Flora and Fauna
This food comprises 99 percent of a giant panda’s diet.
What is bamboo?
Fact: Land clearing and habitat destruction in China, the giant panda’s native home, is causing a big drop in its traditional food supply. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. It releases 30% more oxygen into the atmosphere and absorbs more CO2 compared to other plants.
The Grand Canyon is located in this state.
What is Arizona?
Fact: The Grand Canyon is 277 miles in length and became a National Park in 1919. The rock found at the bottom of the Grand Canyon (schist) is around 2 billion years old, while the rock found on the upper rim (limestone) is around 230 million years old. The river that runs through the canyon in the Colorado River.
This is the deepest ocean in the world.
What is the Pacific Ocean?
Fun Fact: The deepest part is called the 'challenger deep', at 36,200 feet deep.
This weather event swept Dorothy and her house from Kansas to the Land of Oz.
What is a tornado?
Fact: Tornadoes form when warm humid air collides with cold, dry air. The denser cold air is pushed over the warm air, usually producing thunderstorms. The warm air rises through the colder air, causing an updraft which creates the funnel shape. Wind speeds can reach 250 miles and hour.
A gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy which causes radiation from the planet's atmosphere to warm the planet's surface to a temperature above what it would be without this gas.
What is a greenhouse gas (or types of greenhouse gases, i.e. carbon dioxide, methane, CFCs, etc.)
The fastest land animal can run between 65-75 mph.
What is the cheetah?
Fact: A majority of the current cheetah population lives in Sub-Saharan Africa where they roam open grassy Savannah plains and open forests. They hunt during the day to avoid competition from other predators.
The Great Barrier Reef is located off the coast of this continent.
What is Australia?
Fact: The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest reef system. It has over 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres.
This biome is located on many continents such as South America and Asia. It is the most diverse biome, and is home to animals such as sloths, jaguars, and monkeys.
What is the rainforest?
Fun Fact: They once covered 14% of the Earth's land area, but by 1991 over half had been destroyed.
A category five hurricane that made landfall on Florida and Louisiana in August of 2005, causing catastrophic damage, particularly in the city of New Orleans.
What is Hurricane Katrina?
Fun Fact: It is known as the costliest Atlantic hurricane, costing the US $125B in damages.
This process destroys 18.7 million acres of trees each year.
What is deforestation?
The process in which plants turn carbon dioxide into food using energy from the sun.
What is photosynthesis?
Fact: Leaves change color in autumn because the process of photosynthesis slows down.
Lemurs are only native to this country.
What is Madagasgar?
Fact: Madagascar, the isolated island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, has the highest rate of endemism (species found nowhere else) in the world!
Name the desert.
Ganges, Kalahari, Indus, Krakatoa, Denali, Steppes.
What are the Sahara desert, the Gobi desert, and the Kalahari desert?
The worst recorded earthquake occurred on May 22, 1960 in Southern Chile. The magnitude of this earth quake was ____. Hint: it is a decimal number between 9 and 10.
What is 9.5?
Fun Fact: Earthquakes occur when there is a sudden slip of the tectonic plates at en earth fault. Seismometers are used to measure the magnitude of an earthquake.
A species that has been categorized as very likely to become extinct in the near future. This species has been declining in population and is placed on the 'red list'.
What is an endangered species?
The largest animal to ever have inhabit the earth.
What is the blue whale?
Fact: They weigh about 198 US tons and reach a length of 98 feet. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant and their hearts as much as a car, yet they survive by eating a diet of tiny plankton.
The archipelago Charles Darwin visited in 1835, whose unique species prompted him to formulate his theory of evolution
What are the Galapagos Islands?
These large animals previously roamed the grassland biome, an area in which vegetation is dominated by grasses, by the millions. During the 1800s, settlers in North America began to kill them for various reasons.
What are bisons?
The highest temperature recorded on Earth (within 5 degrees).
What is 134 degrees Fahrenheit?
Fun Fact: This occurred on July 10, 1913 at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, CA.
The process in which the ocean absorbs about 30% of the carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere, leading to a reduction in the pH of the ocean.
What is ocean acidification?
These are the largest and most diverse groups of organisms on the earth.
What are insects?
Fact: Scientists have documented nearly 1 million species of insects but it is believed the actual number might actually exceed 20 million! Insects are important waste decomposers and food sources for many animals. Even though they are very abundunt, insect populations are rapidly declining due to climate change.
This Canadian city gave its name to the 1987 world agreement on protection of the ozone layer.
What is Montreal?
Fact: The Montreal Protocol is a global agreement to phase out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons . The stratospheric ozone layer filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation, which is associated with an increased prevalence of skin cancer and cataracts, reduced agricultural productivity, and disruption of marine ecosystems.
The coldest biome that has the shortest growing season. Its vegetation is generally not edible and the subsoil is permafrost.
What is tundra?
An irregularly occurring complex series of climatic changes affecting the equatorial specific region every few years. It is characterized by the appearance of unusually warm and nutrient poor water.
What is El Nino?
A nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986 at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
What is Chernobyl?
Fun Fact: It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history.