Environmental Science- Final Exam

About how much energy is lost with each transfer from one trophic level to the next

90%

The ocean contains about ________ of the earths water

97%

On human time scales, nonrenewable resources ______

Can be depleted much faster than nature can form them

____ are the fundamental structural and functional units of life

Cells

Only about 0.024% of the earth's vast water supply is available to humans and other species as liquid freshwater

False

The term ____ specifically refers to species that are introduced to a new area and then compete with and harm other species, as opposed to other introduced species that may be harmless

Invasive soecies

An exponential growth curve depicting an ever-growing population is shaped like the letter _______

J

A particular species has a very long lifespan, during which it slowly produces a few offspring in which it invests a great deal of parental effort. Which term best describes this reproductive strategy

K-selected

What term refers to the contamination of the environment by a chemical or other agent such as noise or heat to a level that is harmful to the health, survival, or activities of humans or other organisms

Pollution

After a major forest fire, communities of plants and other organisms become re-established. What is the term for this process

Secondary succession

Cone-bearing trees are characteristic of the ___

Taiga or boreal forest

Which of the following characterizes tropical rainforests

They have structured vegetation layers that provide specialized niches for animals

Which of the following is the best definition of science?

a broad field of study focused on discovering how nature works

Specialist species occupy ____

a narrow ecological niche

Populations that overshoot their carrying capacity may experience ____

a population crash

The abyssal zone of the ocean is characterized by ______

abundant living organisms despite the lack of sunlight for photosynthesis

Cultural eutrophication occurs when humans ____

allow excessive nutrients from urban and agricultural areas to enter lakes

The term "ecological footprint" can best be described as the _____

amount of land and water needed to supply a population or an area with renewable resources and to absorb and recycle the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use

Matter is best described as ____

anything that has mass and takes up space

A common misconception about evolution is that humans evolved from ___, when they actually evolved from _____

apes or monkeys; a common ancestor shared with apes and moneys

A(n) _____ contains groundwater that has collected in layers of rock, sand, and gravel

aquifers

Permafrost is characteristic of the ____ biome

arctic tundra

Producers can also be described as "self-feeders", or

autotrophs

photosynthesis is performed by

autotrophs

Lightning and _____ convert nitrogen to forms that can be used by plants

bacteria

When environmental conditions change dramatically or rapidly, a population of a species faces three possible futures: adapt to the new conditions through natural selection, migrate (if possible) to another area with more favorable conditions, or ____

become extinct

Large terrestrial regions characterized by a particular type of climate and a certain combination of dominant plant life are called ___

biomes

Tropical rain forests are dominated by ___

broadleaf evergreen plants

An element _______

can combine with one or more other elements to make a compound

All organic compounds are primarily characterized by the presence of ___

carbon

Some bats prey on certain moths, hunting them using echolocation. Some of those moths have evolved ears sensitive to the sound frequencies bats use to locate them, helping them to avoid being caught. The bats, in turn, have evolved to use change the frequency they use. This interaction is an example of ____

coevolution

Which of the following organisms can be called autotrophs

daisies, roses, and grass

Organisms that consume wastes and remains of plants and animals are ___

decomposers, usually bacteria and fungi

Which of the following could be considered a density-dependent limiting factor

disease

the rain shadow effect refers to _____

drier conditions on the leeward (facing away from the wind) side of mountain ranges

Which of the following is a branch of biology that focuses on interactions between living organisms and both the living and nonliving components of their environments

ecology

A community of different species interacting with one another and with their nonliving (abiotic) environment of matter and energy is called a

ecosystem

Which term best describes the overall processes provided by healthy ecosystems that support life and human economies at no monetary cost to us

ecosystem services

The transition zone between two ecosystems or biomes is called the ____

ecotone

A trait that creates a specific advantage for some organisms in the struggle to survive ___

enables individuals with the trait to leave more offspring than other members of the population leave

A species that is found only on one island would be described as ____

endemic

What is a social movement that is dedicated to trying to sustain the earths life-support system for all forms of life

environmentalism

About 40% of the earth's photosynthetic activity occurs in the ____ of the open ocean.​ This is the brightly lit upper zone

euphotic zone

Examples of economic services that oceans provide are ____

food

Complex networks of interconnected food chains in ecosystems are best described as _____

food webs

Ions are atoms or groups of atoms that have _______

gained or lost electrons

Species with broad niches are described as ____ species

generalist

Under rapidly changing environmental conditions, ____ usually have an advantage

generalist species

Scientists are now able to transfer genes between different species that would not interbreed in nature through a process called ____

genetic engineering

Traits that can be passed from one generation to the next are called ____ traits

heritable

Where do mangrove forests grow

in coastal wetlands

A country's ecological footprint is larger than its biological capacity to replenish its renewable resources and absorb the resulting waste and pollution. What can be said about this country

it has an ecological deficit

An intertidal species of seastar helps to maintain the diversity of the intertidal region by controlling the mussel population. Without the seastar, the mussel population would crowd out other species and take over their territory. The seastar could be called a ____

keystone species

The loss of ____ can lead to population crashes and even extinction in some species who rely on them for ecosystem services

keystone species

Kinetic energy and potential energy differ in that ______

kinetic energy is energy of motion and potential energy is stored energy

Biomes are _____

large terrestrial regions of the earth with distinct climate and certain species typically occurring within them

