Reflection seismology
Reflection seismology is a method of exploration geophysics that uses the principles of seismology to estimate the properties of the Earth's subsurface from reflected seismic waves. The method requires a controlled seismic source of energy, such as dynamite or Tovex blast, a specialized air gun or a seismic vibrator known by the trademark name Vibroseis. Reflection seismology is similar to echolocation; this article is about surface seismic surveys. Reflections and refractions of seismic waves at geologic interfaces within the Earth were first observed on recordings of earthquake-generated seismic waves; the basic model of the Earth's deep interior is based on observations of earthquake-generated seismic waves transmitted through the Earth’s interior. The use of human-generated seismic waves to map in detail the geology of the upper few kilometers of the Earth's crust followed shortly thereafter and has developed due to commercial enterprise the petroleum industry. Seismic reflection exploration grew out of the seismic refraction exploration method, used to find oil associated with salt domes.
Ludger Mintrop, a German mine surveyor, devised a mechanical seismograph in 1914 that he used to detect salt domes in Germany. He applied for a German patent in 1919, issued in 1926. In 1921 he founded the company Seismos, hired to conduct seismic exploration in Texas and Mexico, resulting in the first commercial discovery of oil using the refraction seismic method in 1924; the 1924 discovery of the Orchard salt dome in Texas led to a boom in seismic refraction exploration along the Gulf Coast, but by 1930 the method had led to the discovery of most of the shallow Gulf Coast salt domes, the refraction seismic method faded. The Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden was the first to conceive of using reflected seismic waves to infer geology, his work was on the propagation of acoustic waves in water, motivated by the sinking of the Titanic by an iceberg in 1912. He worked on methods of detecting submarines during World War I, he applied for the first patent on a seismic exploration method in 1914, issued in 1917.
Due to the war, he was unable to follow up on the idea. John Clarence Karcher discovered seismic reflections independently while working for the United States Bureau of Standards on methods of sound ranging to detect artillery. In discussion with colleagues, the idea developed that these reflections could aid in exploration for petroleum. With several others, many affiliated with the University of Oklahoma, Karcher helped to form the Geological Engineering Company, incorporated in Oklahoma in April, 1920; the first field tests were conducted near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1921. Early reflection seismology was viewed with skepticism by many in the oil industry. An early advocate of the method commented: "As one who tried to introduce the method into general consulting practice, the senior writer can recall many times when reflections were not considered on a par with the divining rod, for at least that device had a background of tradition."The Geological Engineering Company folded due to a drop in the price of oil.
In 1925, oil prices had rebounded, Karcher helped to form Geophysical Research Corporation as part of the oil company Amerada. In 1930, Karcher helped to found Geophysical Service Incorporated. GSI was one of the most successful seismic contracting companies for over 50 years and was the parent of an more successful company, Texas Instruments. Early GSI employee Henry Salvatori left that company in 1933 to found another major seismic contractor, Western Geophysical. Many other companies using reflection seismology in hydrocarbon exploration, engineering studies, other applications have been formed since the method was first invented. Major service companies today include CGG, ION Geophysical, Petroleum Geo-Services, Polarcus, TGS and WesternGeco. Most major oil companies have conducted research into seismic methods as well as collected and processed seismic data using their own personnel and technology. Reflection seismology has found applications in non-commercial research by academic and government scientists around the world.
Seismic waves are mechanical perturbations that travel in the Earth at a speed governed by the acoustic impedance of the medium in which they are travelling. The acoustic impedance, Z, is defined by the equation: Z = V ρ,where V is the seismic wave velocity and ρ is the density of the rock; when a seismic wave travelling through the Earth encounters an interface between two materials with different acoustic impedances, some of the wave energy will reflect off the interface and some will refract through the interface. At its most basic, the seismic reflection technique consists of generating seismic waves and measuring the time taken for the waves to travel from the source, reflect off an interface and be detected by an array of receivers at the surface. Knowing the travel times from the source to various receivers, the velocity of the seismic waves, a geophysicist attempts to reconstruct the pathways of the waves in order to build up an image of the subsurface. In common with other geophysical methods, reflection seismology may be seen as a type of inverse problem.
