Exam 1 Study Guide

ENVS 4950 Environmental Studies Capstone Seminar, Spring 2019, O'Donnell

last updated: March 3, 2019

Exam date: Wednesday, March 6, 2019

This exam counts for 15% of the final grade.

Exam Guidelines and Format

The exam will present you with a choice of 10 identification prompts--significant quotes, terms or phrases, proper nouns--which will in turn be drawn from 17 prompts listed below.

Out of the 10 prompts on the exam, you will in turn choose 8, for each of which you will write a "mini essay" -- that is, three or four clear, complete, self-explanatory sentences -- in which you identify 1) the context or definition; 2) the author(s) and text(s) with which prompt is associated; 3) an important issue associated with the prompt.

Please note that, while you may write practice responses ahead of time, I require you to compose your prompts on the spot, during the exam, rather than copying pre-composed responses directly from your notes.

17 Prompts (10 of these will appear on the exam)

1. chytrid fungus

2. great auk

3. K-T boundary

4. Anthropocene epoch

5. ocean acidification

6. latitudinal diversity gradient

7. Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project

8. "The New Pangea"

9. overkill hypothesis

10. The Leopold Report

11. "'The message we got from above was basically, Don't go into it if you can help it.'"

12. "As the historian Polly Welst Kaufman has written, the earlier generation of rangers resented the intrusion of 'pansy-pickers' and 'butterfly chasers.'"

13. The Jakobshavn ice sheet (or Jakobshavn Glacier or Ilulissat Glacier)

14. "the new harpoon"

15. the chicken microbiome

16. grain-fed beef

17. conservation reliance