| A | B |
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| TRUE or FALSE: Crops like corn have a bigger water footprint than farm animals raised for their meat, like cows. | TRUE (Farm animals always have a higher water footprint than crops because you have to count the water that was it took to grow the plant-based food they eat. For example, it takes a lot of water to irrigate and grow corn, but cows eat corn and they have to eat about 10 pounds of corn for every pound that the cow grows.) |
| Giving animals antibiotics even when they are healthy, keeping animals in small confined spaces, and giving them growth hormones are all practices common used in ______. | factory farming |
| Using natural fertilizers and pesticides, and growing a wide variety of crops together are all practices common used in ______. | organic farming |
| Plants and animals that have had genes from other species inserted into their chromosomes are known as _____ | GMOs (genetically modified organisms) |
| Algal blooms and fish-kills can be caused by the overuse and runoff of _______ from farms. | fertilizer |
| TRUE or FALSE: Organic farms aren't allowed to use pesticides. | FALSE (They can use pesticides as long as they are natural. For example, the pesticide that has been genetically engineered into corn "BT" is made naturally by a type of bacteria. Since it comes from a natural organism, it can be harvested from this type of bacteria and sprayed onto organic fields, but organic farmers wouldn't used genetically modified corn that makes the exact same pesticide inside corn GM corn cells) |
| Even though someone might know that what they are doing is bad for the environment, if it can make them money and they think that even if they don't do it, someone else will, they might still do it. This is an example of a ________ | Tragedy of the Commons (This concept was originally proposed to explain why common pastures in 18th century England were being overused. Since there were no regulations, people raised too many cows on the pasture even though they knew it would destroy the pasture because they knew that even if they chose not to raise too many cows on the pasture, it wouldn't matter because other people would, and they pasture would be destroyed anyways) |
| ______ is the raising of fish in captivity, similar to how farm animals are raised. | Aquaculture |
| The amount of crops that could be grown on an acre of land went up greatly during the _____ revolution when chemical fertizilizers, pesticides, and mechanical plowing techniques first started being widely used. | Green |
| TRUE or FALSE: Factory farms require more land to grow the same amount of food compared to organic farms. | FALSE (Modern factory farms that use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides can grow more food per acre. This is the biggest criticism of organic farming. Even though in many ways, organic farming is better for the environment, organic farms need more land to grow the same amount of food, which is land that could have been left wild as habitat for animals) |
| Spraying fields with pesticides causes the evolution of resistant insects by causing non-resistant insects to ____. | die (When the non-resistant insects die, it leaves the insects that are the most resistant to be the only ones reproducing. Their offspring are more likely to have inherited whichever gene or genes allowed their parents to be resistant to the pesticide. This weeding out of the weak causes each generation to be more resistant than the last. This is how evolution works. You can think of the pesticide as being similar to natural selection. Indidently, this is also how the overuse of antibiotics causes bacteria to evolve resistance to antibiotics.) |
| Which trophic level would you expect organisms to have the highest concentration of toxic substances that biomagnifiy (like mercury or DDT) in their tissues? | top predator |
| _____ is the fishing technique that catches the most fish in the world and does the most damage to the bottom of the ocean. | Trawling (Trawling damages the ocean floor because it drags large nets across the ocean bottom, which crushes crabs and pulls up deep-sea corals),  |
| Commercial fishing can actually increase the amount of fish that grow each year by taking out the ______. | top predators (this leaves the smaller faster growing young fish a better chance of survival) |
| Fish that are caught accidently during commercial fishing and are thrown back in the ocean dead are referred to as _____. | bycatch |
| The logging technique that causes the most erosion on steep slopes is ______. | clear-cutting (When you take out every tree on a steep slope, like in clear-cutting, you lose the roots that held the soil in place and you also lose the ability of transpiration in trees to suck water out of the ground, leaving it wetter and more prone to erosion) |