That is, given a set of data collected by experimentation and the physical laws that apply to the experiment, the experimenter wishes to develop an abstract model of the physical system being studied. In the case of refle
Continental shelf
A continental shelf is a portion of a continent, submerged under an area of shallow water known as a shelf sea. Much of the shelves were exposed during interglacial periods; the shelf surrounding an island is known as an insular shelf. The continental margin, between the continental shelf and the abyssal plain, comprises a steep continental slope followed by the flatter continental rise. Sediment from the continent above cascades down the slope and accumulates as a pile of sediment at the base of the slope, called the continental rise. Extending as far as 500 km from the slope, it consists of thick sediments deposited by turbidity currents from the shelf and slope; the continental rise's gradient is intermediate between the shelf. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the name continental shelf was given a legal definition as the stretch of the seabed adjacent to the shores of a particular country to which it belongs. Width of the continental shelf varies – it is not uncommon for an area to have no shelf at all where the forward edge of an advancing oceanic plate dives beneath continental crust in an offshore subduction zone such as off the coast of Chile or the west coast of Sumatra.
The largest shelf – the Siberian Shelf in the Arctic Ocean – stretches to 1,500 kilometers in width. The South China Sea lies over another extensive area of continental shelf, the Sunda Shelf, which joins Borneo and Java to the Asian mainland. Other familiar bodies of water that overlie continental shelves are the North Sea and the Persian Gulf; the average width of continental shelves is about 80 km. The depth of the shelf varies, but is limited to water shallower than 100 m; the slope of the shelf is quite low, on the order of 0.5°. Though the continental shelf is treated as a physiographic province of the ocean, it is not part of the deep ocean basin proper, but the flooded margins of the continent. Passive continental margins such as most of the Atlantic coasts have wide and shallow shelves, made of thick sedimentary wedges derived from long erosion of a neighboring continent. Active continental margins have narrow steep shelves, due to frequent earthquakes that move sediment to the deep sea.
The shelf ends at a point of increasing slope. The sea floor below the break is the continental slope. Below the slope is the continental rise, which merges into the deep ocean floor, the abyssal plain; the continental shelf and the slope are part of the continental margin. The shelf area is subdivided into the inner continental shelf, mid continental shelf, outer continental shelf, each with their specific geomorphology and marine biology; the character of the shelf changes at the shelf break, where the continental slope begins. With a few exceptions, the shelf break is located at a remarkably uniform depth of 140 m; the continental slope is much steeper than the shelf. The slope is cut with submarine canyons; the physical mechanisms involved in forming these canyons were not well understood until the 1960s. The continental shelves are covered by terrigenous sediments. However, little of the sediment is from current rivers. Sediments become fine with distance from the coast; these accumulate 15–40 cm every millennium, much faster than deep-sea pelagic sediments.
Continental shelves teem with life because of the sunlight available in shallow waters, in contrast to the biotic desert of the oceans' abyssal plain. The pelagic environment of the continental shelf constitutes the neritic zone, the benthic province of the shelf is the sublittoral zone. Though the shelves are fertile, if anoxic conditions prevail during sedimentation, the deposits may over geologic time become sources for fossil fuels; the accessible continental shelf is the best understood part of the ocean floor. Most commercial exploitation from the sea, such as metallic-ore, non-metallic ore, hydrocarbon extraction, takes place on the continental shelf. Sovereign rights over their continental shelves up to a depth of 100 m or to a distance where the depth of waters admitted of resource exploitation were claimed by the marine nations that signed the Convention on the Continental Shelf drawn up by the UN's International Law Commission in 1958; this was superseded by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Which created the 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone, plus continental shelf rights for states with physical continental shelves that extend beyond that distance. The legal definition of a continental shelf differs from the geological definition. UNCLOS states that the shelf extends to the limit of the continental margin, but no less than 200 nmi and no more than 350 nmi from the baseline, thus inhabited volcanic islands such as the Canaries, which have no actual continental shelf, nonetheless have a legal continental shelf, whereas uninhabitable islands have no shelf. Baseline Continental Island Continental shelf pump Continental shelf of Russia Exclusive ec
Australia (continent)
The continent of Australia, sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul, Australinea or Meganesia to distinguish it from the country of Australia, consists of the land masses which sit on Australia's continental plate. This includes mainland Australia and the island of New Guinea. Situated in the geographical region of Oceania, it is the smallest of the seven traditional continents in the English conception; the continent includes a continental shelf overlain by shallow seas which divide it into several landmasses—the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between mainland Australia and New Guinea, Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the Last Glacial Maximum about 18,000 BC, they were connected by dry land. During the past 10,000 years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania.
