eosc114-ex-reading-assignment-fall2021

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EOSC114 EX Reading Assignment-Fall2021 The catastrophic Earth: natural disasters (The University of British Columbia) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university EOSC114 EX Reading Assignment-Fall2021 The catastrophic Earth: natural disasters (The University of British Columbia) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by Emily Park (emily.d.park618@gmail.com) lOMoARcPSD|32012925

EOSC 114 Reading Assignment, Fall 2021: Mass Extnctons/Impacts from Space (Important copyright notce) 1 Student ID: 77636835 Introducton and Goals This Reading Assignment explores global scale natural “disasters” or hazards, as well as objects that have impacted, or threaten to impact, our planet. Afer completng this assignment, you should be able to: 1. Compare the tmes and characteristcs of Earth’s fve principal extncton events. 2. Characterize the relatonship between ecosystem diversity and both extncton and originaton rates. 3. Defne “elevated extncton rates” by referring to “background extncton rates”, then interpret two estmates of “elevated extncton rates” for six diferent animal groups. 4. Use the CNEOS website to characterize near earth objects. 5. Use the Earth Impact Database to fnd and describe known craters or crater remnants on Earth. Instructons. REVIEW THESE CAREFULLY; DON’T MAKE GUESSES ABOUT YOUR TASKS 1. First skim all questons to fnd out what to expect. 2. You will need to access web resources including reports, websites and maps. 3. Some references are rather long so we will point you to specifc sectons of those readings. Citatons and access to readings will be provided within the Worksheet. 4. Complete this Worksheet during or afer reading the artcle 5. THEN, afer you have completed this Worksheet, go online to Canvas to write the Reading Assignment Quiz. a. Time available for online submission is limited. Do the reading and Worksheet BEFORE going online. b. Online questons are automatcally gradable versions of SOME of these Worksheet questons. c. Each student will get a diferent subset of these questons. 6. Important notes a. Regarding EOSC 114 Reading Assignments from past terms : This reading assignment AND the questons for the Quiz are diferent from EOSC 114 reading assignments from past terms. b. THE MOST COMMON ERROR is not reading the questons carefully. Their order may difer from the Worksheet, answer optons are randomized, AND each student gets a diferent subset of questons. Please write your Quiz carefully, with your Worksheet beside you. c. Working with peers on homework is OK, but copying the work of others is cheatng and will not help you succeed. Read UBC’s Students Code of Conduct and our strict rules regarding academic integrity at htp://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/index.cfm?tree=3,54,111,959 . d. Note there may be one or more questons about this assignment in future Quizzes or Final Exam. e. Questons in this Worksheet have checkboxes instead of numbers to avoid confusion with the numbering system in the Reading Assignment Quiz. f. Note that this course has students in non-science and science disciplines, frst and fourth year-levels and everyone in between. Some tasks may seem “easy” for some students but will be challenging for others. 1. 1 This Worksheet copyright © 2019, F. Jones, L. Porrit and UBC. All rights reserved. Re-distributon to anyone or the web is against copyright law. See UBC intellectual property rights at htps://copyright.ubc.ca/guidelines-and-resources/faq/ Page 1 of 11 Downloaded by Emily Park (emily.d.park618@gmail.com) lOMoARcPSD|32012925

Step 1: Times of major extnctons and causes, plus observatons about the “sixth extncton”. The fgure below is a “linear” geological tme line presented in a circular format. You may see this or a similar depicton of geological tme in class.  Seven tmes are shown with small stars labelled A through G. At which of these tmes (i.e. which leter-labels) are each of the “big 5” extncton events?  ___e___ Triassic–Jurassic or Tr-J  ___d___ Permian–Triassic or P-Tr  ___b___ Ordovician–Silurian or O-S  ___c___ Late Devonian extncton or Late D  ___f___ Cretaceous–Paleogene or K-Pg  From this fgure, for roughly what proporton of Earth’s entre history has life of any type existed?  ___3%___ 3% – 4%  ______ 8% – 10%  ______ 15% – 20%  ______ 25% – 30%  ______ 45% – 55%  ______ 65% – 75%  ______ 85% – 95%  From this fgure, for roughly what proporton of Earth’s entre history have vertebrate land animals existed?  ______ 3% – 4%  ___7%___ 8% – 10%  ______ 15% – 20%  ______ 25% – 30%  ______ 45% – 55%  ______ 65% – 75%  ______ 85% – 95% Page 2 of 11 Downloaded by Emily Park (emily.d.park618@gmail.com) lOMoARcPSD|32012925

