Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 22

The correct answer is C, the Forest Survey of India, which works under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and is based at Dehradun. It has brought out the report once in two years since 1987, assessing forest cover and tree cover state by state from satellite imagery. Option A is wrong because the Central Pollution Control Board is a pollution body: it runs the national air and water monitoring network and issues the Air Quality Index. Option B is wrong because the Wildlife Institute of India, also at Dehradun, is a research and training institute and is the technical partner in the tiger estimation, not the publisher of forest statistics. Option D is wrong because the National Tiger Conservation Authority administers Project Tiger and the tiger reserves, and with the Wildlife Institute it publishes the tiger count, not the forest report.

The correct answer is A, the north eastern coast of Australia. The Great Barrier Reef stretches for well over two thousand kilometres along the Queensland coast in the Coral Sea, off the north eastern shore of Australia, and is the largest structure on earth built by living organisms. It lies there because the conditions a reef needs are all present together: shallow water on a wide continental shelf, sea temperature that stays warm through the year, clear water that lets sunlight reach the algae living inside the coral polyps, and normal salinity undisturbed by a great river. Option B is wrong because the western coast faces the cool waters of the Indian Ocean and carries only small fringing reefs. Option C is wrong because the northern coast is muddied by river discharge into the Arafura Sea. Option D is wrong because the southern coast lies in cooler temperate latitudes where reef building corals cannot grow. Remember also that reefs are called the rainforests of the sea.

The correct answer is B, the taiga or boreal coniferous forest. The taiga forms an almost unbroken belt of needle leaved softwood trees, mainly pine, spruce, fir and larch, right across the northern parts of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia, and this belt covers a greater area of land than any other biome. Its trees are conical and evergreen, their needles cut water loss in a long frozen winter, and the forest is the world's main source of softwood, newsprint and pulp. Option A is wrong because the tropical rainforest, though far richer in species, is confined to a narrow equatorial belt and covers a much smaller area. Option C is wrong because the tundra lies poleward of the taiga on a smaller ring of land and carries no trees at all, only mosses, lichens and sedges above a frozen subsoil. Option D is wrong because the savanna, though extensive in Africa, South America and northern Australia, still covers less land than the boreal forest. Do not confuse largest in area with richest in species.

The correct answer is B, Haryali. 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. Under it gram panchayats build check dams, farm ponds, percolation tanks and contour bunds so that rain is held where it falls; wells recharge, and dryland farmers get water for a second crop. The watershed committee is chosen by the gram sabha, and the villagers share part of the cost and the upkeep of the structures. A is wrong because the Arvary Pani Sansad is a people's parliament of villages on the Arvari river in Alwar, Rajasthan, a community effort and not a central scheme. C is wrong because Jal Kranti Abhiyan was a later water awareness campaign of the water resources ministry. D is wrong because Neeru-Meeru was a state water conservation programme of Andhra Pradesh. Exam tip: Haryali 2003, central and panchayat-led; Neeru-Meeru is Andhra Pradesh; Arvari Pani Sansad is Rajasthan.

The correct answer is B, the United Nations Environment Programme. The report compares the emission cuts that countries have actually promised with the cuts the world would need to hold warming to agreed limits, and the difference between the two is the gap of the title; UNEP releases it shortly before the annual climate conference. Option A is wrong because the World Meteorological Organization publishes the State of the Global Climate and the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which report observed conditions rather than policy gaps. Option C is wrong because the World Economic Forum publishes the Global Risks Report, a survey of risks to the world economy. Option D is wrong because the International Energy Agency publishes the World Energy Outlook, which projects energy demand and supply. Remember that UNEP also owns the Adaptation Gap Report and the Global Environment Outlook.

The correct answer is D, Overgrazing. Overgrazing is a cause of soil degradation, not a way to conserve soil, so it is the option that does not belong. When too many animals feed on the same patch, the grass cover is eaten down to the roots and hooves loosen the bare topsoil, which wind and running water then carry away; in dry regions this is a main road to desertification. A is wrong as an answer because crop rotation is a genuine conservation method, since changing the crop each season restores nitrogen and other nutrients instead of draining one of them. B is wrong as an answer because terrace farming cuts a slope into steps, slowing runoff so that water soaks in rather than washing the soil down. C is wrong as an answer because tree roots bind the soil and shelter belts of trees break the force of the wind. Exam tip: contour ploughing, terracing, strip cropping and shelter belts conserve soil; overgrazing and deforestation destroy it.

The correct answer is C, the Prairies. The temperate grassland is the same biome the world over, short nutritious grass with almost no tree, but each continent gives it a local name, and the pairs are asked directly in examinations. In North America, across the central United States and the Canadian plains, it is called the Prairies, and so much of it has been ploughed for wheat that the region is known as the granary of the world. Option A is wrong because the Pampas is the temperate grassland of Argentina and Uruguay in South America, famous for cattle ranching. Option B is wrong because the Steppes form the vast grassland belt of Eurasia, running from Ukraine across Central Asia. Option D is wrong because the Veld is the grassland of the plateau of South Africa. Complete the set with the Downs of Australia and the Canterbury of New Zealand, and keep the tropical grasslands separate: the Savanna of Africa, the Llanos and Campos of South America.

