Name: __________________________
Date:____________
Review Sheet: Cycles of Matter, and Population Growth
The Carbon Cycle:
1. Define the following terms, and explain their importance in the carbon cycle:
A. Photosynthesis:
B. Respiration:
C. Combustion:
The Nitrogen Cycle:
2. Which biotic factor is part of nearly all the steps of the nitrogen cycle?
3. What role does lightning play in the nitrogen cycle? Explain.
4. Animals, like humans, require nitrogen in their bodies. Can they use the gas form of nitrogen
in the atmosphere? Explain using the term Nitrogen Fixation.
5. Which two places can nitrogen fixation occur?
6. How do plants, animals, and other organisms get their source of nitrogen?
The Phosphorus Cycle:
7. How is phosphate naturally released onto land and water?
8. How do humans affect the phosphorus cycle?
9. What is eutrophication, and why is it so potentially dangerous to an aquatic ecosystem.
10. Name one U.S. lake is affected by eutrophication.
Population Change:
11. Describe how the human population has changed over the last 10,000 years.
12. What type of growth have the world population of humans experienced over the last few
hundred years?
13. Can the type of growth from the previous question continue forever? Explain what might
affect it.
14. Explain how the following four factors can be useful in forecasting (predicting) population
change in a country in the future:
A. Age structure diagrams
B. Fertility Rates
C. Life expectancy/survivorship.
D. Migration
15. Underneath each age diagram, indicate if the population is expected to so slow growth,
large growth, or no/negative growth.
16. Which of the diagrams from above represents a transitional nation? ______________
Which represents a least-developed nation? _________________
Which represents a very developed nation? _________________
17. What do you predict would happen to population growth if the diagram looked like this?
18. Explain your prediction from above:
19. What is the relationship between women’s’ fertility rate and wealth/education?
20. Why are people living longer, on average, today, than ever before?
21. What is the difference between population SIZE, and population GROWTH?
22.
Looking at the graph above, determine which stage the following is occurring:
A. Population SIZE is high, but population GROWTH is zero or negative __________
B. Population GROWTH is very high, as the birth rate far exceeds the death rate________
C. Both birth and death rates are high, meaning there is a low GROWTH rate ____________
23. How is Easter Island like your micro-ecosystem? What can it tell us about earth and
human’s population growth? Explain.
24. What is primary succession? Describe the steps.
25. What is secondary succession? Describe the steps.
26. What is a pioneer species? Provide an example.
27. What is a climax community? What type of trees should you see in a climax community?
28. If country x has a birth rate of 14, and a death rate of 16, when will there population
double? Show calculations.
29. A country has 3,400,000 citizens. 12,667 are born, 135,011 die, 22,048 immigrate, and
4,666 emigrate, what is the population of the country? Show calclulations.
30. What are sampling and mark-and-recapture used for? When would you use each technique?