Environment & Ecology Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 16

The Chipko movement began in 1973 in the Garhwal Himalayas, in Chamoli district of what is now Uttarakhand, when villagers hugged trees to stop contractors from felling them.

In 2018 the Union Environment Ministry started a pilot project to clean up and develop selected beaches so that they could win the Blue Flag.

Methane is not one of the pollutants used to calculate India's National Air Quality Index. The National Air Quality Index was launched in 2014 under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and is run by the Central Pollution Control Board.

Sulphur dioxide dissolves in rainwater to form sulphuric acid, a main cause of acid rain. Burning coal and oil in power stations, smelters and vehicles releases sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen into the air.

All four areas are recognised as the major coral reef areas of India. India's coral reefs lie in four main regions.

Xeriscaping is a way of designing gardens and landscapes so that they need little or no irrigation. The word joins the Greek xeros, meaning dry, with landscaping.

Strontium-90, iodine-131 and caesium-137 are all fission products that settle on soil, water and plants and reach people through food.

One carbon credit stands for one tonne of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases, kept out of the atmosphere.

Going by their states, Uttarakhand lies furthest north, then Rajasthan, then Odisha, and Kerala lies furthest south.

The SDGs form the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN member states in September 2015.

Global warming is the long-term rise in the average temperature at the earth's surface, and it is driven mainly by the growing amount of greenhouse gases in the air, so Statement II explains Statement I. Sunlight warms the ground, which gives off heat as infrared radiation.

The Great Himalayan area in Himachal Pradesh is a national park, not a biosphere reserve. The Great Himalayan National Park lies in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh.

This is false: the north-east has several tiger reserves. Manas, Kaziranga, Nameri and Orang in Assam, Namdapha, Pakke (Pakhui) and Kamlang in Arunachal Pradesh, and Dampa in Mizoram are all tiger reserves.

Schedule I lists the animals that get the highest level of legal protection in India, and the tiger is one of them.

M-STrIPES stands for Monitoring System for Tigers: Intensive Protection and Ecological Status. It was introduced by the National Tiger Conservation Authority around 2010, with technical support from the Wildlife Institute of India, for use in tiger reserves.

The Chambal River holds the largest wild population of gharials in the world and is protected as the National Chambal Sanctuary.

The CCAC is not a G20 body, but it does target methane, black carbon and HFCs. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition was launched in February 2012 by the UN Environment Programme together with six countries: Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden and the United States.

Ordinary plastics are non-biodegradable, so bacteria and fungi cannot break them down in any useful length of time. Most plastics, such as polyethylene, polypropylene and PVC, are long synthetic polymers made from petroleum.

Nekton are animals large enough to be seen with the naked eye that swim actively and can move against water currents.

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…