Category:Dictionary
From Indian River Lagoon Project
Indian River Lagoon Dictionary uses text and multimedia to describe words and phrases commonly found in Indian River Lagoon documents and discussions. This multimedia dictionary contains a glossary of terms and definitions, and a list of abbreviations.
Indian River Lagoon Glossary
The IRL Glossary currently contains over 250 terms and definitions. The glossary can be viewed using a word index, searchable table, or printable vocabulary list.
Glossary Index
Glossary Index pages display the vocabulary words in a compact text view. Select a letter to view an index page.
Glossary Table
Indian River Lagoon Glossary displays the entire glossary in a dynamic table with search.
Indian River Lagoon Glossary
| Term | Definition | |
|---|---|---|
| Term | Definition | |
| abiotic factors | non-living characteristics of a habitat or ecosystem that affect organisms' life processes. | |
| adaptation | a behavior or physical trait that evolved by natural selection and increases an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in a specific environment. | |
| aeration | The process of exposing water to air, allowing air and water to mix and water to absorb the gasses in air. | |
| aerobic | with air, oxygen. | |
| algae | a simple, nonflowering, and typically aquatic plant of a large group that includes the seaweeds and many single-celled forms. | |
| anadromous | fish that live their adult lives in the ocean but move into freshwater streams to reproduce or spawn. | |
| anerobic | without air, no oxygen. | |
| anthropogenic | arising from human activity. | |
| Association of National Estuary Programs | Association of National Estuary Programs (ANEP) works with the EPA's National Estuary Program (NEP) to restore and protect estuaries of significant importance. | |
| backshore | That part of the beach that is usually dry, being reached only by the highest tides, and by extension, a narrow strip of relatively flat coast bordering the sea.
| |
| baffle box | An underground stormwater management device that uses barriers (or baffles) to slow the flow of untreated stormwater, allowing particulates to settle in the box before the stormwater is released into the environment. | |
| bank | Edge of a cut or fill; the margin of the watercourse; an elevation of the seafloor located on a continental shelf or an island shelf and over which the depth of water is relatively shallow but sufficient for safe surface navigation (reefs or shoals, dangerous to surface navigation may arise above the general depths of a bank). | |
| bar-built estuary | areas where sandbars form parallel to the shore, partly enclosing the water behind them as the sandbars become islands. | |
| barrier island | A long, narrow, sandy island that is above high tide and parallel to the shore that commonly has dunes, vegetated zones, and swampy terrains extending lagoonward from the beach. | |
| Basin Management Action Plan | A Basin Management Action Plan, or BMAP, is a comprehensive set of site-specific strategies to reduce or eliminate pollutant loadings and restore particular waterbodies to health. | |
| bathymetry | Science of measuring water depths (usually in the ocean) in order to determine bottom topography.
| |
| beach berm | Nearly horizontal portion of the beach or backshore formed by the deposit of materials by wave action. Some beaches have no berms, others have one or several. | |
| beach | Zone of unconsolidated material that extends landward from the low water line to the place where there is marked changes in material or physiographic form, or to the line of permanent vegetation (usually the effective limit of storm waves). A beach includes foreshore and backshore. | |
| benthos | bottom-dwelling flora and fauna; from tiniest microbenthos (bacteria) to medium-sized meiobenthos (nematode worms) to the highly visible macrobenthos (clams, polychaete worms). | |
| berm | Nearly horizontal portion of a beach or backshore having an abrupt fall and formed by wave deposition of material and marking the limit of ordinary high tides. | |
| biodiversity | the number and variety of living things in an environment. | |
| biofilter | living material or an organism that captures and biologically degrades pollutants. | |
| biogeochemical | relating to or denoting the cycle in which chemical elements and simple substances are transferred between living systems and the environment. | |
| biosphere | the part of the world in which life can exist; living organisms and their environment. | |
| biota | the animal and plant life of a particular region, habitat, or geological period. | |
| biotic | of or having to do with life or living organisms; organic. | |
| boat | A boat is any vessel or conveyance that floats on or operates on the water and is under 197 feet (60 meters) length overall (LOA). A boat may be used for pleasure, commercial, or residential purposes. Boat is synonymous with small craft in marine use. | |
| brackish | brackish water occurs in areas, usually estuaries and lagoons, where salt water oceans and fresh water rivers mix together. | |
| causeway | a raised road or track across low or wet ground. | |
