Creative tasks for classes in the “EkoMir” program; educational and methodological material on ecology
Creative tasks
to classes according to the program
"EkoMir"
(Gin A.A., Andrzheevskaya I.Yu. 150 creative tasks: for a rural school: Educational and methodological manual. - M.: National Education, 2007. - 234 p.)
Compiled by:
Grischuk T.E.
preschool teacher
Creative tasks on ecology.
“Pressure” of bison.
Bison are huge animals, and naturally they put a lot of ecological pressure on the environment. They eat young trees and, during molting, scratch on the trunks of mature trees, damaging them. Even before the beginning of the agrarian history of the Earth, it was large herd ungulates, including bison, that thinned out the forest, creating numerous forest edges. Under natural conditions, the feeding area of a bison family covers an area of several square kilometers. And in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, bison are kept within relatively small areas of forest, which they quickly turn into a space devoid of vegetation. Specialists from Belovezhskaya Pushcha had a problem: how can the “pressure” of bison on nature be reduced under artificial conditions without reducing their number?
Answer: To reduce forest damage, bison are constantly fed. And in feeding areas they build special grates for them, against which they rub their sides.
By the way.
At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, herds of bison were recorded only in two isolated habitats - in Belovezhskaya Pushcha and in the western Caucasus, but by the end of the 20s they were exterminated in these places as well. The First World War and the Civil War were especially destructive for the bison. In the Caucasus, the disappearance of the bison was “helped” by outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease and anthrax epidemics brought into the mountains by cattle. By the time the bison disappeared from the wild, its captive population numbered 12 individuals. Thanks to them, two currently existing groups of bison were created - Belovezhsky and Caucasian-Belovezhsky. The Caucasian subspecies of bison in its pure form was lost. Moreover, the Belovezhskaya line comes from 7 of the 12 founding bisons, and the Belovezhsko-Caucasian line comes from all 12 individuals. Thus, the Belovezhsk bison have almost half the initial genetic diversity than the Caucasian-Belovezh bison.
Wolves, oh!
Environmental scientists were faced with the task of determining the number of wolves living in a certain territory. But how to do that? Registering animals based on their tracks in the traditional way is too time-consuming and expensive.
Suggest another, more modern way to solve this problem.
Answer: Scientists used highly sensitive equipment capable of recording the voices of wolves. To the howl, which in the language of wolves means something like “Don’t appear here, this territory is ours!”, the wolves responded with a response howl, which was recorded and analyzed. This made it possible to determine their numbers in a given area with great accuracy.
They say that wolves howl at the moon. In reality, wolves howl at any time of the day, but most often in the evening hours, during the period of their highest activity. And they howl when they need to mark their territory, or to gather members of their flock for a hunt, or to find a lost brother - regardless of whether the moon is shining or not.
WHY DO ROE DEER DIE IN ENVIRONS?
In Belovezhskaya Pushcha, animals are kept in spacious pens - almost in a natural state. Curious bison, elk, and deer often approach the boundaries of the enclosure, so visitors can watch them. But many animals are hiding. Therefore, some animals (wolves, foxes) were placed in cages or small enclosures to make it easier to observe them. At first, the roe deer were also placed in such an enclosure. After a while alone
of the roe deer died. Another died after her. Researchers established the cause of death of the roe deer and released the rest into the wild - into the forests of Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
What did the roe deer die from?
Answer: Roe deer are very shy animals. They always stay away from humans. And here there was a continuous stream of visitors, noisy groups of schoolchildren. There was nowhere for the roe deer to hide, and it was also impossible to run away... So the roe deer died of a broken heart.
Who is a deer's friend?
In one of the Canadian reserves, all wolves were destroyed in order to increase the herd of deer. What do you think: was it possible to achieve the goal in this way?
Answer: The destruction of wolves led to an increase in weak and sick individuals in the herd, as well as to the emergence and spread of diseases and, as a result, to the mass death and extinction of deer.
Many environmental disasters occur due to human error. Below are several examples of human intervention in natural biocenoses.
