QUIZ – 2020: INSIGHTS STATIC , 18 November 2020 – Evironment

Solution: c)

Some of the Ramsar sites in India include

Chilika Lake in Odisha

Keoladeo National Park in Rajasthan

Harike Lake in Punjab

Loktak Lake in Manipur

Wular Lake in Jammu and Kashmir

Source

Solution: b)

Net primary productivity, or NPP, is gross primary productivity minus the rate of energy loss to metabolism and maintenance. In other words, it’s the rate at which energy is stored as biomass by plants or other primary producers and made available to the consumers in the ecosystem.

Net primary productivity varies among ecosystems and depends on many factors. These include solar energy input, temperature and moisture levels, carbon dioxide levels, nutrient availability, and community interactions.

Tropical rain forests receive overall more rainfall than seasonal forests and grasslands. Also, a forest will certainly be more productive than grassland.

Solution: c)

Acclimatization is the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as a change in altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions. Acclimatization occurs in a short period of time (hours to weeks), and within the organism’s lifetime (compared to adaptation, which is a development that takes place over many generations).

Humans who migrate permanently to a higher altitude naturally acclimatize to their new environment by developing an increase in the number of red blood cells to increase the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, in order to compensate for lower levels of oxygen intake.

Solution: b)

The mechanisms used by most mammals to regulate their body temperature are similar to the ones that we humans use. We maintain a constant body temperature of 370C. In summer, when outside

temperature is more than our body temperature, we sweat profusely.

The resulting evaporative cooling, similar to what happens with a desert cooler in operation, brings down the body temperature. In winter when the temperature is much lower than 370C, we start to

shiver, a kind of exercise which produces heat and raises the body temperature. Plants, on the other hand, do not have such mechanisms to maintain internal temperatures.

Thermoregulation is energetically expensive for many organisms. This is particularly true for small animals like shrews and humming birds. Heat loss or heat gain is a function of surface area. Since small animals have a larger surface area relative to their volume, they tend to lose body heat very fast when it is cold outside; then they have to expend much energy to generate body heat through metabolism. This is the main reason why very small animals are rarely found in polar regions.

Solution: a)

Aerosols are minute particles suspended in the atmosphere. When these particles are sufficiently large, we notice their presence as they scatter and absorb sunlight. Their scattering of sunlight can reduce visibility (haze) and redden sunrises and sunsets.

Aerosols interact both directly and indirectly with the Earth’s radiation budget and climate. As a direct effect, the aerosols scatter sunlight directly back into space. As an indirect effect, aerosols in the lower atmosphere can modify the size of cloud particles, changing how the clouds reflect and absorb sunlight, thereby affecting the Earth’s energy budget.

Aerosols also can act as sites for chemical reactions to take place (heterogeneous chemistry). The most significant of these reactions are those that lead to the destruction of stratospheric ozone. During winter in the polar regions, aerosols grow to form polar stratospheric clouds. The large surface areas of these cloud particles provide sites for chemical reactions to take place. These reactions lead to the formation of large amounts of reactive chlorine and, ultimately, to the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere.