Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 38

The correct answer is B, the United States of America. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which came into force in 1970, required every agency of the American federal government to prepare a statement of the environmental effects of any major action it proposed, and that requirement is taken as the beginning of environmental impact assessment as a legal duty anywhere in the world. Option A is wrong because the United Kingdom adopted assessment later, under the directives of the European Community. Option C is wrong because Sweden hosted the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972, which is a different landmark and a common point of confusion. Option D is wrong because India began appraising river valley projects administratively only in 1978 and made assessment a legal requirement by notification in 1994.

The correct answer is C, eight. The plan of 2008 works through eight National Missions: Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture, and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change. Option A is wrong because six leaves two of them out, a common trap when candidates forget the Strategic Knowledge and Himalayan missions, which are the two that build knowledge rather than assets. Option B is wrong because ten would include the later proposals on wind energy and health, which were suggested after 2014 but are not part of the original plan. Option D is wrong because twelve is simply larger than any count of the missions, original or proposed. Remember the figure eight with the nodal ministries attached, because papers often ask which ministry runs a named mission.

The correct answer is C, natural manures and pesticides are used. Organic farming is defined by the inputs it refuses. In place of factory made fertilisers it uses farmyard manure, compost, vermicompost, green manure and biofertilisers such as Rhizobium and Azotobacter. In place of synthetic insecticides it uses biopesticides such as neem extract and Bacillus thuringiensis, along with natural enemies of the pest. Option A is the opposite of the definition, since the use of chemical fertilisers disqualifies a farm from organic certification. Option B is wrong because certification standards under the National Programme for Organic Production specifically exclude genetically modified seed and planting material. Option D is wrong because organic farming in India is practised in cereals, pulses, oilseeds, spices, tea and fruit, and no rule limits it to cotton; organic cotton is simply one of the better known export lines.

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 C, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Section 3 of that Act gives the central government power to take all measures it thinks necessary to protect and improve the quality of the environment, and the EIA Notifications of 1994 and 2006 were both issued under it. The Act was passed in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 and is an umbrella law for environmental regulation. Option A is wrong because the Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972 deals with protected areas, schedules of species and hunting. Option B is wrong because the Water Act of 1974 created the pollution control boards and deals with effluent standards and consent to operate. Option D is wrong because the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 governs the diversion of forest land, for which a separate forest clearance is needed.

The correct answer is C, COP21, held at Paris, where the agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 and opened for signature in April 2016; it entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its central feature is the nationally determined contribution, written by each country itself and revised every five years, together with the goal of holding warming well below two degrees Celsius. A, COP19 at Warsaw in 2013, created the international mechanism for loss and damage. B, COP20 at Lima in 2014, produced the Lima Call for Climate Action and invited countries to submit intended contributions, which is why it is the favourite distractor here. D, COP24 at Katowice in 2018, agreed on the rulebook for implementing the agreement adopted three years earlier. The agreement is therefore always tied to Paris and to the year 2015 in exam options.

The correct answer is B, Rhizobium. Rhizobium is a symbiotic bacterium that enters the roots of pulses, groundnut, soybean and other legumes and multiplies inside swellings called root nodules. Inside the nodule the enzyme nitrogenase converts atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, which the plant uses, while the plant supplies the bacterium with sugars. This is why a legume is placed after a cereal in crop rotation. Option A, Azotobacter, also fixes nitrogen but lives freely in the soil and is recommended for wheat, maize, cotton and vegetables, not inside nodules. Option C, Azospirillum, is an associative fixer that lives close to the roots of sugarcane, sorghum and millets without forming nodules. Option D, Trichoderma, is a fungus used as a biofungicide against soil borne diseases such as root rot and wilt; it does not fix nitrogen at all.

The correct answer is B, Marine National Park, Gulf of Kachchh. Declared in Gujarat in 1980, it was the first area in India to be notified as a marine national park, and it covers a chain of islands carrying coral reefs and mangrove along the Gulf of Kachchh. Option A is wrong because the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park at Wandoor in South Andaman was notified in 1983, after the Gujarat park. Option C is wrong because the Gulf of Mannar holds a different distinction: it was declared India's first marine biosphere reserve in 1989, and the two superlatives are the pair examiners most often swap. Option D is wrong because the Sundarbans, though a mangrove area on the coast, was notified as a national park for the tiger and is not classed as a marine national park.

The correct answer is C, 2006. The EIA Notification of 2006 replaced the earlier notification of 1994 and reorganised the whole clearance process, chiefly by dividing projects into Category A, appraised and cleared at the central level, and Category B, appraised and cleared at the state level, and by laying down the four stages of screening, scoping, public consultation and appraisal. Option A is wrong because 1986 is the year of the parent Act, the Environment (Protection) Act, not of any notification. Option B is wrong because the notification of 1994, which first made assessment compulsory in India, has been superseded. Option D is wrong because 2010 is the year of the National Green Tribunal Act, which created the forum for appeals against clearance decisions, a related but separate law.

