Quiz 2 Study Guide

Question 0

What is an ecosystem?

Answer 0

All organisms and nonliving entities that occur and interact in a particular area at the same time.

Question 1

What are the components of an ecosystem?

Answer 1

Producers : photosynthesizing organisms (e.g., plants, phytoplankton)

Consumers = use the energy stored by the producers two major groups:

1. Consumers (primary, secondary, tertiary, etc) (eat live food)
2. Decomposers (eat dead material)
   Abiotic (non-living) matter: e.g. soil, nutrients, dead organic matter

Question 2

Major types of biomes

Answer 2

Tropical rainforests
Temperate deciduous forest
Temperate rainforest
Boreal forest
Tundra
Tropical dry forest
Savanna
Chaparral
Temperate grasslands
Deserts

Question 3

Determinants of where biomes exist

Answer 3

As precipitation increases, vegetation generally becomes taller and more luxuriant. As temperature increases, types of plant communities change. Together, temperature and precipitation are the main factors determining which biome occurs in a given area.

Question 4

What is the Trophic Level?

Answer 4

Rank in the feeding hierarchy of a food chain. Organisms at higher trophic levels consume those at lower trophic levels.

Question 5

What is the Food Chain?

Answer 5

A linear series of feeding relationships. As organisms feed on one another, energy is transferred from lower to higher trophic level.

Question 6

What is a Food Web?

Answer 6

A visual representation of feeding interactions within an ecological community that shows an array of relationships between organisms at different trophic levels.

Question 7

What is the Law of conservation of matter?

Answer 7

Physical law stating that matter may be transformed from one type of substance into others, but that it cannot be created or destroyed.

Question 8

What is the ecological footprint measuring?

Answer 8

The cumulative amount of land and water required to provide the raw materials a person or population consumes and to dispose of or recycle the waste that is produced. It is a measurement of humanity’s demand upon nature and a demonstration that everything we do has consequences.

Question 9

What is a Hydrologic cycle?

Answer 9

Water transports nutrients, sediments, and pollutants from the continents to the oceans via rivers, streams, and surface runoff. Nutrients can then be carried thousands of miles on ocean currents. Water also brings atmospheric pollutants from the air back down to the surface when they dissolve in falling rain or snow.

Question 10

When was the Green Revolution?

Answer 10

70 years ago Green revolution

Question 11

What kinds of changes did the Green Revolution bring?

Answer 11

(use of modern techniques has allowed food production to keep pace with population growth - not Eco friendly things)
Synthetic fertilizers
Hybrid crop varieties (led to GMO varieties)
Mechanized processes (very large scale)
Irrigation systems (might be the most important development because it brings water to places that didn’t have water)
Monocultures
Pesticides (insecticides and herbicides)
Dependence upon fossil fuels
Large scale tilling

Question 12

What is the 21 Acres mission?

Answer 12

Our mission is to cultivate, demonstrate and advance systems that support sustainable agriculture. 21 Acres is a non-profit organization with a vision to create and operate a vital, open public space for all of us to rediscover the agricultural heritage of our region and learn about cutting-edge, sustainable agricultural design and technologies as well as ways to maximize the beneficial aspects of fresh local produce and farm products.

Question 13

What are examples of sustainable practices at 21 acres?

Answer 13

Cover crops
No pesticides - natural pest control (catnip)
Bio char - adds soil fertility
Water efficient farming practice
Habitat supporting pollinators and predatory insects
Used Goats for weed control
Poly culture and companion crops (tomatoes are grown with basil because the plants give nutrients and discourage pests)
Efficient means of filtering water before it got to the slough
Buffer between the farm and the river
Green manure use
Non GMO seeds when they can get them
IPM approach (integrated pest management) using the least toxic means of pest control first. Managing the pests and not killing the pest.

Question 14

Why would someone get organic certified?

Answer 14

Higher resale value
More peace of mind
Healthier
Tends to be more choice because not tied to mechanized system

Question 15

What is industrial agriculture?

Answer 15

A form of agriculture that uses large scale mechanization and fossil fuel combustion, enabling farmers to replace horses and oxen with faster and more powerful means of cultivating, harvesting, transporting, and processing crops. Other aspects include irrigation and the use of inorganic fertilizers. Use of chemical herbicides and pesticides reduces competition from weeds and herbivory by insect.

