Environment & Ecology Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 8

Sustainable Development Goal 6 is clean water and sanitation, and its aim is to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

The Himalayan region is home to wild goats such as the ibex and the tahr and to the snow leopard, which hunts them above the tree line, so pair (a) is right.

The greater one-horned rhinoceros, the animal of Kaziranga and Manas in Assam, is placed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the schedule that carries the highest protection and the strictest punishment for hunting or trade.

Mulching means covering the bare ground between plants with straw, dry leaves or crop waste, so that the soil holds moisture and raindrops cannot beat the topsoil loose.

A glacier is a natural mass of moving ice and a source of fresh water, not a pollutant. A water pollutant is any substance added to water that makes it unfit for use.

On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Limited at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, killing thousands of people and injuring many more.

A tsunami is caused by an undersea earthquake, a volcanic eruption or a landslide on the ocean floor, and has nothing to do with the ozone layer.

The Polar Code is the International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters, adopted by the International Maritime Organization and in force since the beginning of 2017.

Under the Bureau of Indian Standards specification for drinking water, IS 10500:2012, turbidity has an acceptable limit of 1 NTU and a maximum permissible limit of 5 NTU in the absence of any alternate source.

Tamil Nadu is the first state in India to make rooftop rainwater harvesting structures compulsory for all houses and buildings across the state, through a law brought in 2003.

The Kachchh Biosphere Reserve in Gujarat, notified in 2008, covers about 12,454 square kilometres and is the largest biosphere reserve in India by area.

The 3 R's of waste management are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle; Refuse is not one of them. Reduce means creating less waste in the first place, such as buying fewer packaged goods and switching off lights to save power.

It means the layering of an ecosystem from top to bottom, with each layer holding its own set of species.

The Seshachalam Biosphere Reserve lies in the Seshachalam hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats in southern Andhra Pradesh, across the old Chittoor and Kadapa districts, and was notified in 2010 as India's 17th biosphere reserve.

The Ramsar Convention came into force for India on 1 February 1982, the date on which India's accession took effect.

Lying between India and Sri Lanka off Tamil Nadu, it is built around a chain of 21 small islands with estuaries, beaches, coral reefs, salt marshes, seagrass beds and mangroves.

Operation Olivia is the Indian Coast Guard's annual mission, begun in the early 1980s, to protect Olive Ridley turtles off the Odisha coast.

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.

Permaculture avoids monoculture, does not build up salt in the soil and relies on mulching; only statement 3 is wrong.

The Asan Conservation Reserve lies in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand. The reserve is a stretch of the Asan river near its meeting with the Yamuna, where a barrage built in 1967 created a wetland.