Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 32

The correct answer is B, Eichhornia crassipes, the water hyacinth. It is a free-floating plant of South American origin that was brought to India for its attractive flowers. It multiplies very fast and forms dense mats over ponds, canals and wetlands, shutting out light and oxygen, killing fish, blocking navigation and increasing water loss, and its destruction of the water bodies of Bengal earned it the nickname. Option A, lantana, is an invasive shrub of forests and grasslands but it is terrestrial and carries no such name. Option C, Prosopis juliflora or vilayati babool, is a thorny tree of dry regions introduced from Mexico and Central America. Option D, Parthenium hysterophorus, is the congress grass, a terrestrial weed of waste ground notorious for causing skin allergy rather than for choking water bodies.

The correct answer is B, Earthworm. The earthworm is called the farmer's friend because its work keeps soil fit for crops. As it burrows it loosens the soil and lets air and water reach the roots, and the castings it leaves behind are rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, so the topsoil is steadily renewed. Charles Darwin called earthworms nature's ploughmen for this reason. Farmers use the same habit in vermicomposting, where species such as Eisenia fetida turn cattle dung and crop waste into fine manure within a few weeks. A is wrong because the cockroach is a household pest that spoils food and carries germs. C is wrong because the honey bee is useful as a pollinator and for honey, but the name friend of the farmer is not given to it. D is wrong because the housefly spreads diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Exam tip: earthworm, the farmer's friend and nature's plough, used in vermicompost.

The correct answer is D, a botanical garden. Ex-situ conservation means keeping a species, or only its germplasm, outside its natural habitat, which is what a botanical garden, a zoo, an aquarium, a seed bank, a gene bank or a conservation breeding centre does. Option A is wrong because a biosphere reserve conserves a whole landscape with its core, buffer and transition zones, which is in-situ conservation. Option B is wrong because a wildlife sanctuary protects animals where they live, with limited human activity allowed, again in-situ. Option C is wrong because a national park is the strictest form of in-situ protection, where grazing and private rights are not permitted. The quickest test is to ask whether the species stays in its habitat; if it does, the method is in-situ.

The correct answer is D, Ecotone. An ecotone is the transition zone where two different ecosystems meet and mix, such as the belt between a grassland and a forest, an estuary between a river and the sea, or a mangrove strip between land and ocean. It holds species of both neighbouring communities along with a few of its own, so the number of species and their density are often higher in it. This crowding at the edge is called the edge effect, and species found only in such a belt are called edge species. A is wrong because the ecosphere means the whole living world of the earth taken together with its environment. B is wrong because ecoboundary is not a term used in ecology. C is wrong because ecotwin is not an ecological term either. Exam tip: tie ecotone to the edge effect, and keep ecotone, a zone, apart from ecocline, a gradual gradient.

The correct answer is C, 1973. The text of CITES was agreed by the representatives of eighty countries meeting at Washington in the United States in 1973, which is why the treaty is also called the Washington Convention; it then entered into force on 1 July 1975, and India became a party in 1976. Option A, 1963, is the year the idea of such a convention was first adopted as a resolution by members of the IUCN, not the year of the treaty itself. Option B, 1971, is the year of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed at Ramsar in Iran, which is a common distractor. Option D, 1992, is the year of the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, where the Convention on Biological Diversity and the climate convention were opened for signature. Candidates should keep 1971, 1973 and 1992 clearly apart.

The correct answer is A, the National Tiger Conservation Authority. It was created by the amendment of the Wild Life (Protection) Act in 2006, which gave Project Tiger a statutory footing, and it approves tiger conservation plans, notifies core and buffer areas with the states and conducts the national tiger estimation. Option B is wrong because the Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun is a training and research institution and assists in surveys rather than administering the project. Option C is wrong because the Zoological Survey of India documents the fauna of the country. Option D is wrong because the Central Zoo Authority recognises and regulates zoos. The National Board for Wild Life, chaired by the Prime Minister, advises on policy above all of these.

The correct answer is A, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The amendment of 1991 inserted the provisions on zoos into that Act, and the Central Zoo Authority was constituted in 1992 to recognise zoos, prescribe standards for animal housing, upkeep and veterinary care and coordinate conservation breeding; a zoo without its recognition cannot operate. Option B is wrong because the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 is the umbrella law under which notifications such as eco-sensitive zones and coastal regulation zones are issued. Option C is wrong because the Biological Diversity Act of 2002 created the National Biodiversity Authority, which deals with access to biological resources and benefit sharing. Option D is wrong because the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 governs the diversion of forest land for non-forest use.