About 83% of the world's human population live in ____

less-developed countries

An acidic solution would have ___

more hydrogen ions than hydroxide ions and a pH less than 7

A relationship in which both species benefit best illustrates ____

mutualism

A thermostat set to 62 °F turns on the furnace when a house cools below that temperature, and shuts the furnace off when a house warms above that temperature. This is an example of a simple

negative feedback loop

The role a species plays in its ecosystem is its ____

niche

The most common gas in the atmosphere is ____

nitrogen

Crude oil is a _______

nonrenewable resource because it cannot be formed on a human time scale

Genes are composed of sequences of

nucleotides

Despite its low net primary productivity (NPP), the open ocean produces more of the earth's biomass per year than any other ecosystem or life zone because ____

of the enormous volume of the global ocean

Which of the following resources is nonrenewable

oil

At least half of the known species of terrestrial plants and animals are found ____

only in tropical rainforests

Aerobic respiration uses _____ to convert glucose (or other organic nutrient molecules) back into carbon dioxide and water

oxygen

A relationship, in which one organism benefits by living on or in a member of another species, which is harmed by the interaction, best illustrates ____

parasitism

Tapeworms live inside their hosts, drawing nourishment from them. This interaction is an example of ____

parasitism

The two major processes through which carbon cycles through the biosphere are _____

photosynthesis and aerobic respiration

Which statement best describes an organism's habitat

place or type of ecosystem in which a species lives

Simple organic molecules called monomers can be linked together by chemical bonds to form ____

polymers

A group of individuals of the same species living in a particular place is a(n) ___

population

Scientific hypotheses differ from scientific theories in that they are

possible, but not yet well-tested, explanations of data

A fox catches and eats a mouse. In this interaction, the fox is the ____

predator

A glacier retreats, exposing bare rock and allowing communities of organisms to move in. This is an example of ____

primary ecological succession

The atomic number of an element is the number of ___

protons in an atom

One reason biodiversity is such an important aspect of sustainability is that it ____

provides vital ecosystem services through the interactions among species and keeps any population from growing too large

sustainable yield is the highest rate at which we can use a ______ without reducing its available supply

renewable resource

Middle-income countries such as India and China may have low ____, but they have a high ____

resource use per person; overall environmental impact

Affluence has a harmful effect on the environmental impact of a population primarily because it ____

results in higher levels of per capita resource consumption

A grassland with widely scattered clumps of trees located near the equator would be called a ___

savanna

There are ____ separate Hadley cells in which warm air rises and cools, then falls and heats up again in great rolling patterns

six

Which resource would best be categorized as inexhaustible

solar energy

____ is the type of diversity that describes the number and variety of species present in any biological community

species diversity

The ozone layer, which filters out about 95% of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, is found in the _____

stratosphere

Much of which biome has disappeared from the earth because it has been converted to farmland for growing crops and grazing cattle

temperate grassland

carrying capacity refers to ____

the maximum population size that a particular habitat can sustain indefinitely

Ocean acidification is occurring because ____

the ocean absorb about 25% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities

Net primary productivity (NPP) is the rate at which producers use photosynthesis to produce and store chemical energy minus ______

the rate at which they use some of this stored chemical energy through aerobic respiration

The equator is warmer than the poles because ____

the sun's rays strike directly at the equator

When a person rationalizes that the little bit that they use or pollute does not matter on the grand scale, this is known as ______

tragedy of the commons

A forest that is known for its year-round uniformly warm temperature is the _____

tropical rainforest

Ocean currents are most significantly affected by ____

variation in winds over the ocean and changes in the shapes of land masses

Temperate deciduous forests typically have ____

warm summers, cold winters, and abundant precipitation

An example of kinetic energy is

water flowing down a waterfall

Transpiration is the process by which ______

water is released into the air from plants

Which process best illustrates an ecosystem service

water purification

On the evening news, there is a forecast of sunny weather for the next day with a high temperature 10°F warmer than today. This is an example of ______

weather