40 Environment Trivia Questions for Kids
The easiest environment questions in the game, picked for younger players. Every one comes with the answer and a short explanation of why it is right.
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Easy Environment Questions and Answers
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Which emissions chiefly cause acid rain?
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with water and oxygen in the atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids, which fall as acid rain. These pollutants can travel long distances before returning to Earth.
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Which form of pollution was blamed for dying lakes in Scandinavia and dying forests in central Europe through the 1970s and 1980s?
Acid rain
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal burning and vehicle exhaust turn into sulfuric and nitric acid in the air and come down in rain and snow. The acid stripped nutrients from forest soils and pushed lake water acidic enough to kill the fish, until emissions limits cut the pollutants back.
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Which greenhouse gas from human activity drives the most warming, by sheer volume released?
Carbon dioxide
Atmospheric CO2 has climbed from about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution to over 420 ppm today. Charles David Keeling began recording it continuously at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 1958, producing the rising trend line now known as the Keeling Curve.
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A reef with hundreds of species scores highly on which ecological measure?
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety of life in a place, or across the planet as a whole. The word is a contraction of biological diversity and only entered wide use in the late 1980s.
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Which carbon sink is turning more acidic because of the CO2 it absorbs?
The ocean
The ocean has taken up roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide people have released. Dissolving that gas makes seawater more acidic, which makes it harder for corals and shellfish to build their skeletons and shells.
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Which carbon-cycle process lets growing plants take in carbon dioxide?
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis lets growing plants absorb carbon dioxide and use sunlight to turn its carbon into sugars for growth. Oxygen is released as a byproduct.
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What term measures climate-warming emissions linked to an activity or person?
Carbon footprint
A carbon footprint measures the greenhouse-gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by an activity or person. It includes gases beyond carbon dioxide, expressed together as carbon dioxide equivalents.
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Which poisonous gas is produced by incomplete combustion?
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas produced when fuels burn incompletely.
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Which class of older industrial chemicals became closely associated with damage to the ozone layer?
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
CFCs are ozone-depleting substances. In the stratosphere, their breakdown releases chlorine or bromine atoms that deplete ozone.
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What economic model emphasizes reuse, repair and recycling to reduce waste?
Circular economy
A circular economy keeps products and materials in use and aims to reduce waste and resource extraction.
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Building flood defences and switching to heat-tolerant crops are examples of which response to climate change?
Adaptation
Adaptation means adjusting to effects that are already happening or expected: flood defences, different crop varieties, heatwave plans. Mitigation is the other half of the pair: cutting the emissions that cause the warming in the first place.
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What soil amendment can be made from recycled food scraps and yard trimmings?
Compost
Compost is produced by recycling organic materials such as food scraps and yard trimmings into a soil amendment.
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What marine ecosystem forms from colonies of tiny animals with hard skeletons?
Coral reef
A coral reef forms from colonies of tiny coral animals called polyps, which build hard calcium carbonate skeletons. Over time, these skeletons accumulate into the reef structures that support thousands of marine species.
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What term means converting wooded areas to another land use?
Deforestation
Deforestation is the conversion of forest to another use, such as cropland, cattle pasture or building. Thinning or damaging a forest that remains a forest counts as degradation instead.
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What prolonged weather pattern brings unusually little precipitation?
Drought
A drought is a stretch of unusually low precipitation long enough to draw down soil moisture, rivers and reservoirs. It is measured against what a place normally gets, so a wet region can be in drought on rainfall a desert would call a good year.
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What kind of energy does Earth emit to space after absorbing sunlight?
Infrared radiation
The Sun is hot enough to radiate mostly visible light, while Earth's cooler surface radiates at longer, infrared wavelengths, the same reason a hot stove element glows red rather than white. Gases in the atmosphere trap part of that outgoing infrared and send it back down, keeping the surface warmer than it would otherwise be.
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What is the practice of assisting the recovery of a degraded or destroyed ecosystem called?
Ecological restoration
Ecological restoration is the practice of helping a degraded, damaged or destroyed ecosystem recover: replanting native species, pulling out invasives, re-flooding drained wetland, reopening a river blocked by a dam. The aim is a system that sustains itself without further intervention.
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Old phones, screens and computers are kept out of ordinary landfill mainly because they contain what?
Heavy metals such as lead and mercury
Discarded electronics carry lead in old solder and screens, mercury in backlights and switches, and cadmium in batteries. Buried in ordinary landfill these leach into soil and groundwater, so e-waste is collected separately, which also makes it possible to recover the gold, copper and rare earths inside.
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What coastal area forms where freshwater mixes with seawater?
Estuary
An estuary is a coastal area where freshwater mixes with seawater.
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What is a single straight-line sequence of organisms, each one eaten by the next, called?
