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Abiotic nonliving, often applied to the nonliving parts of an ecosystem.
Acid Rain - an unnatural type of rain which occurs when sulfur and nitrogen compounds combine with raindrops to create nitric and sulphuric acids. This causes great damage to the environment and to man-made structures, especially concrete. It is common in the northeastern portion of North America, as the prevailing westerly winds carry pollution from the American midwest to the northestern United States and the lower portions of Canada. It also occurs downwind of many other industrialized areas of the world.
Algonquin Any of various Native American peoples inhabiting the Ottawa River valley of Quebec and Ontario. The family of languages related to the Ojibwa language spoken by the peoples called Algonquin.
Anadromous A term applied to fish which live their adult lives in the ocean, but travel upstream to spawn in fresh water.
BOD Biological Oxygen Demand. The amount of oxygen consumed by decay and other organic processes in a body of water.
Boundaries A limit, a bound, anything marking a limit.
Browser A computer program which reads Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents, formats them, and displays them on the computer screen.
Canal An artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation.
Cartography The art or technique of making maps or charts.
Charles Pickering An early settler of the Schuylkill River corridor, a compatriot of William Penn.
Chief Tamanend A major leader of the Lenape Indians, who reached a treaty of peace with William Penn and the Quaker colonists of Pennsylvania.
Colliery A coal mine and the associated processing facilities, such as the breaker (for crushing the coal) and sorting machinery.
Communicate To impart to another or others, to give to another, to make known.
Community A society of people having common rights and privileges, or common interests, civil, political, etc. or living under the same laws and regulations.
Confluence The point where two streams flow together.
Constitutes Sets up, establishes. Makes up, forms, composes.
Ecosystem A biological community together with its environment, functioning as a unit.
Fall line A point at which a river makes a sudden drop. A notable example is found in the eastern United States from New York to Alabama in the zone where the major rivers descend from the Appalachian foothills to the Atlantic coastal plain. Here, the fall line is marked by such cities as Trenton, N.J., Philadelphia, Pa., Baltimore, Md., Washington, D.C., Richmond, Va., Raleigh, N.C., Columbia, S.C., and Macon, Ga.
FTP File Transfer Protocol. A standard method of transferring data files from one computer to another.
Food chains and Food Webs: Food chain: A succession of organisms in an ecological community that constitutes a continuation of food energy from one organism to another as each consumes a lower member and in turn is preyed upon by a higher member. Food web: A complex of interrelated food chains in an ecological community. Also called a food cycle.
Geomorphology Geomorphology, from Greek words for earth and form, is the study of landforms and landscapes, particularly from the standpoint of origin. Geomorphology seeks to relate specific landforms to the formative processes that operate in different environments.
Gopher A standard protocol for driving menu-based indexing of computer resources on the Internet.
Habitat Loss An ecological problem caused when changes in the envrionment occur, rendering an area uninhabitable by a given species. That species suffers a "habitat loss".
HTML Hypertext Markup Language. A derivitive of the Standard General Markup Language, used to specify formatting and hyperlinks in hypertext documents.
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol. A standard set of rules for processing hypertext links.
Hydrology The study of the water cycle and the flow of water on and under the surface of the earth.
Hypertext A type of computer-based document which links resources on remote computers. Certain sections of the document are designated as "links" which connect one document to another, allowing the user to view resources on a remote computer by "clicking" on the higlighted link.
Image Map A Hypertext document which takes the form of an image. Different portions of the image are hyperlinks to other WWW documents. By "clicking" on a particular section of the image the user will load the linked document on their computer. An example would be a map of the world which would bring up information about each nation when the user clicked on that nation.
Immigration Entering and settling in a country or region to which one is not native.
Internet A global network of computers, allowing the sharing of data and correspondence.
Lenni Lenape A group of natives of the Americas who lived along the Delaware River Valley, from lower New York to northern Delaware.. They were labeled the "Delaware" by the colonists, after the river alongside which they lived. The phrase "Lenni Lenape" means "Original People" in their language. They were a part of the Algonquin language group, and were under the political influence of the Iroquois Confederation. By and large they were a peaceful people. They were typical hunters and gatherers, although they raised corn, beans, and squash as staples of their diet.
