Question 1

Describe how greenhouse gases act to maintain the greenhouse effect.

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Question 2

When deforestation occurs, the albedo of the deforested region _______.

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Question 3

Explain why Earth is divided into polar, temperate, and tropical regions, and briefly describe the processes that result in these differences.

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Question 4

Two islands are approximately the same distance from the mainland.One island is small and has low species diversity.The other is larger and has much higher species diversity.It is likely that the larger island has a lower rate of _______.

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Question 5

The species diversification rate and species diversification time in a coastal ecosystem are similar to other ecosystems at the same latitude.However, this particular system has much higher species diversity.The difference might exist because this area has much higher _______.

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Question 6

A large region is deforested, with a resulting increase in the region's temperature.This increase is due to a decrease in the process of _______.

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Question 7

Moist air from the south moves up the Himalayas in Asia, falling as rain on the mountain slopes.The north and northwest regions of China, on the leeward side of the mountains, are very dry.These regions include Mongolia's Gobi Desert.The dry conditions on the leeward side of the Himalayas result from a topographical feature known as a(n) _______.

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Question 8

On a single continent, patterns of species diversity are connected at scales that become increasingly larger, beginning with local, transitioning to landscape, and finally encompassing _______ scales.

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Question 9

During the last ice age, an advancing ice sheet cut through the range of ancestral brown bears in North America.Isolated in different environments, these ancestors eventually evolved into the modern brown, grizzly, and polar bear species.Thus, their evolution resulted from the process called _______.

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Question 10

Beyond the intertidal zone, the ocean floor gradually slopes down until it drops off abruptly.This gradual slope, much of which is in the photic zone and is thus able to support attached photosynthesizing organisms, is called the _______.

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Question 11

According to the experiments of Lovejoy and colleagues, the rate at which a fragment lost species diversity was greatest in the _______ fragments.

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Question 12

A small prairie state park is surrounded by agricultural land.It is the only prairie remaining in the state and is geographically and genetically isolated from remaining stands of prairie in surrounding states.This is an example of habitat _______.

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Question 13

A city in Canada has an average annual temperature approximately 2°C warmer than a city in Argentina at approximately the same latitude.What might explain this difference?

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Question 14

In the Amazon rainforest, deforestation is leading to the formation of forest fragments with abrupt edges starkly different from both the original forest and from the new, deforested landscape.These changes will likely cause the fragments to have _______ species diversity.

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Question 15

Wilson and MacArthur developed an explanation for the species-area relationship, or the increasing number of species as area increased.This was a major contribution to the science of _______.

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Question 16

In the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia, waters from the rivers meet oceanic waters.Hence, the bay is also a(n) _______.

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Question 17

A major environmental problem in the twenty-first century is the concentration of plastic trash in the worlds' oceans, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.Explain how these masses of pollution concentrate and remain in the central regions of oceans.

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Question 18

Due to the tilt of Earth's axis, summer in Australia begins in the month of _______.

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Question 19

The biome named for its dominant trees, which lose their leaves, and having cold winters and warm summers, is the _______ biome.

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Question 20

Ecologists use a mixture of observations, experiments, and models to study ecological systems.Explain why all three methods are important in ecological studies.

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Quiz 53: The Physical Environment and Biogeography of Life