Intro Environmental Studies

What negative results happens as Earth's oceans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere?

- acidification - drop in pH

China's environmental problems can be summarized under the following headings:

- air - water - soil - habitat destruction - biodiversity losses - megaprojects

Diamond proposes four factors that contribute to failures of group decision making. They are:

- Group fails to anticipate a problem before it arrives. - Group fails to perceive a problem after it arrives. - Group fails to try and solve a problem after perceiving it. - Group tries, but does not solve a problem after perceiving it.

Since rhinos have no natural predators, why are they in danger of extinction?

- because humans are cutting down the rain forests they live in - hunting/poaching by humans - because we are encroaching on their critical habitats

The Greenland Norse damaged their environment, leading to collapse, in the following ways:

- causing soil erosion - cutting turf - destroying the native vegetation

Pollution-wise, China contributes the following to our global atmosphere:

- chloroflorocarbons (CFCs) - carbon dioxide (CO2) - oxides of sulfur

What are the two theories for the extinction of the megafauna species near Big Bone Lick, OH?

- climate change at the end of the last ice age (Pleistocene) - man moving into the area and killing them

China is the world's largest producer of:

- coal - fertilizer - steel - agricultural film (plastic)

Mayan maximized agricultural yield by:

- draining and raising hills - building arrays of canals - terracing of hills & slopes

Greenland's subsistence was based on a combination of:

- hunting game for meat - raising livestock

How did the deforestation lead to decreases in agricultural yield?

- increased soil erosion by rain and wind - no canopy protection from sun, evaporation, and direct rain erosion - increased soil nutrient leaching - no more material from trees to make compost

What theory did resulted from Alvarez's evidence?

- more research into impact craters - extraterrestrial cause for the K-T extinction of the dinosaurs

Why was Easter Island so susceptible to deforestation?

- old volcanics, instead of younger, fresher volcanics - too far from neighboring islands for aerial ash fallout - low relief (not enough mountains)

Who proposed the theory of uniformitarianism?

Lyell

The two states most friendly to the hardrock mining industry are Arizona and ____________________.

Nevada

What is the Malthusian population growth/problem?

That population growth proceeds exponentially, while food production proceeds arithmetically.

What was the main animal eaten by early Easter Islanders as evidenced by bones found in the middens?

The Common Dolphin

The Anasazi society collapsed primarily because:

The U.S. Southwest is a fragile & marginal environment for agriculture (i.e. frequent droughts, thin soils, etc.)

How does the isotope Oxygen-18 (O-18) help us decipher ancient climates?

The warmer the temperature when snow or ice forms, the higher the O-18 percentage is.

Who made paradigm shifts a popular term?

Thomas Kuhn

A characteristic of the Anthropocene is that during any given 24 hour period, ~10,000 species are being moved around the world in ship's ballast water.

True

A good example of a group failing to anticipate a problem before it occurs is British colonists introducing foxes and rabbits into the Australian ecosystem in the 1800's.

True

About one-third of the world's coral reefs have already been severely damaged.

True

The Norse culture lasted from A.D. 984 to sometime in the 1400's in the island's two fiord systems on the western side of the island.

True

The United States has retreated substantially from its former values of legalized racial discrimination, homophobia, a subordinate role for women and sexual repression over the last century.

True

The collapse of Easter Island society followed abruptly upon reaching the peak of population, monument building, and environmental impact.

True

The first settlement on Easter Island is estimated to be somewhat before A.D. 900.

True

The two worst environmental problems in Los Angeles are traffic congestion & poor air quality.

True

Though it might be nice to imagine there was once a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear he ever really did.

True

When modern humans appeared in the Neanderthals' region, they bred with them, resulting in the fact that today, most humans have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA.

True

While Diamond's book cites many examples of societies that did indeed fail to solve their problems and subsequently collapsed, many modern cultures are indeed addressing their problems and thriving today.