The correct answer is D, SDG 15. Goal 15, called Life on Land, is the goal for land ecosystems, and its wording covers forests, desertification, land degradation and the loss of biodiversity. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as the heart of the 2030 Agenda, and they are to be reached by 2030. Goal 15 takes in forest cover, protected areas, the Red List of threatened species and the fight against poaching and the trafficking of wildlife, while Goal 14, Life Below Water, does the same work for the seas. A is wrong because SDG 12 is about responsible consumption and production. B is wrong because SDG 7 is about affordable and clean energy. C is wrong because SDG 17 is about partnerships for the goals. Exam tip: hold the pair together - SDG 14 is Life Below Water for the oceans and SDG 15 is Life on Land for forests and soil.

The correct answer is C, the World Wide Fund for Nature, which brings out the Living Planet Report once in two years. Its central measure, the Living Planet Index, is prepared with the Zoological Society of London and shows how populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have changed over time. Option A is wrong because the International Union for Conservation of Nature publishes the Red List of Threatened Species, which classifies species by risk of extinction rather than tracking population trends. Option B is wrong because UNESCO publishes the World Water Development Report and administers the World Heritage list. Option D is wrong because the Food and Agriculture Organization publishes the State of the World's Forests and the Global Forest Resources Assessment. The trap here is IUCN, so tie Living Planet firmly to WWF.

The correct answer is C, Garhwal Himalayas. 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. Its name comes from the Hindi word chipko, to cling. Chandi Prasad Bhatt led the first protest at Mandal village, Gaura Devi led the women of Reni village in 1974, and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried the message across the hills with the slogan that the soil, water and pure air are the real produce of a forest. The movement led to a fifteen-year ban on green felling above 1,000 metres in the Himalayan forests of Uttar Pradesh in 1980. Option A is wrong because Patna in Bihar has no link with it. Option B is wrong because Thrissur is in Kerala, far from the movement. Option D is wrong because Jammu was never its centre. Exam tip: Chipko 1973, Garhwal; Appiko 1983, Karnataka.

The correct answer is B, lichens. A bare rock offers no soil, almost no water and no shelter, and only an organism that can survive long spells of drying and can hold on to bare stone can settle there. A lichen is exactly that, a partnership of an alga and a fungus in which the fungus grips the rock and holds water while the alga makes food. Lichens also release weak acids that eat into the rock and, with their own dead remains, form the first thin film of soil. Option A is wrong because mosses follow the lichens; they need that first film of soil and more moisture than bare rock can give. Option C is wrong because grasses come later still, after the soil is deep enough to hold roots and water. Option D is wrong because shrubs belong to a late seral stage, shortly before the tree climax. The full xerarch sequence to remember is lichen, moss, herb and grass, shrub and finally forest, and the parallel hydrarch sequence begins with phytoplankton in water.

The correct answer is C, It is a community based rain water harvesting system. A johad is a small crescent-shaped earthen dam that villagers build together to catch and store rainwater. It is used mainly in Rajasthan and Haryana, where rain is scarce and falls in only a few months of the year. The water held behind the bund is used for cattle and farming, and much of it soaks into the ground, refilling wells and raising the water table. In Alwar district of Rajasthan, villagers working with the Tarun Bharat Sangh built many johads, and the Arvari river, which had dried up, began to flow again. A is wrong because a johad does not pump groundwater; it helps to recharge it. B is wrong because it collects rainwater running off the land, not water drawn from rivers. D is wrong because a johad is a storage structure, not a water filter. Exam tip: johad, Rajasthan and Haryana; kul, western Himalayas; bamboo drip irrigation, Meghalaya; zing, Ladakh.

The correct answer is B, Yale and Columbia Universities. The index is academic work, produced by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy together with a centre at Columbia University, and it ranks countries on indicators of environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Option A is wrong because Germanwatch, a German organisation, publishes the Global Climate Risk Index, which ranks countries by the losses they suffer from extreme weather; the two indices are the standing pair of distractors in this question. Option C is wrong because UNEP owns the Emissions Gap Report and the Global Environment Outlook but not this index. Option D is wrong because the World Bank publishes development statistics and reports on the cost of environmental damage, not the Environmental Performance Index. Keep Yale with performance and Germanwatch with risk.

