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.
CES Ecosystem Management & Sustainability Practices 3
Which term describes the restoration of ecosystem services and functions on severely degraded lands, such as abandoned mine sites?