Question 16

What is a population?

Answer 16

A group of organisms of the same species that live in the same area.

Question 17

What are characteristics of populations?

Answer 17

size, age structure, distribution, rate of change

Question 18

What are the factors controlling population and growth rate?

Answer 18

Birth, Immigration, Death, Emigration

Population change = (B+I) - (D+E)

Question 19

What is exponential growth?

Answer 19

The increase of a population (or of anything) by a fixed percentage each year.

Question 20

What is Overshoot?

Answer 20

The amount by which humanity has surpassed Earth’s long term carrying capacity for our species.

Question 21

What is a population’s Carrying capacity?

Answer 21

The maximum population size that a given environment can sustain.

Question 22

How do you calculate Average Annual Growth Rate (AAGR)?

Answer 22

Crude birth rate - crude death rate

Question 23

Why is certification important for sustainable agriculture?

Answer 23

Certification is very critical for the sustainably of sustainable agriculture. It must have an economic benefit in order for people to do it. Extra cost of organic is an internalization of the externalities of conventional agriculture.

Question 24

What would make sustainability in agriculture?

Answer 24

Soil practices - Use cover crops instead of fertilizers. No till farming. Crop rotation
Planting different crops in different years to restore nutrients (e.g. a nitrogen fixers like beans)

No pesticide use. Pesticides kill beneficials (kill pests and they kill things that aren’t pests like bees and beneficial soil bacteria). Pesticides are neurotoxins and can hurt anything with a brain (us too). Drip irrigation. Better regulates water flow to use less. Use organic Fertilizers. Green manure (plowing plant material into the soil)
Compost.

Question 25

What is sustainable agriculture?

Answer 25

Agriculture that does not deplete soils faster than they form, or reduce the clean water and genetic diversity essential to long-term crop and livestock production.

Question 26

What is the Rule of 70?

Answer 26

Rule of 70 - means 70 over the AAGR is the doubling time

Question 27

What are Nutrient cycles?

Answer 27

The comprehensive set of cyclical pathways by which a given nutrient moves through the environment.

Question 28

What is the Nitrogen cycle?

Answer 28

A major nutrient cycle consisting of the routes that nitrogen atoms take through the nested networks of environmental systems.

Question 29

What are Problems with Green Revolution style agriculture (externalities)?

Answer 29

Reduced biodiversity
Depleting soil or soil loss (soil is a renewable resource, forms at a inch every thousand years, but it is not generated at the rate it is being lost)
Erosion - tilling sets up for erosion nutrient depletion
Salinization
Water logging
Sediment pollution downstream
Monoculture tend to be more prone to disease
Water consumption / water supply loss / water pollution
Release of toxins (primarily pesticides)
Carbon emissions

Question 30

What is the process by which hypoxia occurs….

Answer 30

Nitrogen is imported into the water which allows phytoplankton to flourish and eventually they die and sink to the bottom provides food for Decomposers, while digesting the Decomposers consume oxygen, eventually the oxygen in the water is too low for life to exist
Nitrogen is the limiting factor
Tests showed that the nitrogen input is recent (cores done)
Worldwide problem
Cutting into fish production

Question 31

Why aren’t hypoxia effected areas getting fixed?

Answer 31

People causing the problem aren’t willing to fix the problem, partially because it doesn’t affect them, it might cost them more money, they have no incentive, it’s an externality of agricultural production

Question 32

Ways to fix hypoxia effected areas?

Answer 32

Plant trees or vegetation near the rivers that will absorb the nitrogen
Change to organic or compost fertilizers to reduce the nitrogen
Change policy (corn and soybeans) to remove subsidies for inorganic farming
Green taxes to provide an incentive to use less polluting fertilizers
Strong difficulty in regulation - a very regulation intensive to use non market based approaches

Question 33

What is soil degradation?

Answer 33

A deterioration of soil quality and decline in soil productivity, resulting primarily from forest removal, crop land agriculture, and overgrazing of livestock.

Question 34

What are soil conservation practices?

Answer 34

Crop rotation
Contour farming
Terracing
Intercropping
Shelterbelts (windbreaks)
Conservation tillage (no till)

Question 35

What is Biodiversity?

