Environmental Science Quizzes part 2

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

Nevada

Name the three forms of agriculture that emerge in the US southwest

Planting only canyon bottoms & intermittent stream beds, higher elevation dry lands agriculture, ditch irrigation to irrigate remote fields

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

Strip ..... Surface (?)

What is the Malthusian population growth problem?

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

The Anasazi society collapsed primarily because:

The US southwest is a fragile & marginal environment for agriculture (ie frequent droughts, thin spike, 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.

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. T/F

True

About one-third of the world's coral reefs have already been severely damaged. T/F

True

The Norse culture lasted from AD 984 to sometime in the 1400's in the islands two fiord systems on the western side of the island. T/F

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. T/F

True

The classic Mayan collapse occurred due to drought and other factors in the southern lowlands between AD 810- AD 910. T/F

True

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

True

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

china

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

chloroflorocarbons (CFCs), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), oxides in sulfur

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

coal

China is the worlds largest producer of:

coal, fertilizer, steel, agricultural film (plastic)

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

Hardrock mining refers to mines that extract ores that contain

metals

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

Between 250-1500 people per square mile

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

The per capita income in the Dominican Republic is 5 times higher than the per capita income in Haiti

5

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

7.6 Billion

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

75

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

Baseball

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

Causing soil erosion, cutting turf, destroying the native vegetation

Corn, a staple of the Anasazi, arrived by BC 2000 from this area

Central America

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

Chloroflourocarbons (?)

The main crop of the Mayan culture was:

Corn

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

Deforestation

Mayan maximized agricultural yield by

Draining and raising hills, building arrays of canals, terracing of hills and slopes

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

Environmental damage by humans, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreases support from friendly neighbors/trade partners, societal response to its problems.

"Technology will solve our environmental problems." T/F

False

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

False

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

False

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

False

Population pressure anywhere automatically leads to genocide anywhere around the world. T/F

False

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

False

The Dominican Republic is among the most overpopulated countries in the new world. T/F

False

The Mayan homeland lies in a habitat termed "tropical rainforest" T/F

False

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

False

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

False

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

False

Viking Erik the Red naked Greenland (>90% glacial) to induce other Vikings to join him there. T/F

False

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

Finland

Diamond proposes four factors that contribute to failures of ground 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.

The poorest country in the New World

Haiti

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

Hohokam

Greenland's subsistence was based on a combination of:

Hunting game for meat, raising livestock

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 US in order to improve their living conditions. T/F

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. T/F

True

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

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. T/F

True

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

True

Environmentalists blame big businesses for harming people by damaging the environment & routinely putting the business's financial interests above the public good. T/F

True

For many reasons, the hardrock mining's pollution problems are much more expensive to remediate than the oil & gas industry problems. T/F

True

Greenland's Norse population of ~5,000 lives on 250 farms, with an average of 20 people per acre, with 14 main churches. T/F

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. T/F

True

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

True

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

True

Southwestern Native American populations exploded from AD 1- AD 1117 because they took up residences in villages and became agricultural societies based on agriculture with Ditch irrigation systems. T/F

True

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

True

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

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. T/F

True

While declining in the U.S., CO2 emissions in China will increase to 40% of the world's total by 2050. T/F

True

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

Written records, pollen, ice cores

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

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

Oil, metals, and coal are ________________________ resources.

non-renewable

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

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