Ch. 18 (and previous chapters) Study Guide - Honours

Ch. 18

  1. A pH scale is used to show whether a substance is _____ or ______.

Acidic or basic

  1. How is the burning of coal related to acid rain?

Acid rain is caused by coal-burning power plants that send sulfur-containing smoke high into the atmosphere.

Sulfur combines with water vapor to produce sulfuric acid – causes acid rain (Lower pH than is normal; more acidic)

  1. Why is acid rain a problem?

Causes the death of trees, death of life in lakes, alters soil chemistry (this is hurting the maple syrup industry in New England)

  1. If an area is downwind from a coal plant, will it experience more or less of the negative impact of pollution?

More, because pollution is blowing toward the area

  1. What is the purpose of ozone in the atmosphere?

Ozone (O3) protects the Earth from excess solar radiation

  1. What are CFCs?

chlorofluorocarbons

  1. Which products contain CFCs?

aerosol sprays, as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners, and Styrofoam containers.

  1. What problem do CFCs cause?

Ozone hole is caused by CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons),

  1. What human diseases are caused by the destruction of the ozone layer?

Skin cancer and eye disease

  1. Why are certain gases called greenhouse gases?

They help to trap the Sun’s heat and warm the Earth

  1. Is the greenhouse effect on earth increasing or decreasing? Why?

Increasing most likelybecause human activity produces greenhouse gases

  1. What would the earth be like without the Greenhouse Effect?

Earth would be as cold as the moon if not for greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide), which trap heat radiated away from the earth. More gases means that more heat is trapped.

  1. What happens to living organisms in a lake or river when chemicals are released into the river?

They absorb those chemicals and become toxic. These toxins pass up through the trophic levels in a process called biological magnification.

  1. What are the results of the destruction of the rain forest?

Because of the destruction of tropicalrainforest (1/2 lost in last 50 years), we lose species of animals and plants before we can study them for potential human use

  1. How is chemical pollution related to species diversity?

Chemical pollution decreases species diversity by killing species

  1. Give three examples of a non-renewable resource.

fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), topsoil, fresh water

  1. Give one example of a renewable resource.

Solar power, wind power

  1. How is population growth related to birth and death rates?

If birth rate exceeds death rate, population grows

If death rate exceeds birth rate, population decreases

If birth rate equals death rate population stays the same

  1. Why is the loss of topsoil so problematic?

It takes 1000 years to form just one inch of topsoil

poor land management allows wind and rain to remove top soil that has been built up over tens of thousands of years (1/3 lost in last 50 years).

  1. What is ground water?

Water trapped beneath the soil, largely in porous rock

  1. What three problems are associated with the use of groundwater?

Pollution from above ground, salinization due to pumping out water faster than it is replaced, overuse

  1. What are resources we cannot replace?

Non-renewable (Like fossil fuels and topsoil)

  1. Which resources can be replaced?

Renewable (Like solar, wind, etc)

  1. When do populations grow or decrease (think about births versus deaths)?

If birth rate exceeds death rate, population grows

If death rate exceeds birth rate, population decreases

If birth rate equals death rate population stays the same

  1. Why did the human world population increase so rapidly during the 1900s?

Industrial revolution, advances in medicine and better sanitation

  1. How long did it take for the world population to go from 1 billion to 2 billion? From 5 to 6 billion?

From 1 to 2 billion was 130 years

From 5 to 6 billion was 12 years

  1. Where in the world is the human population increasing, where is it decreasing?

Increasing in Africa and Middle East

Decreasing in Western Europe

  1. What are the 2 main reasons that environmental problems have not yet been solved?
  2. high cost for industries to become cleaner (example: catalytic converters in cars are expensive)
  3. high cost for governments to police industries
  4. charging higher taxes to polluters may make a politician unpopular
  5. the Western lifestyle is hard on the environment (large amounts of trash, using machines for everything, large automobiles that get poor gas mileage), yet most developing countries would like to achieve a Western lifestyle
  6. Give an example of habitat fragmentation and how it could be fixed.

Habitat fragmentation (example: building a highway through a forest – animals cannot cross to reproduce or hunt; a large park in a city without a connection to another natural area)

  1. What are the other four threats to biodiversity?
  2. Habitat alteration/destruction (example: deforestation = humans cutting down forests to create agricultural land). Cutting down rainforests is the largest threat to biodiversity. Rainforests now: 6% of earth’s surface, used to be 14%
  3. Demand for wildlife products (example: killing animals for their fur, their horns or trophy hunting/fishing)
  4. Pollution (toxic chemicals can kill animals and plants and affects water, land and air)
  5. Introduced species: non-native plants and animals usually have no natural predators; populations can grow rapidly and out-compete native species
  6. Explain one solution that is used to conserve biodiversity.
  7. Saving individual species by raising them in protected surroundings and then releasing them into the wild
  8. Saving whole ecosystems by creating wildlife areas and national parks, both on land and in the ocean. Developing nations need to do this the most but are least able to do so because

