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Landfill

Land waste disposal site in which waste is generally spread in thin layers, compacted, and covered with a fresh layer of soil each day.

Lapse rate

The change in temperature with altitude in the atmosphere.

Lava

Any molten material that is extrusive or volcanic, or the rock that forms from a molten extrusive.

Law of Demand

People purchase more of any particular good or service as its relative price falls; they purchase less as its relative price rises.

Law of Supply

At higher relative prices, the quantity supplied of a good will increase; at lower relative prices, smaller quantities will be supplied.

Leaching

The process by which chemicals are dissolved and transported through the soil by percolating water. Pesticides and nutrients from fertilizers or manures may leach from fields, areas of spills, or feedlots and thereby enter surface water, groundwater, or soil. Leaching from concentrated sources such as waste sites and loading areas vulnerable to spills can be prevented by paving or containment with a liner of relatively impermeable material designed to keep leachate inside a treatment pond, landfill, or a tailings disposal area. Liner materials include plastic and dense clay.

Legumes

A family of plants, including many valuable food, forage and cover species, such as peas, beans, soybeans, peanuts, clovers, alfalfas, sweet clovers, lespedezas, vetches, and kudzu. Sometimes referred to as nitrogen-fixing plants, they can convert nitrogen from the air to build up nitrogen in the soil. Legumes are an important rotation crop because of their nitrogen-fixing property.

Leisure

All uses of time in which ones labor services are not exchanged for money. The uses of everyone's time can be divided between employment and leisure.

Liabilities

The debts of a person or business.

Lifetime (Atmospheric)

The lifetime of a greenhouse gas refers to the approximate amount of time it would take for the anthropogenic increment to an atmospheric pollutant concentration to return to its natural level (assuming emissions cease) as a result of either being converted to another chemical compound or being taken out of the atmosphere via a sink. This time depends on the pollutant's sources and sinks as well as its reactivity. The lifetime of a pollutant is often considered in conjunction with the mixing of pollutants in the atmosphere; a long lifetime will allow the pollutant to mix throughout the atmosphere. Average lifetimes can vary from about a week (sulfate aerosols) to more than a century (CFCs, carbon dioxide). See residence time, greenhouse gas.

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