In one of the fish farms, predatory snakehead fish, brought from the Far East, were released into ponds to clean the ponds of trash fish that interfered with carp breeding. The snakeheads quickly ate the trash fish and quickly multiplied. And when they began to starve, they began to eat carp fry. We tried to destroy the snakeheads by draining the water from the ponds. But it turned out that snakeheads are able to burrow into the mud and hibernate for several months, surviving a long drought.
Sparrows are granivores, and in 1958 in China they were declared harmful and decided to be destroyed. This is how some sources describe the story of the extermination of sparrows. “It was not difficult to do this: a sparrow is not able to fly for more than 40 minutes, and if you force it to stay in the air for 40-45 minutes, it dies. The entire Chinese population at the appointed hour began Operation Sparrow - whistling, knocking and waving rags until the sparrows fell dead.” It is known from other sources that poisons were used to exterminate sparrows. In addition, passerines are traditionally eaten in China, so a considerable proportion of the birds were simply eaten. But the point is that the very next year the grain harvest suffered from insects much more than before from sparrows. We had to urgently purchase these birds from Cuba and deliver them to China. [12, p.
In France, catfish living in the lakes of the Bois de Boulogne were declared enemy number one. Thanks to the abundance of food, catfish reach more than a meter in length and, naturally, infringe on the right to life of all other inhabitants of reservoirs. There is a curious story about how catfish ended up in these waters. In Paris, a fashion for pet turtles once appeared. But the turtles began to multiply on an incredible scale, and the Parisians got rid of them, releasing hundreds of them into the lakes. As a result, the turtles upset the biological balance, and it was necessary to somehow curb them, which was done with the help of catfish. And then the need arose to find control over these huge predatory fish.
In Germany, at the end of the 18th century, scientists and foresters decided to transform the “ancient chaotic forest cluster” into a new type of forest, which was supposed to consist of geometrically precise rows of normalized trees and provide a constant high profitability from the sale of wood.
For almost the entire 19th century, the Germans punctually (according to compiled tables) cleared out their forests. The German scientific school of forestry served as a standard for Western followers from Norway to North America. In Russia, forestry also developed according to the German model, but much less successfully (ambitions and exorbitant felling got in the way). The first generations of trees in the regular German forest demonstrated the highest woodiness and strength, from which impressive profits were extracted. And within a generation, forest growth and, accordingly, profits began to decline sharply: productivity decreased as a result of soil depletion and the monocultures' susceptibility to massive outbreaks of disease.
More than 100 years ago, rabbits were brought to Australia, which became a real scourge there, destroying all vegetation. To create living thorny hedges, the prickly pear cactus was acclimatized, but it turned into a malicious weed, taking away 60 million of land. Powerful equipment (bulldozers, flamethrowers) could not cope with the cacti. A small butterfly, the cactus moth, helped correct this environmental mistake. And they managed to control the rabbits with the help of the myxomatosis disease virus, imported from Brazil.
CAREFULLY! ON THE ROAD OF FROGS!
In the county of Buckinghamshire in the UK, a highway was built that cut the frogs' domain in half between two large lakes. Whole columns of frogs moved from one lake to another, crossing the highway, and died in thousands under the wheels of cars. The mass of animals that died during the year was about twenty tons!
What should I do?
Answer: usually, in places where there are mass crossings of animals, a canopy road is built. And for small animals, pipes are inserted into the road embankment. True, we still need to ensure that these animal pipelines are popular.
THINK
In the swamps of the Azerbaijani subtropics there lives a small frog - an ordinary tree frog, which “travels” with ducks. In the fairy tale “The Frog Traveler,” two geese carried a twig in their beaks, which the frog held onto.
How do tree frogs actually travel? And for what?
GROWTH POINT In the experiment, the experimental frogs were carried away from their native pond not in a straight line, but in a loop, and all the time, rotating the buckets in which they were located. And yet, every time, finding themselves free, the frogs immediately began to move towards their native pond, without hesitation and almost instantly choosing the exact direction.
How do frogs determine the right direction? Offer your hypotheses.
The Japanese government decided to allocate funds to build a bridge for monkeys. The cost of the project is 247 thousand dollars. The 137-meter-long bridge will connect two rocks across a dam in the town of Unazuki. Five years ago, a herd of monkeys moved along the rocks closer to the grain plantations. In 2001, one of the rocks was blown up during the construction of a dam, and the monkeys were unable to return to their permanent residence, continuing to ravage the fields. To stop monkeys from raiding farmers' fields, local high school teacher Hisaiki Akazu developed a monkey bridge project that has the full support of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
WE ARE DRYING THE SWAMP - THE FOREST IS DYING BECAUSE OF SOMETHING...
Due to the drainage of swamps, forests suffer, and not only nearby ones, but also those tens of kilometers away from the swamps. Here is what, for example, we were told in Belovezhskaya Pushcha: “The party in the 50s of the 20th century issued a cry: to reclaim Polesie. No sooner said than done: canals were built, wetlands were drained. But after reclamation work, the spruce in Pushcha began to suffer greatly - huge areas of the forest were affected by the typograph bark beetle. 50 years have passed since then, and Pushcha still hasn’t recovered – it’s sick.”
Why do forests suffer, although reclamation work is carried out in swamps?
Answer: the level of underground groundwater in the forest drops and becomes the same as the water level in the drained areas - the law of communicating vessels applies. This leads to drying out of the forest. The trees weaken, begin to get sick, and the forest may even die.
By the way. In Belarus there are about 2.5 million hectares of undrained swamps (12 percent of the territory) and 450 thousand hectares of sand. These 450 thousand hectares were formed mainly for two reasons. Firstly, due to the drainage of swamps, and secondly, due to too intensive exploitation of drained peatlands. Unlike chernozems and even just loams, peat bogs are soils that are extremely easily subject to wind erosion. The cultivation of such soils requires special, unconventional technology, but this became clear after a significant area of the former swamps was destroyed. The costs of draining swamps are unjustified either economically or environmentally. Swamps are climate regulators, storehouses of fresh water; when they are drained, cranberry plantations die.
WHO WENT INTO THE OCEAN?
Tanker captains sometimes commit environmental poaching - after unloading and washing the holds, they dump the remaining oil into the water. Oil spreads over the water in a thin film and destroys all living things around... Fighting the film is difficult and very costly. Who should pay for all this?
Of course, tanker owners who make profits from transporting oil.
But how to find those who dumped oil into the water?
Answer: Swedish scientists have proposed a simple and reliable method. Immediately after loading oil into the ship's tanks, powder is poured out, which consists of metal alloy powders mixed in different proportions. When loading this vessel, the port makes a note in the goods passport and an entry in the port journal about the mark code. A ton of oil requires 15 grams of powder, but in the future they hope to reduce this figure to 5 grams. In the event of a violation, the control laboratory will collect samples of oil floating on the water and determine exactly which tanker discharged the oil.
By the way. The international black box law can be applied to tankers. It is not the oil that needs to be tagged, but the tanker. A tanker whose draft has decreased at sea is a poacher. The control device, naturally, is inaccessible to the team, like a black box on an airplane. When entering the port, this device sends one of two signals via radiotelephone (cellular communication): “I am tanker such and such, no poaching has been detected” or: “I am tanker such and such, poaching has been detected” - and the coordinates. The signal is received at the port and immediately transmitted to the sanitary and epidemiological service and other regulatory organizations.
A more complex problem is associated with the transportation of oil: how to quickly find out that oil was dumped on the high seas if the captain is hiding it?
Answer: today thousands of satellites fly over the planet, and any incident at sea can be “detected” with their help.
One more question: why do you need to flush the tanks if they are loaded with oil again?
OIL FILM - HOW TO DEAL WITH IT?
Oil enters the water in huge quantities during tanker accidents or problems on oil-producing tankers or problems on oil-producing offshore platforms. This brings death to sea fish, birds, and plankton.
Suggest ways to collect spilled oil and clean water from oil film?
Answer: Oil can be collected purely mechanically using adsorbents. For example, ordinary straw absorbs oil 8-30 times more than its own weight; feathers and down of birds absorb an amount of oil that is 14 times more than their own weight. Researchers from Tralee Technical College, Ireland, have proposed the following technology. The feathers are placed in a wide “feather bed” five centimeters thick and up to six meters long, the “feather bed” is packed in a nylon net and placed on the spot, then lifted aboard the boat and rolled through special rollers, squeezing out the oil. Featherbeds can be used up to three times. Feather material for them is cheap - usually it is simply destroyed at poultry farms.
— Use tapes made of polypropylene, polyurethane foam or floating porous granules that are not wetted by water, but absorb oil well. In order to quickly collect these granules, small magnets are inserted into them and collected by the large electromagnet of the oil trap vessel.
— To “catch” spilled oil and prevent it from spreading over the surface of the water, they use a special trap - a flexible synthetic shell made of hermetically sealed inflatable chambers. It can cover a large area and is easy and quick to install. Thanks to its flexibility, the trap follows the wave profile and prevents oil from spreading.
- Oil is flammable and can be burned. But if you miss the moment and let it spill, then it is almost impossible to build a fire on the surface of the sea - if the layer thickness is less than three millimeters, the oil does not burn. But if you foam the top layer of liquid, the oil will separate from the water and become flammable.
— You can collect oil using submerged acoustic emitters. A sound beam directed from below releases energy at the water-oil interface, lifting the latter into the air, where it is collected in containers or burned. The same acoustic generator can move the spill spot horizontally and also create barriers in the way of the spill. An oil slick can be towed by first treating the oil with a hardener.
In coastal Black Sea waters (down to a depth of 100 meters), bacteria annually destroy about two thousand tons of oil. Unfortunately, much more of it comes here. By eating oil, bacteria quickly multiply and cover the film with a continuous layer. The bacterial film becomes thicker and thicker, and only inside it can live microorganisms be found: closer to the surface, their dead bodies - bacterial detritus - accumulate. The detrital coat isolates microbes from seawater, depriving the influx of nutrients and oxygen. As a result, the vital activity of bacteria in oil slows down and can completely freeze. But other marine microorganisms - ciliates - come to the rescue. They settle on the detritus film and eat it, making life easier for oil-oxidizing bacteria. In turn, detritivorous ciliates feed on representatives of the next level of the ocean food pyramid. Knowing all this, it is possible to select organisms - links in the food chain - in such a way that together they will form a biological reactor that processes oil that ends up in the sea. True, there is a difficulty: not all organisms survive oil pollution...
There is no good solution to this problem yet. All methods are expensive and not effective enough. Inventors continue their search...
LEATHER COAT? NEVER!
Famous English photographer David Bason has released a series of posters in defense of endangered animals whose skins are used to make clothing. The posters were equipped with original inscriptions, after reading which many fashionistas lost the desire to wear leather coats.
Suggest options for such inscriptions.
Answer: One of the most famous posters had the following inscription: “It takes 40 animals to kill to make one leather coat, but only one wears it.”
Offer your options for posters and captions. What other way can you attract public attention to this problem?
WHY ECOLOGISTS ARE AGAINST?
Every form of life is unique, no matter what
nor was its usefulness to humans.
World Charter for Nature. Paragraph 1
Many cities are overcrowded with stray animals. In Moscow, for example, more than 30 thousand stray dogs roam the streets. They are sources and carriers of various diseases, including infectious ones. The sanitary and epidemiological inspection proposed to catch all stray animals to solve this problem once and for all. But environmentalists spoke out against this decision.
Why?
Answer: If you catch all the stray animals, then without a biological barrier new animals from the region will pour into the city, in large numbers, with their own diseases, which will also begin to fight for territory, for survival in new conditions, and the situation may be even worse than the original .
In Soviet times, there was a plan for catching and euthanizing - 20 thousand annually, but the number of stray dogs did not decrease. By the 1980 Olympics, not a single homeless animal remained in the capital, and in 1981, Moscow was attacked by hordes of rats. Something like this happened in the capital in 2000, when, in the fight against terrorism, most of the basements were walled up and almost all the cats died in the winter. Prosperous Europe, thanks to the most stringent sanitary policies, huge fines and strict control over waste sorting, supposedly successfully solved the problem of homeless animals. There aren't even crows in London, let alone dogs. However, Europe is currently suffering from an invasion of other beasts. England - from foxes and badgers, Germany and Austria - from raccoons and ferrets. These animals have taken the place of ownerless dogs and cats, as they are capable of tearing strong bags of garbage with their teeth. But residents practically do not see them, since animals “graze” in garbage dumps only at night.
THINK
How can we solve the problem of stray animals in cities?
Answer: Since the end of 2001, stray animals in Moscow have been caught, sterilized, vaccinated against rabies and released into the wild.
PROTECT NATURE…
The tin layer protects the cans from corrosion. And the cans discarded by tourists have been lying around for decades, disfiguring nature. True, in the North this is not a problem - at low temperatures, tin crumbles into powder, and iron, deprived of protection, quickly rusts and also crumbles. •
How to protect the southern regions, where there is no frost, from clogging cans?
Answer:
— Tin cans can be made from two layers of metal that enter into an electrochemical reaction with each other in the presence of moisture. Between the layers is salt that absorbs moisture. Once the can is opened, moisture gets into the cut, active corrosion begins, and after a few weeks not a trace remains of the can.
— The Swedes found another solution to this problem. They solved the problem, not how to make the metal of the cans collapse, but how to preserve this metal... Nowadays, most Swedes accumulate cans and then return them to machines in supermarkets for money. As a result, as evidenced by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, the Swedes became world champions in the recycling of light metal containers: in 1984, 63 percent of all used cans were handed over, five years later - 82, and after 10 years - 91.5 percent! This is truly a world record. Switzerland is in second place with 80 percent, Austria is in third place with 50 percent. As a result, the Swedes kill not even two, but three birds with one stone. The consumer gets the money back; no damage to the environment; industry is supplied with secondary raw materials, which are used for melting down and making new cans.
— And in Lyon (France) a garbage can for cans was combined with a slot machine. As soon as the empty jar falls into the round hole, three drums with pictures begin to spin behind the glass. If all three reels land on the same pictures, the machine gives out a win. This could be a piece of candy, a keychain, chewing gum, or a pen. On average, every fourth jar brings a win. Each machine collects approximately 500 cans per week. Vending machines have appeared on campuses, stadiums, parks and cultural centers in Lyon. 60 percent of young Lyonese surveyed admitted that before the advent of these devices they always threw an empty jar anywhere.
Situational tasks in ecology
Situational tasks in ecology
2017
- Construction is planned on the river bank; the contractor has proposed a plan for placing a recreation center and a pig farm. How should these objects be placed in relation to the river and why?
Answer: The recreation center must be located upstream, and the pig farm downstream and as far as possible from the river so that livestock runoff from the farm (liquid manure) does not pollute the reservoir.
- Recently, the number of fires in forests has increased, the reasons for their occurrence vary from drought and heat to the human factor. What measures need to be taken to reduce their number.
Answer: It is necessary to clear the forest of dead wood, do not light fires, do not throw cigarette butts, plow the forest or shelterbelt away from roads and the steppe zone, because dry grass quickly catches fire and fire from the steppe can easily spread to the forest.
- Recently, when carrying out a cleanup, it has been customary to collect leaves in bags or bury them. Why is it recommended to bury leaves when carrying out a cleanup?
Answer: if the foliage is burned, then the heavy metals contained in the leaves will enter the atmosphere with the smoke, and if the foliage is not removed, then harmful invertebrates and spores of parasitic fungi will multiply in it. By burying the foliage, it decomposes and promotes soil formation and the development of seed-plants.
- What scientific trends in ecology do you know?
Answer: geographic ecology, population ecology, chemical ecology, industrial ecology, ecology of plants, animals, humans.
- What resources do green plants use to live?
