Environmental Science CP

Fall Final Review Guide

Test info:

Part 1: on QUIA: Multiple choice, matching, and diagrams

Part 2: on Paper: Scientific Reading. Read a short article and respond to questions

Creating a graph, math, short answer (writing)

Unit 1

Chapter 1:

  • Explain the focus of environmental science.
  • Describe the recent trends in human population and resource consumption.
  • Explain what science is.
  • Describe the process of science, scientific methods
  • Describe the major roles of the scientific community in the process of science.
  • Explain the study of environmental ethics

Chapter 2:

  • Describe two basic concepts of economics. Supply and demand
  • Explain the relationship between economics and the environment.
  • Describe ways that economies are working toward sustainability.
  • Explain the purpose of environmental policy.
  • Describe the history of U.S. environmental policy.
  • Describe the direction of current U.S. environmental policy.
  • Identify major international institutions involved in environmental policy.
  • Discuss different approaches to environmental policy.
  • List the steps involved in the environmental policy process

Chapter 3:

  • Differentiate among an atom, an element, a molecule, and a compound.
  • Discuss how various macromolecules are essential to life.
  • Identify some unusual properties of water.
  • Describe two major ways that Earth’s systems interact.
  • Define Earth’s geosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere
  • Describe the parts of Earth’s geosphere.
  • Describe Earth’s biosphere and atmosphere.
  • Discuss the water cycle.
  • Explain how the law of conservation of matter applies to the behavior of nutrients in the environment.
  • Describe the carbon cycle.
  • Describe the events of the phosphorus cycle.
  • Explain the importance of bacteria to the nitrogen cycle.

Unit 2

Chapter 4- Population Ecology

  • Levels of ecological organization: individual  Biosphere
  • Biotic vs. abiotic factors
  • Describe and use methods to determine population size and density
  • Three types of population distribution
  • Survivorship curves- types I, II, III
  • Calculating population sizes and
  • Types of population growth, terms associated with
  • Limiting factors

Chapter 5- Evolution

  • Four ways evolution occurs
  • Process/conditions of natural selection
  • Artificial vs. Natural selection
  • Speciation and extinction
  • What is included in a niche of organism
  • Competition and resource partitioning
  • Ways of getting nutrients: Predation, parasitism, herbivory
  • Mutualism and commensalism
  • Tropic levels and terms associated
  • Photosynthesis vs. chemosynthesis vs. cellular respiration
  • Energy and biomass pyramids
  • Food webs: how to draw/read and label
  • Primary vs. secondary succession
  • Invasive species- how they impact natives

Chapter 6:Biomes and Aquatic Ecosystems

  • How biomes are classified and climatographs
  • Weather vs. climate
  • For each terrestrial biome you should know it’s distinguishing characteristics- see your biome notes in ISN
    Aquatic ecosystems- where are the located, terms associated---see diagrams in text

Chapter 7 : Biodiversity and conservation

  • Components of biodiversity
  • How biodiversity can be measure
  • Importance of biodiversity to ecosystem stability and to humans
  • Extirpation vs. extinction vs. endangered vs. threatened
  • Loss of biodiversity; HIPCO
  • What ESA and CITES can do to protect species
  • Single species and ecosystem approaches to protecting biodiversity

Unit 3

Chapter 8: Human Population

  • Trends in human growth, including technologies
  • Terms associated with population growth: infant mortality, life expectancy, growth rate, TFR
  • Calculating growth rates and doubling times
  • Reading age structure diagrams
  • Stages and characteristic of demographic transition
  • Impacts of human population growth

Chapter 9: Environmental Health

  • Types of hazards
  • Epidmiology
  • Toxicology- dose response, LD50 calculations
  • Individual response
  • Types of infectious disease- you should know the diseases presented in class
  • Dealing with diseases
  • Types of chemical hazards- carcinogens, mutagens, teratogen, neurotoxin, allergen, edocrine disrupter.
  • Types of indoor chemical and outdoor chemical hazards
  • Biomagnification and bioaccumulation

Possible Short Answer Questions:

You will be asked to write ONE short answer questions during the final. Below is a list of possible questions to help you prepare. I will choose which one of these will be on the final.

  1. Suppose a scientist developed a hypothesis stating that salt slowed down the growth of chili pepper plants. Briefly describe a controlled experiment the scientist could conduct to test the hypothesis. Identify the controlled variables, the independent variable(s), and the dependent variable(s).
  2. Compare and contrast what is likely to happen to an area that has just experienced a severe forest fire, and what is likely to happen to an area that has just been covered with a lava flow. Which will regrow more quickly, and why?
  3. Wolves were exterminated from Yellowstone National Park in the early part of the twentieth century. The elk population grew quickly once wolves were gone. Around 1950, a species of willow-nesting bird disappeared from the park. in 2005, 15 years after the reintroduction of wolves to the park, the willow-nesting bird returned. Explain what happened and how it illustrates the fact that top predators are important.
  4. A person lives in a home near a factory that generates harmful air pollution. What type of environmental hazard is this? Can the hazard be controlled? Explain why or why not.