Quick-Fire Review: Energy, Populations and Pollution
You can explain a food chain in class and still lose the marks for it in the exam.
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Quick-Fire Review: Energy, Populations and Pollution
This is a fast pass through the ecology, population and pollution material in Environmental Systems and Societies — the half that shows up in the data questions — with eleven questions, each one followed by the answer and the reasoning that earns the mark.
What this review covers
Energy flow and productivity. Why a food chain runs out of links, and how to work out net primary productivity from gross primary productivity and respiration.
Populations, succession and growth. The lag between a predator's peak and its prey's, which site goes through secondary succession and why, and the stage of the demographic transition where a population grows fastest.
Nutrients, chemicals and data. Eutrophication, acid deposition hundreds of kilometres from its source, and the food-chain data question on how a pollutant concentrates as it moves up.
Climate, energy and resources. What greenhouse gases actually do, when a renewable resource stops being sustainable, and telling mitigation apart from adaptation.
How to use it
Answer each question before the host gives it away — the pause is there for exactly that. If you get one wrong, the reason that follows is the part worth repeating, because that is where the marks live.
The ones that catch people out are the energy lost at each trophic transfer, the stage two growth spurt, and mitigation against adaptation. Each of those turns on a single word in the question, so say that word out loud before you say the answer.
Replay the whole thing the night before, and once more on the way to the exam.
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