CES Ecosystem Management & Sustainability Practices 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which term describes the restoration of ecosystem services and functions on severely degraded lands, such as abandoned mine sites?
- Bioremediation
- Ecological restoration (Correct answer)
- Mitigation banking
- In-situ stabilization
Correct answer: Ecological restoration
Ecological restoration actively aids the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.
Question 2: The concept of 'ecosystem services' classifies the benefit of natural pollination by bees as which service type?
- Provisioning service
- Regulating service (Correct answer)
- Supporting service
- Cultural service
Correct answer: Regulating service
Pollination is a regulating service because it regulates biological processes (crop production) rather than directly providing material goods.
Question 3: A life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates environmental impacts:
- Only during the manufacturing phase of a product
- From raw material extraction through end-of-life disposal (Correct answer)
- Exclusively during the use phase of a product
- Over the first decade of a product's commercial availability
Correct answer: From raw material extraction through end-of-life disposal
LCA examines all environmental impacts across a product's entire life cycle, from cradle to grave (or cradle to cradle).
Question 4: Under the Clean Water Act Section 404 program, compensatory mitigation can be achieved through which mechanism?
- Purchasing carbon offsets equal to the wetland acreage lost
- Buying credits from an approved wetland mitigation bank (Correct answer)
- Installing sediment control best management practices on the project site
- Reducing impervious surface elsewhere in the watershed
Correct answer: Buying credits from an approved wetland mitigation bank
Section 404 compensatory mitigation allows permittees to purchase credits from approved mitigation banks to offset unavoidable wetland impacts.
Question 5: Which fire management strategy involves intentionally burning vegetation under controlled conditions to reduce fuel loads?
- Salvage logging
- Prescribed burning (Correct answer)
- Mechanical thinning
- Suppression burning
Correct answer: Prescribed burning
Prescribed (controlled) burning deliberately uses fire under specific weather and fuel conditions to reduce accumulated fuels and restore fire-dependent ecosystems.
Question 6: The Ramsar Convention specifically protects which type of ecosystem?
- Old-growth forests
- Wetlands of international importance (Correct answer)
- Coral reef systems
- Alpine meadows
Correct answer: Wetlands of international importance
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971) is an international treaty dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.
Question 7: In sustainable forestry, the concept of 'net annual increment' is used to determine:
- The total carbon sequestered since forest establishment
- The allowable annual cut without depleting growing stock (Correct answer)
- The proportion of old-growth trees that can be harvested
- The minimum replanting ratio required after clear-cutting
Correct answer: The allowable annual cut without depleting growing stock
Net annual increment (NAI) represents annual forest growth and is used to set sustainable harvest levels that do not exceed growth rates.