The correct answer is A, Uttarakhand. The movement began in 1973 in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya, which was then part of Uttar Pradesh and has been in the new State of Uttarakhand since 2000. Villagers, and above all the women of Reni village led by Gaura Devi, embraced the trees so that contractors could not fell them, and Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt carried the demand forward until a ban on green felling above a certain altitude was ordered. Option B, Himachal Pradesh, has its own forest protection traditions but not Chipko. Option C, Karnataka, is the home of the Appiko movement of 1983 in the Western Ghats, led by Panduranga Hegde, which is the southern parallel to Chipko and is often set as a distractor here. Option D, Assam, is unconnected with it. The word chipko means to cling, and appiko means to hug in Kannada.

The correct answer is A, Appendix I. CITES sorts species into appendices according to how badly trade threatens them. Appendix I holds the species that are threatened with extinction, such as the tiger, the Asian elephant, the one-horned rhinoceros and the red panda, and commercial international trade in their specimens is banned; movement is allowed only in exceptional non-commercial cases with both export and import permits. Option B is wrong because Appendix II covers species that are not yet threatened but could become so if trade is uncontrolled, and trade in them continues under export permits. Option C is wrong because Appendix III lists species that a single party protects within its own territory and for which it has requested the cooperation of other parties. Option D is wrong because CITES has only three appendices.

The correct answer is B, Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve. Spread across the Nallamala hills in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana along the Krishna river, it is the largest tiger reserve in the country by area, and its division between two States after 2014 is itself a question. Option A is wrong because the Sundarbans in West Bengal, though unique as the only mangrove tiger habitat, is far smaller. Option C is wrong because Melghat in the Satpura ranges of Maharashtra, one of the first nine reserves, is large but not the largest. Option D is wrong because Namdapha in Arunachal Pradesh, notable for being home to four big cats, is also smaller. The companion fact is the smallest reserve, Bor in the Wardha district of Maharashtra. Remember also that this reserve lies in the Nallamala hills along the Krishna river and that the Srisailam dam divides it, a detail papers use to disguise the name.

The correct answer is B, the Alipore Zoological Garden in Kolkata, opened to the public in 1876 and therefore the oldest formally established zoo in the country. Option A is wrong because the National Zoological Park in Delhi dates from 1959 and was planned as a model zoo for the capital. Option C is wrong because the Nehru Zoological Park at Hyderabad was opened in the 1960s and is known for its safari enclosures and nocturnal animal house. Option D is wrong because the Arignar Anna Zoological Park at Vandalur near Chennai, though the largest zoo in India by area, was opened in 1985 after shifting from the older Madras zoo. A related fact often asked alongside is that the Mysuru zoo of 1892 is the second of the old zoos and the Darjeeling zoo the highest in altitude.

The correct answer is B, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, a statutory body under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 and the Ministry of Power, which already ran the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme and so had the measurement and verification experience the carbon market needs. In the same scheme the Grid Controller of India keeps the registry and the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission regulates trading. A is wrong because the Central Pollution Control Board, under the environment ministry, sets and enforces pollution standards and monitors air and water quality; it issues consents, not credits. C is wrong because the Securities and Exchange Board of India regulates securities markets and the disclosure rules for green debt, not the carbon credit itself. D is wrong because NITI Aayog is a policy think tank with no regulatory or administrative power over a trading scheme.

The correct answer is C, 2007. The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau is a multi-disciplinary statutory body created in 2007 under section 38Z of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. It works from New Delhi under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, gathers and shares intelligence on organised wildlife crime, and assists state forest departments, the police and the customs in enforcement. Option A, 1972, is the year of the parent Wild Life (Protection) Act itself, not of the Bureau. Option B, 1992, is the year Project Elephant was launched, a frequent distractor in this group of questions. Option D, 2014, matches no landmark in wildlife enforcement. Remember that the Act of 1972 is the law and the Bureau of 2007 is one of the agencies created under it by later amendment.

