1.
Cameroon
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Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroons coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. French and English are the languages of Cameroon. The country is referred to as Africa in miniature for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, deserts, mountains, rainforests, the country is well known for its native styles of music, particularly makossa and bikutsi, and for its successful national football team. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates, the Union des Populations du Cameroun political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Cameroonian Independence War. It waged war on French and UPC militant forces until 1971, in 1960, the French-administered part of Cameroon became independent as the Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. The southern part of British Cameroons federated with it in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, the federation was abandoned in 1972. The country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972, Cameroon enjoys relatively high political and social stability. This has permitted the development of agriculture, roads, railways, nevertheless, large numbers of Cameroonians live in poverty as subsistence farmers. Power lies firmly in the hands of the president since 1982, Paul Biya. The English-speaking territories of Cameroon have grown increasingly alienated from the government, politicians and civil society in English-speaking regions have called for greater decentralization and even complete separation or independence from the former French-governed territories. The territory of present-day Cameroon was first settled during the Neolithic Era, the longest continuous inhabitants are groups such as the Baka. From here, Bantu migrations into eastern, southern, and central Africa are believed to have originated about 2,000 years ago, the Sao culture arose around Lake Chad c. AD500 and gave way to the Kanem and its successor state, kingdoms, fondoms, and chiefdoms arose in the west. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in 1472 and they noted an abundance of the ghost shrimp Lepidophthalmus turneranus in the Wouri River and named it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English
2.
Departments of Cameroon
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The Regions of Cameroon are divided into 58 divisions or departments. The divisions are further sub-divided into sub-divisions and districts, the divisions are listed below, by province. The constitution divides Cameroon into 10 semi-autonomous regions, each under the administration of an elected Regional Council, a presidential decree of 12 November 2008 officially instigated the change from provinces to regions. Each region is headed by an appointed governor. Governors have broad powers, they may order propaganda in their area and call in the army, gendarmes, all local government officials are employees of the central government’s Ministry of Territorial Administration, from which local governments also get most of their budgets. The regions are subdivided into 58 divisions and these are headed by presidentially appointed divisional officers, who perform the governors duties on a smaller scale. The divisions are further sub-divided into sub-divisions, headed by assistant divisional officers, the districts, administered by district heads, are the smallest administrative units. These are found in large sub-divisions and in regions that are difficult to reach, the three northernmost regions are the Far North, North, and Adamawa. Directly south of them are the Centre and East, the South Province lies on the Gulf of Guinea and the southern border. Cameroons western region is split into four regions, The Littoral and Southwest regions are on the coast. The Northwest and Southwest were once part of British Cameroons, the regions were in French Cameroun
3.
Kadey
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Kadey is a department of East Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 15,884 km² and as of 2001 had a population of 192,927. The capital of the department lies at Batouri, the department is divided administratively into 7 communes and in turn into villages. Batouri Kentzou Kette Mbang Ndelele Nguelebok Ouli Kadéï River
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
6.
Central African Republic
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The Central African Republic is a landlocked country in Central Africa. The CAR covers a area of about 620,000 square kilometres and had an estimated population of around 4.7 million as of 2014. Most of the CAR consists of Sudano-Guinean savannas, but the country includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north. Two thirds of the country is within the Ubangi River basin, while the third lies in the basin of the Chari. Ange-Félix Patassé became president, but was removed by General François Bozizé in the 2003 coup. As of 2015, according to the Human Development Index, the country had the lowest level of human development and this Agricultural Revolution, combined with a Fish-stew Revolution, in which fishing began to take place, and the use of boats, allowed for the transportation of goods. Products were often moved in ceramic pots, which are the first known examples of artistic expression from the regions inhabitants, the Bouar Megaliths in the western region of the country indicate an advanced level of habitation dating back to the very late Neolithic Era. Ironworking arrived in the region around 1000 BC from both Bantu cultures in what is today Nigeria and from the Nile city of Meroë, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush. Bananas arrived in the region and added an important source of carbohydrates to the diet, production of copper, salt, dried fish, and textiles dominated the economic trade in the Central African region. During the 16th and 17th centuries slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan, in the mid 19th century, the Bobangi people became major slave traders and sold their captives to the Americas using the Ubangi river to reach the coast. During the 18th century Bandia-Nzakara peoples established the Bangassou Kingdom along the Ubangi River, in 1875 the Sudanese sultan Rabih az-Zubayr governed Upper-Oubangui, which included present-day CAR. The European penetration of Central African territory began in the late 19th century during the Scramble for Africa, Europeans, primarily the French, Germans, and Belgians, arrived in the area in 1885. France created Ubangi-Shari territory in 1894, in 1911 at the Treaty of Fez, France ceded a nearly 300,000 km² portion of the Sangha and Lobaye basins to the German Empire which ceded a smaller area to France. After World War I France again annexed the territory, in 1920 French Equatorial Africa was established and Ubangi-Shari was administered from Brazzaville. The concessionary companies forced local people to harvest rubber, coffee, between 1890, a year after the French first arrived, and 1940, about half of the population died as a result. New forms of forced labor were also introduced and a number of Ubangians were sent to work on the Congo-Ocean Railway. Many of these laborers died of exhaustion, illness, or the poor conditions which claimed between 20% and 25% of the 127,000 workers. In 1928, an insurrection, the Kongo-Wara rebellion or war of the hoe handle, broke out in Western Ubangi-Shari
7.
Republic of the Congo
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The Republic of the Congo, also known as the Congo Republic, West Congo, Congo-Brazzaville or simply Congo, is a country located in Central Africa. The region was dominated by Bantu-speaking tribes, who built trade links leading into the Congo River basin, Congo-Brazzaville was formerly part of the French colony of Equatorial Africa. Upon independence in 1960, the colony of French Congo became the Republic of the Congo. The Peoples Republic of the Congo was a Marxist–Leninist one-party state from 1970 to 1991, Bantu-speaking peoples who founded tribes during the Bantu expansions largely displaced and absorbed the earliest inhabitants of the region, the Pygmy people, about 1500 BC. Several Bantu kingdoms—notably those of the Kongo, the Loango, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo in 1484. Commercial relationships quickly grew between the inland Bantu kingdoms and European merchants who traded various commodities, manufactured goods, the area north of the Congo River came under French sovereignty in 1880 as a result of Pierre de Brazzas treaty with King Makoko of the Bateke. This Congo Colony became known first as French Congo, then as Middle Congo in 1903, in 1908, France organized French Equatorial Africa, comprising Middle Congo, Gabon, Chad, and Oubangui-Chari. The French designated Brazzaville as the federal capital, economic development during the first 50 years of colonial rule in Congo centered on natural-resource extraction. The methods were brutal, construction of the Congo–Ocean Railroad following World War I has been estimated to have cost at least 14,000 lives. During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Brazzaville functioned as the capital of Free France between 1940 and 1943. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 heralded a period of reform in French colonial policy. Congo benefited from the expansion of colonial administrative and infrastructure spending as a result of its central geographic location within AEF. It also received a local legislature after the adoption of the 1946 constitution that established the Fourth Republic, during these reforms, Middle Congo became known as the Republic of the Congo in 1958 and published its first constitution in 1959. Antagonism between the pro-Opangault Mbochis and the pro-Youlou Balalis resulted in a series of riots in Brazzaville in February 1959, the Republic of the Congo received full independence from France on 15 August 1960. Fulbert Youlou ruled as the countrys first president until labour elements, the Congolese military took charge of the country briefly and installed a civilian provisional government headed by Alphonse Massamba-Débat. Resentment and bitterness between the Baali and the Mbochi peoples brought upheaval in Brazzaville, the French army arrived to quell the turmoil. New elections took place in April 1959, by the time the Congo became independent, Jacques Opangault, the former opponent of Youlou, agreed to serve under him. Youlou became the first President of the Republic of the Congo, since the political tension was so high in Pointe-Noire, Youlou moved the capital to Brazzaville
8.