| centralized wastewater treatment system | A managed system consisting of collection sewers and a single treatment plant used to collect and treat wastewater from an entire service area. Traditionally, such a system has been called a publicly owned treatment works | |
| channel | a dredged passageway within a coastal bay that allows maritime navigation. | |
| chlorophyll | a green pigment found in algae, plants and other organisms that carry on photosynthesis; enables plants to absorb energy from light. | |
| Citizen Oversight Committee | The Citizen Oversight Committee (COC) oversees the Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) program in Brevard County. | |
| Clean Water Act | The Clean Water Act is a 1977 amendment to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, which set the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants to waters of the United States. | |
| coast | General region of indefinite width that extends from the sea inland to the first major change in terrain features | |
| coastal zone | coastal waters and adjacent shorelands including islands, inter-tidal areas, salt marshes, wetlands, and beaches. | |
| coliform bacteria | A group of bacteria predominantly inhabiting the intestines of humans or other warm-blooded animals, but also occasionally found elsewhere. Used as an indicator of human fecal contamination. | |
| commercial fishing | fishing for a commercial purpose, i.e. to sell the catch | |
| Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan | The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) identifies a region's priority environmental issues and the actions needed to solve them. | |
| condensation | the process in which water vapor changes into liquid water (such as dew, fog, or cloud droplets). | |
| conservation | careful preservation and protection of ecological processes and biodiversity of the environment. | |
| contamination | an undesirable element, impure or unclean, something that is not supposed to be there (such as oil or insecticides in water). | |
| cove | A small, narrow sheltered bay or recess in an estuary, often inside a larger embayment | |
| craft | Craft are any vessel or conveyance that operate in a fluid medium or a vacuum. Thus, boats are craft; aircraft are craft; and spaceships, spacecraft, and space capsules are craft. When applied to vessels or conveyances that float on the water, a craft is any boat or ship of any size or type and of any use. | |
| crustacean | anthropods having hard-shelled bodies and jointed ligaments such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters. | |
| current | large-scale circulation of water caused by thermodynamics and winds. | |
| dam | a barrier constructed to hold back water and raise its level, forming a reservoir used to generate electricity or as a water supply. | |
| decompose | to decay or rot; to break down or separate into smaller or simpler components. | |
| decomposer | an organism that feeds on and breaks down dead plant or animal matter, thus making organic nutrients available to the ecosystem. | |
| decomposition | the process of decaying or rotting; breaking down or separating a substance into smaller or simpler components. |
Abbreviations
Abbreviations displays the complete IRL Abbreviations List.
New Abbreviations
| Abb | Term | |
|---|---|---|
| Abb | Term | |
| EPA | Environmental Protection Agency | |
| NEPA | National Environmental Policy Act | |
| RAP | reasonable assurance plan | |
| OSTDS | onsite sewage treatment and disposal system | |
| CWA | Clean Water Act | |
| IRLON | Indian River Lagoon Observatory Network | |
| IRLO | Indian River Lagoon Observatory | |
| DEP | Florida Department of Environmental Protection | |
| FAU | Florida Atlantic University | |
| IRLNEP | Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program | |
| NOAA | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | |
| ANEP | Association of National Estuary Programs | |
| FWC | Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission | |
| NWLON | National Water Level Observation Network | |
| SWMP | System Wide Monitoring Program | |
| SWIM | Surface Water Improvement and Management Act | |
| NPDES | National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System | |
| NERR | National Estuarine Research Reserve System | |
| MLAP | Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve | |
| EPA | Environmental Protection Agency | |
| MRC | Marine Resources Council | |
| IRLRI | Indian River Lagoon Research Institute | |
| BMAP | Basin Management Action Plan | |
| LOBO | Land-Ocean Biogeochemical Observatory | |
| SJRWMD | Saint Johns River Water Management District | |
| NWR | National Wildlife Refuge | |
| FIT | Florida Institute of Technology | |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center | |
| NASA | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | |
| NEP | National Estuary Program | |
| SOIRL | Save Our Indian River Lagoon | |
| DOI | Department of Interior | |
| COC | Citizen Oversight Committee | |
| TMDL | total maximum daily load | |
| CCMP | Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan | |
| FWS | United States Fish and Wildlife Service | |
| HAB | harmful algae bloom |
Subcategories
This category has the following 2 subcategories, out of 2 total.
A
- Abbreviations (37 P)
G
- Glossary (248 P)
