Questions and Answers of Environment

What is an urban agglomeration? Give an example.
What are tobacco smoke and radon considered to be particularly hazardous indoor air pollutants?
What are the major sources of indoor air pollution?
What is the global distillation effect? What kinds of air pollutants are involved in the global distillation effect?
Why is managing acid rain an international challenge?
How is forest decline related to acid deposition?
How did the Montreal Protocol reverse ozone depletion?
How does stratospheric ozone thinning occur?
What are some technologies that reduce air pollution? Some policies?
Why are children particularly susceptible to the effects of air pollution?
What is the general effect of air pollution on the body’s immune system?
How and why have tropospheric ozone concentrations changed in southern California since World War II?
What are the primary constituents of the atmosphere?
Explain why switching to low carbon intensity fuels can reduce local and regional air pollution as well.
Conserving energy by reducing the rate at which indoor air is replaced with outdoor air can improve energy efficiency (less heating and cooling), but can contribute to indoor air pollution. Explain
Why is the global distillation effect likely to become an increasingly challenging problem in the future?
The amount of ozone-depleting chemicals released to the atmosphere has been reduced substantially since the late 1980s. Why has the concentration of stratospheric ozone not increased? Do we expect it
The figure below depicts the thickness of the stratospheric ozone layer (measured in Dobson units) above New Zealand. In what year did the average yearly column of ozone above New Zealand first drop
What urban areas have the worst air pollution in the world? Is this likely to change in the near future? Why or why not?
What is a more stable atmospheric condition, cool air layered over warm air or warm air layered over cool air? Explain. What condition is a temperature inversion?
Why might global warming lead to more photochemical smog, even if emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic chemicals remain constant?
What are industrial smog and photochemical smog, and how do they differ?
How does overexploitation of fish stocks lead to reduced food availability?
Give one advantage and one downside of GM crops.
1. What types of plant traits are likely to be found in heirloom seeds? What traits are likely in modern agriculture seeds?2. Describe two risks of routine hormone and antibiotic use in livestock
What are the three most important food crops?
How do education and political structures affect hunger in a region?
What are world grain stocks?
Which is a more pervasive global issue – famine or chronic hunger? Explain your answer.
Climate scientist have observed a feedback loop involving soil moisture: Increasing temperatures dry the soil, and the dried soil exacerbates the heat. Is this an example of a positive feedback loop
How does a sustainable agriculture system resemble a natural ecosystem?
Explain why aquaculture is more like agriculture than it is like traditional fishing.
What is the problem with open management of ocean fisheries?
Describe the environmental problems associated with farming each of these areas: Tropical rain forests, hillsides, semiarid, and arid regions.
Describe some traits which consumers and farmers might desire in crops.
Distinguish between organic agriculture and sustainable agriculture.
Why does food insecurity occur? What are the links among poverty, food insecurity, and population issues?
What groups of people (age, gender) are usually most affected by undernutrition and famine? Why?
What are three U.S. ecosystems that need protection?
List at least five causes of wetlands destruction.
What human activity is threatening many acres of prime farmland?
How is desertification related to rangeland management?
How do rangelands differ from pasture? What is the carrying capacity of a rangeland?
How do conservation easements protect forests from development?
What is deforestation?
Why is the fact that U.S. national forests were created for multiple uses often a contentious issue?
What is sustainable forestry?
What is the purpose of the National Wildlife Refuge System?
What are some current concerns of the National Park System?
What is the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System? Which state has the most wilderness land?
What percentage of world land do urban areas occupy? How much is used for agriculture?
What are ecosystem services?
Describe current wetland protection policies in the United States and give their strengths and weaknesses.
What are three ecosystems services that wetlands provide?
What is a wetland? Why is the scientific definition of wetlands controversial?
Explain how certain tax and zoning laws increase the conversion of prime farmland to urban and suburban development.
Distinguish between rangeland degradation and desertification.
Describe the Forest Legacy Program
How does a healthy forest affect a region’s hydrologic cycle? The carbon cycle?
How would you expect a park manager of a national park that adheres to natural regulation respond to a lightning-induced forest fire? To the establishment of a noxious invasive weed species?
What are the most promising water conservation measures for agriculture, industry, and individual homes and businesses?
What is desalinization? Reverse osmosis?
What are some major problems and solutions associated with dams on the Columbia River?
What is sustainable water use?
Which international water problems have been most amenable to management? Least amenable?
What is the relationship between climate change and global water problems?
Which U. S. regions have the most severe water-scarcity problems?
Which human activity is responsible for more than 70% of global water consumption?
What is surface water? Groundwater?
How do hydrogen bonds form between adjacent water molecules?
One strategy for inland cities like Denver or Phoenix to increase their water supply would be to fund desalination plants hundreds of miles away in California and trade the water for an increased
Use the following graph to compare residential water use in the United States, Sweden, and the Netherlands, as reported in a past study. How do the countries differ in their water use habits? What
Which industries consume the most water? Discuss one way to use industrial water more sustainably.
Describe several types of irrigation that reduces water use. With these techniques available, why would farmers still use traditional irrigation methods?
What are some of the advantages of dams? The disadvantages?
Explain how water resource problems might contribute to economic or political instability.
Are water supply problems due to too many people or too much consumption per person in the United States? In developing countries? Explain the differences (if any).
Explain the relationship between global climate change and local availability of fresh water.
Why might an ecologist consider a system of levees, spillways, and other flood control structures detrimental to a river system?
Discuss the dissolving ability of water as it relates to ocean salinity and to water pollution.
Describe several threats to surface water and groundwater supplies
What does this diagram represent? Explain how this process affects the properties of water.
Explain why the poor in many countries have to pay more for their water than do the wealthy.
How will future nuclear power reactors differ from current plants?
What are some of the advantages of storing high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain? What are some of the disadvantages?
What is low-level radioactive waste, and how is it disposed of? What is high-level radioactive waste, and how is it currently stored?
What were the effects of the nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan?
In generating electricity, how do the environmental effects of coal combustion and conventional nuclear fission compare?
How does a nuclear reactor produce electricity?
What is the nuclear fuel cycle?
What is the difference between chemical energy and nuclear energy?
What are the pros and cons of using geothermal energy to produce electricity? Or using tidal power?
What are advantages and disadvantages of using wind to produce electricity? Of using hydropower to produce electricity?
What is biomass?
What are the advantages of producing electricity by solar thermal energy? By photovoltaic (PV) solar cells?
What is active solar energy? Passive solar energy?
The graph to the right depicts the percent growth of global electricity produced by different energy sources from 2004 to 2012. If these growth rates continue, what percent could wind and solar
What are the main arguments for and against the United States developing additional nuclear power plants to provide us with electricity over the next several decades? Which perspective do you find
How does the disposal of radioactive wastes pose technical problems? Political problems?
What is spent fuel?

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