Nature tourism (Nature-based tourism): Ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas

Negative feedback loop: Situation in which a change in a certain direction provides information that causes a system to change less in that direction. This is a common regulatory mechanism and is widely used in animals to control hormone levels in the blood. For example, the hormones that control ovulation in humans are on a negative feedback loop.

Nitrogen fixation: The process of chemically converting nitrogen gas (N₂) from the air into compounds, such as nitrates (NO₃), nitrites (NO₂) or ammonia (NH₃), that can be used by plants in building amino acids and other nitrogen-containing organic molecules.

Nitrogen cycle: Cyclic movement of nitrogen in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment.

Nonbiodegradable substances: Not able to be consumed and/or broken down by biological organisms. Nonbiodegradable substances include plastics, aluminum, and many chemicals used in industry and agriculture. Particularly dangerous are nonbiodegradable chemicals that are also toxic and tend to accumulate in organisms.

Nonrenewable resource: Resource that exists in a fixed amount (sock) in various places in the earth’s crust and has the potential for renewal only by geological, physical, and chemical processes taking place over hundreds of millions to billions of years. Examples are copper, aluminum, coal and oil. We classify these resources as exhaustible because we are extracting and using them at a much faster rate than they were formed.

Nutrient: Any food or element an organism must take in to live, grow or reproduce. Plant: an essential element in a particular ion or molecule that can be absorbed and used by the plant. For example, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and phosphorus are essential elements; carbon dioxide, water, nitrate (NO₃), and phosphate (PO₄) are respective nutrients. Animal: materials such as protein, vitamins, and minerals that are required for growth, maintenance, and repair of the body and also materials such as carbohydrates that are required for energy.

Open system: A system, such as a living organism, in which both matter and energy are exchanged between the system and the environment.

Optimum sustainable population: The number of animals which will result in the maximum productivity of the population or the species, keeping in mind the carrying capacity of the habitat and the health of the ecosystem.

Organic: 1. All living things, and products that are uniquely produced by living things, such as wood, leather and sugar; 2. All chemical compounds or molecules, natural or synthetic, that contain carbon atoms as an integral part of heir structure.

Organism: Any living system (such as animal, plant, fungus or micro-organism). In at least some form all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homiostasis as a stable whole. An organism may either be unicellular (single-celled) or be composed of, as in humans, many billions of cells grouped into special tissues and organisms. The term multicellular (many-celled) describes any organism made up of more that one cellar.

Overburden: Layer of soil and rock overlying a mineral deposit, removed during surface mining.

Overconsumption: Situation in which some people consume much more than they need at the expense of those who cannot meet their basic needs, and at the expense of earth’s present and future life-support systems for humans and other forms of life.

Paleoecology: The study of ancient ecosystems. Paleoecologists use data from such sources as tree rings, geologic deposits, fossils (pollen is a particularly popular tool), and coral bores to reconstruct the climate and ecology or ancient ecosystems.

Palaeogeography (also spelled paleogeography): The study of what the geography was in times past. It is most often used about the physical lamdscape, although nothing excludes its use in reference to the human or cultural environment. If the topic is landforms it could also be called paleogeomorphology.

Permafrost: Soil at or below the freezing point of water (0⁰ C or 32⁰ F) for two or more years. Most permafrost is located in high latitudes (i.e.,lay in close proximity to the North and South poles).Permafrost accounts for 0.022% of total water and exists in 24% of exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Physiographic region: A portion of the Earth’s surface with a common topography and common morphology.

Pioneer species: First hardy, often xenophytic, species (often microbes, mosses, and lichens) that begin colonizing a site as the first stage of ecological succession.

Plants: Living organisms belonging to the kingdom plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses and green algae. The scientific study of plants, known as botany, has identified about 350,000 extant species of plants, defined as seed plants, bryophytes, fern and fern allies. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are flowering and 18,000 bryophytes. Green plants, sometimes called viridiplantae, obtain most of their energy from sun via a process called photosynthesis.

