Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Environment) – August 8, 2020

If one wants to see multi-storeyed forests with tall trees and rare plants, where hardly any light reaches the ground, Cotigao Sanctuary is the place to go to.

• It touches the border of Karnataka state and in the lean season, several gaurs are known to come into Cotigao from its neighbourhood.
• The vegetation is mostly moist-deciduous type, interspersed with semi-evergreen and evergreen patches.
• The Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary was established in 1969 to protect a remote and vulnerable area of forest lining the Goa- Karnataka border.
• Encompassing 86-sq-kms of mixed deciduous woodland, the reserve is certain to inspire tree lovers, but less likely to yield many wildlife sightings: its tigers and leopards were hunted out long ago, while the Gazelles, Sloth Bears, Porcupines, Panthers and Hyenas that allegedly lurk in the woods rarely appear.

A new species of dung beetle has been discovered in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

• The species, Enoplotrupes tawangensis, is shining dark blue in colour and, measuring up to 27 mm, is relatively bigger than most of the dung beetles.
• Dung beetles belong to the super family scarabaeoidea, having clubbed antennae and pro-tibiae (pro-legs) modified for burrowing dung inside the soil.
• These groups of insects are considered beneficial to the environment as they help in nutrient cycling of the soil. Often referred to as little recyclers, these scavenger beetles require mammalian dung to survive.
• “Insects comprise almost 65% of all animal species on the planet. From India, approximately 65,000 species of insects are known, of them, more than 22,000 species are beetles.
• Dung beetles are the one of the fascinating group of insects because of their ability to bury dung deep in the soil and are indicators of the ecological health of an ecosystem”.
• Other than the relatively large size and distinct blue colour, another important distinguishing characteristic of this species is the strong sexual dimorphism, with the fronto-clypeal horn shorter in females than males.

Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary is famous for being the second protected habitat of the Golden Langur.

• Charkashila was previously a reserve forest, but in the year 1994, it was declared as a wildlife sanctuary.
• It covers a total area of 45.50 sq km and its jurisdiction falls under two districts – namely of Dhubri and Kokrajhar district of Assam.
• In the Chakrashila Wildlife Sanctuary, tourists can see as many as 273 species of birds apart from 14 different species of reptiles, 60 kinds of fish and 11 species of amphibians.
• There are two lakes in the wildlife sanctuary which add to the beauty of the place. They are called Dheer Beel and Diplai Beel, and they are located on the two sides of the sanctuary.
• Chakrashila, India’s first wildlife sanctuary with golden langur as the primary species.
• Chakrashila has about 600 golden langurs whose population is scattered across western Assam and the foothills of Bhutan.

In recent months, climate activists have stepped up efforts to convince travellers to boycott air travel, with Swedish schoolgirl and campaigner Greta Thunberg spearheading the trains-over-planes movement and making “flygskam”, or flight shame, a buzzword in the Scandinavian country.

• The industry has been under fire over its carbon emissions, which at 285 g of CO2 emitted per km travelled by a passenger far exceed all other modes of transport. Road transportation follows at 158 and rail travel is at 14, according to European Environment Agency figures.
• The International Civil Aviation Organization estimates that air transport is responsible for 2% of global CO2 emissions.
• But aircraft also emit particles such as nitrogen oxides, which can trap heat at high altitude, meaning the industry is responsible for 5% of warming, according to the Climate Action Network.

The industry has committed to improving fuel efficiency by 1.5% per year from 2009 to 2020 and stabilising its CO2 emissions in preparation for a 50% reduction by 2050 compared to 2005.

Golden is no longer the only colour the elusive Asiatic golden cat can be associated with.

• Its coat comes in five other shades in Arunachal Pradesh, scientists have discovered.
• The Asiatic golden cat (Catopuma temminckii) is listed as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of threatened species.
• It is found across eastern Nepal through north-eastern India to Indonesia.
• Indian scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), an international conservation charity, and University College London (UCL) have discovered six colour morphs of the golden cat in Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh.
• Scientists have found that its coat comes in six types: cinnamon, golden, gray, melanistic, ocelot and tightly rosetted.

The use of Bitcoin — a popular virtual currency — emits over 22 megatonnes of carbon dioxide annually, comparable to the total emissions of cities such as Las Vegas and Vienna, a study has found.

• Researchers from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany carried out a detailed calculation of the carbon footprint of the Bitcoin system.
• For a Bitcoin transfer to be executed and validated, a mathematical puzzle must be solved by an arbitrary computer in the global Bitcoin network. The network, which anyone can join, rewards the puzzle solvers in Bitcoin.
• The computing capacity used in this process — known as Bitcoin mining — has increased rapidly in recent years. Statistics show that it quadrupled in 2018 alone.
• Consequently, the Bitcoin boom raises the question of whether the cryptocurrency is imposing an additional burden on the climate.
• The Bitcoin system has a carbon footprint of between 22 and 22.9 megatonnes per year. That is comparable to the footprint of such cities as Hamburg, Vienna or Las Vegas.

EU leaders will this week discuss setting a target of zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

• European Union leaders met in Brussels to debate the 2050 target of “climate neutrality” that the environmental group WWF says now has the support of 16 of the EU’s 28 countries.
• “We urgently need to step up our action to manage this existential threat,” a draft of the EU’s strategic agenda for the next six years says.
• “The EU must lead the way, by engaging in an in-depth transformation of its own economy and society to achieve climate neutrality,” according to the draft.
• The draft contained a footnote, saying the wording may be adjusted to reflect the results of the summit debate, which an EU source said would focus on the 2050 target.
• The source said that a number of EU countries want more debate on financing the shift from an economy running on fossil fuels, especially those in eastern Europe, to one driven by clean energy.

With Southeast Asia awash in rubbish, from plastic-choked whales to trash-clogged canals, leaders are planning to push through a deal to fight maritime debris at a regional meeting in June 2019.

• Just five Asian countries — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand — dump more than half of the eight million tonnes of plastic waste that end up in oceans every year, according to a 2017 Ocean Conservancy report.
• The region has come under fire for not doing enough to tackle its mounting trash troubles, with single-use plastic and sub-par waste management adding to the problem.
• Leaders at a weekend meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are expected to sign a “Bangkok Declaration” on fighting maritime waste — a first of its kind — which promises to “prevent and significantly reduce marine debris”.

The day when a city’s taps dry out and people have to stand in line to collect a daily quota of water.

• Through most of June, this has been the situation in Chennai, one of India’s major cities facing an acute, unprecedented water shortage.
• Many other big cities, including the national capital Delhi, are likely to run out of groundwater by next year, according to India’s policy making body NITI Aayog’s recent assessment.
• In all, 600 million people are facing the worst water crisis in the history of India.
• Adding to the woes is the gloomy prediction that by 2030, the overall demand for water in India will double. “Forty per cent of the population would have no access to drinking water by 2030,” the report warns.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961, working in the field of wilderness preservation, and the reduction of human impact on the environment.

• It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States.
• WWF aims to “stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.”
• The Living Planet Report is published every two years by WWF since 1998; it is based on a Living Planet Index and ecological footprint calculation.
• In addition, WWF has launched several notable worldwide campaigns including Earth Hour and Debt-for-Nature Swap, and its current work is organized around these six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans.