Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found in the US state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and wildfire, featuring summer-drought-tolerant plants with hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves, as contrasted with the associated soft-leaved, drought-deciduous, scrub community of coastal sage scrub, found below the chaparral biome. Chaparral covers 5% of the state of California and associated Mediterranean shrubland an additional 3.5%. The name comes for evergreen oak shrubland. In its natural state, chaparral is characterized by infrequent fires, with intervals ranging between 30-50+ years; the fires are high stand-replacing. Recent human activity has increased fire frequency; the shoots of the Chaparral plants do not have thick bark, they are not resistant. There are two kinds of Chaparral plant species: Sprouters: these plants have dormant meristems on buried lignotubers, they have storage and intact roots.

Seeders: these plants have long-lived seeds in the seed bank or aerially. The germination of these seeds is induced by fire; because sprouters can respond with more rapid growth than seeders, they tend to dominate the early years after a fire. If fires become frequent, seeders cannot reach reproductive size before the next fire. System shifts to sprouter-dominance. If fire become more frequent, sprouters exhaust their below- ground reserves and there will be a conversion to a non-chaparral biome. Mature chaparral is characterized by dense thickets; these plants are flammable during the late summer and autumn months when conditions are characteristically hot and dry. They grow as woody shrubs with thick and small leaves, contain green leaves all year, are drought resistant. After the first rains following a fire, the landscape is dominated by small flowering herbaceous plants, known as fire followers, which die back with the summer dry period. Similar plant communities are found in the four other Mediterranean climate regions around the world, including the Mediterranean Basin, central Chile, the South African Cape Region, in Western and Southern Australia.

According to the California Academy of Sciences, Mediterranean shrubland contains more than 20 percent of the world's plant diversity. The word chaparral is a loan word from Spanish chaparro, meaning both "small" and "dwarf" evergreen oak, which itself comes from a Basque word, that has the same meaning. Conservation International and other conservation organizations consider chaparral to be a biodiversity hotspot – a biological community with a large number of different species –, under threat by human activity; the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, of the Mediterranean forests and scrub biome, has three sub-ecoregions with ecosystem—plant community subdivisions: California coastal sage and chaparral:In coastal Southern California and northwestern coastal Baja California, as well as all of the Channel Islands off California and Guadalupe Island. California montane chaparral and woodlands:In southern and central coast adjacent and inland California regions, including covering some of the mountains of the California Coast Ranges, the Transverse Ranges, the western slopes of the northern Peninsular Ranges.

California interior chaparral and woodlands:In central interior California surrounding the Central Valley, covering the foothills and lower slopes of the northeastern Transverse Ranges and the western Sierra Nevada range. For the numerous individual plant and animal species found within the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, see: Flora of the California chaparral and woodlands Fauna of the California chaparral and woodlands; some of the indicator plants of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion include: Quercus species – oaks: Quercus agrifolia – coast live oak Quercus berberidifolia – scrub oak Quercus chrysolepis – canyon live oak Quercus douglasii – blue oak Quercus wislizeni – interior live oak Artemisia species – sagebrush: Artemisia californica – California sagebrush, coastal sage brush Arctostaphylos species – manzanitas: Arctostaphylos glauca – bigberry manzanita Arctostaphylos manzanita – common manzanita Ceanothus species – California lilacs: Ceanothus cuneatus – buckbrush Ceanothus megacarpus – bigpod ceanothus Rhus species – sumacs: Rhus integrifolia – lemonade berry Rhus ovata – sugar bush Eriogonum species – buckwheats: Eriogonum fasciculatum – California buckwheat Salvia species – sages: Salvia mellifera – black sage Another phytogeography system uses two California chaparral and woodlands subdivisions: the cismontane chaparral and the transmontane chaparral.

Cismontane chaparral refers to the chaparral ecosystem in the Mediterranean forests and scrub biome in California, growing on the western sides of large mountain range systems, such as the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the San Joaquin Valley foothills, western slopes of the Peninsular Ranges and California Coast Ranges, south-southwest slopes of the Transverse Ranges in the Central Coast and

Bigambo Rochat is a Swiss footballer who plays for Yverdon-Sport FC. Rochat began his career with FC Renens after which he moved to FC Crissier in March 2002, his stay in Crissier lasted just twenty three months before was scouted from Lausanne-Sport, making the move in February 2004. At Lausanne he played two games with the first team in the Challenge League and was a member of Team Vaud, the academy team. On 23 September 2008 he moved to top French club Lille. On 9 April 2009 the 18-year-old defender left Lille to sign a five-year deal with Sion until 2014. However, his stay would last less than two years as he returned to his former club Lausanne-Sport, joining them 25 September 2010, though he was released at the end of the season. In July 2011, Bigambo Rochat signed a contract for Swiss team Neuchâtel Xamax. At the end of the season, he moved on to Yverdon-Sport FC in July 2012 following Xamax's financial troubles and relegation to the fifth tier. Rochat has represented Switzerland at various youth levels including.