Food chain
A food chain runs in one line, grass to rabbit to fox, each link passing on a fraction of the energy it took in. Because most animals eat more than one thing, real chains interlock into a branching food web.
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In a forest, what layer is formed by the crowns of its trees?
Canopy
The canopy is the upper forest layer formed by the crowns and branches of trees. It intercepts much of the sunlight and rainfall and provides habitat for many forest organisms.
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Which ecosystem locks up the most carbon per hectare on land?
Forests
Forests act as terrestrial carbon sinks because trees absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and store the carbon in trunks, branches, roots, and soil. Much of a forest’s carbon can remain locked away for decades or centuries if the ecosystem is not disturbed.
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Coal, oil, and natural gas are collectively called what?
Fossil fuels
Coal, oil, and natural gas are fossil fuels, formed from the remains of ancient plants and organisms over millions of years. Because they take so long to form, they are considered nonrenewable energy sources.
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What ecological term names an organism's usual living environment?
Habitat
A habitat is the natural environment where an organism lives. The National Park Service identifies habitat as essential to organisms' survival.
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In the Atlantic, what is a tropical cyclone called once its sustained winds reach 74 mph (119 km/h)?
Hurricane
An Atlantic tropical cyclone becomes a hurricane at sustained winds of 74 mph; below that it is a tropical storm. The same storm would be called a typhoon in the north-west Pacific and simply a cyclone in the Indian Ocean and around Australia.
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What is a harmful non-native species called?
Invasive species
Invasive species are introduced organisms that establish and spread while causing environmental, economic, or human-health harm.
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What engineered site is used to bury solid waste?
Landfill
A landfill is an engineered site where solid waste is placed and covered.
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Which metal in old paint and old plumbing is especially harmful to children's developing nervous systems?
Lead
Lead damages the developing brain, affecting learning and behaviour, and young children take up far more of it through the gut than adults do. Lead paint and lead water pipes are the classic sources, which is why both were phased out of new building.
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What collective name is given to the salt-tolerant trees and shrubs that form tropical coastal wetland forests?
Mangroves
Mangroves are the roughly seventy species of trees and shrubs, drawn from many unrelated plant families, that grow in the salty tidal zone of tropical and subtropical coasts. They either filter salt out at the roots or push it back out through their leaves, and their tangled aerial roots trap sediment, shelter young fish and blunt storm surges.
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What are fragments of manufactured polymers under 5 millimetres commonly called?
Microplastics
Fragments of manufactured polymers smaller than 5 millimetres are called microplastics. They can form when larger plastic items break down or be released directly from products such as synthetic clothing and cosmetics.
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Which international agreement phases out ozone-depleting chemicals?
Montreal Protocol
The Montreal Protocol is the global agreement designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out substances that deplete it.
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In which atmospheric layer is most of Earth's ozone found?
Stratosphere
The ozone layer is a region of the stratosphere containing relatively high ozone concentrations.
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Ozone, the gas that shields the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, is made of which element?
Oxygen
Ozone is oxygen wearing a different hat: three atoms bonded together as O3, rather than the two-atom O2 we breathe. High in the stratosphere, ultraviolet light constantly splits ozone apart and the fragments recombine, and it is that endless breaking and remaking that soaks up the radiation before it reaches the ground.
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In a food web, what is an animal that kills and eats other animals called?
Predator
A predator is an animal that hunts and eats other animals.
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Which water-collection method do some drought-prone places now require every new building to install?
Rainwater harvesting
Roof runoff is guttered into a rain barrel or underground tank and reused for watering, washing and flushing, cutting demand on the mains. Bermuda has no natural springs or rivers, so its building code requires every roof to be shaped and guttered to catch rain for storage on site.
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What term describes a polluted haze often found over cities?
Smog
Smog is a blend of the words smoke and fog, coined for the coal hazes that used to settle over British cities. The modern kind is photochemical: sunlight reacts with exhaust fumes to make ground-level ozone, which is why it peaks on hot, still, sunny afternoons.
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What process carries soil away by wind or water?
Erosion
Erosion is the process in which wind or water wears away and carries off soil and rock. The material moved by erosion can later settle elsewhere as sediment.
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What process lets bacteria make atmospheric N₂ usable by plants?
Nitrogen fixation
Bacteria convert atmospheric N₂ into forms plants can use through nitrogen fixation. The other choices are real nitrogen-cycle processes but describe different conversions.
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What power source generates electricity as coastal waters move in and out?
Tidal energy
Tidal energy generates electricity from the regular movement of ocean water as tides rise and fall.
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What is a violently rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground?
Tornado
A tornado must touch both the base of a thunderstorm and the ground. The strongest ones descend from the broad rotating updraught inside a supercell, and the same vortex over water is called a waterspout.
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