Adamawa Region
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The Adamawa Region is a constituent region of the Republic of Cameroon. It borders the Centre and East regions to the south, the Northwest and West regions to the southwest, Nigeria to the west, the Central African Republic to the east, and this mountainous area forms the barrier between Cameroons forested south and savanna north. At almost 64,000 km² in land area, the Adamawa is the third largest of Cameroons ten regions, the land is rugged and sparsely populated, however, as most is devoted to the rearing of cattle. The Muslim Fulbe form the ethnic group, though Tikar, Gbaya. The Adamawas oldest populations were various Paleo-Sudanese peoples and these were mostly displaced or absorbed by invading Sudanese groups in the 8th or 9th century. These included the Mbum, Ndoro, Kutin, Laka-Mbere, Chamba, Doayo, Fali, Mundang, the Kanem-Bornu Empire of Lake Chad had relations with these tribes. They called the area Fumbina or Mabina, the Kanem-Bornu also introduced Islam to the region between 1349 and 1385 by way of the Islamic centre at Kano in present-day Nigeria. However, no more than a few rulers, nobles or merchants ever converted, many more tribes entered the territory from the region of Chad between the 14th and 17th centuries. These included the Semi-Bantu tribes, such as the Bamileke, Bamun, Kom, Nso, Tikar, Widikum, the Bantu came as well, examples being the Beti-Pahuin and Maka and Njem. Other groups who came were the Gbaya, from the present CAR, the Vute were regions first iron workers, and they founded the towns of Mbamnyang and Tibaré. The Semi-Bantu peoples gradually moved south before settling near the headwaters of the Mbam River sometime between the 17th and 19th centuries, the Bantu settled east of them, south of the Adamawa Plateau. One or all of these populations founded Banyo, Tibati, meanwhile, the Bantu and Semi-Bantu invasions drove the longer-established Sudanese peoples north. The Mbum, Ndoro, Kutin, and Laka-Mbere moved to the provinces northern reaches. This period marked the highest population for the Adamawa territory until modern times, however, one event had drastic consequences for the region, the arrival of the Fulbe. Early Fulbe settlers entered the Adamawa from present-day Nigeria or northern Cameroon as early as the 13th century and these settlers and nomads were never numerous, however, and they often held subservient status to other tribes. Over time, however, the stream of Fulbe immigrants allowed Fulbe communities to spring up in many areas. These early Fulbe converted to Islam sometime in the 17th century, beginning with the settled, or town, in 1804, Fulbe in the territory and beyond were growing disenchanted with submission to pagan tribes. They were also hungry for larger territories that they could use for cattle grazing, the Fulbe leader Usman dan Fodio responded to this sentiment and called a jihad
9.
Centre Region (Cameroon)
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The Centre Region occupies 69,000 km² of the central plains of the Republic of Cameroon. It is bordered to the north by the Adamawa Region, to the south by the South Region, to the east by the East Region and it is the second largest of Cameroons regions in land area. Major ethnic groups include the Bassa, Ewondo, and Vute, Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon, is at the heart of the Centre, drawing people from the rest of the country to live and work there. The Centres towns are also important industrial centres, especially for timber, agriculture is another important economic factor, especially with regard to the provinces most important cash crop, cocoa. Outside of the capital and the zones, most inhabitants are sustenance farmers. In 2008, the President of the Republic of Cameroon, President Paul Biya signed decrees abolishing Provinces, hence, all of the countrys ten provinces are now known as Regions. The Centres soil is composed of Precambrian deposits of metamorphic rocks, such as gneiss, mica, migmatites. Granite dominates from about 4˚ N and to the Adamawa border, faults along the border with the South Province have deposited metamorphic schists and quartzites, with some granite. Laterites are also common, caused by the decomposition of the crystalline rock, red ferrallitic soil dominates most of the province, including the forested zone and much of the savanna area. Though as deep as ten metres, this soil is leached by silica and percolating water, however, it is usable as a building material, and traditional houses in the province are made from red, sun-dried bricks of mud. Toward the northern border, this soil becomes lightly evolved with large deposits of raw minerals, the Sanaga is the most important river in the province, as its many falls and rapids make it an important source of hydroelectric power. It also supports varied agriculture, as it is prone to flooding during the rainy season and it is navigable from Nachtigal Falls to Edéa in the Littoral Province. Several smaller tributaries that drain the Centres Mbam division form the Sanaga, the Djérem flows in from the Adamawa and then through the far northeast of the area before entering the East Province to join the Lom. The Djérem, like the Sanaga, is subject to seasonal flooding. The Kim flows in from the Adamawa and through the portion of the Mbam division before merging with the Mbam River at the border with the West Province. The Mbam then empties into the Noun, the Noun, which flows in from the West Province, passes through the town of Bafia, and receives the flow of the Ndjim River north of Goura. The Noun then joins the Sanaga northeast of Monatélé, the Nyong is the only major river in the province that does not flow into the Sanaga. It rises in the East Province, passes through Mbalmayo, continues west, other Centre Province rivers flow through both equatorial and tropical climate zones where rainy seasons occur at different times, and so they never experience great fluctuations in water level
10.
South Region (Cameroon)
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The South Region is located in the southwestern and south-central portion of the Republic of Cameroon. The South occupies 47,720 km2 of territory, making it the fourth largest region in the nation, the major ethnic groups are the various Beti-Pahuin peoples, such as the Ewondo, Fang, and Bulu. The South Region has an amount of industry, its main commerce consisting of logging, timber, mining. Commercial agriculture is important in the South, the major cash crops being cocoa. Cattle rearing and fishing are significant economic components, as well, much of the population is made up of subsistence farmers. In 2008, the President of the Republic of Cameroon, President Paul Biya signed decrees abolishing Provinces, hence, all of the countrys ten provinces are now known as Regions. This was to be the end of South, the soil of the South is made up primarily of metamorphic rock, particularly gneiss. However, the land is riddled with faults around the border with the Centre Province that arc toward the border with Congo, the soil is primarily ferrallitic except for southwestern portions near the border with Equatorial Guinea and moving north to Ebolowa, where it is mixed. Due to high amounts of leaching, the Souths red earth is only marginally productive, several river systems drain the South Province. The northernmost of these is the Nyong, which part of the border with the Littoral. The coastal Ocean division is drained by two rivers, the Lokounje to the north and the Lobé to the south, the Ntem, or Campo, rises in the east of the region and flows along or just north of the southern border to the town of Campo. All of these rivers empty into the Atlantic Ocean, the Dja and Lobo Rivers flow through the easternmost division of the province, splitting south of Bengbis and encompassing the Dja Reserve. These two rivers form part of the Congo River basin, the South Province begins at sea level on the coast. The land slowly climbs throughout the Kribi-Douala basin, which averages 300–600 metres in altitude, rocky promontories on the coast and rolling, tree-covered hills inland characterise the land. The Ntem Massif near Ebolowa is the provinces highest point at 1400 metres, the climate of the South Province is Type A or Guinea-type climate. Humidity is high, and precipitation averages 1500–2000 mm per year in the interior, the coast from the north of Kribi south to Ebodjé gets as much as 4000 mm of rain per year. Temperatures are relatively high as well, averaging 24˚ C and 26˚ C from Kribi north along the coast, in lieu of traditional seasons, the Guinea-type climate affords alternating dry and wet periods. The year begins in a dry season that lasts from December to May
11.
Baka people (Cameroon and Gabon)
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They are sometimes called a subgroup of the Twa, but the two peoples are not closely related. Likewise, the name Baka is sometimes applied to other peoples of the area who, like the Baka and Twa, have been historically called pygmies. Baka people are hunter-gatherers, formerly called Pygmies, located in the Central African rain forest, having heights of 1.52 meters in average as well as a semi-nomadic lifestyles, the Baka are often discriminated against and marginalized from society. They reside in south-eastern Cameroon, northern Gabon and in the part of the Republic of Congo. In Congo, the Baka people are known as the Bayaka. Some Baka are also found in the Southwestern African Republic, although, the Baka people are located throughout the Central African rain forest, they are mainly concentrated in Cameroon as the Baka community of Cameroon represents roughly 30000 individuals. The Baka are a people, like other hunter-gatherers such as the Bagyeli. However, they are becoming a more sedentary people due to the intensive deforestation of the Central African Rainforest. Pressures from their taller and more dominant neighbors, the Bantu, have slowed the Baka people’s mobility. The Baka have successfully maintained their language, also called Baka, unlike their neighbors’ languages which have Bantu roots, Baka comes from a different language family, Ubangian. The oldest reference to “pygmies” dates back to 2276 B. C when Pharaoh Pepi II described seeing a dancing dwarf of the god from the land of spirits”, in the Iliad, Homer described the “pygmies” as dark skinned men in warfare with cranes. They were as tall as a “pygme” which meant that they measured the length of an elbow to a knuckle, or about one and a half feet long. About three centuries later, the Greek Herodotus reported that an explorer had seen, while travelling along the West African Coast, “dwarfish people, who used clothing made from the palm tree. Mark writes that Aristotle, in 340 B. C, was the first to relate, in his Historia Animalium, in 1890, the Welsh journalist Henry Stanley gave, according to anthropologist Paul Raffaele, the first modern account of the existence of “pygmies”. In his book, In Darkest Africa, Stanley described meeting a “pygmy” couple, Stanley writes of them, In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam, in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve. In 1906, a Congolese “pygmy” Ota Benga, was exhibited, among apes, according to the New York Times, Ota was 4 feet and 11 inches. This episode is extremely controversial today as a New York Times article was written about Ota more than 100 years later. According to the Times, black clergyman and superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, Reverend James H. Gordon, deemed the exhibit to be racist and demeaning
12.
Pygmy peoples
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A pygmy is a member of an ethnic group whose average height is unusually short, anthropologists define pygmy as a member of any group where adult men are on average less than 150 cm tall. A member of a slightly taller group is termed pygmoid, the term is most associated with peoples of Central Africa, such as the Aka, Efé and Mbuti. If the term pygmy is defined as a groups men having an average height below 1, in Greek mythology the word describes a tribe of dwarfs, first described by Homer, the ancient Greek poet, and reputed to live in India and south of modern-day Ethiopia. The term pygmy is considered pejorative. However, there is no term to replace it. Many prefer to be identified by their ethnicity, such as the Aka, Baka, Mbuti, the term Bayaka, the plural form of the Aka/Yaka, is sometimes used in the Central African Republic to refer to all local pygmies. Likewise, the Kongo word Bambenga is used in Congo, various theories have been proposed to explain the short stature of pygmies. Some studies suggest that it could be related to adaptation to low light levels in rainforests. Most Pygmy communities are partially hunter-gatherers, living partially but not exclusively on the products of their environment. They trade with neighbouring farmers to acquire cultivated foods and other material items and it is estimated that there are between 250,000 and 600,000 Pygmies living in the Congo rainforest. However, although Pygmies are thought of as forest people, the groups called Twa may live in swamp or desert. There are at least a dozen Pygmy groups, sometimes unrelated to each other and this view has no archaeological support, and ambiguous support from genetics and linguistics. Some 30% of Aka language is not Bantu, and a percentage of Baka language is not Ubangian. Much of pygmy vocabulary is botanical, dealing with collecting, or is otherwise specialized for the forest. It has been proposed that this is the remnant of an independent western Pygmy language, however, this type of vocabulary is subject to widespread borrowing among the Pygmies and neighboring peoples, and the Baaka language was only reconstructed to the 15th century. African pygmy populations are diverse and extremely divergent from all other human populations. Their uniparental markers represent the second-most ancient divergence right after those found in Khoisan peoples. Recent advances in genetics shed some light on the origins of the pygmy groups
13.
Industry
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Industry is the production of goods or related services within an economy. The major source of revenue of a group or company is the indicator of its relevant industry, when a large group has multiple sources of revenue generation, it is considered to be working in different industries. Manufacturing industry became a key sector of production and labour in European and North American countries during the Industrial Revolution, upsetting previous mercantile and this came through many successive rapid advances in technology, such as the production of steel and coal. Following the Industrial Revolution, possibly a third of the economic output are derived that is from manufacturing industries. Many developed countries and many developing/semi-developed countries depend significantly on manufacturing industry, Industries, the countries they reside in, and the economies of those countries are interlinked in a complex web of interdependence. Industries can be classified in a variety of ways, at the top level, industry is often classified according to the three-sector theory into sectors, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Some authors add quaternary or even quinary sectors, over time, the fraction of a societys industry within each sector changes. Below the economic sectors there are other more detailed industry classifications. These classification systems commonly divide industries according to functions and markets. Market-based classification systems such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark are used in finance, the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities is the most complete and systematic industrial classification made by the United Nations Statistics Division. ISIC is a classification of economic activities arranged so that entities can be classified according to the activity they carry out. The Industrial Revolution led to the development of factories for large-scale production, originally the factories were steam-powered, but later transitioned to electricity once an electrical grid was developed. The mechanized assembly line was introduced to parts in a repeatable fashion. This led to significant increases in efficiency, lowering the cost of the end process, later automation was increasingly used to replace human operators. This process has accelerated with the development of the computer and the robot, historically certain manufacturing industries have gone into a decline due to various economic factors, including the development of replacement technology or the loss of competitive advantage. An example of the former is the decline in manufacturing when the automobile was mass-produced. A recent trend has been the migration of prosperous, industrialized nations towards a post-industrial society and this is manifested by an increase in the service sector at the expense of manufacturing, and the development of an information-based economy, the so-called informational revolution. In a post-industrial society, manufacturing is relocated to more favourable locations through a process of off-shoring
14.
Logging
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Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. In forestry, the logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest. However, in usage, the term may be used to indicate a range of forestry or silviculture activities. Illegal logging refers to what in forestry might be called timber theft by the timber mafia and it can also refer to the harvesting, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. Clearcut logging is not necessarily considered a type of logging but a harvesting or silviculture method, in the forest products industry logging companies may be referred to as logging contractors, with the smaller, non-union crews referred to as gyppo loggers. Cutting trees with the highest value and leaving those with lower value and it is sometimes called selective logging, and confused with selection cutting, the practice of managing stands by harvesting a proportion of trees. Logging usually refers to above-ground forestry logging, submerged forests exist on land that has been flooded by damming to create reservoirs. Such trees are logged using underwater logging or by the lowering of the reservoirs in question, ootsa Lake and Williston Lake in British Columbia, Canada are notable examples where timber recovery has been needed to remove inundated forests. Clearcutting, or clearfelling, is a method of harvesting that removes all the standing trees in a selected area. Silviculture objectives for clearcutting, and a focus on forestry distinguish it from deforestation, other methods include shelterwood cutting, group selective, single selective, seed-tree cutting, patch cut, and retention cutting. The above operations can be carried out by different methods, of which the three are considered industrial methods, Trees are felled and then delimbed and topped at the stump. The log is then transported to the landing, where it is bucked and loaded on a truck and this leaves the slash in the cut area, where it must be further treated if wild land fires are of concern. This ability is due to the advancement in the style felling head that can be used, the trees are then delimbed, topped, and bucked at the landing. This method requires that slash be treated at the landing, in areas with access to cogeneration facilities, the slash can be chipped and used for the production of electricity or heat. Full-tree harvesting also refers to utilization of the tree including branches. Cut-to-length logging is the process of felling, delimbing, bucking, harvesters fell the tree, delimb, and buck it, and place the resulting logs in bunks to be brought to the landing by a skidder or forwarder. This method is available for trees up to 900 mm in diameter. Harvesters are employed effectively in level to steep terrain
15.
Lumber
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Lumber, or timber is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber may also refer to currently un-needed furniture, as in Lumber room, or an awkward gait, ultimately derived from the look of unfashionable, Lumber may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and it is available in many species, usually hardwoods, but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has other uses as well. It is classified more commonly as a softwood than as a hardwood, in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Britain, the term timber describes sawn wood products, such as floor boards. In the United States and Canada, generally timber describes standing or felled trees, before they are milled into boards, Timber there also describes sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. The latter includes the often partly finished lumber used in timber-frame construction, remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of previously milled lumber. Specifically, it is cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not usually processed by a primary sawmill, resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing, structural lumber may also be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock. Its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength, durability, logs are converted into timber by being sawn, hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with grain and large knots. There are various types of sawing, Plain sawn —A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log, quarter sawn and rift sawn—These terms have been confused in history but generally mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart—The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure, heart center—the center core of a log. Free of heart center —A side-cut timber without any pith, free of knots —No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4, the length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth
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Mining
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Mining is extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth usually from an orebody, lode, vein, seam, reef or placer deposits. These deposits form a mineralized package that is of economic interest to the miner, ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. Mining is required to obtain any material that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water. Mining of stones and metal has been a human activity since pre-historic times, Mining operations usually create a negative environmental impact, both during the mining activity and after the mine has closed. Hence, most of the nations have passed regulations to decrease the impact. Work safety has long been a concern as well, and modern practices have significantly improved safety in mines, levels of metals recycling are generally low. Unless future end-of-life recycling rates are stepped up, some rare metals may become unavailable for use in a variety of consumer products, due to the low recycling rates, some landfills now contain higher concentrations of metal than mines themselves. Since the beginning of civilization, people have used stone, ceramics and, later and these were used to make early tools and weapons, for example, high quality flint found in northern France, southern England and Poland was used to create flint tools. Flint mines have been found in areas where seams of the stone were followed underground by shafts. The mines at Grimes Graves and Krzemionki are especially famous, other hard rocks mined or collected for axes included the greenstone of the Langdale axe industry based in the English Lake District. The oldest-known mine on archaeological record is the Lion Cave in Swaziland, at this site Paleolithic humans mined hematite to make the red pigment ochre. Mines of an age in Hungary are believed to be sites where Neanderthals may have mined flint for weapons. Ancient Egyptians mined malachite at Maadi, at first, Egyptians used the bright green malachite stones for ornamentations and pottery. Later, between 2613 and 2494 BC, large building projects required expeditions abroad to the area of Wadi Maghareh in order to secure minerals and other resources not available in Egypt itself. Quarries for turquoise and copper were found at Wadi Hammamat, Tura, Aswan and various other Nubian sites on the Sinai Peninsula. Mining in Egypt occurred in the earliest dynasties, the gold mines of Nubia were among the largest and most extensive of any in Ancient Egypt. These mines are described by the Greek author Diodorus Siculus, who mentions fire-setting as one used to break down the hard rock holding the gold. One of the complexes is shown in one of the earliest known maps, the miners crushed the ore and ground it to a fine powder before washing the powder for the gold dust
17.
Subsistence agriculture
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Subsistence agriculture is self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families. The output is mostly for local requirements with little or no surplus trade, the typical subsistence farm has a range of crops and animals needed by the family to feed and clothe themselves during the year. Planting decisions are made principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, tony Waters writes, Subsistence peasants are people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace. Subsistence agriculture also emerged independently in Mexico where it was based on cultivation. Subsistence agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the world until recently, Subsistence horticulture may have developed independently in South East Asia and Papua New Guinea. Subsistence farming continues today in parts of rural Africa, and parts of Asia. Many of the items, as well as occasional services from physicians, veterinarians, blacksmiths. In Central and Eastern Europe subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture reappeared within the economy since about 1990. In this type of agriculture, a patch of forest land is cleared by a combination of felling and burning, and crops are grown. After 2-3 years the fertility of the soil begins to decline, the land is abandoned, while the land is left fallow the forest regrows in the cleared area and soil fertility and biomass is restored. After a decade or more, the farmer may return to the first piece of land, shifting cultivation is called Dredd in India, Ladang in Indonesia and Milpa in Central America and Mexico. However, such farmers often recognize the value of such compost and they also may irrigate part of such fields if they are near a source of water. In some areas of tropical Africa, at least, such smaller fields may be ones in which crops are grown on raised beds, thus farmers practicing slash and burn agriculture are often much more sophisticated agriculturalists than the term slash and burn subsistence farmers suggest. In this type of farming people migrate along with their animals from one place to another in search of fodder for their animals, generally they rear cattle, sheep, goats, camels and/or yaks for milk, skin, meat and wool. This way of life is common in parts of central and western Asia, India, east and south-west Africa, examples are the nomadic Bhotiyas and Gujjars of the Himalayas. In Intensive subsistence agriculture, the farmer cultivates a small plot of land using simple tools, climate, with large number of days with sunshine and fertile soils permits growing of more than one crop annually on the same plot. Farmers use their land holdings to produce enough, for their local consumption. It results in more food being produced per acre compared to other subsistence patterns
18.
Paul Biya
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Paul Biya is a Cameroonian politician who has been the President of Cameroon since 6 November 1982. He succeeded Ahidjo as President upon the latters resignation in 1982. Biya introduced political reforms within the context of a one-party system in the 1980s, under pressure, he accepted the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s. He narrowly won the 1992 presidential election with 40% of the plural, single-ballot vote and was re-elected by large margins in 1997,2004, opposition politicians and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each of these occasions. Biya has maintained Cameroons close relationship with France, Cameroons former colonial ruler, Paul Biya was born in the village of Mvomekaa in the South Region of Cameroon. He studied at lycée Louis-le-Grand, Sorbonne and Sciences Po Paris and he married Jeanne-Irène Biya, who did not have any children, though she adopted Franck Biya who was born from a relationship of Paul Biya with another woman. After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on 29 July 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya on 23 April 1994, as an official in post-independence 1960s Cameroon, Biya rose to prominence under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. He gained the rank of Minister in August 1968 and the rank of Minister of State in June 1970, following the creation of a unitary state in 1972, he became Prime Minister of Cameroon on 30 June 1975. In June 1979, a law designated the Prime Minister as the Presidents constitutional successor, Ahidjo unexpectedly announced his resignation on 4 November 1982, and Biya accordingly succeeded him as President of Cameroon on 6 November. Because Biya is a Christian from southern Cameroon, it was considered surprising that he was chosen by Ahidjo, after Biya became President, Ahidjo initially remained head of the ruling Cameroon National Union. Biya was brought into the CNU Central Committee and Political Bureau and was elected as the Vice-President of the CNU, on 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge of managing party affairs in Ahidjos absence. During the first months after Biyas succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued to support for Biya. Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of abuse of power, the two could not be reconciled despite efforts by several foreign leaders. After Ahidjo resigned as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at a session of the CNU party held on 14 September 1983. In November 1983, Biya announced that the presidential election would be held on 14 January 1984. He was the candidate in this election and won 99. 98% of the vote. Biya survived a coup attempt on 6 April 1984, following his decision on the previous day to disband the Republican Guard. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 71 to about 1,000, in 1985, the CNU was transformed into the Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, in Bamenda the political capital of the north west region and Biya was elected as its President
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Soil
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
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Iron
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Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series and it is by mass the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earths outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earths crust, like the other group 8 elements, ruthenium and osmium, iron exists in a wide range of oxidation states, −2 to +6, although +2 and +3 are the most common. Elemental iron occurs in meteoroids and other low oxygen environments, but is reactive to oxygen, fresh iron surfaces appear lustrous silvery-gray, but oxidize in normal air to give hydrated iron oxides, commonly known as rust. Unlike the metals that form passivating oxide layers, iron oxides occupy more volume than the metal and thus flake off, Iron metal has been used since ancient times, although copper alloys, which have lower melting temperatures, were used even earlier in human history. Pure iron is soft, but is unobtainable by smelting because it is significantly hardened and strengthened by impurities, in particular carbon. A certain proportion of carbon steel, which may be up to 1000 times harder than pure iron. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to pig iron, further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion to make steel. Steels and iron alloys formed with metals are by far the most common industrial metals because they have a great range of desirable properties. Iron chemical compounds have many uses, Iron oxide mixed with aluminium powder can be ignited to create a thermite reaction, used in welding and purifying ores. Iron forms binary compounds with the halogens and the chalcogens, among its organometallic compounds is ferrocene, the first sandwich compound discovered. Iron plays an important role in biology, forming complexes with oxygen in hemoglobin and myoglobin. Iron is also the metal at the site of many important redox enzymes dealing with cellular respiration and oxidation and reduction in plants. A human male of average height has about 4 grams of iron in his body and this iron is distributed throughout the body in hemoglobin, tissues, muscles, bone marrow, blood proteins, enzymes, ferritin, hemosiderin, and transport in plasma. The mechanical properties of iron and its alloys can be evaluated using a variety of tests, including the Brinell test, Rockwell test, the data on iron is so consistent that it is often used to calibrate measurements or to compare tests. An increase in the content will cause a significant increase in the hardness. Maximum hardness of 65 Rc is achieved with a 0. 6% carbon content, because of the softness of iron, it is much easier to work with than its heavier congeners ruthenium and osmium. Because of its significance for planetary cores, the properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures have also been studied extensively
21.
