year. |
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Term
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Definition
| is often associated with migrations that follow established routes over vast distances. |
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Term
| Human Ecology (or cultural ecology) |
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Definition
| the study of the relationship between the activities of human populations and various features of the physical environment. |
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Term
| The evolution of energy production (9) |
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Definition
| Food, fire, animal power, charcoal fire, wind power, coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear energy... |
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Term
| Evolution of food production (5) |
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Definition
| Hunting and gathering/foraging, horticultural, pastoralist, agricultural, industrial. |
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