| Soil in a tropical rainforest can best be described as being nutrient _____. | poor (Rainforest soils are thin and nutrient-poor because everything decomposes so quickly and the rains wash away any nutrients that aren't sucked up right away by tree roots. That is why removing trees in a rainforest is especially damaging. Without the trees and their roots, the little bit of soil and nutrients tends to just wash away.) |
| Tropical rainforests have more different species and varieties of species of plants and animals than any other type of biome, therefore, they have the greatest ______ of any type of biome. | biodiversity |
| ______ forests can support more biodiversity than forests that have been logged in the last 200 years. | Old-growth |
| Species of organisms that were brought to a certain area by humans and then outcompete the species that have always been there and kind of take-over because they might not have any natural predators are called _____ . | invasive species |
| Even if the total amount of land is the same, if that land has undergone _____ by being broken up into patches by things like roads and housing developments going in, that land will not be able to support as much biodiversity as the same amount of land if that land is all grouped together. | habitat fragmentation (For example, a 1000 acre forest will support more biodiversity than ten fragments of forest that are 100 acres each. Even though it's the same amount of overall land, animals need have access to bigger populations of their own species, and bigger populations of diverse plants and prey species in order to survive well.) |
| Genetically modified salmon grow bigger because they have had a _____ from another fish added to their cells. | gene |
| Corn has been genetically modified by adding a gene from a bacterial cell that has the instructions that corn can use to make its own _______. | pesticide |
| Which type of terrestrial biome has the greatest biodiversity? | Tropical rainforest |
| What can you put near streams and rivers to prevent erosion and help keep the water cooler? | Trees (They also help provide more habitat when they die and fall into the stream because they change the flow of water and help deeper pools of water to form) |
| Most trees in tropical rainforests are being cleared by _____. | being slashed and burned |
| The northern spotted owl is a(n) ____ because it can only live in very healthy biodiverse forests. | indicator species (their presence indicates the forest is healthy) |
| A big threat to salmon is the building of ____ power plants. | hydroelectric (Hydroelectric power plants use dams to generate electricity, but the dams make it hard for the salmon to migrate back upstream to reproduce) |
| The name of the substance that can be found in high concentrations in large predatory fish like tuna because it biomagnifies is ____. It is especially harmful to babies because it causes problems with brain development. | mercury |
| The pesticide that biomagnifies and almost wiped out some top predator birds like the Bald Eagle before its use was banned is ____. | DDT |
| The process of ____ can lead to high levels of toxic substances in top-predators even though it might have pretty low concentrations in organisms near the bottom of the food chain. | biomagnification |
| The process of _____ describes how lakes become overgrown with algae due to excessive nutrients entering the water (usually from fertilizer or sewage). | eutrophication |
| Giving farm animals ____ allows them to grow faster but may end up making humans more likely to die of a disease. | antibiotics |
| Farmers have been using _____ for the last 10,000 years in order to make plants and animals bigger and tastier. | artificial selection |
| TRUE or FALSE: Planting a bunch of different crops in the same field more likely to attract crop-destroying insect pests than planting a mono-culture (just one type of crop in the field). | FALSE (Different insects prefer different crops. If you're a pest that eats corn, you're going to be more attracted to a field that is just corn than a field with a lot of different crops, including some corn. This is why organic farmers, who don't use much pesticide, plant polycultures of many different crops in the same field.) |
| Organisms that are only found in one small area in the world are called ______. | endemic species |
| TRUE or FALSE: Many medicines were originally discovered in rainforest plants and animals. | TRUE |
| TRUE or FALSE: Irrigating farmland with water from rivers can lead to the soil becoming more salty. | TRUE (There is a small amount of salt even in freshwater. When fields are irrigated, a lot of the water evaporates leaving the salt behind. This can lead to a buildup of salt in the soil as time goes by, making it harder for crops to grow) |
| The practice of watering crops is called _____. | irrigation |
| The practice of stirring up the soil on farms to loosen it giving crops a better chance to start growing is called ____ but can also lead to the soil drying out and blowing away like during the "Dust Bowl" of the Great Depression. | tilling |