Metamorphic rock
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Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock types, in a process called metamorphism, which means change in form. The original rock is subjected to heat and pressure, causing profound physical and/or chemical change, the protolith may be a sedimentary, an igneous, or even an existing type of metamorphic rock. Metamorphic rocks make up a part of the Earths crust. They are classified by texture and by chemical and mineral assemblage and they may be formed simply by being deep beneath the Earths surface, subjected to high temperatures and the great pressure of the rock layers above it. They can form from tectonic processes such as continental collisions, which cause horizontal pressure and they are also formed when rock is heated up by the intrusion of hot molten rock called magma from the Earths interior. The study of rocks provides information about the temperatures and pressures that occur at great depths within the Earths crust. Some examples of rocks are gneiss, slate, marble, schist. Metamorphic minerals are those that only at the high temperatures and pressures associated with the process of metamorphism. These minerals, known as index minerals, include sillimanite, kyanite, staurolite, andalusite, and some garnet. Other minerals, such as olivines, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, feldspars, and quartz, may be found in metamorphic rocks and these minerals formed during the crystallization of igneous rocks. They are stable at temperatures and pressures and may remain chemically unchanged during the metamorphic process. However, all minerals are only within certain limits. The change in the size of the rock during the process of metamorphism is called recrystallization. Both high temperatures and pressures contribute to recrystallization, high temperatures allow the atoms and ions in solid crystals to migrate, thus reorganizing the crystals, while high pressures cause solution of the crystals within the rock at their point of contact. The layering within metamorphic rocks is called foliation, and it occurs when a rock is being shortened along one axis during recrystallization. This causes the platy or elongated crystals of minerals, such as mica and chlorite and this results in a banded, or foliated rock, with the bands showing the colors of the minerals that formed them. Textures are separated into foliated and non-foliated categories, foliated rock is a product of differential stress that deforms the rock in one plane, sometimes creating a plane of cleavage. For example, slate is a metamorphic rock, originating from shale
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Gneiss
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Gneiss is a common distributed type of rock formed by high-grade regional metamorphic processes from pre-existing formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rocks. The foliations are characterized by alternating darker and lighter colored bands, the word gneiss comes from the Middle High German verb gneist. It has occurred in English since at least 1757, gneissic rocks are usually medium- to coarse-foliated, they are largely recrystallized but do not carry large quantities of micas, chlorite or other platy minerals. Gneisses that are metamorphosed igneous rocks or their equivalent are termed granite gneisses, diorite gneisses, gneiss rocks may also be named after a characteristic component such as garnet gneiss, biotite gneiss, albite gneiss, etc. Orthogneiss designates a gneiss derived from a rock, and paragneiss is one from a sedimentary rock. Gneissose rocks have properties similar to gneiss, gneiss appears to be striped in bands, called gneissic banding. The banding is developed under high temperature and pressure conditions, the minerals are arranged into layers that appear as bands in cross section. The appearance of layers, called compositional banding, occurs because the layers, the darker bands have relatively more mafic minerals. The lighter bands contain relatively more felsic and these forces stretch out the rock like a plastic, and the original material is spread out into sheets. Another cause of banding is metamorphic differentiation, which separates different materials into different layers through chemical reactions, not all gneiss rocks have detectable banding. In kyanite gneiss, crystals of kyanite appear as random clumps in what is mainly a plagioclase matrix, henderson gneiss is found in North Carolina and South Carolina, US, east of the Brevard Shear Zone. It has deformed into two sequential forms, the second, more warped, form is associated with the Brevard Fault, and the first deformation results from displacement to the southwest. Most of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland have a formed from Lewisian gneiss. In addition to the Outer Hebrides, they form basement deposits on the Scottish mainland west of the Moine Thrust and on the islands of Coll and Tiree. These rocks are igneous in origin, mixed with metamorphosed marble, quartzite and mica schist with later intrusions of basaltic dikes. Gneisses of Archean and Proterozoic age occur in the Baltic Shield, in antiquity, gneisses were also utilized in architectural construction. They were used to erect the Sphinx of Taharqo in the Nile Valley, list of rock types Blatt, Harvey and Robert J. Tracy. Petrology, Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic, 2nd ed. Freeman, mcKirdy, Alan, Roger Crofts and John Gordon
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Schist
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Schist is a medium-grade metamorphic rock with medium to large, flat, sheet-like grains in a preferred orientation. It is defined by having more than 50% platy and elongated minerals, often finely interleaved with quartz and these lamellar minerals include micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a form called quartz schist is produced. Schist forms at a temperature and has larger grains than phyllite. Geological foliation with medium to large grained flakes in a preferred orientation is called schistosity. The names of various schists are derived from their mineral constituents, for example, schists rich in mica are called mica schists and include biotite or muscovite. Most schists are mica schists, but graphite and chlorite schists are also common, Schists are also named for their prominent or perhaps unusual mineral constituents, as in the case of garnet schist, tourmaline schist, and glaucophane schist. The individual mineral grains in schist, drawn out into flaky scales by heat and pressure, Schist is characteristically foliated, meaning that the individual mineral grains split off easily into flakes or slabs. Most schists are derived from clays and muds that have passed through a series of processes involving the production of shales, slates and phyllites as intermediate steps. Certain schists are derived from fine-grained igneous rocks such as basalts, before the mid-18th century, the terms slate, shale and schist were not sharply differentiated by those involved with mining. In the context of underground mining, shale was frequently referred to as slate well into the 20th century. During metamorphism, rocks which were originally sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic are converted into schists, if the composition of the rocks was originally similar, they may be very difficult to distinguish from one another if the metamorphism has been great. A quartz-porphyry, for example, and a fine grained feldspathic sandstone, usually, however, it is possible to distinguish between sedimentary and igneous schists and gneisses. If, for example, the district occupied by these rocks has traces of bedding, clastic structure, or unconformability. In other cases intrusive junctions, chilled edges, contact alteration or porphyritic structure may prove that in its original condition a metamorphic gneiss was an igneous rock. Such rocks as limestones, dolomites, quartzites and aluminous shales have very definite chemical characteristics which distinguish them even when completely recrystallized, the schists are classified principally according to the minerals they consist of and on their chemical composition. For example, many metamorphic limestones, marbles, and calc-schists, with crystalline dolomites, contain silicate minerals such as mica, tremolite, diopside, scapolite, quartz and they are derived from calcareous sediments of different degrees of purity. Another group is rich in quartz, with amounts of white and black mica, garnet, feldspar, zoisite
24.