Plate tectonics: A scientific theory which describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. The theory builds on the older concepts of continental drift, developed during the first decades of the 20th century (one of the most famous advocates was Alfred Wegener), and was accepted by the majority of the Geoscientific community when the concepts of seafloor spreading were developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Polar ice cap (polar ice sheet): A high-latitude region of a planet or moon that is covered in ice. Ice caps form because high-latitude regions receive less energy in the form of solar radiation than equatorial regions, resulting in lower surface temperatures.

Pollutant: A particular chemical or form of energy that can adversely affect the health, survival or activities of humans or other living organisms.

Population: A group within a single species, the individuals of which can and do freely interbreed. Breeding between populations of the same species is less common because of differences in location, culture, nationality and so on.

Population change: An increase or decrease in the size of a population. It is equal to (birth + immigration) – (deaths + emigration).

Population density: Number of organisms in a particular population found in a specific area.

Population dispersion: General pattern in which the members of a population are arranged throughout its habitat.

Population distribution: Variation of population density over a particular geographical area. For example, a country has a high population in its urban areas and a much lower population density in rural areas.

Positive feedback loop: Situation in which a change in a certain direction provides information that causes a system to change further in the same direction. This can lead to a runaway or vicious cycle.

Potentially renewable resource: Resource that theoretically can last indefinitely without reducing the available supply, either because it is replaced more rapidly through natural processes than are nonrenewable resources or because it is potentially inexhaustible (solar energy). Examples are trees in forests, grasses in grasslands, wild animals, fresh surface water in lakes and streams, most groundwater, fresh air and fertile soil. If such a resource is used faster than it is replenished, it can be depleted and converted into a nonrenewable resource.

Pricing: Decision-making process of ascertaining what price to charge for a given tour, once total costs are known Prices involves determining the markup, studying the competition, and evaluating the tour value for the price to be charged; function performed by the operations manager.

Primary producer: An organism, such as a plant or microbe, that makes its own food and forms the bottom-most tier in a trophic system. Primary producers are the basis of the food web in most ecosystems (the exceptions are open system communities based entirely on scavenging nutrients flushed into the system from elsewhere, such as some deep sea communities – though even in these cases the food flushed into the system comes from another system where primary producers are the basis of the trophic pyramid). Primary producers are able to convert abiotic raw materials into biotic tissue, either by capturing the sun’s energy through photosynthesis (plants) or by harnessing the energy in chemical bonds through chemosynthesis (some microbes).

Pyramid of biomass: Diagram representing the biomass (total dry weight of living organisms) that can be supported at each trophic level in a food web. The bottom of the pyramid is comprised of primary producers, while the peak of the pyramid is topped by one (or at most a small handful) apex predator. Humans are abnormal in that we cross all ecosystems and biomass pyramids, and in almost every one (excepting the polar caps and deepest of oceanic environments) we are the dominant apex predator.

Pyramid of energy flow: Also called a trophic pyramid. Diagram representing the flow of energy through each trophic level in a food chain or food web. With each energy transfer, only a small part (typically 10%) of the usable energy entering one trophic levels transferred to the organisms at the next trophic level, with the remaining 90% lost as heat or expended in metabolic processes.

Quaternary science: An interdisciplinary field of study focusing on the Quaternary period, which encompasses the last 2.6 million years. The field studies the last ice age and the recent inerstadial the Holocene and uses proxy evidence to reconstruct the past environments during this period to infer changes that have occurred.

Restoration: Returning existing habitats to a known past state, or to an approximation of the natural condition, through repairing degradation, removing introduced species, and revegetating using native locally occurring species.

Resource economics: The study of natural ecosystem services and the economic values, in terms real-world currencies and capital valuations of those services. One of the goals of resource economics is to assist policy makers in performing the cost-benefit analysis of various plans of action or inaction with regard to the natural world. The value of an ecosystem service is determined by calculating what it would cost to perform the same service artificiallyif the naturally occurring service were disrupted or destroyed.

Resource partitioning: Process of dividing up resources in an ecosystem so that species with similar requirements (overlapping ecological niches) use the same scarce resources at different times, in different ways or in different places.

Rock: A naturally occurring soil aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. The Earth’s outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Metamorphic rock is the result of the transformation of an existing rock type in a process called metamorphism, which means “change in form”. The scientific study of rock is called petrology and petrology is an essential component of geology.

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