Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 39

The correct answer is B, the State Pollution Control Board. The notification of 2006 makes the State Pollution Control Board, or the pollution control committee in a union territory, responsible for conducting the public hearing at or near the site of the project, for recording the proceedings and for sending that record to the appraisal committee. Option A is wrong because the Expert Appraisal Committee issues the Terms of Reference and later appraises the report, but does not hold the hearing. Option C is wrong because although the district administration assists and a senior district officer presides over the proceedings, the responsibility for conducting the hearing rests with the board. Option D is wrong because the ministry takes the final decision on a Category A project and does not conduct hearings at project sites.

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 A, Eisenia fetida. This red worm, often called the red wiggler or tiger worm, lives in the surface litter layer rather than in deep burrows, eats a large weight of organic waste every day, tolerates crowding in a pit or bed and breeds quickly. Those traits make it the standard worm of vermicompost units, and its castings are rich in available nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and plant growth promoting microbes. Option B, Pheretima elongata, is a common Indian field earthworm that burrows deep and is far less efficient in a compost bed. Option C, Lumbricus terrestris, is the European deep burrowing night crawler, valuable in soil aeration but unsuited to pit composting. Option D, Ascaris lumbricoides, is not an earthworm at all; it is the parasitic roundworm of the human intestine and belongs to a different phylum.

The correct answer is C, 2010. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was launched in January 2010 under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, with an initial target of 20,000 MW of grid-connected solar power by 2022; the target was raised to 100 GW in 2015. Option A is wrong because 2008 is the year the parent plan, the NAPCC, was released, not the year any mission began operating. Option B is wrong because 2009 saw the plan's missions being drafted and approved in principle, but the Solar Mission's formal launch came in the following January. Option D is wrong because by 2012 the mission was already in its first phase, and 2012 is better remembered as the start of the first cycle of the Perform, Achieve and Trade scheme. Pair the mission with its ministry and its revised target, as both are asked.

The correct answer is A, Category A. For a Category A project, prior environmental clearance from the central government is compulsory by the very fact of its listing in the schedule, so there is nothing for a screening stage to decide and the process begins at scoping. Options B and C are wrong because screening is precisely the stage that sorts Category B projects into B1, which must prepare a full EIA report, and B2, which need not; a B1 or B2 label is the outcome of screening and cannot exist without it. Option D is wrong because it contradicts the structure of the notification, which expressly exempts Category A projects from screening. Remembering that screening belongs only to Category B is enough to answer several variants of this question.

The correct answer is B, COP16 at Cancun in 2010, with headquarters at Songdo in the Republic of Korea. Copenhagen in 2009 had produced the political pledge of a hundred billion dollars a year by 2020, and the Cancun decisions of the following year created the institution to channel that money, along with the Cancun Adaptation Framework. A names the right pledge but the wrong conference and city. C is wrong on both counts, since Bonn hosts the convention secretariat rather than the fund, and Paris created no new fund. D is invented; Glasgow in 2021 gave the Glasgow Climate Pact and the call to phase down unabated coal, while Nairobi is the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme. Fix the pair in memory as Cancun for the decision and Songdo for the office of the fund.

The correct answer is B, the Insecticides Act, 1968. This Act, with the Insecticides Rules of 1971, sets up the registration of every pesticide before it may be sold, licensing of manufacturers and dealers, labelling and packing requirements and the appointment of insecticide inspectors and analysts. The Central Insecticides Board advises the government and the Registration Committee grants the registrations. Option A, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, is the umbrella law passed after the Bhopal gas disaster; it empowers the central government broadly on environmental standards but is not the pesticide licensing law. Option C, the Fertiliser Control Order, 1985, is issued under the Essential Commodities Act and governs fertilisers, not pesticides. Option D, the Seeds Act, 1966, deals with the certification and quality of seed. Pesticide residue limits in food, however, are fixed under the food safety law, not under the 1968 Act.

The correct answer is C, Odisha. Chilika is a brackish water lagoon on the Odisha coast, the largest of its kind in Asia, separated from the Bay of Bengal by a long sand bar. The island of Nalaban within it is notified as a bird sanctuary, and Chilika was among the first Indian wetlands to be designated a Ramsar site; it is also known for the Irrawaddy dolphin. Option A is wrong because West Bengal's great coastal wetland is the Sundarbans. Option B is wrong because Andhra Pradesh has Pulicat and Kolleru, and Pulicat, the second largest brackish lagoon of India, is shared with Tamil Nadu. Option D is wrong because Tamil Nadu's names here are Point Calimere and Vedanthangal. A useful pairing is that Chilika is the largest brackish water lagoon of Asia while Pulicat, shared between Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, is the second largest in India.

The correct answer is B, the National Green Tribunal. The tribunal was created by the National Green Tribunal Act of 2010, its principal bench sits at New Delhi, and it hears appeals against the grant or refusal of environmental clearance as well as disputes under other environmental laws. It is not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure and is expected to decide matters within six months as far as possible. Option A is wrong because the Central Pollution Control Board is a technical and regulatory body that lays down standards and monitors pollution; it hears no appeals of this kind. Option C is wrong because the National Biodiversity Authority, set up under the Biological Diversity Act of 2002, deals with access to biological resources and benefit sharing. Option D is wrong because the Central Zoo Authority only recognises and regulates zoos.

