Botkin & Keller- Earth as a Living Planet: 8th Edition

Guided Reading Assignment

Chapter #11- Agriculture, Aquaculture and the Environment
Name: _____________________________________________
Case Study: Biofuels and Banana Chips: Food Crops vs. Fuel Crops
1: Why do pig farmers have to feed their pigs junk-food?
Agroecosystems:
2: Explain how agroecosystems halt ecological succession.
3: What is the problem with growing monocultures?
4: Why does growing plants in neat rows and fields make it easier for pests?
5: How does plowing fields over and over damage the soils? Explain.
6: What are the other 2 ways that agrocultures are harmful to ecosystems?
The Plow Puzzle
7: How much of the top soil in the U.S. has been lost since European settlement?
Can We Feed the World?
8: What percentage of the worlds land area is used for agriculture?
Because of the demand of the biofuel ethanol, and its cheaper.
Because under natural conditions crops and species would be replace by better
functional plants.
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Less diversity, because it only concentrates on one specie.
It can reduce the soil content of certain elements, reduce fertility.
Because the crop has no place to hide.
It exposes the soil to erosion and damage it physical structure, it leads to decline in
organic matter and a loss of chemical elements.
Decline in organic matter and a loss of chemical elements.
10.5%
38%.
How We Starve
9: What is the difference between undernourishment and malnourishment?
10: Why does providing food aid to countries in need actually work against increased availability
of locally grown food?
What We Grow on the Land
11: Most of the worlds food is produced by only ______ species. List them below in order of
importance:
12: What is a forage crop?
13: Define the following:
Rangeland:
Pasture:
14: What impact does the number of livestock around the world have on rangeland and
pasturelands?
15: Why are feedlots considered to be a big source of local pollution?
16: What is a benefit of farming animals rather than crops?
Under: insufcient calories in available food. malnou: lack of nutrients chemical components of food.
Free food undercuts local farmers. They cant compete with it .
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Wheat, rice, maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc, sugarcane, sugar beat, beans,
soybeans, barley, sorghum, coconuts, and bananas.
Food for domestic animals.
Food for grazing. without planting.
Plowed planted, harvest, to forge for animals.
Land is early damaged by grazing, specially during drought.
Because of overgrazing.
Lands too poor for crop that people can ear can be excellent rangeland, with things that
livestock can eat.
Soils
17: How does rainwater affect the soil horizon? Explain.
18: What is soil fertility? How it is determined?
19: Why are soils in humid and tropical areas considered to be poor? What happens to them after
deforestation?
20: What is the problem with soils in semi-arid regions?
21: Why are coarse-grained soils more susceptible to erosion that soils that contain more clay?
22: Soil Horizons: Define each of the soil horizons
Horizon O:
Horizon A:
Horizon E:
Horizon B:
Horizon C:
Horizon R:
Restoring Our Soils
23: What is the difference between organic and inorganic (artificial) fertilizers?
Because its slightly acid. It moves down the soil to other horizons.
Capacity of soil to supply nutrients require for the plant growth.
Because of the heavily leached and relatively poor nutrients, due to rainfall.
It can be difcult.
The soils can shrink, or dry out.
Water move through them quickly, sand and gravel have large spacing.
Organic materials, leaves or twigs. Often black or brown.
Both mineral and organic materials. Leaching. Move clay and other material to B.
composed with leaching: clay, calcium, magnesium, and iron at lower hyros. consist on A and E.
Zone of accumulation.
parent material. satined red with iron oxides.
Unweathered parent material.
inorganic contains more chemicals.
24: Define the following:
Macronutrient:
Micronutrient:
Limiting Factor:
Controlling Pests
25: In the U.S, how much of the potential harvest is lost to pests?
26: What is the definition of a weed?
Pesticides
27: What are the differences between inorganic and organic pesticides?
28: What are some of the reasons why pesticides are considered to be ineffective?
29: Define Integrated Pest Management (IPM) AND explain HOW it works:
30: What is the use of biological control and give an example:
31: What was the green revolution?
chemicals require for all living things.
Require for small amounts, forms of life.
Improved soil.
32 billion.
Wild plant growing were is not wanted.
inorganic contains more chemicals.
Because some only affect one not all the pest.
Combination of methods, control certain chemicals species. Pest is control rather than
eliminated.
Use of a species to eliminate other. Ex/ caterpillars and lavender.
Programs that have led to new crops develops. higher yields, better resistance yields, ability
to grow under poor conditions.
