BIOS1301 Study Guide - Final Guide: Cites, Stormwater, Endangerment

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HIGHLIGHT IN PINK= HAVENT CHECK ANSWERS!!

1. Why should biodiversity loss be of concern to the general community?



It is a resources we need for medicine, it provides a range of ecosystem services to

human populations including utilitarian services



Biodiversity provides a wide range of natural resources, food sources that are

important for the survival of our community. Without biodiversity we would have

limited choices and supplies of these items.



1. Why do we study extinction rates? 



represents a massive warning signs, it tell us about the environment



Extinction rates will be able to tell us about future extinction events as well as

providing us information on where the future of the environment will end up.



1. Why is the current major extinction event of most concern (how is it

different to the 5 other ones)? ฀



It is happening at a larger scale and faster rate. The species have less time for

adapting, immigrating and surviving. 



The current extinction event has happened much sooner than anticipated and it is

happening at a larger scale and a faster rate. This tells us that that our way of life is

detrimental to the environment.

1. Why is measurement of natural capital important for ecological

sustainability? ฀



defining natural capital is a way of ensuring that economic drivers account the

impacts on ecological sustainability



1. Why are statistics important for environmental science?

look for pattern, relation, variable, standard deviation, mean value

1. What is a hypothesis? ฀(3 marks)



Tentative explanation or assumption about a particular aspect of nature



1. How would you describe the scientific method?

observation-> question-> turn to hypotheses ->study design-> collect data->analyse

or reject hypotheses

1. What is the main structure of a scientific report?

Title, author, abstract, intro, method, result, conclusion, discussion, acknowledge, reference.

1. Why are water and temperature so important in defining a niche? ฀

They are both the main drivers for biotic services, which in turn form the basis for

food webs. The healthier/vibratnt the niche is, the greater diversity in the food webs, thus benefiting

the trophic strucutre, primary/secodnayr consumers and producers

1. What was the role of Wallace’s line in relation to Australia’s biodiversity? ฀

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Separate Oriental biota from Australian biota

1. What are the main characteristics used to specify the nature of

disturbances in ecology?

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1. What will the world be like in the future? ฀

Fire weather and heatwaves, more extreme conditions.

Increase intensity and frequency of tropical cyclone.

Increase or decrease rainfall amount, its intensity, seasonality, depending on region.

Droughts, increased desertification

Increased acidification, changed currents, rising sea level

1. How will biodiversity respond? ฀

Ecosystem movement->adapt or die

1. What can we do? (lect9)

1)Reduce other stresses

2)Protect, restore, connect

3)Ensure climate change solutions don’t make things worse

4)Value Biodiversity, healthy ecosystems as our life support system

5)Recognise people & livelihoods as integral to conservation strategy.

6)change energy structure eg using solar energy

1. What is a fire regime?

The pattern, frequency and intensity of fire that prevails in an area

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1. What are the potential impacts of a fire regime?

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1. Should bushfires be viewed as positive or negative events w.r.t. biodiversity

conservation?



Bushfires are a positive event for biodiversity conservation as it is essentially a

reset to the current biodiversity

allow new species of flora that have been dormant underground to grow and

flourish therefore increasing biodiversity.

-neg events due to the destruction of existing flora and fauna that make up the

ecosystem’s current biodiversity. Therefore bushfires are detrimental to

biodiversity conservation in the short term, and enhances biodiversity conservation

in the long term

1. Why are Australian soils so infertile?

There are many reasons why Australia’s soil and landscape is infertile for vegetative

growth.

1Aus landscape old, with Western Australia estimated to being around 400 Million

years old meaning land has been extensively weathered and thus leads to low

nutrient quantities (low nitrogen and phosphorous)

2 no active volcanoes or natural lakes in Australia, thus no new soil is introduced on

the landscape.

3 most of the australian landscape experiences very variable, limited rainfall and the

land is usually too arid to support life.

4the landscape has high salinity and is too infertile for vegetative growth. 

All of these factors contribute to Australia’s infertile soils.

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Less than 10% of country is productive

(because landscape so weathered, the soil is redistributed, heavy rainfall, soil crust,

ungrazed area have soil crust, traps moisture, on the soil, allow small shrubs to grow, Break

up and become exposed, strong wind events,<-(what i heard is a mess, feel free to add stuff

or delet!)

This means that Australia’s soil has been weathered extensively over millions of years,

dispersing ground nutrients all across the continent resulting in less fertile soil. Wind and rain

wash nutrients away and into the ocean as runoff.