Mica
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The mica group of sheet silicate minerals includes several closely related materials having nearly perfect basal cleavage. All are monoclinic, with a tendency towards pseudohexagonal crystals, and are similar in chemical composition, the nearly perfect cleavage, which is the most prominent characteristic of mica, is explained by the hexagonal sheet-like arrangement of its atoms. The word mica is derived from the Latin word mica, meaning a crumb, and probably influenced by micare, to glitter. Chemically, micas can be given the general formula X2Y4–6Z8O204 in which X is K, Na, or Ca or less commonly Ba, Rb, or Cs, Y is Al, Mg, or Fe or less commonly Mn, Cr, Ti, Li, etc. Z is chiefly Si or Al, but also may include Fe3+ or Ti, structurally, micas can be classed as dioctahedral and trioctahedral. If the X ion is K or Na, the mica is a common mica, whereas if the X ion is Ca, mica is widely distributed and occurs in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary regimes. Large crystals of mica used for various applications are typically mined from granitic pegmatites, until the 19th century, large crystals of mica were quite rare and expensive as a result of the limited supply in Europe. However, their price dramatically dropped when large reserves were found and mined in Africa, the largest documented single crystal of mica was found in Lacey Mine, Ontario, Canada, it measured 10 ×4.3 ×4.3 m and weighed about 330 tonnes. Similar-sized crystals were found in Karelia, Russia. The British Geological Survey reported that as of 2005, Koderma district in Jharkhand state in India had the largest deposits of mica in the world. China was the top producer of mica with almost a third of the share, closely followed by the US, South Korea. Large deposits of mica were mined in New England from the 19th century to the 1970s. Large mines existed in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine, scrap and flake mica is produced all over the world. In 2010, the producers were Russia, Finland, United States, South Korea, France. The total production was 350,000 t, although no data were available for China. Most sheet mica was produced in India and Russia, flake mica comes from several sources, the metamorphic rock called schist as a byproduct of processing feldspar and kaolin resources, from placer deposits, and from pegmatites. Sheet mica is considerably less abundant than flake and scrap mica, the most important sources of sheet mica are pegmatite deposits. Sheet mica prices vary with grade and can range from less than $1 per kilogram for low-quality mica to more than $2,000 per kilogram for the highest quality, the mica group represents 37 phyllosilicate minerals that have a layered or platy texture
25.
Migmatite
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Migmatite is a rock that is a mixture of metamorphic rock and igneous rock. They can also be known as diatexite, Migmatites form under extreme temperature conditions during prograde metamorphism, where partial melting occurs in pre-existing rocks. Migmatites are not crystallized from a molten material, and are not generally the result of solid-state reactions. Commonly, migmatites occur within extremely deformed rocks that represent the base of eroded mountain chains, if present, the mesosome, intermediate in color between a leucosome and melanosome, is mostly a more or less unmodified remnant of the original parent rock. The light-colored material has the appearance of having been mobilized or molten, a leucosome is the lightest-colored part of migmatite. The melanosome is the part, and occurs between two leucosomes or, if remnants of the more or less unmodified parent rock are still present. When present, the mesosome is intermediate in color between leucosome and melanosome, migmatite textures are the product of thermal softening of the metamorphic rocks. Schlieren textures are a common example of granite formation in migmatites. Ptygmatic folds are formed by highly plastic ductile deformation of the gneissic banding, ptygmatic folds can occur restricted to compositional zones of the migmatite, for instance in fine-grained shale protoliths versus in coarse granoblastic sandy protolith. When a rock undergoes partial melting some minerals will melt, while others remain solid, the neosome is composed of lightly-colored areas and dark areas. The leucosome lies in the center of the layers and is composed of quartz. The melanosome is composed of cordierite, hornblende and biotite and forms the wall zones of the neosome, for migmatised argillaceous rocks, the partial or fractional melting would first produce a volatile and incompatible-element enriched rich partial melt of granitic composition. Such granites derived from sedimentary rock protoliths would be termed S-type granite, are typically potassic, sometimes containing leucite, volcanic equivalents would be rhyolite and rhyodacite. Volcanic equivalents would be dacite, trachyte and trachydacite and it is difficult to melt mafic metamorphic rocks except in the lower mantle, so it is rare to see migmatitic textures in such rocks. However, eclogite and granulite are roughly equivalent mafic rocks, the Finnish petrologist Jakob Sederholm first used the term in 1907 for rocks within the Scandinavian craton in southern Finland. The term was derived from the Greek word μιγμα, migma meaning a mixture, the Canadian Mineralogist Special Publication 9. Mineralogical Association of Canada, Quebec, NRC Research Press, Ottawa, ISBN 978-0-660-19787-6 Recommendations by the IUGS Subcommission on the Systematics of Metamorphic Rocks,6. Migmatites and related rocks R. V. Dietrich - Migmatites North Cascades National Park, Orthogneisses and Migmatites Cooma Complex, SE Australia
26.
Granite
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Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be white, pink, or gray in color. The word granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the structure of such a holocrystalline rock. By definition, granite is a rock with at least 20% quartz. The term granitic means granite-like and is applied to granite and a group of igneous rocks with similar textures and slight variations in composition. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a texture is known as a granite porphyry. Granitoid is a general, descriptive field term for lighter-colored, coarse-grained igneous rocks, petrographic examination is required for identification of specific types of granitoids. The extrusive igneous rock equivalent of granite is rhyolite, Granite is nearly always massive, hard and tough, and therefore it has gained widespread use throughout human history, and more recently as a construction stone. The average density of granite is between 2.65 and 2.75 g/cm3, its compressive strength usually lies above 200 MPa, and its viscosity near STP is 3–6 •1019 Pa·s. The melting temperature of dry granite at ambient pressure is 1215–1260 °C, it is reduced in the presence of water. Granite has poor primary permeability, but strong secondary permeability, true granite according to modern petrologic convention contains both plagioclase and alkali feldspars. When a granitoid is devoid or nearly devoid of plagioclase, the rock is referred to as alkali feldspar granite, when a granitoid contains less than 10% orthoclase, it is called tonalite, pyroxene and amphibole are common in tonalite. A granite containing both muscovite and biotite micas is called a binary or two-mica granite, two-mica granites are typically high in potassium and low in plagioclase, and are usually S-type granites or A-type granites. A worldwide average of the composition of granite, by weight percent, based on 2485 analyses. Much of it was intruded during the Precambrian age, it is the most abundant basement rock that underlies the relatively thin veneer of the continents. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors and rounded massifs, granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite often occurs as small, less than 100 km² stock masses
27.
Nyong River
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The Nyong is a river in Cameroon. The river flows approximately 640 kilometres to empty into the Gulf of Guinea, the Nyong originates 40 km east of Abong Mbang, where the northern rain forest feeds it. The rivers length is almost parallel to the reaches of the Sanaga River. Its mouth is in Petit Batanga,60 km south-southwest of Edéa, in two places, Mbalmayo and Déhané, the river has huge rapids. The first 300 km of the river, between Abong Mbang and Mbalmayo, are navigable for boats from April to November. The town of Mbalmayo, which has a railhead, lies on the bank of this river. The towns of Akonolinga and Abong-Mbang also lie on it
28.
Dja River
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The Dja River is a stream in west-central Africa. It forms part of Cameroon–Republic of Congo border and has a course of roughly 720 kilometres, rising southeast of the southeastern Cameroon town of Abong-Mbang, the Dja Faunal Reserve, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, lies along the banks of its upper course. It protects one of the largest tracts of tropical rainforest in Africa, following its course in the reserve, the Dja flows approximately southeast past Moloundou, below which small boats can navigate. At Ouesso, in the Republic of Congo, it empties into the Sangha River, every year, poachers travel up the Dja for central Nki National Park, where elephant ivory is abundant. Strong currents on the river are a deterrent for half the year, but after that, according to freelance journalist Jemini Pandya, the fauna is easy to prey upon
29.
