Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 44

Energy shrinks sharply at each step of a food chain, so after a few levels too little is left to support another level of consumers.

The leak at the Union Carbide India Limited plant in Bhopal began late on 2 December 1984 and the gas spread through the early hours of 3 December, which is why India observes 2 December as National Pollution Control Day.

The Malabar Civet and the Sambar Deer are active after sunset, while the Lion-tailed Macaque is a daytime animal.

IUCN was set up in 1948 at a conference held at Fontainebleau and was then called the International Union for the Protection of Nature; its headquarters later settled at Gland in Switzerland.

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve spreads across Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, meeting where the Western and Eastern Ghats join. Set up in 1986, the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve was India's first biosphere reserve and in 2000 became the first in India to join UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

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.

Copper smelting is a concern for its sulphur dioxide emissions and for heavy metals leaching from its slag, not for lethal carbon monoxide.

That body is the implementing arm of the Namami Gange programme for cleaning the river Ganga, created under the river conservation effort and not under the climate plan; its concern is pollution in one river basin rather than greenhouse gases.

All three statements are correct about PFAS, the so-called 'forever chemicals'. PFAS are a large family of man-made chemicals built on very strong carbon-fluorine bonds.

The Harike wetland in Punjab, also called Hari-Ke-Pattan, was formed by a barrage at the point where the Beas joins the Sutlej, is the largest wetland of northern India, and is a Ramsar site rich in waterfowl.

Nuclear power runs on uranium and thorium, mined minerals whose stock is finite, so it is a non-renewable source even though it is low in carbon.

The panel was created in 1988, four years before the climate convention existed, which is why B is wrong: the IPCC is not an organ of the convention, although its reports set the agenda for every conference and the first assessment report of 1990 led directly to the negotiation of…

The Western Hoolock Gibbon is an Endangered ape protected in a sanctuary in Assam, and it moves by swinging from branch to branch, but it is a light, slender animal, not heavily built like a gorilla.

Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and writer, published Silent Spring in 1962.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct; heavy metals cannot be readily and completely removed by microbes. Bioremediation uses living organisms, mostly bacteria and fungi, to break down pollutants.

The Seshachalam Biosphere Reserve lies in the Seshachalam hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats in southern Andhra Pradesh, across the old Chittoor and Kadapa districts, and was notified in 2010 as India's 17th biosphere reserve.

Lichens and mosses can live on bare rock, tree bark and walls without any soil, and they are the pioneer species of primary succession.

India's net zero target announced at COP-26 is the year 2070, not 2047. At COP-26 in Glasgow in November 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced five commitments called the Panchamrit (five nectar elements).

Vermicompost is a nutrient-rich organic manure and crop rotation helps control pests and weeds, but organic farming does use biofertilizers and bio-pesticides.

The Tohoku earthquake of 11 March 2011 shut the reactors down as designed, but the tsunami that arrived minutes later flooded the emergency diesel generators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on Japan's Pacific coast.