Answer: The body of a green plant is created from molecules of inorganic substances and ions. To build its body, a plant requires energy, which is obtained from solar radiation during photosynthesis.
- One farmer decided to get rid of parasites in his field and treated it with chemical protection agents - pesticides. After application, after some time, the number of these pests, which so annoyed the farmer, increased sharply. Why, explain the situation.
Answer: Pesticides not only kill the species they are used against, but also their parasites and predators. The remaining part of the pests after treatment, freed from their enemies - population regulators, after a short time gives a new, even higher outbreak of numbers.
- What are the main consequences of irrigation carried out without proper control?
Answer: to secondary soil salinization.
- What law does this formulation correspond to: no more than 10% of energy is transferred from one trophic level of the biocenosis to organisms located at a higher trophic level?
Answer: Lindemann's law.
- It is known that locusts cause significant damage to crops and pastures, although gram-eating locusts, as scientists from the Novosibirsk State University have shown. University, play an important positive role in the mineral nutrition of plants during the growing season, acting as a “link” of pasture and detritus food chains. Why?
Answer: locusts emit microorganisms along with secretions that convert nitrogen from the air and soil into a form that can be absorbed by plants.
- In the 20th century, the number of capelin, pollock, hake and other smaller fish in the Barents Sea increased. What is this connected with?
Answer: due to intensive fishing of cod, which is a predatory fish, carried out at this time.
- It is advisable to transport snow collected by cleaning equipment from the roadways of city streets to biological treatment ponds, and then to fields for irrigation. What is it for?
Answer: snow collected from roads contains a large amount of chemicals (petroleum products, acids, salts, rubber, soot). The entry of these substances into water bodies, fields, and forests without natural or artificial purification is dangerous. Irrigation fields are used for round-the-clock and year-round disinfection of wastewater intended for irrigation and fertilization of agricultural structures. In biological ponds, both domestic and industrial wastewater can be purified if they do not contain substances that have a direct toxic effect on organisms living in the water, as well as raw (untreated) wastewater after preliminary removal of fat and suspended particles.
- Why in the northern regions should economic felling be carried out only in winter and wood transported through deep snow?
Answer: since the soil cover is disturbed much less; the litter and herbaceous layer of plants are not destroyed, potholes and ruts are not formed that change the hydraulic regime and contribute to soil erosion; Young growth and undergrowth are destroyed significantly less.
- Until recently, there were projects to drain swamps to optimize natural landscapes, but these projects are now closed due to the obvious huge role of swamps in the biosphere in maintaining the stability of the Earth's climate. What is this connected with?
Answer: Swampy areas are one of the main suppliers of methane gas to the atmosphere, which is produced by bacteria in the anoxic lower layers of swamps. Methane is one of the so-called “greenhouse” gases, which trap part of the Earth’s thermal radiation into outer space. If the methane content in the atmosphere drops sharply, the Earth's climate will become colder until the onset of a new ice age.
- Why is the birch tree called the “pioneer” of the forest, and the birch forest temporary?
Answer: birch is the first to colonize open spaces, clearings, and burnt areas; its seedlings are not afraid of bright sun and frost. Spruce trees settle under the crown of birch trees, which eventually displace it, which lacks snow among the spruce trees.
- Like in the middle of the 19th century. Did oil save some whale species from complete destruction?
Answer: until 1857, when the first kerosene lamp went on sale and the first industrial development of oil began, people used whale oil and spermaceti to illuminate and lubricate various mechanisms (mainly steam engines).
- In a specific territory, over the course of 20 years, there has been a change in the species composition of birds characteristic of the definition of ecosystems. At first, some bird species nested on the territory (grey warbler, chaffinch, oriole), then others (crake, lapwing, yellow wagtail). What is this connected with?
Answer: this is due to the digression of the primary ecosystem (anthropogenic impact on the primary ecosystem). For example, as a result of cutting down a small-leaved forest (anthropogenic impact), where some bird species nested, secondary succession is formed in a fairly short period of time, i.e. new on the site of an existing ecosystem destroyed by man. Excess light and sufficient moisture promote the active development of meadow species, which form a new ecosystem.
