GEOG 442 Biogeography

Study Guide for Final

 

This will be an open note, open text, and open computer test.

Look up each concept in your course notes, labs, textbook (Ch. 5, 10-14), and, when all else fails, your favorite Internet search engine. In terms of the textbook, pay especial attention to bolded words (they often give definitions in the helpful glossary at the end of the book, too) and do look at those boxed mini-papers often by guest writers). Annotate the study guide below with a note about where you found the concept discussed. This will save you time during the test if you have to look something up.

• Epicontinental seas and continental shelves
• History of plate tectonics:
  • Gondwana
  • Pangaea
  • Laurasia and Gondwana (II)
• The Great American Interchange
  • What caused it (and when did the process enabling it become complete enough for the Interchange to happen?)
  • How many families went north and how many went south?
  • Which north-moving groups eventually went extinct in North America and which southbound groups went extinct in South America?
  • Judging from the kinds of critters on the move, what kind of environment probably dominated the pathway?
• Wallacea
• Terranes and the plate tectonic context in which they form and then accrete onto continents
• Eutrophication
• Lab 6 on zoögeographic provinces and patterns of endemism
• The geological time scale in the USGS link
  • You don't need to memorize all of the eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages, but you should be familiar with the USGS handout and be able to answer questions about which came before which by, well, looking at it
  • You should also have a sense of the nesting of these divisions: ages nest within epochs, which nest within periods, etc.
• Megatherms, mesotherms, and microtherms
• Differences in the distributions of mammals and flowering plants and why it's so difficult to relate the history of mammals to the history of plate tectonics
• Who has an easier time dispersing from one continent to another: Mammals (animals in general, actually) or flowering plants?
• Placental, marsupial, monotreme
• Evolution and geographical distribution of equines in particular (okay, professorial indulgence here!)
• The Younger Dryas: What was it, when and in which context did it occur, and why is it so startling to the geoscience and bioscience communities dealing with environmental change?
• Humans as geological forces on a planetary scale: the Anthropocene debate
• The five big extinction events and which one was the most catastrophic in terms of losses at the family taxonomic level
• Possible causes for great extinction events
• The Sixth Extinction debate
• Biodiversity measures, their strengths and weaknesses, and why we're stuck using so many of them)
  • Species richness (and its alpha, gamma, and beta diversity variants)
  • Shannon's various indices (Shannon's H and Shannon's Equitability Index or E_H)
  • Simpson's various indices (Simpson's D and why it's a little squirrely; Simpson's Inverse D; Simpson's Equitability Index or E_D)
• Spatial sampling: transects and quadrats
• Interpreting statistics
  • The logic of alternate (working) hypotheses and null hypotheses
  • How can you decide whether to reject your null hypothesis given your alpha standard?
  • Watch out for effect sizes: You can have significant but trivial results OR you can have dramatic results that aren't significant. How does THAT happen?
• Humans and the biosphere:
  • Domesticating plants and other animals (dogs, corn, hint)
  • Advantages and hazards of human existence as roving hunters/gatherers/fishers vs settling down to do agriculture with our collections of domesticated species
  • Biogeochemical disruptions (pollution of air, water, and soil)
  • Introductions of exotic species and loss of biodiversity
  • Megafaunal extinctions and our various rôles
  • Deforestation in North America
  • Impacts on local vegetation systems
• The Southern California Spring 2019 superbloom you all wound up in <G> (isn't Nature beautiful?)
• Be able to recognize two locally dominant shrub-dominated ecosystems: chaparral and California sage scrub
• Be able to recognize native from exotic species examples (or be able to look them up fast in Calflora!)

 

Dr. Rodrigue's Home | Geography Home | ES&P Home | EMER Home |

| CSULB Home | BeachBoard | MyCSULB | Campus Search | Library |

Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
First placed on web: 08/25/02
Last revision: 05/13/19