Skip to content
GK24
GK QuizEnvironment & Ecology

Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 46

  • 20 questions
  • 20 minutes
  • Difficulty: Medium
Start Quiz

About this quiz

Set 46 of the Environment & Ecology mixed quiz has 20 multiple-choice questions from 9 different topics of the subject: Water Conservation and Traditional Rainwater Harvesting, Species Interactions: Mutualism, Commensalism, Parasitism and Predation, Eco-Sensitive Zones, the Western Ghats and Coastal Regulation Zones and more. A topic quiz checks one chapter; this set revises the whole subject at once, the way an exam paper does, where the next question can come from any chapter. Every question carries an explanation of why the correct option is right and why the others are wrong. Keep to the timer, read the explanations at the end, and go back to the notes of any topic where you slipped.

Questions in this quiz

20 questions with answers and explanations

Q1.Environment & EcologyHard

The National Water Mission is one of the eight missions under which of the following?

  1. A.The National Action Plan on Climate Change
  2. B.The National Water Policy, 2012
  3. C.The Namami Gange Programme
  4. D.The National Rural Drinking Water Programme
Show answer
Correct answer: A. The National Action Plan on Climate Change

The plan, released in 2008, set up eight national missions, among them the National Solar Mission, the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, the National Water Mission, the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, the National Mission for a Green India, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, the National…

Q2.Environment & EcologyEasy

A lichen is an example of which type of species interaction?

  1. A.Parasitism
  2. B.Commensalism
  3. C.Mutualism
  4. D.Amensalism
Show answer
Correct answer: C. Mutualism

A lichen is a close partnership between an alga and a fungus in which both partners gain. The alga prepares carbohydrates by photosynthesis and shares them with the fungus, while the fungus absorbs and holds water and minerals and anchors the pair to bare rock or tree bark.

Q4.Environment & EcologyEasy

Eco-Sensitive Zones around National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries are notified under which Act?

  1. A.The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
  2. B.The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980
  3. C.The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
  4. D.The Biological Diversity Act, 2002
Show answer
Correct answer: C. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change notifies an Eco-Sensitive Zone using the power in Section 3(2)(v) of that Act, read with Rule 5(1) of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986, which lets the central government restrict industries and operations in an area it treats as fragile.

Q6.Environment & EcologyEasy

Minamata disease, first identified in Japan in 1956, is caused by poisoning from which element?

  1. A.Cadmium
  2. B.Mercury
  3. C.Lead
  4. D.Arsenic
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Mercury

The Chisso Corporation discharged methylmercury compounds into Minamata Bay in Kumamoto Prefecture; the mercury accumulated through fish and shellfish into the people who ate them and attacked the central nervous system, producing numbness, loss of coordination, blindness and congenital deformity.

Q8.Environment & EcologyMedium

The Living Planet Report, which presents the Living Planet Index of wildlife population trends, is brought out by:

  1. A.Greenpeace
  2. B.World Wide Fund for Nature
  3. C.United Nations Development Programme
  4. D.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Show answer
Correct answer: B. World Wide Fund for Nature

WWF has published the Living Planet Report since the late 1990s, and its central measure, the Living Planet Index, tracks the average change in the size of monitored vertebrate populations.

Q11.Environment & EcologyMedium

Which committee recommended that the whole of the Western Ghats be treated as an ecologically sensitive area and graded into three zones?

  1. A.The Kasturirangan High Level Working Group
  2. B.The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel under Madhav Gadgil
  3. C.The Swaminathan Commission
  4. D.The Tiwari Committee
Show answer
Correct answer: B. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel under Madhav Gadgil

Its report of 2011 held that the whole range deserved protection and divided it into three graded zones, ESZ-1, ESZ-2 and ESZ-3, with the strictest ban on mining, quarrying and large projects in ESZ-1, and proposed a Western Ghats Ecology Authority to supervise the regime.

Q12.Environment & EcologyEasy

At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, India announced a target of reaching net zero emissions by which year?

  1. A.2050
  2. B.2060
  3. C.2070
  4. D.2100
Show answer
Correct answer: C. 2070

At the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties, held at Glasgow in 2021, the Prime Minister announced five pledges that came to be called Panchamrit, the last of which was net zero emissions by 2070, together with targets on non-fossil energy capacity, the share of renewable energy, the cut in projected…

Q14.Environment & EcologyMedium

Under which law are national parks and wildlife sanctuaries notified in India?

  1. A.Indian Forest Act, 1927
  2. B.Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972
  3. C.Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
  4. D.Biological Diversity Act, 2002
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972

This Act provides for the declaration of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, lists protected species in its schedules, and, after the amendment of 2002, added two further categories, conservation reserves and community reserves.

Q16.Environment & EcologyEasy

The Clean Development Mechanism was created by which international agreement?

  1. A.Montreal Protocol
  2. B.Kyoto Protocol
  3. C.Cartagena Protocol
  4. D.Nagoya Protocol
Show answer
Correct answer: B. Kyoto Protocol

Adopted in 1997 at COP3 in Japan and in force from 2005, it set binding emission targets for developed countries and gave them three flexible mechanisms to meet them; the Clean Development Mechanism, under Article 12, let a developed country fund an emission-reduction project in a developing country and claim…

Q17.Environment & EcologyMedium

The competitive exclusion principle, which states that two species competing for the same limited resource cannot coexist indefinitely, was given by

  1. A.Robert Paine
  2. B.G. F. Gause
  3. C.Joseph Connell
  4. D.Charles Elton
Show answer
Correct answer: B. G. F. Gause

The Russian ecologist G. F. Gause worked with cultures of Paramecium and concluded that when two species need exactly the same limited resource in the same space, one of them is always eliminated in the long run; this is the competitive exclusion principle, also called Gause's principle.

Q19.Environment & EcologyHard

In Robert Paine's classic experiment on the American Pacific coast, the removal of which predator caused more than ten invertebrate species to disappear?

  1. A.The sea otter
  2. B.The starfish Pisaster
  3. C.The sea anemone
  4. D.The remora
Show answer
Correct answer: B. The starfish Pisaster

Robert Paine removed the predatory starfish Pisaster from rocky intertidal pools and found that within a short time the mussels it had been eating took over the rock surface and crowded out other animals, so that more than ten invertebrate species were lost from the pools.

Q20.Environment & EcologyEasy

Mangroves, coral reefs and turtle nesting grounds fall under which Coastal Regulation Zone category?

  1. A.CRZ-I
  2. B.CRZ-II
  3. C.CRZ-III
  4. D.CRZ-IV
Show answer
Correct answer: A. CRZ-I

This category holds the ecologically sensitive stretches of the coast, and the notification lists mangroves, coral reefs and coral areas, sand dunes, salt marshes, mudflats, biologically active areas and the nesting grounds of turtles and birds in its sub-category CRZ-I-A, where construction is effectively barred.

View all quizzes