Low and variable (meaning some place more rain, some less)rainfall drives plant productivity

and diversity?(lect12)



1. Why was Antarctica warmer 50 million years ago?

Differences in continental climates through time can be explained with a

phenomenon or theory called ‘continental drift’. This theory states that Antarctica,

along with other continents (such as Australia, Asia, Africa etc) was once part of a

giant landmass called ‘Gondwana’. After some time, this giant landmass separated

into the continents we know today and these continents started to ‘drift’. Thus

locations of continents today were not always where they were located millions of

years ago. 50 million years ago, Antarctica was still connected to Australia. This

meant that Antarctica was not a ‘polar’ continent, but was rather located closer to

the equator where the climate was much warmer. Therefore, Antarctica

experienced warmer weathers. 



Antarctica was once part of the supercontinent Gondwana that consisted of

Australia, Asia, Africa etc. This supercontinent was situated around the equator

explaining why Antarctica was warmer. After a while, Antarctica separated from this

supercontinent in a phenomenon called ‘Continental Drift’, drifting slowly until it

stopped where it is situated today.



1. What does the southern oscillation index measure?

This measures the cyclic nature of air and pressure currents across Australia??



1. Productivity & diversity of Australian native plant ecosystems are best

related to which climate characteristic?

Variability of Rainfall: The ‘endemism’ or uniqueness of native Australian native plant

ecosystems 

Australian flora have therefore developed adaptations which enable their survival on

land where sources of fresh water can be scarce for long periods of time. 

For example, Australian plants have developed deep root systems in order to access

fresh water from groundwater supplies. 



1. What is marine pollution?

Pollution is any substance which can cause damage by interfering with an organism’s

physical and biochemical processes. 

Marine pollution is any substance in salt water aquatic ecosystems (ocean, salt water

lakes, seas) which can negatively impact the health of marine organisms. Marine

pollution can come from natural or anthropogenic (human-related) sources. Marine

environments are popular waste disposal sites because of their ability to dilute and

disperse large bodies of waste. 



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Document Summary

Why is the current major extinction event of most concern (how is it. Why is measurement of natural capital important for ecological. It is a resources we need for medicine, it provides a range of ecosystem services to human populations including utilitarian services. Biodiversity provides a wide range of natural resources, food sources that are important for the survival of our community. Without biodiversity we would have limited choices and supplies of these items. 1. represents a massive warning signs, it tell us about the environment. Extinction rates will be able to tell us about future extinction events as well as providing us information on where the future of the environment will end up. It is happening at a larger scale and faster rate. The species have less time for adapting, immigrating and surviving. The current extinction event has happened much sooner than anticipated and it is happening at a larger scale and a faster rate.

Related Questions

While the concepts of screening and surveillance are intertwined there are subtle distinctions between the two ideas. The main goals are data collection to measure magnitude, changes, and trends in populations. The objective is to create interventions in defined populations. On the contrary, testing to identify individuals with infection or disease is the main goal of screening. The area of breast cancer screening and breast cancer surveillance has been a point of contention. Please read the following article and weigh in on which side seems most convincing:

There is a heated debate in this country about the risks and benefits associated with screening mammography. Proponents on both sides of the debate feel equally as strongly for or against annual breast cancer screening. Despite oneâs opinions regarding the utility of screening mammography, it is difficult to deny that the rates of false-positive exams, the rates of overdiagnosis, and the cost of annual screening are too high. We can do better. It is time to stop devoting energy to arguing about data from studies performed decades ago and start working toward gathering new evidence. In late 2015, we will initiate the WISDOM study to investigate the safety and effectiveness of a personalized breast cancer screening model. This model will use a comprehensive risk assessment process to determine individualized screening regimens for women in the interventional arm. The data collected in this study will better inform the screening debate and will allow us to shed more light and less heat on the issue.

There is a great debate in this country about the risks and benefits of screening mammography. On one side of the debate are those in favor of the one-size-fits-all model of performing annual mammograms starting at the age of 40 for women who are not known to be at greatly elevated risk of developing breast cancer. The radiology community argues that this model reduces the rates of interval cancers, aids early detection, and should not be changed. On the other side of the debate are those who support the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations to screen women biennially starting at age 50, and to screen women in their 40s based on personal preferences regarding the potential benefits and harms of screening.¹ Specialists on this side of the debate believe that annual screening results in unacceptably high rates of false-positive recalls, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment.