The Australian continent, being part of the Indo-Australian plate, is the lowest and oldest landmass on Earth and it has had a stable geological history. New Zealand is not part of the continent of Australia, but of the separate, submerged continent of Zealandia. New Zealand and Australia are both part of the Oceanian sub-region known as Australasia, with New Guinea being in Melanesia; the term Oceania is used to denote the region encompassing the Australian continent and various islands in the Pacific Ocean that are not included in the seven-continent model. Papua New Guinea, a country within the continent, is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse countries in the world, it is one of the most rural, as only 18 percent of its people live in urban centres. West Papua, a province of Indonesia, is home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups. Australia, the largest landmass in the continent, is urbanised, has the world's 13th-largest economy with the second-highest human development index globally.
Australia has the world's 9th largest immigrant population. The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, the large islands just to the east arrived between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago. Archaeological terminology for this region has changed repeatedly. Before the 1970s, the single Pleistocene landmass was called Australasia, derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern", although this word is most used for a wider region that includes lands like New Zealand that are not on the same continental shelf. In the early 1970s, the term Greater Australia was introduced for the Pleistocene continent. At a 1975 conference and consequent publication, the name Sahul was extended from its previous use for just the Sahul Shelf to cover the continent. In 1984 W. Filewood suggested the name Meganesia, meaning "great island" or "great island-group", for both the Pleistocene continent and the present-day lands, this name has been accepted by biologists. Others have used Meganesia with different meanings: travel writer Paul Theroux included New Zealand in his definition and others have used it for Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii.
Another biologist, Richard Dawkins, coined the name Australinea in 2004. Australia-New Guinea has been used. Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands who migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago, they are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa. There is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage; the earliest known human remains were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales. Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the world's oldest known cremations, thus indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans. Dreamtime remains a prominent feature of Australian Aboriginal art, the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world. Papuan habitation is estimated to have begun 48,000 years ago in New Guinea.
Trade between New Guinea and neighboring Indonesian islands was documented as early as the seventh century, archipelagic rule of New Guinea by the 13th. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Sumatra-based empire of Srivijaya engaged in trade relations with western New Guinea taking items like sandalwood and birds-of-paradise in tribute to China, but making slaves out of the natives; the rule of the Java-based empire of Majapahit extended to the western fringes of New Guinea. Recent archaeological research suggests that 50,000 years ago people may have occupied sites in the highlands at New Guinean altitudes of up to 2,000 m, rather than being restricted to warmer coastal areas. Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the South"—date back to Roman times and before, were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle speculated of a large landmass in the southern hemisphere, saying, "Now since there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole...".
His ideas were expanded by Ptolemy, who believed that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. The theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps. Terra Australis, a hypot
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country located in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian. The six largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Tilburg. Amsterdam is the country's capital, while The Hague holds the seat of the States General and Supreme Court; the Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, the largest in any country outside Asia. The country is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union.
It hosts several intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are centered in The Hague, dubbed'the world's legal capital'. Netherlands means'lower countries' in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, with only about 50% of its land exceeding 1 metre above sea level, nearly 17% falling below sea level. Most of the areas below sea level, known as polders, are the result of land reclamation that began in the 16th century. With a population of 17.30 million people, all living within a total area of 41,500 square kilometres —of which the land area is 33,700 square kilometres —the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products, owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, intensive agriculture; the Netherlands was the third country in the world to have representative government, it has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848.
The country has a tradition of pillarisation and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised abortion and human euthanasia, along with maintaining a progressive drug policy. The Netherlands abolished the death penalty in 1870, allowed women's suffrage in 1917, became the world's first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, its mixed-market advanced economy had the thirteenth-highest per capita income globally. The Netherlands ranks among the highest in international indexes of press freedom, economic freedom, human development, quality of life, as well as happiness; the Netherlands' turbulent history and shifts of power resulted in exceptionally many and varying names in different languages. There is diversity within languages; this holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form and the misnomer Holland a synonym for the country "Netherlands". Dutch comes from Theodiscus and in the past centuries, the hub of Dutch culture is found in its most populous region, home to the capital city of Amsterdam.
Referring to the Netherlands as Holland in the English language is similar to calling the United Kingdom "Britain" by people outside the UK. The term is so pervasive among potential investors and tourists, that the Dutch government's international websites for tourism and trade are "holland.com" and "hollandtradeandinvest.com". The region of Holland consists of North and South Holland, two of the nation's twelve provinces a single province, earlier still, the County of Holland, a remnant of the dissolved Frisian Kingdom. Following the decline of the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders, Holland became the most economically and politically important county in the Low Countries region; the emphasis on Holland during the formation of the Dutch Republic, the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, made Holland serve as a pars pro toto for the entire country, now considered either incorrect, informal, or, depending on context, opprobrious. Nonetheless, Holland is used in reference to the Netherlands national football team.