Answer 35

The variety of living organisms considered at all levels of organization, including the genetic, species, and higher taxonomic levels, and the variety of habitats and ecosystems, as well as the processes occurring therein.

Question 36

Causes of current extinctions

Answer 36

Habitat loss/fragmentation 
Human harvest/exploitation 
Invasive species (transported by humans)
Over exploitation 
Pollution (nitrogen, phosphorus)
Global climate change

Question 37

What is the Current global human population

Answer 37

7 billion

Question 38

What are the components of environmental footprint measurement?

Answer 38

Carbon
Food
Housing
Goods and Services

Question 39

What is the current trend in Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”?

Answer 39

Fueled by nutrients from Midwest farms carried by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. The low oxygen conditions have adversely affected marine life and reduced catches of shrimp and fish to half of what they were in the 1980s.

Question 40

How does a hypoxic region happen?

Answer 40

Nitrogen is imported into the water which allows phytoplankton to flourish and eventually they die and sink to the bottom provides food for Decomposers, while digesting the Decomposers consume oxygen, eventually the oxygen in the water is too low for life to exist

Question 41

What are the steps in the process of cultural eutrophication?

Answer 41

Process of nutrient over enrichment, blooms of algae, increased production of organic matter, and subsequent ecosystem degradation

Question 42

What is the mid step to organic certification?

Answer 42

Transition Food - for three years you have to manage your farm organically, undergoing all the extra costs of doing so, but have to absorb the costs. This is partly why a lot of farms cannot even afford to do this extra certification process.

Question 43

What is a fertility rate?

Answer 43

number of births per female of reproductive age

Question 44

What factors influence fertility rates?

Answer 44

Key factors affecting a country’s average birth rate and TFR are the following:

1. Importance of children as a part of the labor force. Rates tend to be higher in developing countries (especially in rural areas, where children begin working to help raise crops at an early age).
2. Urbanization. People living in urban areas usually have better access to family planning services tend to have fewer children than those living in rural areas where children are needed to perform essential tasks.
3. Cost of raising and educating children. Rates tend to be lower in developed countries, where raising children is much more costly because children don’t enter the labor force until their late teens or early twenties.
4. Educational and employment opportunities for women. TFRs tend to be low when women have access to education and paid employment outside the home. In developing countries, women with no education generally have two more children than women with a secondary school education.
5. Infant mortality rate. In areas with low infant mortality rates, people tend to have less children because fewer children die at an early age.
6. Average age at marriage (more precisely, the average age at which women have their first child).
   Women normally have fewer children when their average age at marriage is 25 or older.
7. Availability of private and public pension systems. Pensions eliminate parent’s need to have many children to help support them in old age.
8. Availability of legal abortions. According to the UN and the World Bank, an estimated 26 million legal abortions and 20 million illegal (and often unsafe) abortions are performed worldwide each year among the roughly 190 million pregnancies per year.
9. Availability of reliable birth control methods. Typical effectiveness rates of birth control methods in the US:
   Extremely/Highly Effective
   Effective
   Moderately Effective/Unreliable
10. Religious beliefs, traditions and cultural norms.
    In some countries, these factors favor large families and strongly oppose abortion and some forms of birth control.

Question 45

Detail the history, relationship, and trend of environmental sustainability and economic sustainability

Answer 45

Historically there has been a close correlation between economic growth and environmental degradation: as communities grow, so the environment declines. This trend is clearly demonstrated on graphs of human population numbers, economic growth, and environmental indicators. Unsustainable economic growth has been starkly compared to the malignant growth of a cancer because it eats away at the Earth’s ecosystem services which are its life-support system. There is concern that, unless resource use is checked, modern global civilization will follow the path of ancient civilizations that collapsed through overexploitation of their resource base. While conventional economics is concerned largely with economic growth and the efficient allocation of resources, ecological economics has the explicit goal of sustainable scale (rather than continual growth), fair distribution and efficient allocation, in that order.

Question 46

What does the ecological footprint calculation indicate about our current level of consumption?

Answer 46

Our current lifestyles are unsustainable.

Question 47

How is the ecological footprint measured?

Answer 47

Your ecological footprint is expressed in “global hectares” (gha) or “global acres” (ga), which are standardized units that take into account the differences in biological productivity of various ecosystems impacted by your consumption activities.

Question 48

What are the implications of the global ecological footprint?

