Midterm # 2 Study Guide Questions

Chapter 5

  1. What is climate? What two main factors determine a region's climate?
  2. What are greenhouse gases? List four greenhouse gases.
  3. What is the rain shadow effect, and how can it affect the climate on each side of high mountains?
  4. What is a biome? What two factors determine whether an area of the earth's surface is tropical, temperate, or polar, and is desert, grassland, or forest?
  5. List the layers of the atmosphere.
  6. Distinguish among the layers of the atmosphere.
  7. Explain what the Coriolis Effect is and how it alters air circulation.
  8. Describe several organism adaptations for surviving in a desert.
  9. Describe several organism adaptations for surviving in a tropical rain forest

Chapter 6

  1. What are coral reefs and coral polyps? List economical and ecological services coral reefs provide.
  2. What are the two major types of aquatic life zones?
  3. What are some abiotic factors that determine the types and numbers of organisms found in the layers of aquatic systems.
  4. What is the coastal zone?
  5. What is the intertidal zone?
  6. Distinguish among estuaries, coastal wetlands, and mangroves.
  7. What is a freshwater life zone, and what are the two major types of such zones?
  8. Distinguish among the littoral, limnetic, profundal, and benthic zones of a lake.
  9. List 3 major harmful human impacts on freshwater systems.
  10. Distinguish among eutrophication, oligotrophic, and cultural eutrophication.

Chapter 8

  1. What is population dynamics? Why are the populations of most species found in clumps or groups?
  2. What four factors affect population change? Write an equation showing how population change is related to births, deaths, immigration, and emigration.
  3. What is the age structure of a population? What can be said about a population made up mostly of people in the reproductive ages?
  4. What are environmental resistance and carrying capacity? How do biotic potential and environmental resistance interact to determine carrying capacity
  5. Distinguish between exponential and logistic growth of a population, and give an example of each type
  6. How can a population overshoot its carrying capacity, and what are the consequences of doing this?
  7. Distinguish between density-dependent and density-independent factors that affect a population's size, and give an example of each.
  8. Distinguish among stable, irruptive, irregular, and cyclic forms of population change.
  9. What is a survivorship curve, and how is it used? List three general types of survivorship curves, and give an example of a species with each type.
  10. List the characteristics of (a) r-selected or opportunist species and (b) K-selected or competitor species, and give two examples of each type. Under what environmental conditions are you most likely to find each type of species?

Chapter 9

  1. What factors affect the size of the human population in a particular area? What are the crude birth rate and the crude death rate?
  2. How is the annual rate of population change calculated? What three countries have the world's largest populations?
  3. What is fertility? Distinguish between replacement-level fertility and total fertility rate.
  4. How have fertility rates and birth rates changed in the United States since 1910? How rapidly is the U.S. population growing?
  5. List reasons why the world's death rate has declined over the past 100 years.
  6. Distinguish between life expectancy and infant mortality rate. Why is infant mortality the best measure of a society's quality of life?
  7. Draw the general shape of an age structure diagram for a country undergoing (a) rapid population growth, (b) slow population growth, (c) zero population growth, and (d) population decline.
  8. What is the demographic transition, and what are its four phases? What factors might keep many developing countries from making the demographic transition?
  9. Explain how empowering women can help reduce birth rates, poverty, and environmental degradation.
  1. What is family planning, and what are the advantages of using this approach to reduce the birth rate? Describe the success of family planning in slowing population growth in Bangladesh.