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March 29, 2024, 02:00:12 am

Author Topic: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread  (Read 13720 times)  Share 

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sadia2089

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #15 on: October 10, 2019, 06:22:03 pm »
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What's the difference between the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the IUCN and Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999?

Bri MT

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #16 on: October 11, 2019, 08:16:52 am »
+2
I've been having my exam trials corrected by my teacher and she says that I'm going to be marked down because of my sentence structure. Is this true? Like this is a science subject not an english based one.

Hmm... could you provide an example sentence? If your structure is changing the meaning of the sentence that might be why.

What's the difference between the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988, the IUCN and Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999?

The Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 is Victorian legislation. Some of the things it does includes:
- Allows declaration of critical habitat
- Includes listing of threatened communities and taxa (this can be different from IUCN and/or federal listings!)
- Applies penalties for undertaking particular actions impacting flora and fauna without a licence
Its aims include:
- conserving Victoria's communities of flora and fauna
- managing threatening processes
- to ensure use of flora and fauna is sustainable

The Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 is federal legislation
(it's not fit for purpose as it's wayyy too weak + ministerial discretion)
- applies to matters of national environmental significant
- has it's own listing of what species are threatened; if it's not on the list, it's not "a matter of national environmental significance". In the past species have gone extinct before making it onto this list.
- In 2007 it was changed so recovery plans aren't required for threatened species, instead "conservation advices" are required. Conservation advices don't have the  legal power of recovery plans so what (can) happen/s now is that the minister in charge can know species will have high risk of extinction if they make a particular decision and go "screw it lol" and just make the decision anyway.
Aims include:
- Conserve Aus biodiveristy
- Control movement of plants and animals, and products derived from wildlife, internationally
- Protect national heritage and biodiversity
- Promote ecologically sustainable development & use of natural resources
- Providing protection for nationally significant
- Provide streamlined assessment and approval process (e.g. you want to go develop a piece of land, here's your nice easy process. Just buy your offset and you're good to go! Who cares about nature!)

The IUCN is the international union for conservation of nature (I'm a personally a big fan of them)
- basically they are as they sound - an international group promoting, researching etc. conservation of nature
- one of the things they do is produce the red list of endangered species which is very highly regarded/reputable.

sadia2089

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #17 on: October 11, 2019, 03:54:07 pm »
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Hmm... could you provide an example sentence? If your structure is changing the meaning of the sentence that might be why.

So the question was 'is the extraction of geothermal energy from the aquifer a sustainable use? Use intergenerational equity and ecosystem conservation to explain.

My response: ecosystem conservation means that the ecosystem is conserved and protected from human activities. However, the project extracts a lot of water. This means that endemic species that depend on the water will be harmed since the town's people will take away the water they require.
Intergenerational equity is when the development meets the need of both the future and present generation. This is not met. The water is being used faster than it is extracted and produced. This will cause future generations to have less water. Hence this project is not sustainable.


The question was out of 3 marks but i only got 2. The points I made were correct but she said i was not clear enough in my response.

Bri MT

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #18 on: October 11, 2019, 04:45:50 pm »
+4
So the question was 'is the extraction of geothermal energy from the aquifer a sustainable use? Use intergenerational equity and ecosystem conservation to explain.

My response: ecosystem conservation means that the ecosystem is conserved and protected from human activities. However, the project extracts a lot of water. This means that endemic species that depend on the water will be harmed since the town's people will take away the water they require.
Intergenerational equity is when the development meets the need of both the future and present generation. This is not met. The water is being used faster than it is extracted and produced. This will cause future generations to have less water. Hence this project is not sustainable.


The question was out of 3 marks but i only got 2. The points I made were correct but she said i was not clear enough in my response.

I completely understand why this would frustrate you but I understand why they marked down your response. The problem is that you aren't connecting the different components very well - which could also mean that you lose more marks when a tired examiner is reading through your exam paper and misses that you do actually have all of the components there. It might seem unfair since it's not an English exam but the harder you make it for the examiner to see that you understand and are actually connecting the ideas the less likely you are to get full marks :/

sadia2089

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #19 on: October 22, 2019, 03:32:33 pm »
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What's the difference between environmental impact assessment and risk assessment? And it mentions that environmental risk assessment looks at human health. why?

Bri MT

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #20 on: October 22, 2019, 07:54:53 pm »
+2
What's the difference between environmental impact assessment and risk assessment? And it mentions that environmental risk assessment looks at human health. why?

A risk assessment is more generic and tends to be more people-centric whereas an environmental risk assessment specifically focuses on ecological, social and economic impacts. Note that with risk assessments you're talking about risk i.e. what are the bad things that could happen? whereas in an impact assessment you're looking at impacts - which could be any combination of positive and negative.

E.g. if you were looking at diverting river water into a large artificial pond you may consider in the risk assessment the potential impact of that as a mosquito breeding ground (since mozzies carry diseases). In the EIA you'd be considering things like the impact of lower water levels in the river on biodiversity., impacts on any agriculture that relies on the river water, potential impacts on having the pond as a resource for local biota etc.

jfnjkwenlenflK

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2022, 07:33:43 pm »
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I'm doing environmental science unit 3 & 4 this year and I have AOS 1 Unit 3 SAC coming up soon. Has anyone done the test before? it's the one about the Eastern Barred Bandicoot. Could anyone help and tell me what's on the test, I literally don't understand a thing


thanks

euxh

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Re: VCE Environmental Science Questions Thread
« Reply #22 on: May 13, 2022, 06:02:43 pm »
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hi guys, does anyone know the answer to this?
"explain why the australian government is legally protecting the leafy sea dragon from harm, while the iucn is noting that population numbers are not low enough for alarm"
thanks