Answer 48

We believe that a swift transition to a New Economy based on the principles of sustainable development is the only way to emerge from the converging crisis of global economic collapse, climate change, and resource depletion in a manner that is just, rapid, and minimizes harm, especially to those least well off. Hallmarks of the New Economy have been well researched. It is the transition that needs to happen now.

Question 49

What are the changes the global ecological footprint demand to change our living to a new economy?

Answer 49

We need to marshal vast knowledge, skills, and resource of humanity to create a New Economy that:

1. Measures progress by improvements in well being and not expansion of the scale and scope of market economic activity.
2. Recognizes the immense value and importance of relationships and activities outside the so called formal sector.
3. Is based on a renewable energy platform, guarantees basic human needs, discourages wasteful consumption, and invests in rather than depletes natural, physical, social and cultural capital.
4. Replaces brutal and wasteful competition between nations, businesses, and individuals with one that binds us together in cooperative frameworks for solving civilization’s most urgent problems.
5. Is firmly ensconced within the Earth’s ecological limits and guided by our spiritual and ethical traditions.
6. Is diverse, adaptable, localized, and resilient.

Question 51

What were the major factors that influenced the rapid growth of the human population?

Answer 51

Major milestones included:

improving urban sanitation and waste removal;
improving the quality of the water supply and expanding access to it;
forming public health boards to detect illnesses and quarantine the sick;
researching causes and means of transmission of infectious diseases;
developing vaccines and antibiotics;
adopting workplace safety laws and limits on child labor; and
promoting nutrition through steps such as fortifying milk, breads, and cereals with vitamins.

Question 52

What is the global hypoxic ocean region trend?

Answer 52

Low oxygen conditions occur in marine waters in all parts of the world. Historically, hypoxia has occurred naturally in most of these systems, but, over time, the volume, area, and duration of hypoxia has increased in many marine waters.

Question 53

What made Lake Washington change from a clean lake to a hypoxic lake?

Answer 53

In the 1960s, Lake Washington (Seattle, USA) was one of the most publicized examples of anthropogenic eutrophication. At the maximum of eutrophication, Lake Washington received 20 million gallons of wastewater effluent each day. More than 37,000 kg of phosphates added in 1955 from developed agricultural and urban lands swamped the lake, stimulating plant and algae growth that choked out most other species.

Question 54

What made Lake Washington change from a hypoxic lake to a clean lake?

Answer 54

Lake Washington is perhaps the most widely
recognized success story of recovery from eutrophication through nutrient input control. After
the city began diverting phosphorus-containing
wastewater effluent from the lake, there was a profound improvement of water quality and decrease of phytoplankton growth (Schindler 2006). Thus, to mitigate eutrophication and algal biomass, nutrient control focusing on reducing phosphorus input is vital.

Question 55

What is a brief history of global human population?

Answer 55

Genetic information suggests that around
70,000 years ago there was a dramatic collapse in the world human population and it fell
to very low numbers. Subsequently, numbers
recovered and the development of agriculture
and of settled communities enabled populations to grow. Despite localised population
collapses brought about by famine, war and
disease, on a global scale the population then
continued to increase, reaching between 200
and 300 million by 1 AD. It then took the next
1,600 years to double to 600 million in 1600
and had reached around 800 million by the
mid 18th century1
.
Between AD 1 and 1750 the average annual
increase in world population was around
0.1%, but between 1750 and 2000 it was
close to 0.8%, with the second half of the
20th century showing a figure of 1.8%. This
explosion in human numbers coincided with
the introduction of new and improved crops
and agricultural techniques, together with the
other developments of the industrial revolution which allowed humans to achieve a step
change in the rate that natural resources were
exploited. Improved public health, particularly
vaccination and sanitation, all supported this
growth. By 2000, there were ten times as many
people on Earth as there were 300 years ago;
the figure for 2010 is around 7 billion.

Question 56

What is demographic transition of human population?

Answer 56

Refers to the transition from high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates as a country develops from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system. This is typically demonstrated through a demographic transition model, or transitions, in birth and death rates in industrialized societies over the previous 200 years. The major (relative) exceptions are some poor countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, which are poor or affected by government policy or civil strife.

