Earth Day Contest

Correct answers:

What is an endangered species?
A type of organism that is at risk of extinction.
Scientific evidence states that we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal rate, with many extinctions happening daily.

What percentage of crops are dependent on bee pollination in the U.S.?
90%
Bee pollination is vital to maintaining life on our planet. In the U.S. alone, pollination produces nearly $20 billion worth of products every year and $217 billion worldwide.

Which of the following are threatened with extinction?
Giraffes, elephants, corals and whales are among the species threatened with extinction.

What happens to plastic waste?
It never fully goes away, it just breaks into little pieces

Plastics at SEA (Sea Education Association): North Pacific Expedition 2012, a 36-day nautical research journey through the the North Pacific subtropical gyre down to the Hawaiian islands, found this to be true. The team was studying plastic pollution in the ocean and found that out of the 66,077 pieces of plastic collected in samples, 95% of it was millimeters in size.

Why is plastic dangerous for marine life?
They mistake it for food and cannot digest it. Also they can get tangled in it which hinders their ability to swim.

Plastic tends to float and bobbing on the surface can lead them to be mistaken for other marine life. Plastic bags are often mistaken for jellyfish by leatherback turtles and consumed. A 2009 study found that out of 408 leatherback sea turtle autopsy reports, plastic was found in a third of those cases. Marine life can also get tangled in nets, cords, and other plastic debris, which hinders their ability to swim and in some cases, can be a severe choking hazard.

Where does the majority of plastic waste end up?
Oceans.

Taking hundreds of years to break up, plastic is not going anywhere soon. While some of it does make it to landfills and recycling centers, a majority of it ends up in the ocean through deliberate dumping of garbage into waterways, inefficient waste infrastructure, and simple littering. Once in the water, the plastic waste is gathered up by one of the five major subtropical gyres into enormous stretches of “plastic soup.”

About 71% of the Earth is covered with water. How much of it is fresh water?
2.5%
Only 2.5% of the Earth’s water is freshwater, but over half of that freshwater is locked away in glaciers and ice caps. The water that supports most life on Earth makes up only 1.2% of Earth’s freshwater or about 0.03% of the Earth’s total water!

More than half of the breathable oxygen in the world comes from ___________?
The oceans.

About two-thirds of the world’s breathable oxygen comes from the ocean or, more specifically, from tiny marine plants, called phytoplankton, floating on the ocean’s surface. Like all plants, phytoplankton photosynthesize, converting carbon dioxide to valuable energy and oxygen. As the world’s leading producer of breathable oxygen, phytoplankton are one of, if not the most, important organisms on Earth. However, they are being threatened by rising sea temperatures. Scientists have estimated that an increase 6 degree C increase in ocean temperatures could disrupt phytoplankton photosynthesis, thereby leading to a global shortage of oxygen.

True or False: Deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming in the world.
True.

Deforestation is the second leading cause of global warming worldwide, and it produces about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation in the tropical rainforests contributes more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum of all cars and trucks that drive on the world’s roads.