Recently, the USPSTF published a draft update to the 2009 breast cancer screening recommendations, and the debate has once again intensified. The solution to this problem is not to continue the debate with repetitious reviews of studies that were performed more than 30 years ago, but to focus ahead on how to make breast cancer screening safer and more effective. The time has come to put the debate to rest by conducting a modern-era screening trial.

Before focusing on the future, let us first take a moment to review the current state of breast cancer screening in the United States. The majority of providers in this country continue to recommend annual screening starting at age 40.² Proponents of annual screening mammography cite a resulting relative reduction in breast cancer mortality of 21%, which is based on data from randomized screening trials performed in the 1970s and 1980s.³ However, this estimated benefit comes with significant drawbacks. After 10 years of annual screening, over one-half of women screened will receive a false-positive recall, and 7% to 9% will undergo a benign biopsy.^4,5 False-positive recalls and benign biopsies can cause long-lasting psychological distress that can negatively impact a womanâs willingness to undergo screening for breast cancer in the future. Additionally, false-positive recalls and overdiagnosis cost the United States an estimated $4 billion per year,⁶ and screening in aggregate is estimated to cost between $8 and 10 billion per year.⁷ This estimate is based on a screening mammogram costing between $135 and $195. If the cost of mammography increases, the overall cost of breast cancer screening increases proportionally. As a country and as healthcare professionals, we can and should do better.

Breast cancer screening should harness the advances that have been made in breast cancer risk assessment and our understanding of breast cancer tumor biology. Screening should be more effective at finding relevant and consequential cancers, and should result in fewer benign biopsies. Screening should also be better integrated with prevention. Lastly, screening should be more cost-effective. A personalized screening model could potentially achieve all of these goals.

The aim of a personalized screening model would be to focus resources on those women who are most likely to benefit. The foundation of the model would be a comprehensive risk assessment that would take into consideration a womanâs classical risk factors for breast cancer, such as her personal and family history of breast disease. This comprehensive risk assessment would also include an evaluation of breast density and germline genetic testing. These risk factors would then be placed into a breast cancer risk model that would estimate the womanâs 5-year risk of developing breast cancer, and personalized screening recommendations would be made according to this risk. Women at high risk of developing breast cancer would be screened more frequently, and women at low risk would be screened less frequently. This risk estimation could also be used to make recommendations regarding chemoprevention, thereby integrating screening and prevention, which is the real key to reducing mortality from breast cancer.

This model has the potential to optimize the benefits of mammography in the context of modern systemic therapy while minimizing harms. Using a similar risk model in 3 independent study populations, it has been shown that 50% of cancers occur in women with the top 20% predicted risk.⁸ This model is also practical because these risk factors are easy to assess, and it is estimated to be more cost-effective than annual screening, despite the use of genetic testing, which has decreased in cost significantly since the Supreme Court ruling in June 2013 that stated that the human genome could not be patented.

Personalized screening may be the way forward, but this can only be determined in the setting of a randomized controlled trial. In the fall of 2015, a randomized controlled trial comparing personalized breast cancer screening with annual screening will be initiated within the Athena Breast Health Network that spans the University of California and the Sanford Health system in the Midwest. This study will be called the WISDOM study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk). We have received a large grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to perform this trial, and are also working with payers and self-insured employers, such as Blue Shield of California and UC Health, to create a Coverage with Evidence Development policy that will cover the medical costs of the trial. Using surrogate endpoints and long-term follow-up, we aim to determine whether personalized screening is as effective, less morbid, more preferred by women, and enables prevention more as compared with annual screening. Our hope is that this trial will provide us with the information we need in order to determine the safest and most effective way to screen women for breast cancer. Then, and only then, will we be able to put âThe Great Mammography Debateâ to rest.

As we move toward a more biology-based approach to the treatment of diseases, our approach to screening for and preventing those diseases should follow suit. The opportunity before us is to learn who is at risk for which type of breast cancer, and to optimize our screening and prevention strategies for each individual according to her personal risk. Over the last 20 years, many advances have been made in our understanding of the risk factors that contribute to a womanâs risk of developing breast cancer. The time has come for us to harness this knowledge and apply it in an evidence-generating fashion to shed more light and less heat on the screening controversy.

Do you believe that US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations should be followed or do you believe screening should start at age 40? Why or why not?

BIOS1301 Study Guide - Final Guide: Cites, Stormwater, Endangerment

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