He featured for the Swiss under-17 team at the 2008 UEFA European Under-17 Football Championship in Turkey. Career history at ASF Pro Soccer Management Profile

Ireland during the period 1536–1691 saw the first full conquest of the island by England and its colonization with Protestant settlers from Great Britain. This established two central themes in future Irish history: subordination of the country to London-based governments and sectarian animosity between Catholics and Protestants; the period saw Irish society transform from a locally driven, clan-based Gaelic structure to a centralised, state-governed society, similar to those found elsewhere in Europe. The period is bounded by the dates 1536, when King Henry VIII deposed the FitzGerald dynasty as Lords Deputies of Ireland, 1691, when the Irish Catholic Jacobites surrendered at Limerick, thus confirming British Protestant dominance in Ireland; this is sometimes called the early modern period. The English Reformation, by which Henry VIII broke with Papal authority in 1536, was to change Ireland totally. While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely.

While the English, the Welsh and the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic. Queen Mary I reverted the state to Catholicism in 1553–58, Queen Elizabeth I broke again with Rome after 1570; these confusing changes determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years, as the Reformation coincided with a determined effort on behalf of the English state to re-conquer and colonise Ireland thereafter. The religious schism meant that the native Irish and the Old English were to be excluded from power in the new settlement unless they converted to Protestantism. There is some debate about; however the most immediate reason was that the Fitzgerald dynasty of Kildare, who had become the effective rulers of Ireland in the 15th century, had become unreliable allies of the Tudor monarchs. Most they had invited Burgundian troops into Dublin to crown the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel as King of England in 1487. In 1535, Silken Thomas Fitzgerald went into open rebellion against the crown.

Henry VIII put down this rebellion and set about to pacify Ireland and bring it all under English government control to prevent it from becoming a base for foreign invasions of England. Ireland was changed from a lordship to a full Kingdom under Henry VIII. From the period of the original lordship in the 12th century onwards, Ireland had retained its own bicameral Parliament of Ireland, consisting of a House of Commons and a House of Lords, it was restricted for most of its existence in terms both of membership – Gaelic Irishmen were barred from membership – and of powers, notably by Poynings' Law of 1494, which required the approval of the English Privy Council before any draft bills might be introduced to the Parliament. After 1541, Henry VIII admitted native Irish lords into both houses and recognised their land titles, in return for their submission to him as King of Ireland. However, the real power in Ireland throughout this period lay not with the Parliament, but with the Lord Deputy of Ireland, nominated by the King of England to govern Ireland.

The Parliament met only when called by the Lord Deputy, when he wanted to pass new laws or raise new taxes. The Lord Deputy's permanent advisors were the Irish Privy Council. With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory. Henry VIII's officials were tasked with extending the rule of this new Kingdom throughout Ireland by the policy of "surrender and regrant", they either fought with the autonomous Irish Kings and lords. This took nearly a century to achieve, the re-conquest was accompanied by a great deal of bloodshed, as it led to the assimilation – sometimes abolition – of lordships, independent for several hundred years; the re-conquest was completed during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, after several bloody conflicts. The Desmond Rebellions took place in the southern province of Munster, when the Fitzgerald Earl of Desmond dynasty resisted the imposition of an English governor into the province.

The second of these rebellions was put down by means of a forced famine, which may have killed up to a third of Munster's population. The most serious threat to English rule in Ireland came during the Nine Years War 1594–1603, when Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell the most powerful chieftains in the northern province of Ulster rebelled against English government; this war developed into a nationwide revolt where O'Neill and O'Donnell obtained military aid from Spain, in conflict with England during the Anglo-Spanish War. A Spanish expeditionary force was defeated by English forces at the Battle of Kinsale in 1601. O'Neill and his allies surrendered to the new Stuart King, James I, in 1603. After this point, the English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised form of justice to the entire island, disarmed the various lordships, both Irish and Old English. O'Neill, O'Donnell and their allies subsequently fled Ireland for good in the Flight of the Earls in 1607.

This removed the last major obstacle to English government in Ireland. The English had little success in converting either the native elite or the Irish people to the Protestant religion, it is an enduring question, why the Protestant reformation failed to take hold among the Irish lies in the fact that brutal methods were used by crown aut