The region called the Low Countries and the Country of the Netherlands. Place names with Neder, Nieder and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in places all over Europe, they are sometimes used in a deictic relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Oben, Superior or Haut. In the case of the Low Countries / Netherlands the geographical location of the lower region has been more or less downstream and near the sea; the geographical location of the upper region, changed tremendously over time, depending on the location of the economic and military power governing the Low Countries area. The Romans made a distinction between the Roman provinces of downstream Germania Inferior and upstream Germania Superior; the designation'Low' to refer to the region returns again in the 10th century Duchy of Lower Lorraine, that covered much of the Low Countries. But this time the corresponding Upper region is Upper Lorraine, in nowadays Northern France; the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled the Low Countries in the 15th century, used the term les pays de par deçà for the Low Countries as opposed to les pays de par delà for their original
BP
BP plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is one of the world's seven oil and gas "supermajors", whose performance in 2012 made it the world's sixth-largest oil and gas company, the sixth-largest energy company by market capitalization and the company with the world's 12th-largest revenue, it is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining and marketing, power generation and trading. It has renewable energy interests in biofuels and wind power; as of 31 December 2017, BP had operations in 70 countries worldwide, produced around 3.6 million barrels per day of oil equivalent, had total proved reserves of 18.441 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The company has around 18,300 service stations worldwide, its largest division is BP America in the United States. In Russia, BP owns a 19.75% stake in Rosneft, the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company by hydrocarbon reserves and production.
BP is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has secondary listings on the New York Stock Exchange. BP's origins date back to the founding of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1908, established as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company to exploit oil discoveries in Iran. In 1935, it in 1954 British Petroleum. In 1959, the company expanded beyond the Middle East to Alaska and it was one of the first companies to strike oil in the North Sea. British Petroleum acquired majority control of Standard Oil of Ohio in 1978. Majority state-owned, the British government privatised the company in stages between 1979 and 1987. British Petroleum merged with Amoco in 1998, becoming BP Amoco plc, acquired ARCO and Burmah Castrol in 2000, becoming BP plc in 2001. From 2003 to 2013, BP was a partner in the TNK-BP joint venture in Russia. BP has been directly involved in several major environmental and safety incidents. Among them were the 2005 Texas City Refinery explosion, which caused the death of 15 workers and resulted in a record-setting OSHA fine.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in history, resulted in severe environmental and economic consequences, serious legal and public relations repercussions for BP. 1.8 million US gallons of Corexit oil dispersant were used in the cleanup response, becoming the largest application of such chemicals in US history. The company pleaded guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter, two misdemeanors, one felony count of lying to Congress, agreed to pay more than $4.5 billion in fines and penalties, the largest criminal resolution in US history. On 2 July 2015, BP and five states announced an $18.7 billion settlement to be used for Clean Water Act penalties and various claims. In May 1908 a group of British geologists discovered a large amount of oil at Masjid-i-Suleiman in Mohammerah, today located in the province of Khuzestan, it was the first commercially significant. William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with the Emir of Mohammerah, Sheikh Khaz'al Khan al-Kaabi, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East, an event which changed the history of the entire region.
The oil discovery led to petrochemical industry development and the establishment of industries that depended on oil. On 14 April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was incorporated as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company; some of the shares were sold to the public. The first chairman and minority shareholder of the company became Lord Strathcona. After establishing the company, the British government asked Percy Cox, British resident to Bushehr, to negotiate an agreement with Khaz'al for APOC to obtain a site on Abadan Island for a refinery, storage tanks, other operations; the refinery was built and began operating in 1912. In 1913, the British government acquired a controlling interest in the company and at the suggestion of Winston Churchill, the British navy switched from coal to oil. In 1914, APOC signed a 30-year contract with the British Admiralty for supplying oil for the Royal Navy at the fixed price. In 1915, APOC established its shipping subsidiary the British Tanker Company and in 1916 it acquired the British Petroleum Company, a marketing arm of the German Europäische Petroleum Union in Britain.