The correct answer is B, cooling tower. A cooling tower releases the heat of used cooling water to the atmosphere by evaporation or by air flow, so that the water leaving the plant is close to the temperature of the receiving river or lake. Cooling ponds, spray ponds and the reuse of waste heat through cogeneration work on the same principle. A is wrong because an electrostatic precipitator removes fine dust and fly ash from flue gas by charging the particles, an air pollution device. C is wrong because a cyclone separator uses the spin of the gas stream to throw out coarse particles, again an air pollution device. D is wrong because a scrubber washes gases such as sulphur dioxide out of a flue stream with a liquid or a slurry of lime.

The correct answer is B, Robert Kyd, an officer of the East India Company who proposed and founded the garden at Shibpur in Howrah in 1787, first for growing plants of economic value such as teak and spices. Option A is wrong because William Roxburgh, often called the father of Indian botany, was its superintendent after Kyd and compiled the Flora Indica, which is a different contribution. Option C is wrong because Joseph Hooker travelled in the Himalaya and the Khasi hills and wrote on their flora but did not found this garden. Option D is wrong because the garden was renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in his honour in 2009, long after his death, which is why his name is attached to it today. The garden holds the Great Banyan Tree.

The correct answer is A, the zooxanthellae algae. A reef building coral polyp lives in a close partnership with single celled algae called zooxanthellae that live inside its own tissue. The algae photosynthesise and pass most of the food they make to the polyp, and they also give the coral its brown and green colour; the polyp in return gives them shelter and carbon dioxide. When the sea water becomes too warm or too acidic, or when it is muddied, the polyp expels these algae. The white calcium carbonate skeleton then shows through the transparent tissue, which is why the reef looks bleached, and unless the algae return the polyp starves. Option B is wrong because diatoms are free floating phytoplankton of open water and are not partners of coral. Option C is wrong because nitrogen fixing bacteria live in root nodules of legumes and in the soil. Option D is wrong because mycorrhizal fungi form partnerships with the roots of land plants, not with marine animals.

The correct answer is B, congress grass. Parthenium hysterophorus reached India from tropical America, reportedly with imported wheat, and spread rapidly over waste ground, roadsides and fallow fields. It is also called carrot grass from the shape of its leaves, and it is a public health problem because its pollen and hairs cause dermatitis, asthma and hay fever. Option A, Siam weed, is the common name of Chromolaena odorata, another American invader of plantations and forest edges. Option C, prickly pear, refers to the cacti of the genus Opuntia, which were brought to India in connection with the cochineal dye insect. Option D, mile-a-minute weed, is Mikania micrantha, a fast-climbing vine that smothers plantations and forest regrowth in the North East and the Western Ghats.

The correct answer is A, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at New Delhi, an institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which holds the National Gene Bank where seeds of crop plants and their wild relatives are stored at low temperature for long-term conservation. Option B is wrong because the Botanical Survey of India, founded in 1890 with its headquarters at Kolkata, surveys and documents plant wealth and maintains herbaria and gardens rather than a crop gene bank. Option C is wrong because the National Botanical Research Institute at Lucknow, a CSIR laboratory, works on plant conservation, taxonomy and economic botany. Option D is wrong because the Indian Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa in Delhi is a research and teaching institute; the gene bank stands on the same campus but belongs to the Bureau.

The correct answer is C, Parthenium. Zygogramma bicolorata is a leaf-feeding beetle from Mexico, the native region of Parthenium hysterophorus, and it was introduced in India as a biological control agent because its grubs and adults strip the weed of leaves and check its seed production. Option A is wrong because water hyacinth is controlled biologically by weevils of the genus Neochetina, not by this beetle. Option B is wrong because no single agent has given reliable control of lantana in India, and its management still depends largely on uprooting and on restoring native cover. Option D is wrong because prickly pear, Opuntia, was famously controlled in Australia by the moth Cactoblastis cactorum and in India partly by cochineal insects. Biological control works by pairing a weed with an enemy from its own homeland.

The correct answer is B, Kolkata. The Botanical Survey of India was founded in 1890 with its headquarters in Kolkata, close to the Indian Botanic Garden at Howrah, and it surveys the plant resources of the country, publishes floras and maintains herbaria and botanical gardens through its regional circles. Option A is wrong because Dehradun is the headquarters of the Forest Survey of India, the Wildlife Institute of India and the Forest Research Institute, and this is the likeliest confusion in the question. Option C is wrong because Lucknow houses the National Botanical Research Institute and the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources. Option D is wrong because New Delhi has the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources and the environment ministry, not the Survey's headquarters. Pair 1890 and Kolkata together.