Ecology and the enviroment

Question 1

What’s a habitat?

Answer 1

A place where organisms live

Question 2

What’s a population?

Answer 2

All the organisms of one species in a habitat

Question 3

What’s a community?

Answer 3

All the different species in a habitat

Question 4

What’s an eco-system?

Answer 4

All the organisms living in a particular area, and the non living conditions

Question 5

How to use a quadrat?

Answer 5

Place a 1M square quadrat at a random point
Count all organisms in the quadrat
Multiply to get an estimate for the total area

Question 6

How to make a quadrat more accurate?

Answer 6

Use a bigger quadrat

Question 7

What’s a transect?

Answer 7

When quadrats are out along a line

Question 8

What do food chains show?

Answer 8

What’s eaten by what in a food chain

Question 9

What’s a producer?

Answer 9

Make their own food from the sun, and eaten by primary consumers

Question 10

What eat producers?

Answer 10

Primary consumers

Question 11

What eat Primary consumers?

Answer 11

Secondary consumers

Question 12

What eats the secondary consumer?

Answer 12

Tertiary consumer

Question 13

What’s each level in the food web called?

Answer 13

A trophic level

Question 14

How would you show trophic levels?

Answer 14

Pyramid of numbers, (may not always be a pyramid)

Question 15

What’s a pyramid of biomass?

Answer 15

The mass of living material at that stage of the food chain (always look like a pyramid)

Question 16

What do pyramids of energy transfer show?

Answer 16

The energy transferred through each trophic level, always pyramid shaped

Question 17

How is energy transferred through the trophic levels?

Answer 17

Goes through the levels, but each time a little bit of energy is lost via various manners

Question 18

What do food webs shows?

Answer 18

How food chains are linked, and if you took at one species how it would effect the others

Question 19

What’s the water cycle?

Answer 19

Heat from sun makes water evaporate
Water condenses to form clouds
Water falls as precipitation
Cycle restarts

Question 20

What’s the carbon cycle?

Answer 20

Co2 goes into green plants for respiration
Animals eat plants so Carbon compounds stay in them
Animals and plants release CO2 in respiration
When plants and animals die, decomposers release CO2
Products are also burned releasing CO2 into air

Question 21

What percent of Nitrogen is in the air?

Answer 21

78%

Question 22

What’s the Nitrogen cycle?

Answer 22

Plants obtain Nitrogen from the soil and animals obtain it from plants

Question 23

What’s nitrogen fixation?

Answer 23

Turning Nitrogen into Nitrogen compounds which plants can use from the soil

Question 24

How does Nitrogen fixation happen?

Answer 24

Lightning

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria (4 types)

Question 25

What are decomposers?

Answer 25

Break down proteins and urea, and turn them into Ammonia

Question 26

What’s Nitrifying bacteria?

Answer 26

Turns Ammonia into Nitrates

Question 27

What’s Nitrogen fixing bacteria?

Answer 27

Turns atmospheric Nitrogen into Nitrogen compounds

Question 28

What’s denitrifying bacteria?

Answer 28

Turns nitrates back into atmospheric nitrogen

Question 29

How is Carbon Monoxide made?

Answer 29

When fossil fuels are burnt without enough oxygen

Question 30

Why’s carbon monoxide poisonous?

Answer 30

Combines with red blood cells, stopping them carrying oxygen

Question 31

Where is carbon monoxide mainly released from, and how’s it solved?

Answer 31

Car emissions, catalytic converters turn carbon monoxide into CO2

Question 32

How is acid rain caused by Sulphur Dioxide?

Answer 32

When the gas mixes with rainclouds it forms sulphuric acid, falling as acid rain
Main causes for this are Internal combustion engines

Question 33

What does acid rain do?

Answer 33

Ruin a lake’s eco-system

Kills trees

Question 34

What are the greenhouse gases?

Answer 34

Water vapour, Co2 and Methane

Question 35

What’s global warming?

Answer 35

Greenhouses gasses are trapping heat inside the atmosphere creating climate change as the world heats up

Question 36

What’s climate change causing?

Answer 36

Ice caps melting
Flooding
Change in crop growth

Question 37

How does Human activity produce a lot of CO2?

Answer 37

Burning fossil fuels

Cutting down trees which take in CO2

Question 38

How does Human activity produce a lot of Methane?

Answer 38

Rice growing

Cattle Rearing

Question 39

How does Human activity produce a lot of Nitrous oxide?

Answer 39

Released from soils due to fertiliser

Vehicle engines

Question 40

How does Human activity produce a lot of CFCs?

Answer 40

Aerosols. old fridges, they destroy the ozone layer

Question 41

How do fertilisers lead to Eutrophication?

Answer 41

Nitrates and Phosphates from fertilisers end up in water source
This causing algae to grow blocking out sunlight, so other plants can’t photosynthesise
With more food, there are more micro-organisms who use up all the oxygen in the water causing others to die
This is Eutrophication

Question 42

What’s a different way that causes Eutrophication?

Answer 42

Sewage

Question 43

What’s leaching?

Answer 43

When trees are chopped and taken away, they can’t release there nutrients back into the soil making it infertile

Question 44

What’s soil erosion?

Answer 44

Tree roots hold soil together, when taken away the nutrients can be washed away

Question 45

How does deforestation disturb the water cycle?

Answer 45

When taken away water reaches everything faster possibly causing flooding
Also increases more transpiration making local climate drier

Question 46

How does deforestation disturb the balance of Co2 and oxygen?

Answer 46

More Co2 released when trees are burnt

Less trees means less oxygen produced