DP Environmental Systems and Societies Questionbank

Outline how a positive feedback loop can impact an ecosystem.

Discuss the role of feedback mechanisms in maintaining the stability and promoting the restoration of plant communities threatened by human impacts.

Explain how the level of primary productivity of different biomes influences their resilience.

Discuss whether biodiversity loss or climate change is a greater threat to human societies.

Outline how species diversity and population size influence the resilience of an ecosystem.

Explain how negative and positive feedback mechanisms may influence the growth of decomposer populations in the soil.

Outline how the model shown in Figure 9(c) demonstrates positive feedback.

Identify four characteristics of ecosystems that contribute to their resilience.

Discuss the role of humans in the destabilization of ecological systems.

Outline how four different factors influence the resilience of an ecosystem.

Outline how feedback loops are involved in alternate stable states and the tipping points between them.

Explain how positive feedback mechanisms may influence the equilibrium of an aquatic ecosystem during the process of eutrophication.

Outline two reasons why the climax community in Figure 1 is more stable than the intermediate community.

Explain how both positive and negative feedback mechanisms may play a role in producing a typical S population growth curve for a species.

Describe how the second law of thermodynamics operates in relation to the transfer of energy within the Silver Springs ecosystem.