Ecology B/C

[paleonaps]

I saw a page for the Red Kangaroo that said that they were fierce carnivores who stole Aborigine babies at night. That was pretty stupid.
This is a response to the Wikipedia discussion, btw

[paleonaps]

For you newbies, I would say the most common question I have had on a test is the extremely basic multiple choice, "Ecology is", then it gives 3 or 4 close definitions, and the 4th or 5th choice is the dictionary answer. Easy points. Beyond that, the event is VERY broad. I would suggest grabbing an AP Biology book and reading all of the sections on Ecology. I have been tested on everything from the 10% rule to extinction vortexes. The AP book should accommodate essentially all of your needs for ecological principles. After that there are the frustrating questions on biomes. For those you will find any general biology textbook to be sorely lacking. Often times they only have 1 or 2 pages on every biome. I resort to the internet primarily and any library I can find with books that specialize on a particular biome or even a particular aspect of a particular biome. The last kind of questions, which always seem like the wildcard questions, are conservation questions. Understanding how global warming occurs, human actions that are harming the environment, I even had a question at last year’s national competition that asked about the Clean Air Act. If you can learn all of that you should be very well off.

Thanks. I just took last year's national test, and got 33 wrong. Most were math, because I had a migraine. However, I think I did pretty well.

I'll pick up an AP book soon.

[kp9ssa]

was the nationals test hard?

[paleonaps]

was the nationals test hard?

No, but it was pretty math heavy. That's where I lost my points (I think I mentioned this already). If the same person writes it, you should expect some math (about 33% was math). Other than that, it was actually pretty easy. However, my team was able to get 3rd or 4th place last year WITHOUT a calculator. So maybe I'm just that good......

[junexia]

where can you find the nationals test from last year?

[Paradox21]

where can you find the nationals test from last year?

Div. C and Div. B But it costs money and it includes a lot of other national tests from last year. For the C div. test it seemed like pretty standard stuff. Except a few questions about weird stuff like conservation legislation and hydrofracking. For most, it is wise to just learn all the basic principles and understand how the biomes work. That alone can get you a very good result.

[Liv]

My partner and I are going over the regionals test. We have a question, what is good example and definition of Carbon Sequestration?

[Paradox21]

Carbon sequestration is when carbon is artificially stored to reduce global warming. The main idea is that if you take CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere you can lessen the greenhouse effect and global warming. The methods proposed are taking CO2 and dissolving it into the ocean. The ocean naturally holds a lot of CO2, but recently the levels of dissolved CO2 have been rising, which isn't surprising because there is also more CO2 in the atmosphere. Now having incredibly high CO2 levels in the ocean would also be a bad idea because it causes the ocean to become more acidic. Another, more ironic method is to pump CO2 back into the earth. For example into empty oil holes (which are partially to blame for the CO2 in the 1st place) where it can be sealed off from the surrounding atmosphere. Smarter methods might be reforestation or algal farms that will convert the atmospheric CO2 into O2. I personally like the idea of algal farms because in addition to using CO2, there has been some research into using algae to produce commercially available ethanol. So we could actually convert CO2 into energy you could use to run a car or something.

[Liv]

Carbon sequestration is when carbon is artificially stored to reduce global warming. The main idea is that if you take CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere you can lessen the greenhouse effect and global warming. The methods proposed are taking CO2 and dissolving it into the ocean. The ocean naturally holds a lot of CO2, but recently the levels of dissolved CO2 have been rising, which isn't surprising because there is also more CO2 in the atmosphere. Now having incredibly high CO2 levels in the ocean would also be a bad idea because it causes the ocean to become more acidic. Another, more ironic method is to pump CO2 back into the earth. For example into empty oil holes (which are partially to blame for the CO2 in the 1st place) where it can be sealed off from the surrounding atmosphere. Smarter methods might be reforestation or algal farms that will convert the atmospheric CO2 into O2. I personally like the idea of algal farms because in addition to using CO2, there has been some research into using algae to produce commercially available ethanol. So we could actually convert CO2 into energy you could use to run a car or something.

Thanks! That helped alot! Guess we have to put that on our note sheet!

[sewforlife]

Hey, I was just wondering, I've been studying all of the basics and a bit more for Eco, and I'm wondering, in nationals, what will some problem questions be, that are more unique/some people have never seen them (that I should prepare for, maybe with notes on my cheat sheet)?