- In the vast forests of the North, so-called concentrated logging is often carried out using heavy equipment, which leads to the replacement of forest ecosystems with swamp ones. Why?
Answer: when cutting using heavy equipment, the soil cover is severely destroyed and compacted. This, in turn, leads, as a rule, to chain reactions of natural processes, in particular, the existing water cycles are replaced by the accumulation of stagnant water on the soil surface, followed by the replacement of forest ecosystems by swamps.
- Why is it that in artificial ecosystems, especially in agrocenoses, the number of agricultural pests during mass outbreaks of their reproduction is many times greater than those in natural communities?
Answer: this is due to the huge space occupied by one crop (monoculture), which is an ideal condition for the rapid spread of insects and other crop pests over large areas.
- The creation of large livestock complexes (poultry farms and pig farms with more than 5,000 animals) with unregulated wastewater will affect the chemical composition of surface and groundwater. What is this connected with?
Answer: livestock runoff from farms (liquid manure), entering rivers and lakes, leads to eutofication of these reservoirs, as the content of nitrogen-containing compounds in the water increases. Nitrogen compounds dissolved in surface water can also enter groundwater (overwater), making well water unsuitable for drinking.
- What consequences can the destruction of predators and an increase in the number of herbivores have for the natural community?
Answer: predators are natural orderlies, regulating the number of herbivores by killing the weak and sick. If the number of predators decreases, then there will be no one to regulate the number of herbivores, the population will increase, the number of sick and weak herbivores will increase, which will lead to the spread of infection.
- Why are environmentalists treated with caution towards chipboards (chipboards) used in everyday life?
Answer: because they increase the concentration of formaldehyde in apartments.
- With a stable temperature increase of more than 2° C, global warming will occur. What consequences can this lead to?
Answer: an increase in temperature will lead to the melting of glaciers in the zone of continuous permafrost, the area of the world's oceans will increase, which will lead to flooding of the edges of the continents. The land area will decrease significantly.
- How does the use of large amounts of salt in the autumn-winter period, which is sprinkled on sidewalks to prevent human injuries, affect plants?
Answer: plants experience water starvation due to hypertonic dissolution of salts in the soil.
- Why are multi-storey buildings more environmentally dangerous than single-storey buildings?
Answer: in multi-storey buildings there is unstable air exchange, ventilation, uneven heating of floors.
- After permission to hunt in the forest, the number of rodents in the nearby field increased sharply. What is this connected with?
Answer: since forest predators used to restrain the growth of rodents, being their natural regulator. Accordingly, after hunting was allowed, the number of predators decreased, so there is an increase in rodents.
- Why did the introduction of lampreys into Lake Erie cause enormous harm to fisheries?
Answer: a predator lamprey, when it sees a fish, it attacks the prey, clinging to its body. Fish that do not die from lamprey attacks become lethargic, are more often attacked by parasites and die from fungal diseases.
- What does the following formulation mean: “no more than 10% of energy is transferred from one trophic level of the biocenosis to organisms located at a higher trophic level.”
Answer: this formulation corresponds to the 10% rule (Lindemann's law).
- What are the names of areas of territory in which all natural components and their combinations are preserved in the most complete natural state possible - natural complexes and economic activity is not permitted?
Answer: They are called a reserve.
- What characterizes the bioecological features of the growth and influence of spruce on living conditions in the plant community?
Answer: because the roots are located in the surface layer of the soil, and the needles remain on the branches for 8-10 years.
- In accordance with environmental laws, any species is capable of unlimited growth in numbers, occupying all ecological niches suitable for life (the so-called “life pressure”). Then why are there rare and endangered organisms?
Answer: at present, the main factor limiting the growth of the number of organisms, leading to the threat of their extinction, is human activity.
- Mutually beneficial relationships between species—mutualism—are widespread in nature. An example is the relationship between the Siberian pine pine and birds nesting in cedar forests - the nutcracker and the jock. What are the benefits of such a relationship?
