Quick-Fire Review: Environmental Systems and Societies

This is a fast pass through the Environmental Systems and Societies material most likely to show up on your next test. Eleven questions, each with the answer and the reasoning that earns the mark — so you hear not just what is correct, but why.

Environmental value systems. How to tell a cornucopian statement from an ecocentric or technocentric one, and how to place a writer whose report you have never seen before.

Natural capital and natural income. The difference between the stock and what you can take from it without running the account down.

Carrying capacity and footprints. Why a country with 0.08 hectares of cropland per person is not feeding itself, and why human carrying capacity refuses to sit still.

Pollution. Point source against non-point source, with the examples that make the distinction stick.

Practical and data questions. Titling a controlled experiment correctly, which sediment sample holds the least oxygen and why, and how to read the health of a stream from what you measure in it.

Invasive species and impact assessment. What invasives actually do to a food web, and what an EIA is for.

Answer each question before the host gives it away. If you get one wrong, the reason that follows is the part worth repeating — that is where the marks live.

The three that catch people out most often are the cornucopian option, the date of the Deepwater Horizon spill, and natural income. Each turns on a single distinction, so say the reason out loud when you meet it.

Replay the whole thing the night before, and once more on the way to the exam.