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 B, persistent organic pollutants. The Stockholm Convention lists chemicals that resist breakdown, travel long distances, accumulate in fatty tissue and harm health, beginning with the twelve named compounds often called the dirty dozen; DDT, aldrin, endrin, dieldrin and the dioxins are on that list, and DDT is allowed only in restricted disease vector control. Option A, ozone depleting substances, belongs to the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol, which phase out chlorofluorocarbons and halons. Option C, the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, is the subject of the Basel Convention, which stops rich countries from dumping waste in poorer ones. Option D, greenhouse gas emissions, is covered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with its Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. Pairing each convention with its subject is a standard one mark question.

The correct answer is A, paint brushes made from mongoose hair. The mongoose is a protected animal under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, yet its hair was being used to make artists brushes, and Operation Clean Art was the Bureau first country-wide operation directed at a single wildlife article, ending with large seizures of brushes and raw hair. Option B is wrong because the smuggling of freshwater turtles and tortoises was the target of Operation Save Kurma, named from the Sanskrit word for turtle. Option C is wrong because shahtoosh, the wool of the Tibetan antelope, was the subject of Operation Softgold. Option D is wrong because red sanders, the protected timber of the Eastern Ghats, has been tackled through separate drives and state task forces rather than through Operation Clean Art.

The correct answer is A. A rapid assessment is based on baseline data collected over a single season other than the monsoon, which allows the study to be completed quickly, while a comprehensive assessment collects data over all the seasons of a full year and therefore captures seasonal variation in air quality, water flow and biological activity. Option B is wrong because the Environment Management Plan, which lists the mitigation and monitoring measures, is an essential part of every assessment report, rapid or comprehensive. Option C is wrong because in both cases the report is prepared by an accredited consultant engaged by the project proponent, which is in fact one of the standing criticisms of the system. Option D is wrong because projects inside or near protected areas are dealt with at the central level and ordinarily need the fuller study, not the rapid one.

The correct answer is B, recalcitrant seeds. These seeds lose their viability when their moisture content is reduced, so they cannot be kept in the cold rooms of a seed bank; mango, jackfruit, coconut, cocoa and most tropical fruit trees are examples, and they are conserved instead in field gene banks, as tissue cultures or in cryobanks. Option A is wrong because orthodox seeds, such as wheat, rice, maize and most pulses, can be dried to a low moisture content and frozen, and they are the seeds that gene banks store for decades. Option C is wrong because dormancy is a resting state from which a seed can germinate when conditions are right, and it says nothing about storage. Option D is wrong because hybrid refers to parentage, not to storage behaviour.

The correct answer is B, Endosulfan. Endosulfan is an organochlorine insecticide that was sprayed from the air over state owned cashew plantations in Kasaragod for about two decades. Residents reported congenital deformities, nervous disorders and cancers, studies supported the link, and the Supreme Court of India ordered a halt to its production, sale and use in 2011. The chemical was later added to the Stockholm Convention list. Option A, malathion, is an organophosphate of low mammalian toxicity used in public health spraying and in grain storage. Option C, carbaryl, is a carbamate insecticide, and it matters in a different tragedy: the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal was making it when methyl isocyanate leaked in 1984. Option D, glyphosate, is a herbicide used against weeds and is debated for other reasons, not for the Kasaragod case.

The correct answer is A, the olive ridley turtle. Every year thousands of females come ashore at Gahirmatha for the synchronised mass nesting called arribada, which makes it the largest rookery of the species in the world; Rushikulya on the same coast is the other major site, and the Sea Turtle Project of 1999 works at both. Option B is wrong because the leatherback, the largest sea turtle, nests mainly in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and not on the Odisha coast. Option C is wrong because the saltwater crocodile of this coast is associated with the nearby Bhitarkanika mangroves, not with mass nesting beaches. Option D is wrong because the horseshoe crab, though recorded on this coast, is not what Gahirmatha is known for. Turtle deaths in fishing nets are the reason turtle excluder devices are required there.

The correct answer is B. The Leopold matrix is the best known of the matrix methods: the activities of a project are set along one axis and the components of the environment along the other, and each cell where an activity meets a component is marked for the magnitude and the importance of the impact. It gives a quick visual picture of which activities matter most and which environmental components are most at risk. Option A is wrong because the concentration of pollutants is measured by laboratory analysis and instruments, and forms part of the baseline data that the matrix then uses. Option C is wrong because costing belongs to the Environment Management Plan and to project economics, not to the matrix. Option D is wrong because eco-sensitive zone boundaries are notified by the government, and mapping them is a task for overlay and geographic information techniques.

The correct answer is C, Water Conservation. Tarun Bharat Sangh works on water conservation, and its base is at Bhikampura in Alwar district of Rajasthan. Led by Rajendra Singh, known as the waterman of India, villagers of the area built and repaired thousands of johads, the traditional earthen check dams that hold rainwater and let it sink into the ground. Wells filled again, fields came back under crops and streams such as the Arvari, dry for years, began to flow, which is why the body is studied as a model of community-led water harvesting. Rajendra Singh received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2001 and the Stockholm Water Prize in 2015. A is wrong because women's groups are part of the work but not its field. B is wrong because fighting corruption is not its subject. D is wrong because it is not a tribal youth organisation, and Alwar is not a tribal belt. Exam tip: Tarun Bharat Sangh, Rajendra Singh, johads of Alwar and the revived Arvari river.

The correct answer is A, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana. This scheme, launched in 2015 as a component of the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, groups farmers into clusters, trains them in organic practice and certifies their produce through the Participatory Guarantee System of India, in which members of the group inspect one another's fields. It suits small holders because it avoids the cost of third party certification needed for the India Organic export mark. Option B, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, is the crop insurance scheme against yield loss. Option C, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, is a broad state plan grant for agriculture and allied sectors. Option D, Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, is the irrigation scheme carrying the slogan of water to every field and the per drop more crop component on micro irrigation.

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.