The exam will cover material from the lectures and the text; a basic guide to the material appears below. Material on which you will be examined will have been introduced and described in lecture, and covered in the text. A few key concepts from recitation exercises will be included in the exam, but because you are being graded separately on exercises they are not reflected in the exam in a major way.

To prepare for the exam, use your lecture notes as the key pointer to more detailed material in the text. Use the posted lecture notes to correlate with your own notes, keeping in mind that they are outlines/notes and not verbatim transcripts of lectures.

Aug 28 lecture: "Ways of Thinking" see lecture notes, material not in text.

Chap 1: all. Chap. 2, pp. 14-16 and 23-27 (not 37 as indicated on posted notes). Be sure to know the main human transformations of earth, purposeful and inadvertent—see Sept. 10 lecture notes. Chap 3: all. Chap 4 (please note we took up Chap 5 and 6, then returned to four): all except Continental Shelves (sec. 4.9).

Chap. 5: know the spheres and three cycles: energy, carbon and nitrogen. And systems concepts like feedbacks and homeostasis.

Chap 6: ecosystems as food chains (sec. 6.2 and 6.3); terrestrial ecosystems; human impacts (know Sec. 6.8 in detail).

Chap. 7: use your lecture notes and the posted notes to point to key concepts in this detailed chapter covered in two lectures: Oct. 6: do not memorize populations of different countries, but know the basic concepts like the basic global trends over time; measures of pop; factors in growth and change; variations in density patterns; know Phase I, II and III of the demographic transition model; and its variant version (fig. 7.7). Oct. 8: focus on sec. 7.6 and 7.8.

Chap. 8: agriculture and food. Know the main food crops; global agricultural systems and their resource characteristics (Table 8.2). Also Sections 8.6 on hunger and 8.7 on the green revolution and the main environmental impacts and solutions (8.8), covered in Oct. 20 class.

Chap. 9: Energy: sections 9.1-9.5 on the midterm: know the main sources and uses of energy globally and in US; know chief advantages and disadvantages of sources.

From Recitation Exercises: don’t forget what you learned about the cornucopian or techno-optimists!

These sample questions reflect both the range of material and the types of question on the exam.

(1) The theoretical number of people earth can support indefinitely is the:

(a) planetary resource base

(b) quality of life limit

(c) replacement birth rate

(d) carrying capacity

(2) Human activity, chiefly the creation and application of commercial fertilizers, is one contributor to a build-up (increase in storage) of nitrogen in:

(a) the atmosphere;

(b) lithosphere (geological deposits);

(c) hydrosphere (surface and ground water);

(3) Human activity, chiefly the burning of fossil carbon, is one cause of an observed build-up (increase of storage) of carbon in:

(a) the atmosphere;

(b) lithosphere (geological deposits);

(c) hydrosphere (surface and ground water);

(d) a and b

(4) The "frontier" environments described in the text tend to have:

(a) relatively low human population densities;

(b) significant obstacles to human settlement;

(c) increasing human populations

(d) large remaining natural areas;

(e) all of the above.

(5) In the first and third phases of the demographic transition (Phase I and III in the text), a country's demographic flux is characterized by a:

(a) population pyramid weighted toward older ages

(b) surplus of births over deaths

(c) surplus of deaths over births

(d) rough balance of births and deaths

(6) A practice typically found in intensive subsistence agriculture is:

(a) mechanization replacing human and animal power

(b) mono-cropping

(c) multiple cropping and inter-cropping

(7) Compared to other fossil fuels, coal as a source of energy, is:

(a) clean-burning

(b) relatively abundant

(c) extracted with fewer negative environmental impacts

(d) used mostly for home heating in the most developed nations

(8) Intensive subsistence agriculture is characterized by all of these, EXCEPT:

(a) most produce sold on market

(b) high yield per area (hectare or acre)

(c) few purchased inputs

(d) high labor input

(9) Continued malnutrition in the world (about 1 in 6 people suffer too little to eat) is caused chiefly by:

1. environmental limits on food production
2. war
3. land tenure problems
4. poverty
5. all but a

Match these actions to the list of typical human transformations of ecosystems that BEST represents their effect:

(10) building a dam or a city in a river corridor

(11) transforming a grassland into a wheat field

(12) introducing a toxic chemical into a food chain

(13) increasing plant nutrients in an ecosystem

(14) selecting for growth of certain tree species in a commercial forest

Answers:

(a) fragmentation

(b) substitution

(c) simplification

(d) contamination

(e) fertilization

Match these energy sources with their chief disadvantage:

(15) oil

(16) coal

(17) natural gas

(18) nuclear

(19) wind

Answers:

(a) safety concerns, link to weapons

(b) intermittent availability

(c) spills during transport

(d) large mining impacts

(e) requires expensive distribution infrastructure

(20) Unlike the general world trend, human population is declining in what the text authors call "frontier" environments like arid and wet tropical zones.

(21) Some contemporary less developed nations do not appear to be following the classical demographic transition model. Instead, while death rates decline and longevity increases due to technological advances, their birth rates stay high for cultural or other reasons, thus delaying passage into Phase III.

(22) Biodiversity is the population of a given species in an area.

(23) Many of the most developed nations exhibit fertility rates below replacement rates.

Answers: (1) d; (2) c; (3) a; (4) e; (5) d; (6) c; (7) b; (8) a; (9) e; (10) a; (11) b; (12) d; (13) e; (14) c; (15) c; (16) d; (17) e; (18) a; (19) b; (20) F; (21) T; (22) F; (23) T.