Environmental Conservation Prof. McCloud

Biology 251 Fall 1998

Exam Practice Questions

Course Introduction

Define: Sustainability, Biodiversity, Perpetual/renewable resources, Potentially renewable resources, Non-renewable resources, Environmental degradation, Pollution, Earth Capital, Solar Capital, J-curve, Exponential Growth, Doubling time, Rule of 70, GDP, GNP, Wealth Gap

What is the current world population?

What is the current world population growth rate?

Use the rule of 70 to calculate the current world population doubling time.

Why is world resource consumption increasing?

Why is world per capita resource consumption increasing?

The developed countries hold what percentage of the world's people? These people consume what percent of the world's resources, generate what percent of the world's pollution, and hold what percent of the world's wealth?

Outline a simple model of human impact on the environment. How does the complex model given in the text differ from this?

Distinguish between input and output solutions to pollution. Which is more economically efficient in the long run?

What are the "4R's"?

Environmental Ethics:

Define and describe deontology.

Is teleological thinking more likely to offer a justification for preservation or conservation? Explain.

Why are environmental issues frequently approached from a utilitarian standpoint?

What are two major objections to application of utilitarian analyses of environmental issues?

List two objections to a teleological approach to environmental issues.

Define material, formal, efficient, and final causes.

Distinguish between intrinsic value and instrumental value.

What is ethical relativism?

A major objection to application of utilitarian principles to environmental issues involves the "provisional nature of utilitarian judgment". What is meant by this?

Why is a consideration of environmental ethics useful in evaluating environmental controversy?

Outline two objections to a deontological approach in environmental ethics.

Can a strict ethical relativist logically praise love or condemn war? Why/why not?

A deontological approach is taken in certain kinds of environmental issues involving property. How did our current notions of property rights evolve? What are some objections to the view of property rights that lies at the base of our modern views? How may property rights now be limited?

History of Civilization with Reference to Resource Use:

Characterize the environmental impacts of typical hunter-gatherer populations.

Describe "shifting cultivation".

Describe the energy and population growth consequences of the "agricultural revolution".

Describe the cultural consequences of the agricultural revolution.

What was the crucial shift in energy use/production that allowed the industrial revolution to take place?

Distinguish between atomistic and holistic worldviews.

Which system of ethics underlies all of the planetary management worldviews?

Describe the "No Problem", "Free Market", "Responsible Management", "Spaceship Earth", and "Stewardship" worldviews.

Ecological Concepts

What is meant by the "solar constant"? What is the value of the solar constant?

What happens at the boundary of the troposphere and the stratosphere? What is the importance of each of these?

What is the size of the biosphere relative to the rest of the earth?

What proportion of the solar constant is trapped by plants? What is the average energy loss at each trophic level?

What is the proportion of NPP to respiration?

Place the following ecosystems in order of the amount of NPP they produce: tropical coral reefs, prime farmland, deserts, tropical rainforests, open ocean.

What do pyramids of energy flow, biomass, and numbers generally look like? Why?

When can they look radically different than the way that they usually do? Which pyramids look radically different and what do they look like?

Define "niche". Distinguish this from "habitat"

What biological effect related to tolerance could be the basic mechanism at work behind the sudden die-off of trees in the black forest 10 years ago or the death of large numbers of marine mammals in the North Atlantic 7 years ago?

Explain Leibig's Law of the Minimum.

Nutrient Cycling

How does elemental nitrogen get out of the air and into the bodies of organisms? How about carbon?

What is so different about the phosphorous cycle in contrast to the nitrogen and carbon cycle.

Is it possible for you to breathe a molecule that had once been part of Plato? Explain.

How do human activities interfere and/or interact with the nitrogen cycle in a way(s) that are environmentally significant? How about the phosphorous cycle?

What is the significance of the ocean in the global carbon cycle?

What is the significance of the carbon cycle in environmental issues?

Biomes

Why are there no (very few) trees in the grassland biome?

Discuss some of the special adaptations to life in extreme conditions that are evident in desert plants and animals.

What are the rainfall/precipitation characteristics of the various biomes that we have discussed?