Listserv A mailing list on the Internet, so that a newsworthy piece of information can be passed along to all those interested in a particular subject.
Maple Syrup A sweet syrup made from the sap of the sugar maple. Used as a sweetner by Native Americans.
Minsi Trail A Native American trail which became widely used by early European settlers, and developed into the first colonial road. It connected Philadelphia to Bethlehem and north to the Delaware Water Gap.
Nation A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; a nationality. A relatively large group of people organized under a single, usually independent government; a country.
Paw Paw A deciduous tree of the eastern and southeast United States, having flowers with three sepals, three petals, numerous stamens, and a fleshy, edible fruit. Paw Paws were a common food of eastern Native Americans.
pH Positive Hydrogen ion concentration. A scientific scale use to measure the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid. the scale runs from 0 to 14, with 0 being most acidic, 14 most alkaline, and 7 neutral. Pure water has a pH of 7.
Piedmont An area of shallow, rolling hills formed or lying at the foot of a mountain or mountain range.
Population Dynamics The study of changes in population densities and the underlying biological forces which cause them. It is the basis of all ecological patterns and is also necessary to solve problems of human economy such as biological conservation, pest management, and optimal harvesting of wildlife populations.
Quark A sub-atomic particle, thought to be the simplest of all particles. The quark theory was devised by the physicist Gell-Mann to explain the complex interactions of sub-atomic particles. They were named after a line from James Joyces's novel "Finnegan's Wake", "three quarks for Muster Mark".
Religious Society of Friends A religious sect which originated in 17th century Europe. Perhaps best know as "Quakers". The colony of Pennsylvania in the New World was founded by Quakers seeking to escape religious persecution in England and Wales.
Renewable Resources Resources which can be "harvested" in such and are then repleneshed by the normal operation of natural processes. Timber can be harvested in a renewable fashion, petroleum cannot be. The processes that create new trees operate on a timescale similar to mankind's, while those that create petroleum operate on a geologic timescale.
Schuylkill Navigation A series of canals and slackwater pools that were used to transport goods between Philadelphia and the upper reaches of the Schulykill valley. Much of the traffic on the Navigation consisted of coal and lumber being shipped to downstream markets. Construction was started on the canals in 1816, and traffic continued on the Navigation until the last shipment of coal left Schuylkill Haven in 1888. Sporadic traffic continued on the lower portions of the Navigation into the early years of the twentieth century.
Shad A fish of the genus Alosa, especially the North American species A. sapidissima. These fish are related to the herrings but are unusual in that they live in the ocean but swim up stream to fresh water habitats to spawn. A staple in the diet of the Lenni Lenape natives.
Smelt To melt or fuse (ores) in order to separate the metallic constituents.
Sustainability (Sustainable Development, Sustainable Living) Use of resources in a manner that allows the resources to be replenished by natural systems, as well avoidance of pollution that damages biological systems. Use of resources in such a manner that they will never be exhausted.
Water Cycle Also known as the hydrologic cycle, it is the continual flow of water from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and, after several delays, back to the ocean again.
Watershed A ridge of high land dividing two areas that are drained by different river systems. Also called a waterparting. Also, the region draining into a river, river system, or other body of water.
Web Page A single page of hypertext data, as presented on a computer screen by a "browser" program.
Web Site A number of inter-related "web pages" based at one location and usually dealing with one or a small number of topics.
William Penn Born in 1644, he was a prominent English Quaker and reformer and the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.
World Wide Web (WWW) You are "on it", of course! The WWW is the entire set of Internet-based computer resources which are connected together by "hypertext" links. In essence, any resource of the Internet can be made available to any machine on the network via these hyperlinks. The WWW uses a GUI (grahical user intereface) "browser" to read the hyperlinks and display text, images, graphs. Sound and motion picture resources can also be linked and presented in a "Web Page" document.
Reference: American Heritage Electronic Dictionary.
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