In 1919, the company became a shale-oil producer by establishing a subsidiary named Scottish Oils which merged remaining Scottish oil-shale industries. After World War I, APOC started marketing its products in Continental Europe and acquired stakes in the local marketing companies in several European countries. Refineries were built in Llandarcy in Grangemouth in Scotland, it acquired the controlling stake in the Courchelettes refinery in France and formed with the Government of Australia a partnership named Commonwealth Oil Refineries, which built the Australian's first refinery in Laverton, Victoria. In 1923, Burmah employed Winston Churchill as a paid consultant to lobby the British government to allow APOC have exclusive rights to Persian oil resources, which were subsequently granted by the Iranian monarchy. APOC and the Armenian busines
Mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or small tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics between latitudes 25° N and 25° S; the total mangrove forest area of the world in 2000 was 137,800 square kilometres, spanning 118 countries and territories. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees called halophytes, are adapted to life in harsh coastal conditions, they contain a complex salt filtration system and complex root system to cope with salt water immersion and wave action. They are adapted to the low oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud; the word is used in at least three senses: most broadly to refer to the habitat and entire plant assemblage or mangal, for which the terms mangrove forest biome, mangrove swamp are used, to refer to all trees and large shrubs in the mangrove swamp, narrowly to refer to the mangrove family of plants, the Rhizophoraceae, or more just to mangrove trees of the genus Rhizophora.
The mangrove biome, or mangal, is a distinct saline woodland or shrubland habitat characterized by depositional coastal environments, where fine sediments collect in areas protected from high-energy wave action. The saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater, to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater; the term "mangrove" comes to English from Spanish, is to originate from Guarani. It was earlier "mangrow", but this word was corrupted via folk etymology influence of the word "grove". Mangrove swamps are found in subtropical tidal areas. Areas where mangals occur include marine shorelines; the intertidal existence to which these trees are adapted represents the major limitation to the number of species able to thrive in their habitat. High tide brings in salt water, when the tide recedes, solar evaporation of the seawater in the soil leads to further increases in salinity; the return of tide can flush out these soils, bringing them back to salinity levels comparable to that of seawater.
At low tide, organisms are exposed to increases in temperature and desiccation, are cooled and flooded by the tide. Thus, for a plant to survive in this environment, it must tolerate broad ranges of salinity and moisture, as well as a number of other key environmental factors—thus only a select few species make up the mangrove tree community. About 110 species are considered "mangroves", in the sense of being a tree that grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus, Rhizophora. However, a given mangrove swamp features only a small number of tree species, it is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature only three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, but this is not to say mangrove forests lack diversity. Though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home for a great variety of other species. Mangrove plants require a number of physiological adaptations to overcome the problems of anoxia, high salinity and frequent tidal inundation.
Each species has its own solutions to these problems. Small environmental variations within a mangal may lead to differing methods for coping with the environment. Therefore, the mix of species is determined by the tolerances of individual species to physical conditions, such as tidal inundation and salinity, but may be influenced by other factors, such as predation of plant seedlings by crabs. Once established, mangrove roots provide an oyster habitat and slow water flow, thereby enhancing sediment deposition in areas where it is occurring; the fine, anoxic sediments under mangroves act as sinks for a variety of heavy metals which colloidal particles in the sediments have scavenged from the water. Mangrove removal disturbs these underlying sediments creating problems of trace metal contamination of seawater and biota. Mangrove swamps protect coastal areas from erosion, storm surge, tsunamis; the mangroves' massive root systems are efficient at dissipating wave energy. They slow down tidal water enough so its sediment is deposited as the tide comes in, leaving all except fine particles when the tide ebbs.
In this way, mangroves build their own environments. Because of the uniqueness of mangrove ecosystems and the protection against erosion they provide, they are the object of conservation programs, including national biodiversity action plans. Mangrove swamps' effectiveness in terms of erosion control can sometimes be overstated. Wave energy is low in areas where mangroves grow, so their effect on erosion is measured over long periods, their capacity to limit high-energy wave erosion is in relation to events such as storm surges and tsunamis. The unique ecosystem found in the intricate mesh of mangrove roots offers a quiet marine region for young organisms. In areas where roots are permanently submerged, the organisms they host include algae, oysters and bryozoans, which all require a hard surface for anchoring while they filter feed. Shrimps and mud lobsters use the muddy bottoms as their home. Mangrove crabs munch on the mangrove leaves, adding nutrients to the mangal muds for other bottom feeders.