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, Biomagnification. A pesticide such as DDT dissolves in fat, is not broken down and is not excreted, so the amount in a predator's body is the sum of what all its prey carried. Concentration therefore rises step by step from water to plankton to small fish to large fish to fish eating birds, which may hold several thousand times the level in the water. Option A, eutrophication, is the enrichment of a water body with nitrate and phosphate that causes algal blooms and oxygen loss, a nutrient problem rather than a food chain problem. Option B, bioremediation, is the useful process of employing microbes or plants to clean a polluted soil or water body. Option D, biofortification, is the breeding of crops richer in iron, zinc or vitamin A, as in the iron rich pearl millet varieties released in India.

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, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Under the notification of 2006, a Category A project is appraised by the Expert Appraisal Committee constituted at the centre, and the ministry grants or refuses the prior environmental clearance on that committee's recommendation. Option A is wrong because the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority clears Category B projects, on the recommendation of the State Expert Appraisal Committee; swapping the two categories is the commonest error in this question. Option C is wrong because the Central Pollution Control Board sets standards and monitors pollution but grants no environmental clearance. Option D is wrong because the National Green Tribunal is an appellate and adjudicating body: it hears challenges to a clearance that has been granted or refused, and does not grant clearance itself.

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.

The correct answer is C, Sikkim. Sikkim began phasing chemical fertilisers out in 2003, converted its entire cultivated area to certified organic practice and was declared a fully organic state. For this work it received the Future Policy Gold Award of the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2018, the first state anywhere to be honoured in that way. Option A, Kerala, has a strong organic policy and is remembered in this chapter for the endosulfan tragedy in Kasaragod district, but it has not converted all its farmland. Option B, Uttarakhand, has a large certified organic area and an organic commodity board, yet it came later and only in parts. Option D, Himachal Pradesh, promotes natural farming through a state scheme and has declared the goal of becoming organic, which is not the same as having achieved it. Examiners often pair Sikkim with the year 2016 and with the Gold Award.

The correct answer is B, Kerala. Periyar Tiger Reserve lies in the Idukki and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala, around the Periyar reservoir created by the Mullaperiyar dam, and Kerala's other tiger reserve is Parambikulam. Option A is wrong because Karnataka's reserves are Bandipur, Nagarhole, Bhadra, Kali and Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple. Option C is wrong because Tamil Nadu has Kalakad-Mundanthurai, Mudumalai, Anamalai and Sathyamangalam; Mudumalai adjoins Bandipur across the state border, which is the usual trap in Western Ghats questions. Option D is wrong because Andhra Pradesh shares Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam with Telangana. The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve stitches several of these together, which is why candidates confuse the states of neighbouring reserves. Periyar is also remembered for its eco-development programme, in which former poachers were employed as guides, a model question papers describe as community participation in conservation. Keep the reservoir and the state together in memory.

The correct answer is B, screening, scoping, public consultation, appraisal. Screening comes first and decides whether a Category B project needs a full assessment, making it B1, or does not, making it B2. Scoping follows, at which the appraisal committee issues the Terms of Reference. Public consultation comes third, with a public hearing at the site and written responses. Appraisal is last, when the committee scrutinises the report and the hearing record and recommends a decision. Option A is wrong because scoping cannot precede screening, since screening decides whether an assessment is needed at all. Option C is wrong because a public hearing is impossible before the report exists. Option D is wrong because consultation must follow scoping, as the hearing is held on the draft report prepared against the Terms of Reference.

The correct answer is D, Organochlorine. Dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane is built on a chlorinated hydrocarbon skeleton, which makes it fat soluble, chemically stable and extremely slow to break down in soil and water. Those same properties made it a cheap malaria control spray and also made it the first pesticide shown to biomagnify, which is why it stands on the Stockholm Convention list of persistent organic pollutants. BHC, aldrin and endosulfan are its companions in this class. Option A, organophosphate, covers malathion and parathion, which degrade in days but inhibit acetylcholinesterase sharply. Option B, carbamate, covers carbaryl and carbofuran, which act on the same enzyme reversibly. Option C, pyrethroid, covers cypermethrin and permethrin, laboratory versions of pyrethrin obtained from chrysanthemum flowers; they are far less persistent than DDT.

The correct answer is B, scoping. Scoping is the stage at which the Expert Appraisal Committee, or the state committee for a Category B1 project, determines the Terms of Reference: the detailed list of issues, study area, seasons of data and specific concerns that the assessment must address. The consultant then prepares the EIA report against that list, which is why an incomplete Terms of Reference weakens everything that follows. Option A is wrong because screening only sorts Category B projects into B1 and B2 and issues no terms. Option C is wrong because public consultation is held on the draft report that has already been prepared under the Terms of Reference. Option D is wrong because appraisal is the final scrutiny of that report, after which the committee recommends grant or refusal of clearance.

The correct answer is A, Silent Spring. Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist, gathered the evidence on DDT and other sprays and argued that a chemical released into a field does not stay in that field. The title imagines a spring in which no bird sings because the birds have died. The book led to the ban on agricultural DDT in the United States and is treated as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Option B, Our Common Future, is the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland report, which defined sustainable development. Option C, The Limits to Growth, is the 1972 Club of Rome study on the ceiling that resources place on growth. Option D, Small is Beautiful, is E. F. Schumacher's 1973 book on economics at a human scale. All four are environmental classics, which is exactly why they are set as distractors.