APES Mid-Term Study Guide
1. What is ecology?
2. What is environmental science?
3. What is sustainability?
4. Explain exponential growth and logistical growth?
5. What is the Rule of 70?
6. Compare developing and developed countries in terms of population size, location, resource use,
birth rate, death rate and fertility rate.
7. What is globalization?
8. What is the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources? Give several examples
of each.
9. Explain the tragedy of the commons. Give two examples.
10. What is the difference between point source and non point source pollution?
11. Describe hunter-gatherers and their impact on the environment.
12. Describe the effect of the agricultural revolution on the environment.
13. Describe the effect of the industrial revolution on the environment.
14. What is a positive feedback loop? Give an example.
15. What is a negative feedback loop? Give an example.
16. What is a synergistic interaction? Give an example.
17. Give an example of low quality energy.
18. Explain the law of conservation of matter.
19. What creates biodiversity?
20. Define- atom, element, compound, molecule and isotope.
21. Explain half life and give an example of a problem using half life.
22. Compare a closed and open system and give an example of each.
23. Define population, ecosystem and species.
24. Describe each of the layers of our atmosphere. What is the most common gas?
25. How was Earth’s atmospheric oxygen thought to have been produced?
26. What is the hydrosphere? Lithosphere? Biosphere?
27. What is the energy source of the sun?
28. List examples of greenhouse gases.
29. What is a biome?
30. Briefly describe the following biomes: savanna, temperate grassland, arctic tundra, tropical
rainforest, desert, temperate deciduous forest, coniferous forest.
31. What is eutrophication?
32. Explain how photosynthesis works.
33. Explain how chemosynthesis works.
34. What are herbivores? Carnivores? Omnivores? Autotrophs? Decomposers?
35. What are primary producers? Primary consumers? Secondary consumers?
36. Describe what happens to energy through the food web.
37. List the two ways humans have most interfered with the carbon cycle.
38. What form of nitrogen is most useful to plants?
39. Explain the following: nitrification, nitrogen fixation, dentrification and assimilation.
40. What are the common phosphorus reservoirs in the ecosystem?
41. What elements are involved in major biogeochemical cycles?
42. Explain the steps of the water cycle.
43. What is natural selection? What causes it?
44. What is a mutation? What is evolution? What is coevolution?
45. Describe stabilizing, directional and disruptive natural selection.
46. Compare and contrast a habitat and niche.
47. Describe both a cold and warm front and explain what patterns are associated with both?
48. Describe low and high pressure air masses and what type of weather they are associated with.
49. What is the jet stream?
50. Explain the global circulation patterns.
51. What are the two most important factors in climate?
52. Describe upwelling?
53. Describe the greenhouse effect?
54. What is a limiting factor?
55. Explain what happens with precipitation on the leeward and windward sides of a mountain.
56. What are the causes of desertification?
57. What is the theory of island biogeography?
58. What are keystone species? Nonnative species? Indicator species? Give an example of each.
59. Explain, commensalism, parasitism and mutualism.
60. What is primary succession? Secondary succession? Give an example of where each occurs.
61. What is carrying capacity?
62. What is an r-strategist and K-strategist?
63. Describe the three survivorship curves.
64. Why did the WHO initially spray DDT in Borneo? What was the end result?
65. How do we calculate the population change from year to year?
66. What is a histogram? Describe a histogram for a rapidly developed country and a country with
ZPG.
67. What can lead to a decrease in biodiversity?
68. Why is biodiversity important to humans?
69. What is the greatest threat to most species?
70. Explain island biogeography.