True

What other groups of animals besides amphibians are currently moving toward extinction?

all of the above (corals, mollusks, sharks/rays, mammals, reptiles, birds)

What factors led to the collapse of Greenland's Norse culture?

all of the above (environmental damage by humans, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreases support from friendly neighbors/trade partners, societal response to its problems)

How does Bd move through the environment?

by spores carried by streams

Cuvier proposed that extinctions were caused by:

catastrophes/cataclysms

The primary animals raised for human consumption by the early settlers on Easter Island were:

chickens

The fossil fuels are oil, natural gas, and _________.

coal

_____________ mines tend to make even bigger messes than do hardrock mines, because of the quantity of the resource they extract.

coal

The main crop of the Mayan culture was:

corn

An example of psychological ________________ is living just below a large dam, without any worry of it breaking and killing you and your family.

denial

The main contributor to the increasing population of the U.S. and Europe is ________________________.

immigration

How was the third extinction (Permian) different from the other four extinction?

it was the largest by far (>90% of species disappeared)

It the first of the last five great extinctions, 85% of what kind of species were lost?

marine

Hardrock mining refers to mines that extract ores that contain __________________.

metals

Where did the first evidence come from that CO2 could kill a reef?

Biosphere 2

The Neanderthals disappeared about:

30,000 years ago

On average, each citizen of 1st world countries (U.S., Western Europe, Japan) consumes _____ as many resources as inhabitants of 3rd world countries (Africa, So. America, Mexico, etc.).

32

At the Mayan cultural zenith, their agricultural systems supported peak population densities of:

Between 250 - 1500 people per square mile

Why were the trees felled on Easter Island?

- to burn bodies during cremations - to make room for agriculture - to burn for firewood - to make canoes - to make rope to move the statues (moai)

Australian soils have been leached of nutrients and have NOT been replenished by any of Earth's three natural processes. The three are:

- volcanic eruptions - glacial advance/retreat - crustal uplift

What sources of information are used to study Greenland's past climate?

- written records - pollen - ice cores

Name the three forms of agriculture that emerged in the U.S. Southwest

1. Planting only canyon bottoms & intermittent stream beds 2. Higher elevation drylands agriculture 3. Ditch irrigation to irrigate remote fields

How many species spend at least part of their loves on coral reefs?

1/2 - 9 million

When did the author propose that Homo sapiens emerge?

200,000 years ago

The per capita income in the Dominican Republic is _____ times higher than the per capita income is Haiti.

5

In the last thirty years, the coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef has declined by:

50%

About __________% of all Chinese lakes and almost all coastal seas, are polluted.

75

How much CO2 does burning fossil fuels currently emit into the atmosphere each year?

9 billion tons

How much of the ice-free Earth have humans transformed?

>50%

The world's population as per the United Nations, May 2018 report, is _____________.

?

________ , used in refrigerators, when released into the air, migrate into the stratosphere and destroy a significant fraction of the Earth's protective ozone there.

?

Who proposed the idea of the Ice Ages?

Agassiz

What professional sport is the Dominican Republic known for producing players for?

Baseball

Corn, a staple of the Anasazi, arrived by B.C. 2000 from this area

Central America

What is the world's most populated country, with over 1.3 billion?

China

Where is the famous "Crater of Doom"?

Chixulub, Yucatan, Mexico

What killed all the chestnut trees in the northeastern U.S. in the 1950's?

Cryphonectria parasitica

_________________ was a or the major factor of all of the collapse of past societies described in Diamond's book.

Deforestation

"Technology will solve our environmental problems."

False

"The environment always has to be balanced against the economy."

False

China invests heavily in the education of its population, making their environmental awareness high.

False

In the United States today, the hardrock mining industry is thriving.

False

Neanderthal brains were smaller than modern humans (Homo sapiens).

False

Population pressure anywhere automatically leads to genocide anywhere around the world.

False

Soils in Norway and Britain are made from volcanic ash and can blow away easily if exposed.

False

The BDFFP project is a collaboration with the Peruvian government.

False

The Dominican Republic is among the most overpopulated countries in the New World.

False

The Mayan homeland lies in a habitat termed "tropical rainforest"

False

The Neanderthals lived in Africa for at least 100,000 years.

False

The Norse deforested their settlement areas in order to clear pastures to plant potatoes.

False

The number of motor vehicles (mostly trucks and buses) in China has increased 5-fold between 1980 and 2001.