Boumba River
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Boumba River is a river in the South Cameroon Plateau of southeast Cameroon. The river is a tributary of the Dja River and is adjacent to the Boumba Bek National Park, the river rises in the Abong-Mbang region. The Dja, Boumba, and Sangha River have carved out valleys in the South Cameroon Plateau, the forested area around the river is a diverse ecosystem. Logging is an industry in the area, the remote region is home to the Baka. Communities in the area engage in farming, hunting, fishing and gathering. The area is also used illegal commercial bushmeat hunters and traders, parrots and ivory are also smuggled through the area. The area is believed to be an origin of the AIDS virus. The Boumba is almost 47 km long, the legendary Mokèlé-mbèmbé was reportedly sighted on the river in 2000. List of rivers of Cameroon Boumba-et-Ngoko, a department of East Province in Cameroon
30.
Sangha River
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The Sangha River, a tributary of the Congo River, is located in Central Africa. The Sangha River is formed at the confluence of the Mambéré River, the Sangha flows along the border of Cameroon, with the Central African Republic, and then the Republic of Congo. It joins the Congo River at 1°12′45″S 16°49′40″E The tributaries of the Sangha River include the Ngoko River and its river mouth and confluence with the Sangha is at Ouésso, in the Republic of the Congo. The Sangha River is a Freshwater ecoregion of Africa and its wetlands in Cameroon are a protected Ramsar site. Water Resources eAtlas. org, Map of the Sangha River basin
31.
Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
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South Cameroon Plateau
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The South Cameroon Plateau or Southern Cameroon Plateau is the dominant geographical feature of Cameroon. The plateau lies south of the Adamawa Plateau and southeast of the Cameroon Range and it slopes south and west until giving way to the Cameroon coastal plain in the southwest and the Congo River basin in the southeast. The plateau is characterised by hills and valleys in the southwest, isolated massifs occur, especially in the southwest. Metamorphic rocks make up the plains basement, the soils are ferrallitic and lateritic, with colouration ranging from red or brown in the interior to yellow on the coast. The soils are subjected to silica leeching, so they are not productive without fertiliser, the plateau experiences four major seasons, two rainy, and two dry. Rainfall is high, especially along the coast, the average temperature changes little from 25°C. Rivers in the drain into the Atlantic Ocean and the Congo River basin. South of the Sanaga, rivers flow steadily year-round, but the Sanaga and rivers north have a complex regime characterised by high- and low-water periods upstream, the predominant vegetation is rainforest, especially to the plateaus south. To the north, forests give way to savanna, the South Cameroon Plateau lies between 2 and 6° N and 10 and 16° E. It covers about 225,100 km², more than half of Cameroons total area, the plateau is characterised by sloping terrain and gently rolling hills. The altitude varies from 250 to 800 m and averages 600 or 650 m, the Western High Plateau lies northwest of the plateau and separates it from the interior African plain. The Adamawa Plateau lies to the plateaus north, from an altitude between 800 and 900 m. there, the plateau slowly slopes south and west from the region of Bedzare and Meiganga. To the southwest, large inselbergs and tall hills separated by deep gullies predominate, the plateau gives way to the Cameroon coastal plain in escarpments. This topography has resulted in the creation of the Lobé Falls near Kribi, some of the plateaus highest points are in this region, such as Mbam Minkom near Yaoundé, and Ntem massif near Ebolowa. To the southeast, the transition to the Congo basin takes place on a gently sloping peneplain, the hills of the eastern portion are gentler than those of the west. These hills are known as half-oranges and can easily be seen in the area of Batouri, the lowest point of the plateau is the Sangha River valley in the southeast. Metamorphic rocks such as gneiss, mica, migmatites, and schists make up the South Cameroon Plateaus basement, the plateaus western portions are made up primarily of gneiss. These rocks are millions of years old, the plateaus soils are predominantly ferrallitic and lateritic, the result of decomposing crystalline and sedimentary stone
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Plain
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In geography, a plain is a flat, sweeping landmass that generally does not change much in elevation. Plains occur as lowlands along the bottoms of valleys or on the doorsteps of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands. In a valley, a plain is enclosed on two sides but in other cases a plain may be delineated by a complete or partial ring of hills, where a geological region contains more than one plain, they may be connected by a pass. Coastal plains would mostly rise from sea level until they run into elevated features such as mountains or plateaus, plains are one of the major landforms on earth, where they are present on all continents, and would cover more than one-third of the world’s land area. Plains may have formed from flowing lava, deposited by water, ice, wind, or formed by erosion by these agents from hills. Plains would generally be under the grassland, steppe, savannah or tundra biomes, in a few instances, deserts and rainforests can also be plains. Structural plains are relatively undisturbed horizontal surfaces of the Earth and they are structurally depressed areas of the world that make up some of the most extensive natural lowlands on the Earths surface. Erosional plains have been leveled by various agents of such as running water, rivers, wind and glacier which wear out the rugged surface. Plain resulting from the action of these agents of denudation are called peneplains while plains formed from wind action are called pediplains, depositional plains formed by the deposition of materials brought by various agents of transportation such as rivers, wind, waves, and glaciers. Their fertility and economic relevance depend greatly on the types of sediments that are laid down, flood plain, adjacent to a stream, river, lake or wetland that experiences occasional or periodic flooding. Scroll plain, a plain through which a river meanders with a low gradient. Lacustrine plain, a plain that originally formed in a lacustrine environment, lava plain, formed by sheets of flowing lava. Glacial plains, formed by the movement of glaciers under the force of gravity, Sandur, sandar consist mainly of stratified gravel and sand. Till plain, a plain of glacial till that forms when a sheet of ice becomes detached from the body of a glacier. Till plains are composed of unsorted material of all sizes, abyssal plain, a flat or very gently sloping area of the deep ocean basin. Planitia, the Latin word for plain, is used in the naming of plains on extraterrestrial objects, such as Hellas Planitia on Mars or Sedna Planitia on Venus
34.
Season
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A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight. Seasons result from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. During May, June, and July, the northern hemisphere is exposed to direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the sun. The same is true of the hemisphere in November, December. It is the tilt of the Earth that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the months which increases the solar flux. However, due to lag, June, July, and August are the hottest months in the northern hemisphere and December, January. In temperate and subpolar regions, four calendar-based seasons are recognized, spring, summer, autumn or fall. Ecologists often use a model for temperate climate regions, prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal. Many tropical regions have two seasons, the rainy, wet, or monsoon season and the dry season, some have a third cool, mild, or harmattan season. Seasons often held special significance for agrarian societies, whose lives revolved around planting and harvest times, in some parts of the world, some other seasons capture the timing of important ecological events such as hurricane season, tornado season, and wildfire season. The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. The seasons result from the Earths axis of rotation being tilted with respect to its orbital plane by an angle of approximately 23.5 degrees, regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is directly exposed to the rays of the Sun than the other. For approximately half of the year, the northern hemisphere tips toward the Sun, for the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the southern hemisphere instead of the northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the northern and southern hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the northern hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, the effect of axial tilt is observable as the change in day length and altitude of the Sun at noon during a year. Between this effect and the daylight hours, the axial tilt of the Earth accounts for most of the seasonal variation in climate in both hemispheres
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Rainforest
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The monsoon trough, alternatively known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating the climatic conditions necessary for the Earths tropical rainforests. Around 40% to 75% of all species are indigenous to the rainforests. It has been estimated there may be many millions of species of plants, insects. Tropical rainforests have been called the jewels of the Earth and the worlds largest pharmacy, the undergrowth in some areas of a rainforest can be restricted by poor penetration of sunlight to ground level. If the leaf canopy is destroyed or thinned, the ground beneath is soon colonized by a dense, tangled growth of vines, shrubs and small trees, the term jungle is also sometimes applied to tropical rainforests generally. Tropical rainforests are characterized by a warm and wet climate with no dry season. Mean monthly temperatures exceed 18 °C during all months of the year, average annual rainfall is no less than 168 cm and can exceed 1,000 cm although it typically lies between 175 cm and 200 cm. Many of the tropical forests are associated with the location of the monsoon trough. The broader category of tropical moist forests are located in the zone between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Tropical forests have been called the Earths lungs, although it is now known that rainforests contribute little net oxygen addition to the atmosphere through photosynthesis, Tropical forests cover a large part of the globe, but temperate rainforests only occur in few regions around the world. Temperate rainforests are rainforests in temperate regions and they occur in North America, in Europe, in East Asia, in South America and also in Australia and New Zealand. A tropical rainforest typically has a number of layers, each with different plants, examples include the emergent, canopy, understorey and forest floor layers. They need to be able to withstand the hot temperatures and strong winds that occur above the canopy in some areas, eagles, butterflies, bats and certain monkeys inhabit this layer. The canopy layer contains the majority of the largest trees, typically 30 metres to 45 metres tall, the densest areas of biodiversity are found in the forest canopy, a more or less continuous cover of foliage formed by adjacent treetops. The canopy, by some estimates, is home to 50 percent of all plant species, epiphytic plants attach to trunks and branches, and obtain water and minerals from rain and debris that collects on the supporting plants. The fauna is similar to found in the emergent layer. A quarter of all species are believed to exist in the rainforest canopy. Scientists have long suspected the richness of the canopy as a habitat, true exploration of this habitat only began in the 1980s, when scientists developed methods to reach the canopy, such as firing ropes into the trees using crossbows
36.
