Environment Quiz: Environment | Nov 21,2020

Savannah biome characterized by grasses with scattered trees and fire resisting thorny shrubs.
The fauna include a great diversity of grazers and browsers such as antelopes, buffaloes, zebras, elephants and rhinoceros; the carnivores include lion, cheetah, hyena; and mongoose, and many rodents.
Source: Shankar

Environmental Information System (ENVIS), a Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry has been implemented since 1982.
The purpose of the scheme is to integrate country-wide efforts in environmental information collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination through ENVIS websites, which are dedicated to different interesting themes.
Source: ENVIS

Dolphins, Porpoises and whales are called cetaceans. A cetacean is a creature belonging to a group of water living mammals that have no hind limbs and a blowhole for breathing.
Source: Shankar

Biogeochemical cycles can be classed as gaseous, in which the reservoir is the air or the oceans (via evaporation), and sedimentary, in which the reservoir is the Earth’s crust.
•Gaseous cycles include those of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and water;
•Sedimentary cycles include those of iron, calcium, phosphorus, and other more earthbound elements.
Source: NCERT

Greenhouse gas, any gas that has the property of absorbing infrared radiation (net heat energy) emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiating it back to Earth’s surface, thus contributing to the greenhouse effect.
•Carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapour are the most important greenhouse gases. (To a lesser extent, surface-level ozone, nitrous oxides, and fluorinated gases also trap infrared radiation.)
•Greenhouse gases have a profound effect on the energy budget of the Earth system despite making up only a fraction of all atmospheric gases.
•Concentrations of greenhouse gases have varied substantially during Earth’s history, and these variations have driven substantial climate changes at a wide range of timescales.
•In general, greenhouse gas concentrations have been particularly high during warm periods and low during cold periods.
•These gases have a high capacity for absorbing infrared radiation or occur in significant quantities, whereas others have considerably lower capacities for absorption or occur only in trace amounts.
Source: NCERT

Bioremediation is the use of living micro organisms to degrade the environmental contaminants into less toxic forms.
•It uses naturally occurring bacteria and fungi or plants to degrade or detoxify substances hazardous to human health and/or the environment.
•The micro organisms may be indigenous to a contaminated area or they may be isolated from elsewhere and brought to the contaminated site.
•Contaminant compounds are transformed by living organisms through reactions that take place as a part of their metabolic processes.
•Biodegradation of a compound is often a result of the actions of multiple organisms.
•Bioremediation can be effective only where environmental conditions permit microbial growth and activity.
•The application often involves the manipulation of environmental parameters to allow microbial growth and degradation to proceed at a faster rate.
Source: Shankar

Fresh community consists of an array of organisms depending on the physic-chemical and biological characteristics of the freshwater environment. Freshwater habitats are divided into two major categories:
•Lotic (lotus = washed, or running water): Lotic habitats are those existing in relatively fast running streams, springs, rivers and brooks.
•Lentic (lenis = calm or standing water): Lentic habitats are represented by the lakes, ponds and swamps.
Source: NCERT

A carbon credit is a tradable permit or certificate that provides the holder of the credit the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide or an equivalent of another greenhouse gas.
•The main goal for the creation of carbon credits is the reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from industrial activities to reduce the effects of global warming.
•Carbon credits are market mechanisms of the minimization of greenhouse gases emission.
•The introduction of carbon credit was ratified in the Kyoto Protocol.
•The Paris Agreement validates the application of carbon credits to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases and sets the provisions for the further facilitation of the carbon credits markets.
Types of Carbon Credits: There are two types of the carbon credits:
•Voluntary emissions reduction (VER): A carbon offset that is exchanged in the over-the-counter or voluntary market for credits.
•Certified emissions reduction (CER): Emission units (or Carbon credits) created through a regulatory framework with the purpose of offsetting a project’s emission. The main difference between the two is that there is a third party certifying body that regulates the CER as opposed to the VER.
Source: Shankar

The India State of Forest Report 2019 has been prepared by Forest Survey of India (FSI).
•The report is a biennial exercise.
•It assesses the forest and tree cover, bamboo resources, carbon stock and forest fires.
•The forest cover in the country has increased by 3,976 square kilometer in the last two years.
•The tree and forest cover together made up 25.56% of India’s area. In the last assessment it was 24.39%.
Source: The Hindu

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.
Source: The Hindu