Environment & Ecology Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 10

Mulching means covering the bare soil between plants with a layer of organic matter such as straw, dry leaves, husk or grass clippings.

Kabartal Wetland, known locally as Kanwar Jheel, lies in Begusarai district of Bihar and was designated a Ramsar site in 2020, becoming the first Ramsar site in the state.

Lonar Lake, in Buldhana district of Maharashtra, was added to the list of Ramsar sites in November 2020 along with Sur Sarovar in Uttar Pradesh.

Biogas is produced when cattle dung, crop waste and sewage are broken down by bacteria in a closed tank without air, a process called anaerobic digestion.

India's first vulture breeding centre, the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre, was set up at Pinjore in the Panchkula district of Haryana in 2001.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it lets in the short wave radiation of the sun but absorbs a part of the long wave infrared radiation that the warmed earth sends back, and radiates it downwards again.

In the sea the producers are tiny phytoplankton. At any given moment their total mass is smaller than the mass of the zooplankton and fish that feed on them, so the pyramid of biomass stands upside down.

Earthworms, millipedes and woodlice feed on dead plant and animal matter, called detritus, so they are detritivores. Detritivores break dead leaves and bodies into small pieces, which speeds up the work of decomposers such as bacteria and fungi that finish the breakdown and return nutrients to the soil.

Blue carbon is the carbon stored by marine and coastal ecosystems, especially mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows.

International Tiger Day, also called Global Tiger Day, is observed every year on 29 July. It was started in 2010 at the Tiger Summit held in St Petersburg, Russia, where the thirteen tiger-range countries promised to double the number of wild tigers by 2022.

In a food chain each step at which energy is transferred is a trophic level, and secondary consumers stand at the third step.

This ministry plans, promotes and coordinates India's environmental policy, so it deals with UNEP on India's behalf. UNEP was set up in 1972 after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.

Planting trees helps recharge groundwater: roots and leaf litter slow the run-off and let rain soak into the soil and down to the aquifers.

Sacred groves are patches of forest protected by local communities for religious reasons, so they conserve biodiversity instead of reducing it.

This statement is false: biogas is an excellent fuel with a high heating capacity. Biogas is mostly methane, about 50 to 75 percent, with carbon dioxide and small amounts of other gases.

Sulphur and nitrogen oxides from industries in the Great Lakes region and the US Midwest are carried by westerly winds and fall as acid rain and snow over eastern Canada.

Greta Thunberg, born in Stockholm in 2003, is a Swedish climate activist who became the face of the youth climate movement.

The Basel Convention controls the movement of hazardous wastes across borders and their disposal, to protect human health and the environment.

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.

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.