Environmental Science — Part 2 MCQs with Explanations

Particulate matter contains microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems. Some particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter can get deep into your lungs and some may even get into your bloodstream.

Carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas that helps to trap heat in our atmosphere. Without it, our planet would be inhospitably cold. However, a gradual increase in CO 2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere is helping to drive global warming, threatening to disrupt our planet's climate as average global temperatures gradually rise.

Depending upon the source and composition of the coal being burned, the components of fly ash vary considerably, but all fly ash includes substantial amounts of silicon dioxide (SiO2) (both amorphous and crystalline), aluminium oxide (Al2O3) and calcium oxide (CaO), the main mineral compounds in coal-bearing rock strata.

The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley. Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment.

Artificial ecosystems are maintained artificially by man. A pond constructed as a part of wastewater treatment plant is an example of artificial ecosystem. In these types of ecosystem, the only source of power is solar energy.

Silicosis is a form of occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust. It is marked by inflammation and scarring in the form of nodular lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs.

Small remnants of evergreen forest are found in Odisha state.[D] Semi-evergreen forest is more extensive than the evergreen formation partly because evergreen forests tend to degrade to semi-evergreen with human interference.

The constitution of the Calcutta bench was followed by another in Chennai. On September 2,1996, while passing an interim order in the Tamil Nadu tanneries case, a full bench of the SC comprising Justices Kuldip Singh, Falzan-uddin and K Venkataswami asked the chief justice of the Chennai High Court to constitute a special green bench to deal with environmenal matters - including the tanneries case - in that state.

Today this survivor from the prehistoric times is found only in pockets in the north eastern state of Assam and in Nepal. In Assam, their Rhino habitat is limited to just two national parks - Kaziranga and Manas.

Symbiosis is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. The organisms, each termed a symbiont, may be of the same or of different species.

At the Equator the days and nights are of equal length all year long

The summer solstice (or estival solstice), also known as midsummer, occurs when one of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer solstice is when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky and is the day with the longest period of daylight. Within the Arctic circle (for the northern hemisphere) or Antarctic circle (for the southern hemisphere), there is continuous daylight around the summer solstice. On the summer solstice, Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23.44°. Likewise, the Sun's declination from the celestial equator is 23.44°.

The largest annual ranges of temperatures are found at polar latitudes over land.

If the dewpoint happens to be much lower than the temperature, the air will cool off much more rapidly at night than if the dewpoint was closer to the temperature in the evening. This is why dry regions such as the high plains and desert regions have such large differences between the high and low temperature. Moist areas, such as regions near the coast tend to have a smaller spread between the high and low temperature. If the air has a high moisture content, some longwave radiation emitted by the earth's surface will be radiated back toward the surface.

The relative humidity is usually highest around sunrise when the overnight low temperature is frequently close to the dew point. The humidity drops during the day as the temperature rises and usually reaches its lowest value in the middle or late afternoon when the day's maximum temperature is recorded

In meteorology, an inversion, also known as a temperature inversion, is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the thermal lapse rate. Normally, air temperature decreases with an increase in altitude. During an inversion, warmer air is held above cooler air; the normal temperature profile with altitude is inverted. An inversion traps air pollution, such as smog, close to the ground. An inversion can also suppress convection by acting as a "cap". If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any moisture present can then erupt into violent thunderstorms. Temperature inversion can notoriously result in freezing rain in cold climates

Biotic components are the living things that shape an ecosystem. Examples of biotic components include animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Abiotic components are non-living components that influence an ecosystem. Examples of abiotic factors are temperature, air currents, and minerals.

All species on earth together with their environments collectively comprise the Biosphere. It is a grouping of microorganisms, plants, and animals interacting with each other and their environment.

hydrogen production through biological routes is renewable and eco-friendly in nature. Numerous kinds of biomass can be utilized for hydrogen generation

After the June solstice, the sun follows a lower and lower path through the sky each day in the Northern Hemisphere until it reaches the point where the length of daylight is about 12 hours and eight to nine minutes in areas that are about 30 degrees north or south of the equator.

Climate change is any systematic change in the long-term statistics of climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, pressure, or wind sustained over several decades or longer.

Azotobacter is a genus of usually motile, oval or spherical bacteria that form thick-walled cysts and may produce large quantities of capsular slime. They are aerobic, free-living soil microbes which play an important role in the nitrogen cycle in nature, binding atmospheric nitrogen, which is inaccessible to plants, and releasing it in the form of ammonium ions into the soil (nitrogen fixation).

The main reason why in a food chain of the grassland ecosystem, the top consumers are carnivorous because they are not eaten by others.

A harmful algal bloom (HAB) contains organisms that can severely lower oxygen levels in natural waters, killing marine life. Some HABs are associated with algae-produced toxins.

The first wildlife reserve of India, Jim Corbett National Park or 'Corbett Tiger Reserve' is situated in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand. It covers 1318 sq km of area, in which 500 sq. km is the core area and rest part is the buffer zone.

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is India's premier nuclear research facility, headquartered in Trombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. BARC is a multi-disciplinary research centre with extensive infrastructure for advanced research and development covering the entire spectrum of nuclear science, engineering and related areas. BARC's core mandate is to sustain peaceful applications of nuclear energy, primarily for power generation.

All of the above

The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land. Its full name is the Beaufort wind force scale. The scale was devised in 1805 by the Irish hydrographer Francis Beaufort (later Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort), a Royal Navy officer, while serving on HMS Woolwich.

Because light is absorbed before it can reach deep ocean-water, the energy source for deep benthic ecosystems is often organic matter from higher up in the water column that drifts down to the depths.

Benzene is also a natural part of crude oil and gasoline (and therefore motor vehicle exhaust), as well as cigarette smoke. Benzene is among the 20 most widely used chemicals in the United States. It is used mainly as a starting material in making other chemicals, including plastics, lubricants, rubbers, dyes, detergents, drugs, and pesticides. In the past it was also commonly used as an industrial solvent (a substance that can dissolve or extract other substances) and as a gasoline additive, but these uses have been greatly reduced in recent decades. The link between benzene and cancer has largely focused on leukemia and other cancers of blood cells.

The Sardar Sarovar Dam is a gravity dam on the Narmada river near Navagam, Gujarat in India. Four Indian states, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra and Rajasthan, receive water and electricity supplied from the dam. The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 5 April 1961.

The park is home to a number of species of endangered mammals, including the snow leopard. Hemis National Park is India's protected area inside the Palearctic ecozone, outside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary northeast of Hemis, and the proposed Tso Lhamo Cold Desert Conservation Area in North Sikkim.

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.[1][2] It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history and is one of only two nuclear energy disasters rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Higher the trophic level an organism occupies in the food chain higher will be the accumulation of non-biodegradable pesticide residues. This phenomenon is called as biomagnification.

The main energy source for the environment is Solar energy. Solar power harvests the energy of the sun through using collector panels to create conditions that can then be turned into a kind of power.

Soil chemistry is considered an edaphic factor.

Trichoderma harzianum has proved a useful microorganism for bioremediation of contaminated soils.

Biomagnification, also known as bioamplification or biological magnification, is any concentration of a toxin, such as pesticides, in the tissues of tolerant organisms at successively higher levels in a food chain.

Food webs consist of many interconnected food chains and are more realistic representation of consumption relationships in ecosystems.

BOD stands for Biological Oxygen Demand. It is the amount of dissolved oxygen required by aerobic biological organisms to break down organic material present in a given water sample at certain temperature over a specific time period.