Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 15

Biochemical oxygen demand measures the oxygen that micro-organisms need in order to break down the organic matter present in a sample.

Haryali is a centrally sponsored watershed development project launched in 2003 by the Ministry of Rural Development, and its whole point is that the village panchayat plans and carries out the work itself.

Nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, together written as nitrogen oxides, are air pollutants that come mainly from combustion in vehicles and power stations; they help form smog and acid rain but are not counted among the greenhouse gases of the natural atmosphere.

Space research is not one of the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations General Assembly adopted seventeen such goals in September 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 169 targets to be met by 2030; they replaced the Millennium Development Goals, which ran from 2000 to…

Nitrate from fertiliser run-off and from sewage seeps into groundwater; in an infant it is converted to nitrite, which binds to haemoglobin and forms methaemoglobin, a compound that cannot carry oxygen.

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.

About nine tenths of the atmosphere's ozone lies in the stratosphere, roughly fifteen to thirty five kilometres above the surface, where ultraviolet rays split oxygen molecules and the free atoms combine with other oxygen molecules to make ozone.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan grew up against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada. The movement began in 1985 under Medha Patkar, with Baba Amte and others joining later.

When fertilisers, detergents and sewage add nitrates and phosphates to a lake or a slow-moving river, algae multiply into a bloom that covers the surface.

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.

The Dobson unit, named after the scientist who built the instrument for measuring atmospheric ozone, expresses how thick the ozone column would be if all of it were brought down to the surface at standard temperature and pressure; a hundred Dobson units correspond to a layer one millimetre thick.

An ocean thermal energy conversion plant works only where the warm surface water is at least about 20 degrees Celsius hotter than the cold water drawn from the depths.

The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1974 was India’s first comprehensive law on pollution.

Ashtamudi is a backwater lake in Kollam district of Kerala and the second largest estuarine system in the state after Vembanad.

The Montreal Protocol was adopted in 1987 under the Vienna Convention of 1985 and sets the timetable by which countries must stop producing and using chlorofluorocarbons, halons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform and methyl bromide.

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

The Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1985 to intercept, divert and treat the sewage of the towns along the river, and it was the first programme of its kind in India.

These gases come from burning coal and oil in thermal power stations, smelters and vehicles, are oxidised in the atmosphere and dissolve in water droplets to form sulphuric acid and nitric acid, which come down as acid rain.

The mission, working under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is the implementing agency of the Namami Gange Programme launched in 2014, and it works through State Ganga Committees and district committees along the river.

Marble is calcium carbonate, and sulphur dioxide in polluted air, along with the sulphuric acid of acid rain, reacts with it to form calcium sulphate, so the stone loses its shine, turns yellow and becomes pitted and flaky.