Answer: these birds, feeding on pine seeds, have instincts for storing food. They hide small portions of “nuts” under a layer of moss and forest litter. Birds do not find a significant part of the reserves, and the seeds germinate. The activity of these birds thus contributes to the self-renewal of cedar forests, since seeds cannot germinate on a thick layer of forest litter that blocks their access to the soil.
- It is known that the slipper ciliate reproduces by division. It feeds on certain bacteria that reproduce well in solutions usually used for growing ciliate cultures (for example, in hay infusion). If you add some salts (harmless to ciliates) to this solution, the reproduction of ciliates will stop. What is this connected with?
Answer: the reproduction of ciliates occurs due to the feeding of bacteria, if you add salts (harmless to ciliates) to the solution where the ciliates are grown and fed, then the reproduction of bacteria will stop, and the reproduction of the ciliates will also stop, because there will be nothing to eat.
- You know that most physical environmental factors are of an electromagnetic nature. So, near fast flowing water the air is refreshing and invigorating, for the same reason the air after a thunderstorm seems clean and refreshing to us. What is this connected with?
Answer: with the presence of negative ions in the air, which have a positive effect on health.
- Man has always lived in a world of sounds and noise. For all living organisms, sound is always one of the environmental influences. Why are doctors increasingly talking about noise sickness lately?
Answer: prolonged noise (especially nowadays, due to technological progress) adversely affects the organ of hearing, reducing sensitivity to sound. It leads to disruption of the heart and liver, and to exhaustion and overstrain of nerve cells. Weakened cells of the nervous system cannot clearly coordinate the work of various body systems.
- Why do natural multi-species plant associations suffer significantly less often from outbreaks of insect pests than populations of monocultures in agrocenoses?
Answer: This is due to the high concentration of agricultural crops, which makes them a convenient target for numerous predators, parasites and other pests, freed from the competition inherent in natural communities.
- What effect can agricultural techniques provide in the fight against agricultural pests?
Answer: dense crops create their own microclimate: light and temperature drop sharply on the soil surface, humidity increases, which prevents the pest from multiplying and creates conditions for the development of certain types of fungi and bacteria that can destroy pests in a few days.
- At first glance, hydroelectric power plants are environmentally friendly enterprises that do not harm nature. In our country, many largest hydroelectric power stations have been built on great rivers. It has now become clear that this construction has caused great damage to both nature and people. Why, justify your answer?
Answer: the construction of dams on large lowland rivers for hydroelectric power stations leads to the flooding of vast territories for reservoirs, the resettlement of people and the loss of pasture lands. Secondly, the dam creates insurmountable obstacles on the migration routes of anadromous and semi-anadromous fish that rise to spawn in the upper reaches of rivers. Thirdly, water in storage facilities stagnates, its flow slows down, which affects the lives of all living creatures living in the river. Fourthly, local water rise affects groundwater, leading to flooding, waterlogging, coastal erosion and landslides.
- In Yu. Liebig discovered that plant yield can be limited by any of the basic nutrients, if only this element is in short supply. Then he formulated this simple rule. Formulate it.
Answer: this is the law of the minimum - the successful functioning of populations or communities of living organisms depends on a set of conditions; a limiting or limiting factor is any state of the environment that approaches or goes beyond the limit of stability for organisms of the group of interest to us.
- Why are shellfish, which do not represent much nutritional value for humans and other animals due to their low productivity, of paramount importance as a factor in preserving the fertility of the area where they live?
Answer: according to the type of feeding, mollusks are filter feeders. They suck in and filter water, removing small organisms and detritus. As a result of the water current created by this filtration, large quantities of detrital particles rich in phosphorus and other elements are retained in the shallow tidal zone.
- In recent years, scientists have become increasingly concerned about the depletion of the atmosphere's ozone layer, which acts as a protective shield against ultraviolet radiation. What is the main cause of ozone depletion?
Answer: the main reason for the depletion of the ozone layer is the use of freons by people, which are widely used in production and everyday life as refrigerants, foaming agents, solvents, and aerosols.
