AY Honors/Ecology/Answer Key
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1. Construct a diagram of a fresh-water pond ecosystem with pasted-on animal cutouts.
2. Pick one mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian from your home environment, and for each construct a diagram of its ecological pyramid.
3. Know the meaning of the following terms:
a. Ecology
b. Community
c. Food chain
d. Commensalism
e. Ecological succession
f. Plankton
g. Conservation
h. Climax community
i. Eutrophication
j. Biome
4. Make detailed field observations and a careful library book study of the habitat of some small animal in your own environment. Write a report of about 700 words, one-half from your field observations and one-half from your book study.
5. Define an ecosystem and state what the basic biological and physical factors are that keep it a balanced system.
6. Investigate the disposal of trash in your community. How much is disposed per family per day? per week? per year? How better can it be taken care of?
7. Check the daily paper for one month for the nearest large city for the air pollution level or air quality and plot on graph paper the results for the month. Find out what caused the peaks on your graph.
There are numerous weather sites on the Internet that post the Air Quality Index, (AQI)t. One such site is http://www.wunderground.com/
Another resource is the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), which plots the AQI for the United States and Canada at http://airnow.gov/
The EPA calculates the AQI for five major air pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, particle pollution (also known as particulate matter), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
- Ozone
- In the Earth's lower atmosphere, near ground level, ozone is formed when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, industrial boilers, refineries, chemical plants, and other sources react chemically in the presence of sunlight. Ozone at ground level is a harmful air pollutant.
- Particle pollution
- Carbon monoxide
- Sulfur dioxide
- Nitrogen dioxide
