Lesson 3 People and Their Environment: South America

Review Questions
Directions: Read the lesson and complete the outline below. Refer to your textbook to
fill in the blanks.

I. Managing Resources
A. People are cutting down large areas of South America's rainforests. This threatens the forests'
biodiversity, or variety of plants and animals.

B. Social erosion is one result of too much farming, construction, logging, fires, and overgrazing.

C. Mismanagement of the land where rain forests were cleared causes topsoil to blow away and
desertification to occur.

D. When livestock graze, they eat right down to the ground level; herds' movement also

destroys plant roots that would have bound the topsoil and kept it from blowing away.

II. Human Impact

A. Two causes of environmental pollution in South America are large-scale economic

production and urban growth, or favelas.

B. The growth of cities and the favelas on their outskirts has led to problems with getting rid of

human waste and sewage.

C. The rise in the price of gold has led to damage to the natural environment in the form of

rapid deforestation and high levels of mercury and cyanide pollution in rivers.

D. Colombia and Brazil are two countries who are taking steps to block illegal mining.

III. Addressing the Issues

A. Since Paraguay passed the Zero Deforestation Law in 2004, the country has had a greatly reduced
rate of deforestation.

B. Soil conservation slows the degradation of fertile land.

 C. Argentina has led the world by setting voluntary targets
to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases given off.

D. Because poorer countries cannot afford to restrict

access to natural resources or enforce policies to protect
the environment, the international community is working
together to find solutions to reduce human impact on
environmental change.

Summary and Reflection

Directions: Summarize the main ideas of this lesson by answering the

question below.

Write a paragraph in which you explain in order of importance at least two ways that urbanization
affects South America's environment. Why did you choose this order?

Two ways that urbanization affects South America’s environment is the rapid urbanization growth and
disposing of human waste or sewage. I choose this order because rapid growth of urbanization is the
main cause of the pollution to South America’s environment. There wouldn't be problems with the
sewage if rapid urbanization didn’t exist. Rapid urbanization growth affects the environment because in
less developed countries they lack the foundation to build an extensive network of piped water, drains,
and sewage treatment plants and this pollutes the source of waters nearby . An example is the Paulina
River that flows to Lake Titicaca , which is near the city of El Alto, that has been polluted and
contaminated because of the human waste in the city of El alto.