Trophic Thunder
Grass to grasshopper to frog to snake to hawk: each step in this sequence is called one of these. What is a trophic level?
What is a trophic level?
These engineered disposal sites have clay or plastic liners, leachate collection systems, and methane vents — a long way from the open dumps of the past.
What is a (sanitary) landfill?
The Ogallala, beneath the U.S. Great Plains, is a famous example of this underground water-bearing rock layer — currently being depleted faster than it can recharge.
What is an aquifer?
In 1986, a botched safety test at this Ukrainian nuclear plant caused a reactor explosion, an exclusion zone still active today, and the worst nuclear accident in history.
What is Chernobyl?
Cacti, low precipitation, extreme temperature swings between day and night, and adaptations like CAM photosynthesis define this dry biome.
What is the desert?
Roughly this percentage of energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next — the rest is lost as heat through metabolism.
What is 10 percent?
When water percolates through trash and picks up dissolved contaminants, it becomes this toxic liquid that landfill liners are designed to contain.
What is leachate?
Energy-intensive and expensive, this process removes salt from seawater — Saudi Arabia and Israel rely on it heavily, and California is starting to.
What is desalination?
In 1984, a Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked methyl isocyanate gas over this Indian city, killing thousands overnight and injuring hundreds of thousands.
What is Bhopal?
Permafrost beneath the soil, no trees, a short growing season, and caribou — this biome ringing the Arctic stores massive amounts of carbon that climate change is now releasing.
What is the tundra?
This term — abbreviated NPP — is what's left of a plant's energy production after the plant uses some for its own respiration. It's what's actually available to herbivores.
What is net primary productivity?
This three-step waste treatment process moves sewage through primary settling, secondary biological breakdown by bacteria, and tertiary chemical polishing before discharge.
What is (sewage / wastewater) treatment?
Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, this Central Asian water body shrank to a fraction of its size after the Soviets diverted its feeder rivers to irrigate cotton.
What is the Aral Sea?
In 2010, this BP-operated rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and releasing roughly 4 million barrels of crude oil over 87 days.
What is Deepwater Horizon?
Dominated by conifers like spruce and fir, this is the largest terrestrial biome on Earth — stretching across Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia. Also called the boreal forest.
What is the taiga?
Bring back the wolves to Yellowstone, and the elk stop overgrazing the willows, and the beavers come back, and the streams change course. Name this top-down phenomenon.
What is a trophic cascade?
Old phones, dead laptops, and busted TVs — this fastest-growing category of waste often gets shipped to developing nations, where lead and mercury leach into soil and water.
What is e-waste (electronic waste)?
Thanks to overallocation and prolonged drought, this iconic American river — the lifeblood of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and L.A. — barely reaches its delta in Mexico anymore.
What is the Colorado River?
In 1978, this Niagara Falls neighborhood — built atop a buried chemical waste dump — became the first federal environmental disaster declaration and prompted the creation of Superfund.
What is Love Canal?
Hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters define this fire-adapted biome found in coastal California, the Mediterranean, and parts of Australia — home to species that actually need fire to germinate.
What is the chaparral?
Despite covering most of the planet, the open ocean has surprisingly low values of this measurement because of limited nutrients — coastal estuaries and coral reefs have much higher values.
What is (net or gross) primary productivity?
This list of "the three R's" appears in order of environmental priority — and most people skip straight to the third one, which is actually the least effective.
What are reduce, reuse, recycle?
Used dishwater and shower runoff fall into this category of household wastewater — distinct from the "black" kind that comes from toilets.
What is graywater?
In 1989, this Exxon tanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound, dumping 11 million gallons of oil and devastating sea otter and seabird populations for decades.
What is the Exxon Valdez?
Acacia trees, seasonal rainfall, and famously photogenic megafauna — wildebeest, lions, elephants — characterize this tropical grassland biome.
What is the savanna?