Ebony
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Ebony is a dense black hardwood, most commonly yielded by several different species in the genus Diospyros, which also contains the persimmons. Ebony is dense enough to sink in water and it is finely-textured and has a very smooth finish when polished, making it valuable as an ornamental wood. The word ebony derives from the Ancient Egyptian hbny, via the Ancient Greek ἔβενος, by way of Latin, mauritius ebony, Diospyros tesselaria, was largely exploited by the Dutch in the 17th century. Some species in the genus Diospyros yield an ebony with similar physical properties, ebony has a long history of use, with carved pieces having been found in Ancient Egyptian tombs. By the end of the 16th century, fine cabinets for the trade were made of ebony in Antwerp. Within a short time, such cabinets were also being made in Paris, where their makers became known as ébénistes, many plectra, or guitar picks, are made from this black wood. Traditionally, the pieces in chess sets were made from ebony. Modern East Midlands-style lace-making bobbins, also being small, are made of ebony. Due to its strength, many handgun grips and rifle fore-end tips are made of ebony, as a result of unsustainable harvesting, many species yielding ebony are now considered threatened. Africa in particular has had most of its indigenous ebony cut down illegally, in some countries like Sri Lanka, ebony is a protected species and selling of ebony logs is illegal, due to the woods rarity and high price. In 2012, the Gibson Guitar company was raided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for violations of the Lacey Act of 1900, pete Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the equivalent of Africas blood diamonds. Ebony, when ground into fine dust, results in a flammable, due to the high toxicity of ebony in powdered form, its use in construction work requires government certification in several South Asian countries. African Blackwood Calamander wood Ebonite Ebonol Illegal logging in Madagascar Red List—For recommendations found under the IUCN
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Iroko
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Iroko is a large hardwood tree from the west coast of tropical Africa that can live up to 500 years. The tree is known to the Yoruba as ìrókò, logo or loko and is believed to have supernatural properties, Iroko is known to the Igbo people as oji wood. It is one of the woods sometimes referred to as African teak, the wood colour is initially yellow but darkens to a richer reddish brown over time. It is yielded mostly by Milicia excelsa, in much of the literature on this timber the names of the trees that yields it are given as Chlorophora excelsa and Chlorophora regia. The tree is feared in some cultures where it originates and hence is shunned or revered with offerings, Yoruba people believe that the tree is inhabited by a spirit, and anybody who sees the Iroko-man face to face becomes insane and speedily dies. They also claim that the spirit of the Iroko can be heard in houses which use Iroko wood, in Nigeria the iroko wood is of much lower quality due to soil conditions as well as root-rot. Some Westerners refer to the wood as poor mans teak, the wood is used for a variety of purposes including boat-building, domestic flooring and furniture. From the late 1990s, it was used as part of the txalaparta, Iroko is one of the traditional djembe woods. Iroko wood was the chosen for the pews in the Our Lady of Peace Basilica. In the UK there are no restrictions on the machining of this timber. The only reported adverse effects known to be caused by the dust from Iroko are asthma, dermatitis and nettle rash
38.
Mahogany
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West Indian or Cuban mahogany, native to southern Florida and the Caribbean, formerly dominant in the mahogany trade, but not in widespread commercial use since World War II. Swietenia humilis, a small and often twisted mahogany tree limited to dry forests in Pacific Central America that is of limited commercial utility. Some botanists believe that S. humilis is a variant of S. macrophylla. While the three Swietenia species are classified officially as genuine mahogany, other Meliaceae species with timber uses are classified as true mahogany, some may or may not have the word mahogany in their trade or common name. Some members of the genus Shorea of the family Dipterocarpaceae are also sold as Philippine mahogany. Mahogany is an important lumber prized for its beauty, durability, and color. The leading importer of mahogany is the United States, followed by Britain, while the largest exporter today is Peru and it was estimated that in 2000, some 57,000 mahogany trees were harvested to supply the U. S. furniture trade alone. Mahogany is the tree of the Dominican Republic and Belize. A mahogany tree with two woodcutters bearing an axe and a paddle also appears on the Belizean national coat of arms, under the motto, Sub umbra floreo. The natural distribution of species within the Americas is geographically distinct. In the 20th century various botanists attempted to further define S. macrophylla in South America as a new species, such as S. candollei Pittier, but many authorities consider these spurious. According to Record and Hess, all of the mahogany of continental North and South America can be considered as one botanical species, the name mahogany was initially associated only with those islands in the West Indies under British control. When transported to Jamaica as slaves, they gave the name to the similar trees they saw there. Though this interpretation has been disputed, no one has suggested a more plausible origin, the indigenous Arawak name for the tree is not known. In 1671 the word appeared in print for the first time. Among botanists and naturalists, however, the tree was considered a type of cedar, the following year it was assigned to a new genus by Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, and named Swietenia mahagoni. Until the 19th century all of the mahogany was regarded as one species, although varying in quality and character according to soil and climate. In 1836 the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini identified a species while working on specimens collected on the Pacific coast of Mexico
39.
Sapele
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Entandrophragma cylindricum, commonly known as the sapele or sapelli, is a large tree native to tropical Africa. The tree is known as aboudikro. There are protected populations and felling restrictions in place in various countries, Entandrophragma cylindricum grows to a height of up to 45 m. The leaves are deciduous in the dry season, alternately arranged, pinnate, with 5-9 pairs of leaflets, the flowers are produced in loose inflorescences when the tree is leafless, each flower about 5 mm diameter, with five yellowish petals. The fruit is a capsule about 10 cm long and 4 cm broad. The commercially important wood is reminiscent of mahogany, a member of the family, with a distinctive figure. It has a density of 640 kg per cubic metre, demand for sapele, often marketed as African mahogany, has increased sharply as a mahogany substitute in recent years due to genuine mahogany becoming a CITES Appendix II listed species. Among its more exotic uses is that in musical instruments and it is used for the back and sides of acoustic guitar bodies, as well as the tops of electric guitar bodies. It is also used in manufacturing the neck piece of ukuleles and 26-, in the late 90s, it started to be used as a board for Basque percussion instruments txalaparta. Sapele internal doors were popular in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s. The American car maker Cadillac uses sapele wood for interior trim on its vehicles. The shower seat manufacturer Hudson Reed also use sapele wood for certain shower seats, boutique headphone manufacture Forte Audio uses Sapele Wood in the construction of their Forte Clairity line of hi-end headphones. American specialty furniture maker Geek Chic uses sapele wood for a variety of furniture pieces they offer, including gaming tables. Due to its strength and attractive reddish-brown colouring, sapele wood is used in staircase construction. With its close texture and interlocking grain, sapele is both harder and heavier than mahogany, making it a durable, cost-effective alternative, specialist UK manufacturer Pear Stairs produces a range of custom-made sapele staircases. Media related to Entandrophragma cylindricum at Wikimedia Commons
