U-shaped pattern
UV bullseye flower pattern
UV exposure
Exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight
UV proportion
UV radiation exposure
Exposure to ultraviolet radiation that increases with elevation and can damage plant tissues
Value, Attitude & Behavior Model
Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water scale
Virgilian
W-band radar
Cloud radar operating at approximately 94 GHz frequency with high sensitivity to cloud particles
WEOC
WNV viremia
Web Service Layer
Weber's Law
A law relating to an animal's ability to differentiate among levels of stimuli, specifically about how animals detect and retrieve information, not how they choose to respond to perceived stimuli
West Nile Virus transmission
Disease transmission cycle involving mosquito vectors, bird hosts, and potential infection of mammals including humans
Whittaker dissimilarity index
β-diversity metric used to quantify interaction turnover between successive weekly networks
Willingness to pay
Wood-Ljungdahl pathway
X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy
Spectroscopic technique that provides information on sulfur redox states and bonding environments for investigating sulfur cycling in natural systems
X-ray fluorescence mapping
Synchrotron-based multiple energy μ-XRF 2D mapping technique for detecting spatial distributions of elements and their oxidation states
X-ray imaging
Imaging technique using X-ray photons with energies in the range of 10²-10⁶ eV to visualize internal structures
Z-linkage
Zahavi's handicap hypothesis
The hypothesis that sexually selected traits are honest signals of individual quality because they impose a cost to the bearer
Zen Ecology
A practice of guided meditation that is intended to lead to insight through open-minded observation of the natural world
[Re]/[Na+]* ratios
abandoned channels
achromatic markings
Black and white markings that lack color information
acid neutralizing capacity
The capacity of water to neutralize acids, indicating buffering ability against acidification
acid rain acidification
Acidification of surface waters due to atmospheric acid deposition from anthropogenic sources
activated control point
activated fraction
active groundwater circulation depth
The depth below which the total annual groundwater flux is a sufficiently small fraction of the annual watershed hydrologic budget that its exclusion from watershed numerical models has a negligible i...
active lodge
activity
adaptive governance
Governance systems that can adjust and respond to changing conditions and challenges
adaptive signal processing
Signal processing algorithms that automatically adjust parameters in response to changing environmental conditions
additive mortality
Mortality from hunting that adds to natural mortality rather than substituting for it, resulting in net population-level effects
additive prediction
Predicting community-level function by summing individual species contributions based on their abundance and per-capita rates
additivity rule
The requirement that the sum of species-area relationships for subgroups should equal the species-area relationship for the entire assemblage
aerial dispersal
Colonization by winged adult insects as an often-cited mode of wetland colonization
aerial predation
Predation on flying insects by birds, bats, or other aerial predators during flight
aerobic fungal and bacterial processing
aerobic polishing
Secondary aerobic treatment using wetland plants to further reduce BOD, nutrients, and remaining contaminants from biochemical reactor effluent
aerobic respiration controls on shale weathering
aerosol layer
Atmospheric layer with elevated concentration of aerosol particles, detectable through lidar backscatter measurements
age-elevation relationship
The relationship between thermochronologic ages and sample elevation used to calculate exhumation rates
age-specific behavior
Behavioral differences between juvenile and adult animals related to different survival priorities and risk tolerance
aggressiveness
agricultural economic water productivity
airflow patterns
Three dimensional air movement patterns within forest stands affected by tree density and canopy structure
algal-heterotroph balance
The relative proportions and functional roles of autotrophic versus heterotrophic organisms in biofilm communities
