Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 3

They feed on dead bodies, fallen leaves and waste matter, break the complex organic substances into simple ones and release nutrients back into the soil, water and air, where plants can take them up again.

The Red Data Book is the source book that keeps a record of endangered animals, plants and fungi, so that governments and conservationists know which living species face the greatest risk of dying out.

Gir in Gujarat is a national park and wildlife sanctuary, famous as the only home of the Asiatic lion, but it has never been declared a biosphere reserve.

The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) is one of the expert groups of the IUCN's Species Survival Commission, and it manages the Global Invasive Species Database.

A bioindicator is a living organism whose presence, absence or health tells us about the quality of the environment. Lichens are a partnership between a fungus and an alga or cyanobacterium; they have no roots and take water and nutrients straight from the air and rain.

Project Tiger was launched on 1 April 1973 by the Government of India under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, from Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, to save the Bengal tiger and its habitat.

The ozone layer shields us from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, so when it thins, that protection is lost. It lies in the stratosphere, roughly 15 to 35 km above the Earth, and absorbs most of the UV-B and UV-C radiation.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted at Kyoto, Japan on 11 December 1997 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was the first treaty to set binding targets for cutting emissions.

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 Indian Forest Act of 1878 created the three classes of reserved, protected and village forests. British interest in Indian forests grew as the railways and shipbuilding needed huge amounts of timber.

Energy enters an ecosystem as sunlight, is fixed by green plants, and then moves from producers to herbivores, to carnivores and finally to decomposers.

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

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.

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.

Rain with a pH below 5.6 is called acid rain. Even clean rain is slightly acidic, with a pH of about 5.6, because carbon dioxide from the air dissolves in it to form weak carbonic acid; that is why 5.6, not 7, is the dividing line.

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.

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.

Detritus is dead organic matter such as fallen leaves, dead bodies and animal waste. Organisms like earthworms, termites, bacteria and fungi feed on it, and they in turn are eaten by small birds and other animals.

Nokrek Biosphere Reserve is in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya; Manas is in Assam along the Bhutan border; Similipal is in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha; and Seshachalam lies in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh.

Bears, crows, pigs and human beings eat both plant and animal food, which allows them to occupy more than one trophic level at the same time and makes them a good example of why food webs, rather than single food chains, describe nature better.