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Environmental ScienceQ&A by dot point
A short Q&A bank for every Scotland Environmental Science syllabus dot point. Each question and answer is drawn directly from our worked dot-point page, so you can scan key concepts before opening the long-form answer.
Area 2: Earth's Resources
- The atmosphere: its composition and layered structure, its role in weather and climate, the greenhouse effect, and the causes and effects of atmospheric pollution including acid rain and ozone depletion.2Q&A pairs
- The biosphere: biomes and their distribution, biological and biomass resources, the ecosystem services the biosphere provides, and the sustainable management of biological resources.2Q&A pairs
- The geosphere: the structure of the Earth, the rock cycle and rock types, the formation and properties of soil, weathering and erosion, and the extraction and sustainable use of mineral resources.2Q&A pairs
- The hydrosphere: the water cycle and the distribution of water, water as a resource, the causes and effects of water pollution, and the treatment of water for supply and after use.2Q&A pairs
Area 1: Living Environment
- Biodiversity as genetic, species and ecosystem diversity; how species and genetic diversity are measured; and the ecological and economic importance of biodiversity.4Q&A pairs
- Human influences on biodiversity: habitat loss and fragmentation, overexploitation, the impact of invasive non-native species, pollution, and the methods used to conserve and protect biodiversity.2Q&A pairs
- Interdependence: ecological niche, competition, predation and herbivory, energy flow through food chains and webs, the recycling of nutrients, and ecological succession.2Q&A pairs
- Investigating ecosystems: biotic and abiotic factors, sampling techniques for measuring abundance and distribution, and the use of indicator species to monitor environmental conditions.5Q&A pairs
Area 3: Sustainability
- Anthropogenic climate change: the enhanced greenhouse effect and its causes, the evidence for human-driven warming, the environmental impacts, and the strategies of mitigation and adaptation.2Q&A pairs
- Energy: the demand for energy, the comparison of fossil fuels, nuclear power and renewable energy sources, and the move towards a sustainable, low-carbon energy supply.2Q&A pairs
- Food: the demand for food and food security, the environmental impacts of agriculture including soil degradation, and sustainable approaches to food production.2Q&A pairs
- Global challenges: human population growth and its environmental pressures, the concept of sustainability and sustainable development, carrying capacity, and the use of the ecological footprint to measure human demand.2Q&A pairs
- Waste management: types and sources of waste, the waste hierarchy, methods of disposal and their impacts, and the role of reducing, reusing and recycling in a circular economy.2Q&A pairs
- Water: the demand for water and the causes of water scarcity, the uneven supply of fresh water, and sustainable approaches to managing and supplying water.2Q&A pairs