AP Environmental Midterm FRQs

Practice FRQ 2.7

Based on the graph below, explain whether spruce trees are an early, middle, or late successional species.

FRQ Practice 3.5

Calculate the percent change in the population size of a 14 wolf pack that experiences 5 deaths, 3 births, and 4 new wolves released into the pack from a nearby wildlife sanctuary.

Practice FRQ 1.6

Choose 2 reservoirs depicted in the diagram above and describe how phosphorus moves from one to the other

Practice FRQ 1.7

Chose a processes from the diagram. Identify the process and describe how water is moving from one reservoir to another.

Practice FRQ 2.2

Describe an ecosystem service that intact forest ecosystems provide for humans. Identify one human activity that could degrade this ecosystem service and explain how the activity decreases the value of the ecosystem service.

Practice FRQ 1.5

Describe one chemical transformation that occurs in the natural nitrogen cycle and explain the importance of that transformation to an ecosystem.

Practice FRQ 1.11

Describe one direct effect that a decline in the frog population would have on the food web. Identify an organism that is both a secondary and tertiary consumer

FRQ Practice 3.8

Describe one human activity related to a rapidly growing human population that is having an impact on biodiversity. Propose a solution a government could take to slow population growth.

Practice FRQ 2.1

Describe one of the three levels of biodiversity. Explain how high biodiversity at the level you described is beneficial to ecosystems

Practice FRQ 1.8

Describe the process of net primary productivity (NPP). Describe the relationship between primary productivity and biodiversity.

Practice FRQ 2.3

Describe the processes of colonizing an island habitat. Describe how the island's distance from the mainland influences the number of species that will colonize the island habitat.

Practice FRQ 2.5

Describe the relationship between latitude and change in first leaf date depicted in the graph. Explain why you think this relationship exists.

FRQ Practice 3.3

Describe the trend in survivorship shown in this graph. Justify which type of survivorship curve these data represent

FRQ Practice 3.4

Explain the impact that the canine virus had on the moose population based on the graph.

Practice FRQs 1.9 & 1.10

Explain why a relatively large forest can only support a small number of wolves. Calculate the amount of energy available to a tertiary consumer in the following ecosystem. 100,000 J of energy produced by plants in the ecosystem (after respiration)

Practice FRQ 3.2

Identify ONE characteristic of an r-selected species that could increase the likelihood of the r-selected species becoming a more successful invasive species than K-selected species

Practice FRQ 3.1

Identify ONE characteristic of specialist species and explain how that characteristic makes them more likely to become extinct than generalist species.

Practice FRQ 1.3

Identify an organism found in an aquatic biome and explain how that organism is uniquely adapted to live in that biome.

FRQ Practice 3.7

Identify and discuss TWO of the causes for the trend in worldwide TFR.

Practice FRQ 1.2

Identify one characteristic of a biome and explain how that characteristic determines the community of organisms found in the biome.

Practice FRQ 1.4

Identify one process in the diagram that happens quickly and one process that happens slowly. Explain how the rate at which fossil fuels are transferred into the atmosphere, as shown in the diagram, has altered the carbon cycle during the past 250 years.

Practice FRQ 2.4

Identify the author's claim

FRQ Practice 3.6

Identify the country with the slowest pop. growth rate and explain your answer

FRQ Practice 3.9

Identify the stage of this graph in which population grows the fastest and explain why this is the case. Besides population growth rate, describe one economic or societal indicator of a country in this phase.

Practice FRQ 1.1

Identify two organisms that compete for a shared food resource. Describe how resource partitioning could reduce the competition between the two organisms you identified.

Practice FRQ 2.6

This data table shows the beak size of 20 finches from two different islands in the Galapagos. Describe the difference in beak size between the two islands. Make a claim about the reason for this difference in beak size.