A correlation matching the demographic transition has been established; however, it is not certain whether industrialization and higher incomes lead to lower population or if lower populations lead to industrialization and higher incomes. In countries that are now developed this demographic transition began in the 18th century and continues today. In less developed countries, this demographic transition started later and is still at an earlier stage.

Question 57

In population ecology, explain resource limitations and logistic growth.

Answer 57

The geometric or exponential growth of all populations is eventually curtailed by food availability, competition for other resources, predation, disease, or some other ecological factor. If growth is limited by resources such as food, the exponential growth of the population begins to slow as competition for those resources increases. The growth of the population eventually slows nearly to zero as the population reaches the carrying capacity (K) for the environment. The result is an S-shaped curve of population growth known as the logistic curve.

Question 58

What is Biodiversity?

Answer 58

The variety of living organisms considered at all levels of organization, including the genetic, species, and higher taxonomic levels, and the variety of habitats and ecosystems, as well as the processes occurring therein.

Question 59

What is happening to biodiversity?

Answer 59

We are losing our biodiversity at around 100-1000x background rate. Educated guess we will lose up to 40% by 2100, Losing between 20-75 species a day.

Question 60

What is extinction?

Answer 60

The state or process of a species, family, or larger group being or becoming extinct.

Question 61

What is the relationship between components of biodiversity and ecological processes?

Answer 61

Biological diversity
◦Genes
◦Species
◦Habitats
◦Communities
◦Ecosystems

Ecological and evolutionary processes
◦Nutrient cycling
◦Water cycling
◦Photosynthesis
◦Predation
◦Mutualism
◦Speciation

Question 62

What are the current causes of biodiversity loss?

Answer 62

• Habitat loss/fragmentation
• Human harvest/exploitation
• Invasive species (transported by humans)
• Pollution (nitrogen, phosphorus)
• Over exploitation
• Global climate change (don’t know the effect, but it’s likely to be big)

Question 63

Where does E. coli come from?

Answer 63

Animal digestive tracts.

Question 64

What are the sources of fecal coliform in North Creek?

Answer 64

Sewage, septic tanks, animal feces

Question 65

What is the role of storm events in the contamination of North Creek?

Answer 65

Storm events increased the contamination by proliferating runoff into the creek as evidenced by increased levels of fecal coliform in the creek samples taken. Beginning November 2012, the North Creek Interceptor sewer pipeline experienced multiple sewer overflows during rain events
Caused discharge of untreated wastewater to North Creek in unincorporated Snohomish County, into a wetland area in the City of Bothell, and into homes.

Question 66

What is the possible role of the crow roost in the contamination of North Creek?

Answer 66

There was an increase during the Fall and Winter of fecal coliform close to the crows roost. There was no regular pattern of increase in E Coli from the north end to the south end of the wetlands as seen in the Geoengineers data. But there were far fewer crows (and less rain) during the spring and summer.

Question 67

Detail the study on an emerging concern - antibiotic resistant fecal bacteria in crows

Answer 67

Data showed the fecal matter of crows is antibiotic resistant and is higher than other sites sampled compared alongside dairy cows, farm crows, and waste water crows.

Question 68

What are the effects upon the environment for meat production?

Answer 68

Some of the environmental effects that have been associated with meat production are pollution through fossil fuel usage, and water and land consumption. It has been estimated that global meat consumption may double from 2000 to 2050, mostly as a consequence of increasing world population, but also partly because of increased per capita meat consumption (with much of the per capita consumption increase occurring in the developing world. Irrigation water applied in production of livestock feed and forage has been estimated to account for about 9 percent of withdrawn freshwater use in the United States.

Question 69

What is the Energy input to NPP?

Answer 69

solar, converted to chemical energy by photosynthesis

Question 70

What is NPP?

Answer 70

Net primary productivity (NPP) is defined as the net flux of carbon from the atmosphere into green plants per unit time. NPP refers to a rate process, i.e., the amount of vegetable matter produced (net primary production) per day, week, or year. However, the terms net primary productivity and net primary production are sometimes used rather liberally and interchangeably, and some scientists still tend to confuse productivity with standing biomass or standing crop. NPP is a fundamental ecological variable, not only because it measures the energy input to the biosphere and terrestrial carbon dioxide assimilation, but also because of its significance in indicating the condition of the land surface area and status of a wide range of ecological processes.