In at least some cases, export of carbon fixed in mangroves is imp
Makassar
Makassar is the capital of the Indonesian province of South Sulawesi. It is the largest city in the region of Eastern Indonesia and the country's fifth largest urban centre after Jakarta, Surabaya and Medan. From 1971 to 1999, the city was named after one of Ujung Pandang; the city is located on the southwest coast of the island of Sulawesi. The city's area is 199.3 square kilometres and it had a population of around 1.6 million in 2013. Its built-up area has 1,976,168 inhabitants covering 15 districts, its official metropolitan area, known as Mamminasata, with 17 additional districts, covers an area of 2,548 square kilometres and had a population of around 2.4 million according to 2010 Census. The trade in spices figured prominently in the history of Sulawesi, which involved frequent struggles between rival native and foreign powers for control of the lucrative trade during the pre-colonial and colonial period, when spices from the region were in high demand in the West. Much of South Sulawesi's early history was written in old texts that can be traced back to the 13th and 14th centuries.
Makassar is mentioned in the Nagarakretagama, a Javanese eulogy composed in 14th century during the reign of Majapahit king Hayam Wuruk. In the text, Makassar is mentioned as an island under Majapahit dominance, alongside Butun and Banggawi; the 9th King of Gowa Tumaparisi Kallonna is described in the royal chronicle as the first Gowa ruler to ally with the nearby trade-oriented polity of Tallo, a partnership which endured throughout Makassar's apogee as an independent kingdom. The centre of the dual kingdom was at Sombaopu, near the mouth of the Jeneberang River about 10 km south of the present city centre, where an international port and a fortress were developed. First Malay traders Portuguese from at least the 1540s, began to make this port their base for trading to the Spice Islands', further east; the growth of Dutch maritime power over the spice trade after 1600 made Makassar more vital as an alternative port open to all traders, as well as a source of rice to trade with rice-deficient Maluku.
The Dutch East India Company sought a monopoly of Malukan nutmeg and cloves, came close to succeeding at the expense of English and Muslims from the 1620s. The Makassar kings maintained a policy of free trade, insisting on the right of any visitor to do business in the city, rejecting the attempts of the Dutch to establish a monopoly. Makassar depended on the Muslim Malay and Catholic Portuguese Portuguese sailors communities as its two crucial economic assets; however the English East India Company established a post there in 1613, the Danish Company arrived in 1618, Chinese and Indian traders were all important. When the Dutch conquered Portuguese Melaka in 1641, Makassar became the largest Portuguese base in Southeast Asia; the Portuguese population had been in the hundreds, but rose to several thousand, served by churches of the Franciscans and Jesuits as well as the regular clergy. By the 16th century, Makassar had become Sulawesi's major port and centre of the powerful Gowa and Tallo sultanates which between them had a series of 11 fortresses and strongholds and a fortified sea wall that extended along the coast.
Portuguese rulers called the city Macáçar. Makassar was ably led in the first half of the 17th century, when it resisted Dutch pressure to close down its trade to Maluku, made allies rather than enemies of the neighbouring Bugis states. Karaeng Matoaya was ruler of Tallo from 1593, as well as Chancellor or Chief Minister of the partner kingdom of Gowa, he managed the succession to the Gowa throne in 1593 of the 7-year-old boy known as Sultan Alaud-din, guided him through the acceptance of Islam in 1603, numerous modernizations in military and civil governance, cordial relations with the foreign traders. John Jourdain called Makassar in his day "the kindest people in all the Indias to strangers". Matoaya's eldest son succeeded him on the throne of Tallo, but as Chancellor he had evidently groomed his brilliant second son, Karaeng Pattingalloang, who exercised that position from 1639 until his death. Pattingalloang must have been educated by Portuguese, since as an adult he spoke Portuguese "as fluently as people from Lisbon itself", avidly read all the books that came his way in Portuguese, Spanish or Latin.
French Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes described his passion for mathematics and astronomy, on which he pestered the priest endlessly, while one of his Dutch adversaries conceded he was "a man of great knowledge and understanding." After Pattingalloang's death in 1654, a new king of Gowa, Sultan Hasanuddin, rejected the alliance with Tallo by declaring he would be his own Chancellor. Conflicts within the kingdom escalated, the Bugis rebelled under the leadership of Bone, the Dutch VOC seized its long-awaited chance to conquer Makassar with the help of the Bugis, their first conquest in 1667 was the northern Makassar fort of Ujung Pandang, while in 1669 they conquered and destroyed Sombaopu in one of the greatest battles of 17th century Indonesia. The VOC moved the city centre northward, around the Ujung Pandang fort they rebuilt and renamed Fort Rotterdam. From this base they managed to destroy the strongholds of the Sultan of Gowa, forced to live on the outskirts of Makassar. Following the Java War, Prince Diponegoro was exiled to Fort Rotterdam until his death in 1855.
After the arrival
Indonesia
Maluku
