Environment & Ecology GK Questions with Answers – Page 5

The 2016 Rules set out detailed criteria for choosing sites for landfills and waste processing facilities. The Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, replaced the Municipal Solid Wastes Rules of 2000.

BOD tells how much organic pollution a body of water carries. Biological, or biochemical, Oxygen Demand is the amount of dissolved oxygen that aerobic micro-organisms use up while breaking down the organic matter in a water sample, usually measured over five days at 20 degrees Celsius and expressed in milligrams…

The Act empowers the Centre to set emission and discharge standards, but it says nothing about public participation. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 was passed after the Bhopal gas tragedy as an umbrella law under Article 253, to give effect to the decisions of the 1972 Stockholm Conference.

Each activity is a recognised way of pulling carbon dioxide out of circulation and locking it away.

Rain is called acid rain when its pH falls below 5.6. Even clean rain is slightly acidic, because carbon dioxide in the air dissolves in it and forms weak carbonic acid, which brings its pH down to about 5.6.

The International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer is observed on 16 September, not 16 November. The date marks the signing of the Montreal Protocol on 16 September 1987, the treaty that phased out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances.

Energy passes one way from the Sun through the food chain and is lost as heat, while nutrients are used again and again.

Nanda Devi National Park lies in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, around India's second-highest peak, Nanda Devi. The park is a vast glacial basin ringed by high peaks and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988 for its wild, untouched landscape.

Global dimming is the drop in sunlight reaching the ground, and the cooling that follows, caused by particles in the air.

A green bond is a debt instrument whose money can be spent only on projects that help the environment or the climate.

It is the only set in which each organism eats the one before it, so energy passes along a single feeding line.

The Forest Rights Act names bamboo as minor forest produce and gives forest dwellers ownership of such produce, but the Indian Forest Act amendment did not allow felling of bamboo grown in forest areas.

All three statements about coal, its ash and its emissions are correct. When coal burns in a power station, the leftover fly ash and bottom ash carry toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium and chromium, which can leach into groundwater from ash ponds.

Nagarhole, Sathyamangalam and Wayanad all drain into the Cauvery system, while Papikonda lies on the Godavari. Nagarhole National Park in Karnataka is bounded by the Kabini river, a major tributary of the Cauvery.

Autecology studies one species, or one individual, in relation to the physical and biological conditions of the place where it lives.

Corals grow in clear, shallow, warm sea water with plenty of sunlight; fresh water kills them. Coral reefs are built by tiny animals called polyps, which take calcium carbonate from sea water to make hard skeletons.

Myxomatosis passes from rabbit to rabbit through biting insects and contact, so it spreads fastest where rabbits are crowded together.

The ozone hole, a sharp seasonal thinning of stratospheric ozone, forms every southern spring over Antarctica. During the long polar winter a strong circular wind, the polar vortex, isolates the air over Antarctica, and temperatures fall low enough to form polar stratospheric clouds.

Eutrophication is the enrichment of a water body with nutrients, so statement 2 is correct, while statement 1 describes the opposite condition.

Itai-itai disease is caused by cadmium poisoning and was first reported in Japan. In the early 20th century, mining waste from upstream released cadmium into the Jinzu river in Toyama Prefecture, Japan.