Environment
44 questions tagged Environment — spanning every one of the seven Ws.
What is climate change?
Climate change is the long-term shift in global temperatures and weather patterns, driven mainly by human greenhouse-gas emissions.
What is the water cycle?
The water cycle is the continuous movement of water through evaporation, condensation, and precipitation across Earth.
What Is the Ozone Layer?
The ozone layer is a region of the stratosphere, 15 to 35 km above Earth, where concentrated ozone (O₃) absorbs most of the Sun harmful UV-B and UV-C radiation.
Where Is the Congo Rainforest?
The Congo Rainforest spans the Congo Basin in central Africa, covering parts of six countries centred on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Where Is the Aral Sea?
The Aral Sea straddles the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, though it has largely dried up.
What Is an Ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms interacting with each other and their physical environment as a functional unit.
What Is the Greenhouse Effect?
The greenhouse effect is the natural warming of Earth surface caused by atmospheric gases trapping heat that would otherwise escape to space.
Where Is the Sahel?
The Sahel is a semi-arid transition zone stretching across Africa between the Sahara Desert to the north and the tropical savannas to the south.
Which Is the Most Recycled Material in the World?
Steel is the most recycled material in the world, with a global recycling rate of about 85-90% for structural steel.
Where Is the Aral Sea Today?
The Aral Sea straddles the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia — once the world fourth-largest lake, it has shrunk by over 90% since the 1960s due to Soviet-era irrigation diversions.
How Does Desalination Work?
Desalination removes salt and minerals from seawater to produce fresh water, primarily using reverse osmosis (forcing water through semi-permeable membranes under high pressure) or thermal distillation (boiling and condensing water vapour).
What Is a Microplastic?
Microplastics are tiny plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter that result from the breakdown of larger plastic items, industrial processes, and synthetic textiles — they are now found in every environment on Earth, from deep ocean sediments to human blood.
Whose Campaign Saved the Ozone Layer?
Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland 1974 research showed CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, leading to the 1987 Montreal Protocol — the most successful international environmental agreement in history.
Where is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch lies in the North Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California, where circling currents trap floating plastic debris.
What is a carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases caused by a person, product or organisation, usually measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
What does net zero mean?
Net zero means cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing the rest by removing an equal amount.
When was the first Earth Day?
The first Earth Day was held in the United States on 22 April 1970.
How is plastic made?
Most plastic is made from oil and natural gas, which are refined into small molecules called monomers and then linked into long chains called polymers.
Why does the sky turn orange during wildfires?
Wildfire smoke contains fine particles that scatter blue light away and let red and orange wavelengths pass through, painting the sky in eerie warm tones.
What Is a Bioplastic?
A bioplastic is a plastic material derived partly or entirely from renewable biological sources like corn starch, sugarcane, or cellulose.
What Is a Controlled Burn?
A controlled (prescribed) burn is a planned fire set under specific conditions to reduce fuel loads, restore ecosystems, and prevent catastrophic wildfires.
What is a dead zone in the ocean?
A dead zone is an area of ocean or lake with so little dissolved oxygen that most marine life cannot survive, usually caused by excess nutrients from agriculture.
What is coral bleaching?
Coral bleaching happens when stressed corals expel the colourful algae living in their tissues, turning white and risking starvation if conditions don’t improve.
What Is the Urban Heat Island Effect?
The urban heat island effect is the phenomenon where cities are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas due to human activities and built surfaces.
What is rewilding?
Rewilding is a conservation approach that restores natural processes and reintroduces missing species to allow ecosystems to manage themselves with minimal human intervention.
What Is a Red Tide?
A red tide is a harmful algal bloom caused by rapid growth of toxic microscopic algae that can color the water red or brown.
When Was the Ozone Hole Discovered?
British scientists reported the Antarctic ozone hole in May 1985.
Where Is the World's Largest Peatland?
The West Siberian Lowlands in Russia contain the world's largest peatland, spanning about 600,000 sq km.
Where Is the World's Largest Seed Vault?
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen, Norway, can store up to 4.5 million seed samples.
Which Is the Most Polluted River in the World?
The Citarum River in Indonesia is often cited as the most polluted river globally.
Whose Book Launched the Environmental Movement?
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) is credited with sparking the modern environmental movement.
How Does a Sewage Treatment Plant Work?
Sewage plants use screening, settling, biological digestion, and disinfection to clean wastewater.
How Does a Catalytic Converter Reduce Emissions?
Precious-metal catalysts inside the converter trigger chemical reactions that convert toxic exhaust gases into less harmful substances.
How Does a Reverse Osmosis System Desalinate Water?
High pressure forces seawater through a semipermeable membrane that blocks salt and impurities, producing fresh water.
How Does a Water Desalination Plant Handle Brine?
Brine — the concentrated salt reject — is typically diluted and discharged into the sea via diffuser outfalls, though newer plants explore mineral recovery and zero-liquid-discharge systems.
What is light pollution?
Light pollution is excessive or misdirected artificial light that brightens the night sky and disrupts wildlife and human health.
When was Greenpeace founded?
Greenpeace was founded in 1971 in Vancouver, Canada, by activists who sailed to protest US nuclear weapons testing in Alaska.
When was the Kyoto Protocol signed?
The Kyoto Protocol was adopted on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and came into force on 16 February 2005.
When was the Dust Bowl?
The Dust Bowl struck the southern Great Plains of the United States during the 1930s, when severe drought and poor farming caused massive dust storms.
How Is Aluminium Recycled?
Used aluminium is shredded, cleaned, melted and cast into new metal, using about 95% less energy than making aluminium from ore.
How Does Composting Work?
Composting is the controlled decay of organic waste by bacteria, fungi and small creatures, turning scraps into nutrient-rich soil.
When did the ozone hole get discovered?
The Antarctic ozone hole was discovered in 1985. British Antarctic Survey scientists reported the dramatic springtime ozone loss over Antarctica.
Whose work first explained how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch forms?
Oceanographers studying subtropical gyres explained how circulating currents concentrate floating debris. The patch is a modern environmental phenomenon, not a single discovered object.
How do plastic microfibers and microplastics get into the ocean?
They come from broken-down larger plastics, synthetic clothing fibers, tire wear, and industrial pellets that enter waterways and wastewater.