 From this fgure, for roughly what proporton of Earth’s entre history did non-avian dinosaurs exist on Earth?  ______ 3% – 4%  ______ 8% – 10%  ______ 15% – 20%  ______ 25% – 30%  ______ 45% – 55%  ______ 65% – 75%  ______ 85% – 95% Wikipedia is not always a great resource, although in fact it has good basic coverage of extnctons startng at htps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extncton_event . You do not have read all of the artcle – we will start by using just the data in the table labelled “List of extncton events“, htps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extncton_events .  In total, how many extncton events are listed in that table? Answer with a number , NOT a word (e.g. ‘10’, not ‘ten’). ____25_____  Below is a list of possible causes of extnctons that have been identfed. Put these causes into order with “1” being MOST commonly identfed and “3” being LEAST commonly identfed. (If you need more informaton on one of the possible causes identfed in the table, look it up!)  __3____ Impacts or “craters”  __2____ Changes in sea level, ocean chemistry or anoxia (not including “climate change” without sea-level changes)  __1____ Volcanic, food basalt, magmatc provinces or “traps” events  What type of evidence is used to identfy “extncton events”? HINT: This is NOT about evidence for how it happened but whether an “extncton event” occurred.  Climate records (or proxies for climate variaton)  The fossil record  Astronomical informaton such as evidence for supernovae, gamma ray bursts. etc.  Geological evidence of volcanic events  Geological evidence of impactors (asteroid or meteorite collisions with Earth)  How many of all the extncton events (NOTE: The Great Oxygenaton is not an extncton event.) in the table have at least one possible cause identfed WITHOUT a reference or citaton for that cause? Answer with a number , NOT a word (e.g. ‘10’, not ‘ten’). _____4_____ Read the frst four (4) paragraphs under “Causes”, then fll in blanks to complete the sentences. Note carefully when authors are discussing rates of extncton (or originaton) as opposed to extncton events.  Rather than atributng widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity to a single cause, at least two types of causes seem to be necessary, each possibly including many factors. The frst cause, long-term pressures on the ecosystem, called a press (one word only) by Arens and West, 2006 , make an ecosystem vulnerable. Then the second cause, a diferent set of more sudden changes, called a pulse (one word only), appears to tp the system into collapse. Now consider the apparent relatonship between ecosystem diversity and the rates at which species either appear or disappear (i.e. rates of originaton or extncton). Choose the appropriate term from within the brackets to make the following 2 sets of statements TRUE.  According to this short secton, periods with more diverse ecosystems appear to be correlated with [ increasing / decreasing / unchanging ] rates at which species disappear . Also, periods with less diverse ecosystems appear to be correlated with [ increasing / decreasing / unchanging ] rates at which species appear . Page 3 of 11 Downloaded by Emily Park (emily.d.park618@gmail.com) lOMoARcPSD|32012925

 If the past 100,000 years has seen highly diverse ecosystems, this relatonship would predict that the rate at which species [ appear / disappear ] might increase during this period, while the rate at which species [ appear / disappear ] might decrease. Do these predictons appear to be consistent with reality (WITHOUT trying to atribute any causes, whether human or otherwise)? [ Yes / No / Uncertain ] For the following queston, refer to this website to learn more about “peer-reviewed” artcles or references: htps://library.sdsu.edu/reference/news/what-does-peer-review-mean  In those 4 paragraphs, the authors included a total of __ 13__ references, and __ 7___ of those references appear to be peer-reviewed. Fill in the blanks with a number , NOT a word (e.g. ‘10’, not ‘ten’). Figures 2a and 2b to the right are from the Wikipedia page you accessed above and presented here with x-axes aligned. Consider what’s shown carefully. One graph shows the proporton of total marine genera 2 becoming extnct over tme, and the other shows the total numbers of marine genera over tme.  For which of the big 5 extncton events did the highest relatve proporton (i.e. percentage) of marine animal g enera (see footnote) become extnct?  O – S  Late D  P – Tr  Tr – J  K – Pg  For which of the big 5 extncton events did the lowest relatve proporton (i.e. percentage) of marine animal genera become extnct?  O – S  Late D  P – Tr  Tr – J  K – Pg  For which of the big 5 extncton events was the total number of genera the smallest just before the extncton?  O – S  Late D  P – Tr  Tr – J  K – Pg  What general lesson can be learned from this pair of fgures by examining trends rather than the spikes representng extncton events? Earlier in tme there seems to have been ______.  higher diversity, and higher proportons of that diversity sufered in extnctons.  higher diversity, and lower proportons of that diversity sufered in extnctons.  lower diversity, and higher proportons of that diversity sufered in extnctons.  lower diversity, and lower proportons of that diversity sufered in extnctons. 2 “Genera” is the plural of “genus”, and most genera include several species. Page 4 of 11 Downloaded by Emily Park (emily.d.park618@gmail.com) lOMoARcPSD|32012925

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