Ecosystems
This biome contains plants that are adapted to prevent water loss due to the low average rainfall and high temperatures year-round.
What is a Dessert
Which of the following would be categorized as a cultural ecosystem service of forests?
A. Recreation and scenic areas for tourism
B. Timber and landscape materials
C. Timber and landscape materials
D. Mushroom and plant harvests
E. Soil stabilization and air purification
What is A. Recreation and scenic areas for tourism
In a certain country, the birth rate is high, the death rate is high, and there are many children that are part of the workforce. The country is most likely in which of the following stages of the demographic transition?
What is Stage 1
Two tectonic plates that move away from each other.
What is a divergent plate boundary
Individuals living in cities usually have a __ transportation carbon footprint than individuals living in rural areas.
Which of the following biomes is best characterized as an area that forms the narrow band along the coast that experiences a range of environmental conditions (including daily changes in sunlight, temperature, and water) ?
Intertidal zones
Which of the following would most likely result from the deforestation of large areas of tropical rain forests caused by slash-and-burn agriculture?
A. Increased ozone thinning because of the release of CFCs
B. Decreased acid rain because of the sequestration of SO2
C. Increased global temperature because of the release of CO2
D. Deceased evaporation because of the loss of the tree canopy
What is C. Increased global temperature because of the release of CO2
Which characteristic best supports the claim that Country A is a more developed country and that Country B is a less developed country?
Country A:
Population size: 126 million
Land area: 145,936mi2
Infant mortality rate: 2.0/1,000
Net migration rate: 0.5/1,000
Country B:
Population size: 34 million
Land area: 252,072mi2
Infant mortality rate: 110.6/1,000
Net migration rate: −0.9/1,000
What is Infant mortality rate
Which of the following is a biome found at 30° N and 30° S as seen in the diagram?
Rain forests
Coniferous forests
Tundras
Deserts
What is Deserts
Synthetic fertilizer can provide more targeted __ to the crops. While organic fertilizers are more broad.
What is macronutrients
Which of the following pathways indicate how nitrogen is added to the largest nitrogen reservoir?
What is Denitrifying bacteria and volcanic activity
A 163 square-kilometer (km2) small island is found 2,000km from the mainland. A second, larger, 230,000km2 island is found 1,000km from the mainland. Based on the theory of island biogeography, which of the following statements is most likely true about the small island when compared with the large island?
A. The rate of immigration is lower for the small island than for the large island.
B. The small island has niches that are more like the mainland than the large island.
C. The small island has more available resources than the large island.
D. The rate of species extinction is lower on the small island than on the large island.
What is A. The rate of immigration is lower for the small island than for the large island.
Cycads are gymnosperms that were diverse and abundant during the Mesozoic era. Extant species of cycads share many traits with those from the Mesozoic era. Cycads bear cones, are long-lived with slow growth rates, show late reproductive maturity, and have very few offspring. Based on this description, the are ___ strategists and have a Type __ survivorship curve.
What is K-strategists with a Type I survivorship curve.
El Niño and La Niña are natural phenomena associated with changing water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. The occurrence of these events can result in changes in global weather and ocean circulation patterns.
Which of the following changes in eastern Pacific Ocean food webs is typically associated with La Niña events?
Decreased populations of squid
Decreased populations of anchovies
Increased phytoplankton concentrations
Increased famine among sea lions and seals
What is increased phytoplankton concentrations
The most likely impact from clearing mature, forested land and converting it into agricultural land that would be used for cattle grazing on atmospheric CO2
What is increase in concentration
In a given ecosystem, producers convert solar energy into 15,000kcal of chemical energy stored in organic compounds. Which of the following is the most likely amount of energy available to secondary consumers?
What is 150kcal
Study Finds Aardvarks Suffering as African Climate Heats Up
Little is known about Africa’s elusive aardvarks, but new research says they are vulnerable to climate change like many other species.
Hotter temperatures are taking their toll on the aardvark, whose diet of ants and termites is becoming scarcer in some areas because of reduced rainfall.
Drought in the Kalahari Desert killed five out of six aardvarks that were being monitored for a year, as well as 11 others in the area.
The aardvarks’ body temperatures plummeted during the night because they were not getting enough energy from diminished food sources. They tried to conserve energy by looking for insects during the warmer daytime, but their efforts to adapt could not save them.
Researchers said some birds, reptiles and other animals use aardvark burrows to escape extreme temperatures, reproduce, and hide from predators. They could have fewer refuges available if aardvark populations shrink because of rising temperatures, they said.
The aardvark, which lives in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, is identified as an animal of “least concern” on an international “red list” of threatened species. There are no indications that the population is changing significantly in southern Africa, though it is speculated that numbers may be declining elsewhere because of habitat destruction, the bushmeat trade and other factors.
“Study Finds aardvarks suffering as African climate heats up,” Christopher Torchia, Phys.org, July 31, 2017.
Which of the following best identifies the author’s claim?
A. Aardvarks are shifting the location of their territories as a response to global climate change.
B. Aardvarks are a keystone species and their decline could have a trophic cascade effect on the ecosystem.
C. The loss of aardvarks described in the study was an isolated incident because most aardvark populations are increasing globally.
D. Providing aardvarks with more burrows will help them maintain their body temperature and increase survival rates.
What is B. Aardvarks are a keystone species and their decline could have a trophic cascade effect on the ecosystem.
Raccoons eat a variety of foods and can live in a variety of habitats, including locations near humans. Tiger salamanders eat an abundance of worms and insects and require wetland habitats so they do not dry out. Raccoons are ___, and salamanders are ___.
What is Generalists and specialists
Students want to determine the impact of soil erosion from the development of new housing. They plan to measure the density of a species of algae growing along the bottom of a river that flows through their town. The town is built in a heavily forested area, but a large area of trees along the river was recently clear-cut to allow for the construction of a new housing development, which has caused exposed soil to wash into the river. The river flows north to south through the town and is still forested both up- and downstream of the town.
The best control sample for the study would be...
What is a sample of water collected just downstream of the northern forest
This piece of legislation uses trade rules to protect commercially valuable species.
What is CITES
Five different species of warblers, seed-eating birds, live in the same species of conifer trees. All of the birds migrate to coniferous forests during the summer, and different species reside in different areas in the same tree. They feed on the seeds of the conifer trees, but the different species do not mate with each other.
What is resource partitioning of the seeds reduces competition, and the five different species can live in the same tree.
How do environmental stressors, such as wildfires affect biodiversity in an ecosystem?
What is genetically diverse populations are more likely to survive drastic environmental changes
How does the carrying capacity of the human population change if growth is limited by conditions set forth by the Malthusian theory?
What is... the carrying capacity will decrease, and the human population size will experience a dieback.
Why is understanding a watershed and its boundaries important in designing housing developments along a river?
What is surface water and stormwater runoff will drain downstream within the watershed boundaries
A major environmental problem caused by using the agricultural practice of tilling.
What is eutrophication from excessive fertilizer use