Genetically Modified Food: Biotechnology, Farming and Environment
32: What are the 3 practices of genetic engineering?
33: What are the PROS and CONS of developing hybrid crops?
34: What is the terminator gene and what does it do?
35: What are the political and social concern with companies using seeds with terminator genes?
36: How are GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) helpful?
37: How can GMOs be harmful?
Aquaculture
38: What is aquaculture and how can it be helpful?
39: What is mariculture?
40: How can aquaculture and mariculture harmful to the environment?
Faster and efcient.
Terminator gene.
transfer of genetic.
Increases productivity. It can create superweed.
Seeds from a crop sterile.
It could allow the control of food production.
It transfer genes from one major kind to another.
It can unforeseen and undesirable ways.
Farming of marine and freshwater habitats. It can grow fast.
Farming of ocean sh.
Releases waste, and chemicals for pest to the ocean.
Critical Thinking Issue: Will There Be Enough Water to Produce Food for a Growing
Population?
1: How might dietary changes in developed countries affect water availability?
2: How might global warming affect estimates of the amount of water needed to grow crops in
the 21st century?
3: Withdrawing water from aquifers faster than the replacement rate is sometimes referred to as
mining water. Why do you think this term is used?
4: Many countries in warm areas of the world are unable to raise enough food, such as wheat, to
supply their populations. Consequently, they import wheat and other grains. How is this
equivalent to importing water?
5: Malthusians are those who believe that sooner or later, unless population growth is checked,
there will not be enough food for the worlds people. Anti-Malthusians believe that technology
will save the human race from a Malthusian fate. Analyze the issue of water supply for
agriculture from both points of view.
More water would be require.
It evaporates the water more fast.
Because we get the water from a source.
Because water is needed it in order to transport, also it depend on
what methods is being used.
People will consume more if there are more of them. Technology \
wouldnt be able to cover everything, it would increase it in a certain rate
but will not do much.
Interactive Soil Pyramid- Understand How to Calculate the Soil Composition Type
go to: http://courses.soil.ncsu.edu/resources/physics/texture/soiltexture.swf
Understand and Using Soil Pyramids
go to: http://soils.usda.gov/technical/aids/investigations/texture/
Directions: Using the Soil Pyramid Program- Identify the Type of Soil with the Following
Percent Compositions:
Sand: 30
Clay: 30
Silt: 40
Answer: ____________________________
Sand: 45
Clay: 10
Silt: 45
Answer: _____________________________
Understand Soils in Biomes Around the World
Go to: https://php.radford.edu/~swoodwar/biomes/
Directions: Determine the Type of Soils that are Characteristics of Each Specific of These
Terrestrial Biomes and List Why?
Tundra:
Taiga (Boreal Forest):
Temperate Broadleaf Deciduous:
Mediterranean Scrub:
Temperate Grassland:
Scrubland:
Tropical Rainforest:
Tropical Savannah:
Text Text
Clay loam, 60 to 40.
Sandi clay. 40 to 50.
No true soil is developed in this biome due to the edaphic factors.
Acid soil solution produced under needleleaf trees.
Not enough nutrients.
High nutrients.
Organic, dominant soil-forming process.
Poor development of horizons, with accumulation of calcium carbonate at or near the surface.
Oxisols, infertile, deeply weathered and severely leached.
Oxisol. Soils vary according to bedrock and edaphic condition.
Control of Soil Erosion- go to: http://www2.kenyon.edu/projects/farmschool/types/tillage.htm
Directions: Define and describe each of the alternative methods to traditional soil tillage
Windbreaks:
Cover Crops:
Grassed Waterways:
Contour Cultivation:
Strip Cropping:
Forages:
Conservation Tillage:
No-Till:
Ridge Tillage:
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Planting trees along the borders of their elds to cut down on wind erosion.
Wheat act as a ground cover and protect the vulnerable soil from eroding.
Natural depressions where run-off water goes.
To keep the soil in these depressions from running away with the water, farmers plant grassy strips.
Loosening up the soil between the rows of a growing crop.
Flat areas but it also is a kind of contour farming when strips are planted across the slope of a eld.
The land has steep terrain the practice of strip cropping forage crops and crops
such as corn or wheat is a common way to slow erosion.
They leave stalks and leaves of the harvested crops on their elds.
Farmers leave all of the last crop's residue in the soil while planting the new crop.
Farmers may use special machinery to form the soil into ridges and then plant the seeds on top of the ridges.