False

The seafood industry provides jobs for 20,000,000 people worldwide.

False

The sheep populations introduces on Easter in the 1870's helped the islanders have a cultural resurgence.

False

The worst year in Easter Island's history was in 1864 when Roman Catholic missionaries arrived.

False

There are about 1 million species of insects found in the tropics.

False

Viking Erik the Red named Greenland (> 90% glacial) to induce other Vikings to join him there.

False

Among five small Eastern European countries competing with Russian armies between 1939-1956, only _______________ fought the Russians and kept their independence.

Finland

____________________ is the poorest country in the New World.

Haiti

Which U.S. Southwest tribal culture constructed the most extensive irrigation system in the Americas outside of Peru?

Hohokam

What is ultimately driving all the extinctions of the Sixth Extinction?

Homo sapiens

Why is ocean acidification especially bad for marine calcifiers?

It prohibits effective shell growth, actually dissolving their existing shells

Because the Haitians are so poor and the Dominicans are doing so much better economically, many Haitians are moving across the island to the Dominican Republic, much like many Central Americans are moving into the United States in order to improve their living conditions.

True

By 2013, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that white-nose (Geomyces destructans) had spread to 22 states and 5 Canadian provinces and killed more than 6 million bats in just over 5 years.

True

Chevron and a very few other international oil companies are now using clean and sustainable environmental practices to help them make more profit and gain access to new oil & gas fields.

True

Coral reefs have come and gone before in Earth's geologic past.

True

Darwin agreed Lyell's theory how Earth evolved

True

Deforestation is a driving force behind global warming, by decreasing the size of the carbon sink.

True

Diamond proposes that our failure to perceive the critical problem of global warming is because it takes the form of a slow trend concealed by up-and-down fluctuations.

True

Environmental changes/issues due to agricultural abuses played a significant part in the run-up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

True

Environmentalists blame big businesses for harming people by damaging the environment & routinely putting the business's financial interests above the public good.

True

For many reasons, the hardrock mining's pollution problems are much more expensive to remediate than the oil & gas industry problems.

True

Greenland's Norse population of ~5,000 lived on 250 farms, with an average of 20 people per acre, with 14 main churches.

True

If we hold global warming to a minimum, 9-13% of species will be committed to extinction by 2050 and if we hold it to a maximum, 21-32% of species will be committed to extinction by 2050.

True

In 1994, 800,000 Tutsi, about 3/4 of the remaining Rwandan Tutsi, were slaughtered by Hutu, and this event was the third largest genocide in the world since 1950.

True

In Rwanda in 1994, high population densities and worsening starvation were associated with increasing crime.

True

Ocean acidification caused sea critters to die slowly.

True

Other major Chinese environmental issues include deforestation, soil degradation, wetland loss, overfishing, trash management & disposal, and rising number of invasive species.

True

Slave ships from Peru abducted ~1,500 islanders in 1862-1863, about half the surviving population.

True

Southwestern Native American populations exploded from A.D. 1 - A.D. 1117 because they took up residences in villages and became agricultural societies based on agriculture with ditch irrigation systems.

True

The "Classic" Mayan collapse occurred due to drought and other factors in the southern lowlands between A.D. 810 - A.D. 910

True

The French made a false analogy after WW I and assumed WW II would be just like the previous one.

True

The Inuit survived in Greenland while the Norse did not primary because they were better hunters of whales and seals.

True

While declining in the U.S., CO2 emissions in China will increase to 40% of the world's total by 2050.

True

What is Bd?

a Chytrid fungi

Oil, metals, and coal are ________________________ resources.

non-renewable

What did Walter Alvarez find in the late Cretaceous clay layer he studied that surprised him?

off the chart iridium levels

What caused the demise of Pinguinus impennis?

predation by humans

What characterizes mass extinctions?

rapid and global biodiversity losses

When societies fail to even attempt to solve a perceived problem, many social scientists use the term ___________ ___________, meaning that people reason that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people.

rational behavior

China is the world's largest consumer and producer of ______________, which kills over 730,000 Chinese a year.

tobacco

Silman's Amazonia tree research found that because of global warming

trees are migrating upslope at 8'/y

Australia is the world's major producer of:

wool