The correct answer is D, a - ii, b - i, c - iv, d - iii. Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand is India's oldest national park; it was set up in 1936 as Hailey National Park and in 1973 became the first reserve under Project Tiger. Sundarbans National Park in West Bengal lies in the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta, has the world's largest mangrove forest and is famous for its swimming Royal Bengal tigers; it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bandhavgarh National Park in Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh has one of the highest densities of tigers in India, and the white tigers of Rewa were first found in this region. Sariska in Alwar district of Rajasthan lost all its tigers by 2005, and tigers were brought back from Ranthambore from 2008. Option A is wrong because it puts Corbett in Rajasthan and Sariska in Uttarakhand. Option B is wrong because it places Corbett in Madhya Pradesh and Bandhavgarh in Rajasthan. Option C is wrong because it puts Sundarbans in Madhya Pradesh and Sariska in West Bengal. Exam tip: Corbett Uttarakhand, Sundarbans West Bengal, Bandhavgarh MP, Sariska and Ranthambore Rajasthan.

The correct answer is B, the soil is already present. Primary succession starts on a surface that has never held life, a cooled lava flow, a bare rock or a fresh sand dune, and the slowest part of the whole process there is the making of soil: rock has to be weathered grain by grain and organic matter has to accumulate from the dead pioneers, which takes a very long time. Secondary succession starts where an existing community was destroyed by fire, flood, felling or cultivation, but the soil, with its nutrients, its seed bank and its microbes, survived. Plants can therefore root at once and the sere runs to its climax much sooner. Option A is wrong because secondary succession usually begins on land, and starting in water describes hydrarch succession, which is a different classification. Option C is wrong because secondary succession also has a pioneer community, typically fast growing weeds and grasses. Option D is wrong because climate decides which climax is reached, not how fast a sere moves.

The correct answer is A, 1982. The Ramsar Convention came into force for India on 1 February 1982, the date on which India's accession took effect. The treaty itself was signed on 2 February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar, on the Caspian Sea, and came into force internationally in 1975; 2 February is therefore observed as World Wetlands Day. It is the only global convention devoted to one type of ecosystem, and sites listed under it are called Ramsar sites or Wetlands of International Importance. India's first two, Chilika Lake in Odisha and Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan, were designated on 1 October 1981, just before the convention took effect for the country. So keep three years apart: 1971 signed, 1975 in force worldwide, 1982 in force for India. B, 1980, is the year of the Forest (Conservation) Act, not Ramsar. C, 1989, and D, 1990, have no link with the convention in India. Exam tip: Ramsar 1971, wetlands, Iran; India joined 1982; Chilika and Keoladeo were first.

The correct answer is B, the Bhopal gas tragedy. On the night of 2 and 3 December 1984 methyl isocyanate leaked from a pesticide plant at Bhopal and killed thousands of people in the surrounding settlements, and India keeps 2 December as National Pollution Control Day in memory of the victims and as a reminder of the need for industrial safety. Option A is wrong because the Chernobyl nuclear accident happened in April 1986 in the Soviet Union and is not the occasion for an Indian observance. Option C is wrong because Minamata disease, caused by mercury poisoning of a bay in Japan, gave its name to the Minamata Convention on mercury but not to this day. Option D is wrong because the Chipko movement of the 1970s in the Himalaya was a forest protection movement and has no date in this calendar.

The correct answer is C, the climax community. Succession is a directional process: each community changes the place a little, making it fit for the next, until a community arrives that is in balance with the climate of the region and can replace itself generation after generation without being replaced by another. That is the climax community, and in most of India it is some kind of forest. Option A is wrong because the pioneer community is the first to arrive on the bare site, made of hardy organisms such as lichens on rock or phytoplankton in water. Option B is wrong because a seral community is any of the intermediate communities on the way, and the whole sequence of them is called a sere. Option D is wrong because pelagic refers to the open water zone of a lake or an ocean and is a description of habitat, not a stage of succession. Frederic Clements argued that in a given climatic region succession always leads to one climax, a view called the monoclimax theory.

The correct answer is C, St Petersburg. The tiger range countries met at a summit in St Petersburg in Russia in 2010 and agreed to work towards doubling the number of wild tigers, and 29 July was adopted as International Tiger Day, also called Global Tiger Day, at that meeting. Option A is wrong because New Delhi has hosted tiger conferences and is the seat of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, but the day itself was not declared there. Option B is wrong because Nairobi is the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme and the city where the text of the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted, which is remembered on 22 May instead. Option D is wrong because Rio de Janeiro hosted the Earth Summit of 1992, from which World Water Day and the two Rio conventions came.

The correct answer is A, permafrost. In the tundra only a thin upper layer of the ground thaws in the brief summer; below it the soil stays frozen through the year, and this permanently frozen subsoil is called permafrost. It blocks the deep roots that a tree needs and it also stops water from draining away, so the surface turns into waterlogged marsh in summer. That is why the tundra carries only mosses, lichens, sedges and low flowering herbs, and no trees. Option B is wrong because podzol is the acidic, ash grey soil of the coniferous forest belt just south of the tundra, formed by the leaching of the upper layer. Option C is wrong because chernozem is the black, very fertile soil of the temperate grasslands, rich in humus and famous in the Steppes of Ukraine. Option D is wrong because laterite is the iron rich red soil of the humid tropics, formed by heavy leaching under high rainfall and temperature.