1. Widespread poverty and the need to survive (but once they realize the potential from ecotourism, they are slowly moving away from trophy hunting – when someone hunts the animal, they pay and it’s gone, but if they preserve the animal, then many tourists can come and see and spend more money)

2. Governments are often too weak to enforce rules that forbid hunting, and/or cutting down trees

  1. Mercury Mystery:
  1. Why would a panther in the Everglades have a higher concentration of mercury in its tissue than a raccoon? (review beginning of section 2)

Panther eats at higher trophic level, so due to biological magnification the toxins increase at each level

  1. How was the mercury in the Everglades reduced?

Better regulation of industrial emissions

Ch. 17

  1. Review relationships between organisms (mutualism, etc.)
  2. Mutualism (a symbiotic relationship in which both participating species benefit);

example: ants and aphids

  1. Commensalism (a symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped); example: clown fish and sea anemones
  2. Parasitism - Parasitism is a relationship between two species in which one organism benefits by living in or on another, usually larger organisms. Parasites do not usually kill their host.

Ex: hookworms (inside the body), lice, ticks (outside the body)

  1. Parasitism - The act of one organism killing another for food
  2. Coevolution - Back and forth evolutionary adjustments between interacting members of a community that make species closely matched to one another
  1. Why do some birds of the same species, but living in different locations, have different size beaks?

They eat different things

  1. Define niche

The functional role (the “job it performs”) of an organism in an ecosystem; the pattern of living; all the ways an organism affects, and is affected by, its environment; is not the habitat (location)

  1. Climate is affected by latitude and what else?

Elevation or altitude

  1. Climate is not affected by?

longitude

Ch.16

  1. Define ecology

Ecology is the study of the interaction of living organisms with one another and their physical environment

  1. Define succession and differentiate the two different types.

Primary succession - First life in a place where no life existed before. No soil is present. Examples: Receding glacier or New island

Secondary succession - Succession that occurs in areas where there had been previous life (replacing a previous community). Soil is present.

Example: After a fire or a severe flood

  1. Compare food webs and food chains.

Food chain - Shows one path of energy through the trophic levels.

Example (p.347):

Algae – krill – cod – leopard seal – killer whale

Food web - A complicated, interconnected food chain that shows how energy moves through an ecosystem. Many organisms eat at more than one trophic level so there are few single food chains (food webs are more common).

  1. Which types of organisms live on each level of the food energy pyramid?

1st trophic level – producers (get energy from all other organisms)

2nd trophic level – primary consumers – eat producers (herbivores)

3rd trophic level – secondary consumers – eat primary consumers and producers (omnivores and carnivores)

4th trophic level – tertiary consumers – eat secondary consumers (carnivores)

5th trophic level – quaternary consumers – eat tertiary consumers (carnivores)

Ch.15

  1. Define population

Consists of all the individuals of a species that live together in one place at one time.

Examples: all the alligators living in the Everglades this year

  1. Which are density-dependent, which density-independent limiting factors?
  2. Density dependent - Resources that become depleted as a population grows and reduce or stop population growth: food, water, hiding and nesting spaces, over-accumulation of waste, competition, predation, human-made environmental problems

Example: If the carrying capacity for the field outside of our school grounds is 8, then adding 8 more bulls would cause starvation and over-accumulation of waste

  1. Density independent - Environmental conditions that limit growth:

Natural disasters (fires, floods, freezing, storms)

Affect all living organisms in a certain environment no matter whether the populations are dense or sparse

Example: I have two ponds, one with 10 fish and one with 100 fish. If the ponds freeze, the fish in both lakes will die, not just the fish in the more densely populated lake

  1. List an organism for each of the three patterns of dispersion.

The way individuals are arranged (distributed) in space

  1. random distribution; least common (example: many plants)
  2. even distribution (example: predators have territories)
  3. clumped distribution; most common (example: grazing animals, plants near a river, nesting sites)
  1. Define carrying capacity

the number of organisms of a certain species that can be supported indefinitely.

Ch.4

  1. What is the charge of the nucleus and of a whole atom?

Nucleus is positive (contains protons and neutrons)

Whole atom is neutral – negative electrons balance positive nucleus

  1. What is the atomic number?

Number of protons in an atom

  1. How many atoms are in this molecule? 3 H2O

9 – 3x2=6 Hydrogen and 3 Oxygen total of 9 atoms

  1. Recognize a drawing of a protein, carbohydrate, fat, DNA and ATP.

Protein

Carbohydrate

Lipid or Fat

DNA

ATP

  1. What element is contained in all organic molecules?

Carbon

Ch.1

  1. Define independent variable and dependent variable (from my notes).

Independent – changed, chosen or manipulated by person doing experiment

Dependent – measured at the end of the experiment

  1. For dependent variable, what is the sentence you can use to memorize the location on a graph and what it stands for?

“I am dependent because I measure less than 18.