Preview Test: ENVM7512 Semester One Final Examination 2021 - PART A

QUESTION 1

What bias occurs when we justify further investment on the basis of prior investment? Select one answer below.

Anchoring bias.

Sunk cost bias.

Confirmation bias.

Overconfidence bias.

QUESTION 2

Which of the definitions best describes a menu board? Select one answer below.

A table displaying all actions for creating management strategies.

A table displaying all of the means objectives for constructing an influence diagram.

A table displaying the consequences of each alternative.

A table for displaying swing weights across stakeholders.

QUESTION 3

The figure below shows a systems dynamics model of a fish population reaching carrying capacity. What causes the population growth behaviour observed?

Select one answer below.

A reinforcing feedback loop.

A reinforcing feedback loop and a balancing loop.

A balancing feedback loop with at least one delay.

A balancing feedback loop.

QUESTION 4

What makes a good performance measure? Select one answer below.

Clear relationship to fundamental objectives.

Related to the consequences of interest.

Complete and concise.

All of the answers.

QUESTION 5

What does the hexagon represent in the figure below (highlighted in red)?

Select one answer below.

Driver.

Means objective.

None of the answers.

Fundamental objective.

QUESTION 6

The figure below shows the risk of tiger extinction as a function of the number of tigers poached per year. The number of tigers poached per year is directly related to the number of anti-poaching patrols. Which concept is represented in this figure?

Select one answer below.

None of the answers.

Return on investment.

Satisfaction index.

Cost-benefi t analysis.

QUESTION 7

What best describes objectives? Select one answer below.

None of the answers.

They reflect experimental findings.

They reflect strategic actions.

They reflect human values.

QUESTION 8

What type of performance measure is illustrated in the figure below?

Select one answer below.

Constructed measure.

Proxy measure.

Natural measure.

Structured measure.

QUESTION 9

Which of the following is considered a predictive model? Select one answer below.

Infl uence diagram.

All of the answers.

Bayesian belief network.

Systems  model.

QUESTION 10

What is an irrelevant objective? Select one answer below.

An objective that is not fundamental.

An objective with the best worst-case outcome.

An objective without a direction.

An objective that has the same predicted consequences across all alternatives.

School of Earth & Environmental Sciences

EXAMINATION

Semester One Final Examinations, 2021

ENVM7512 Environmental Problem Solving

Short Answer Questions Component (Questions 11-15)

Question 11.    Explain the issues with using targets in environmental decisions.

Include examples to illustrate your point. (10 marks)

Question 12.   Describe the concepts of a dominated alternative and an efficiency frontier.

Use the items (square, line, circles) on figure below to help illustrate your points. (8 marks)

Figure for Question 12:

Question 13.   Imagine you have had a meeting with an environmental manager

responsible for a national park. The manager is primarily interested in conserving a local marsupial species – the quoll. The quoll population in the national park has recently increased after culling of some of the quoll’s main predators. The manager is concerned that the quoll population is now oscillating overtime, as illustrated in the figure on following page.

Using your knowledge of systems thinking, explain what processes could be responsible for the oscillating population. Use a simple causal loop diagram to identify the important loops involved. (12 marks)

Figure for Question 13:

Question 14.    Uncertainty is an important component of environmental problems. One way to articulate uncertainty is as hypotheses.

The below table shows the expected number of nudibranchs (a soft-bodied marine gastropod) that would be protected under two different proposed estuarine fisheries management strategies and two hypotheses about the distribution of this species of nudibranch in the estuary.

The objective of the managers is to maximize the number of nudibranchs protected. Using the information contained in the table, calculate the value of resolving the uncertainty in the distribution of the nudibranch species (show your working).

To reduce this uncertainty, monitoring would be requiredata cost of $7,000, and managers are willing to pay $500 for each nudibranch that is protected. Based on the value of information you calculated, would you recommend monitoring be implemented? Briefly state why. (20 marks)

Table for Question 14:

Question 15.    Below is a consequence table for an environmental problem. A coastal community has been approached by three different industries (Tourism, Aquaculture, and Oil), hoping to develop the water just offshore. The community would like to maximise the benefit they receive through providing revenue and jobs to the local economy, while minimising the impacts on aesthetics, public health from water quality, and biodiversity of the area.

Simplify the consequence table, then using the swing weighting results provided and the simplified consequence table, calculate the expected utility of each alternative (show your working).

Note that cleaning up pollutants from each industry costs $1.5 million for each part per tonne (ppt) of pollutants, which would come out of the projected profit.

Based on your calculations, which alternative would you recommend to the community and why? (30 marks)

Table for Question 15:

* Equation for normalising values (v) in each row: