1.
The Blue Marble
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The Blue Marble is an image of the Earth made on December 7,1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 45,000 kilometers. It is one of the most reproduced images in human history, the image with the official NASA designation AS17-148-22727 reproduces the view of the Earth as seen by the Apollo crew traveling toward the Moon. The translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea to Antarctica and this was the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap, despite the Southern Hemisphere being heavily covered in clouds. In addition to the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar, almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible, the Asian mainland is on the horizon. The photograph, taken by astronauts on December 7,1972, EST, is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. The image is one of the few to show an almost fully illuminated Earth disk, to the astronauts, the slightly gibbous Earth had the appearance and size of a glass marble, hence the name. The time of Apollo 17s launch,12,33 a. m, EST, meant that Africa was in daylight during the early hours of the spacecrafts flight. With the December solstice approaching, Antarctica was also illuminated, the 1972 Tamil Nadu cyclone can be seen in the top right of the image. This storm had brought flooding and high winds to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on December 5, the photographs official NASA designation is AS17-148-22727. NASA photograph AS17-148-22726, taken just before and nearly identical to 22727, is used as a full-Earth image. The photographer used a 70-millimeter Hasselblad camera with an 80-millimeter Zeiss lens, Apollo 17 was the last manned lunar mission. No human since has been far enough from Earth to photograph an image such as The Blue Marble. The Blue Marble was not the first clear image taken of a face of the Earth. NASA archivist Mike Gentry has speculated that The Blue Marble is among the most widely distributed images in human history, there has also been a childrens television program called Big Blue Marble. The data also included a similarly manually assembled cloud-cover and night-lights image sets, a subsequent release was made in 2005, named Blue Marble Next Generation. A number of viewers for these data have also been released. On 25 January 2012, NASA released an image of the western hemisphere of Earth entitled Blue Marble 2012. The picture logged over 3.1 million views on the Flickr image hosting website within the first week of release
2.
Environment (biophysical)
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The biophysical environment can vary in scale from microscopic to global in extent. It can also be subdivided according to its attributes, examples include the marine environment, the atmospheric environment and the terrestrial environment. The number of environments is countless, given that each living organism has its own environment. The term environment is used as a short form for the biophysical environment. The expression the environment often refers to a global environment in relation to humanity. All life that has survived must have adapted to conditions of its environment, temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc. all influence any species, within any environment. However life in turn modifies, in forms, its conditions. Some long term modifications along the history of our planet have been significant and this process consisted in the breakdown of carbon dioxide by anaerobic microorganisms that used the carbon in their metabolism and released the oxygen to the atmosphere. This led to the existence of oxygen-based plant and animal life, other interactions are more immediate and simple, such as the smoothing effect that forests have on the temperature cycle, compared to neighboring unforested areas. Environmental science is the study of the interactions within the biophysical environment, part of this scientific discipline is the investigation of the effect of human activity on the environment. Ecology, a sub-discipline of biology and a part of environmental sciences, is mistaken as a study of human induced effects on the environment. Environmental studies is an academic discipline that is the systematic study of interaction of humans with their environment. It is a field of study that includes the natural environment, built environments. Environmentalism is a social and philosophical movement that, in a large part, seeks to minimise. The issues of concern for environmentalists usually relate to the environment with the more important ones being climate change, species extinction, pollution. One of the studies related include employing Geographic Information Science to study the biophysical environment, biophysics subject to the context List of conservation topics List of environmental issues Lists of environmental topics Miller, G. Tyler. McCallum, Malcolm L. Gwendolynn W. Bury, google search patterns suggest declining interest in the environment
3.
Human impact on the environment
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Human impact on the environment or anthropogenic impact on the environment includes impacts on biophysical environments, biodiversity, and other resources. The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity, the atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen introduced the term Anthropocene in the mid-1970s. The term is used in the context of pollution emissions that are produced as a result of human activities but applies broadly to all major human impacts on the environment. Environmental impacts caused by the application of technology are often perceived as unavoidable for several reasons, third, according to the second law of thermodynamics, order can be increased within a system only by increasing disorder or entropy outside the system. Thus, technologies can create “order” in the economy only at the expense of increasing “disorder” in the environment. According to a number of studies, increased entropy is likely to be correlated to environmental impacts. The environmental impact of agriculture based on the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world. Ultimately, the impact depends on the production practices of the system used by farmers. The connection between emissions into the environment and the system is indirect, as it also depends on other climate variables such as rainfall. An example of a means-based indicator would be the quality of groundwater, an indicator reflecting the loss of nitrate to groundwater would be effect-based. The environmental impact of agriculture involves a variety of factors from the soil, to water, the air, animal and soil diversity, plants, and the food itself. Some of the issues that are related to agriculture are climate change, deforestation, genetic engineering, irrigation problems, pollutants, soil degradation. These conservation issues are part of conservation, and are addressed in fisheries science programs. There is a gap between how many fish are available to be caught and humanity’s desire to catch them, a problem that gets worse as the world population grows. The journal Science published a study in November 2006, which predicted that, at prevailing trends. Many countries, such as Tonga, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, the impacts stem from the changed hydrological conditions owing to the installation and operation of the scheme. An irrigation scheme draws water from the river and distributes it over the irrigated area. These may be called direct effects, effects on soil and water quality are indirect and complex, and subsequent impacts on natural, ecological and socio-economic conditions are intricate
4.
Global warming
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Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earths climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of evidence show that the climate system is warming. The largest human influence has been emission of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane. These findings have been recognized by the science academies of the major industrialized nations and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region around the globe, anticipated effects include warming global temperature, rising sea levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the retreat of glaciers, permafrost. Effects significant to humans include the threat to security from decreasing crop yields. Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Public reactions to global warming and concern about its effects are also increasing, a global 2015 Pew Research Center report showed a median of 54% consider it a very serious problem. There are significant regional differences, with Americans and Chinese among the least concerned, the global average surface temperature shows a warming of 0.85 °C in the period 1880 to 2012, based on multiple independently produced datasets. Earths average surface temperature rose by 0. 74±0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005, the rate of warming almost doubled for the last half of that period. The rest has melted ice and warmed the continents and atmosphere, the average temperature of the lower troposphere has increased between 0.12 and 0.135 °C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. The warming that is evident in the temperature record is consistent with a wide range of observations. The probability that these changes could have occurred by chance is virtually zero, temperature changes vary over the globe. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures, ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean loses more heat by evaporation. Since the beginning of industrialisation the temperature difference between the hemispheres has increased due to melting of sea ice and snow in the North. Average arctic temperatures have been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past 100 years, the thermal inertia of the oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that climate can take centuries or longer to adjust to changes in forcing. Some of this warming will be driven by past natural forcings which are still seeking equilibrium in the climate system
5.
Environmentalism
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While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. ‘Ecologism’ is more used in continental European languages while ‘environmentalism’ is more commonly used in English. For this reason, concepts such as an ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology. The exact measures and outcomes of this balance is controversial and there are different ways for environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are represented by the color green. Environmentalism denotes a movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism. The word was first coined in 1922, an environmentalist is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual behavior. In various ways, environmentalists and environmental organizations seek to give the world a stronger voice in human affairs. In general terms, environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources, in its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered around ecology, health, and human rights. A concern for environmental protection has recurred in diverse forms, in different parts of the world, for example, in Europe, King Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke had become a problem. The fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow. Earlier in the Middle East, the Caliph Abu Bakr in the 630s commanded his army to Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, at the advent of steam and electricity the muse of history holds her nose and shuts her eyes. The origins of the movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. An Alkali inspector and four sub-inspectors were appointed to curb this pollution, typically the highest priority went to water and air pollution. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 making it one of the oldest environmental NGOs and it was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke. It also provided for sanctions against factories that emitted large amounts of black smoke, financial incentives were offered to householders to replace open coal fires with alternatives, or for those who preferred, to burn coke instead which produces minimal smoke. Smoke control areas were introduced in some towns and cities in which only smokeless fuels could be burnt, the act formed an important impetus to modern environmentalism, and caused a rethinking of the dangers of environmental degradation to peoples quality of life
6.
Environmental education
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Environmental education refers to organized efforts to teach how natural environments function, and particularly, how human beings can manage behavior and ecosystems to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, the term often implies education within the school system, from primary to post-secondary. However, it includes all efforts to educate the public and other audiences, including print materials, websites, media campaigns. Engaging with citizens of all demographics to,2, think critically, ethically, and creatively when evaluating environmental issues,3. Make educated judgments about those issues,4. Develop skills and a commitment to act independently and collectively to sustain and enhance the environment, to enhance their appreciation of the environment, resulting in positive environmental behavioural change. Environmental education has crossover with other disciplines. These fields of education complement environmental education yet have unique philosophies, specifically, CCE needs to help learners develop knowledge, skills and values and action to engage and learn about the causes, impact and management of climate change. Science Education focuses primarily on teaching knowledge and skills, to develop innovative thought in society, outdoor Education relies on the assumption that learning experiences outdoors in ‘nature’ foster an appreciation of nature, resulting in pro-environmental awareness and action. Outdoor education means learning in and for the outdoors, garden-based learning is an instructional strategy that utilizes the garden as a teaching tool. Inquiry-based Science is an open style of teaching in which students follow scientific steps in a similar manner as scientists to study some problem. Often used in biological and environmental settings, while each of these educational fields has their own objectives, there are points where they overlap with the intentions and philosophy of environmental education. Several decades later, Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born naturalist, echoed Rousseau’s philosophy as he encouraged students to “Study nature, not books. ”These two influential scholars helped lay the foundation for an environmental education program, known as nature study. The nature study movement used fables and moral lessons to help develop an appreciation of nature. A new type of education, Conservation Education, emerged as a result of the Great Depression. Conservation Education dealt with the world in a drastically different way from Nature Study because it focused on rigorous scientific training rather than natural history. Conservation Education was a scientific management and planning tool that helped solve social, economic. The modern environmental movement, which gained significant momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stems from Nature Study
7.
Ecological humanities
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The ecological humanities is an interdisciplinary area of research, drawing on the many environmental sub-disciplines that have emerged in the humanities over the past several decades. This world view in turn shares a connection with Lotkas physiological philosophy. This broadened conception of justice involves enlarged or ecological thinking, which presupposes the enhancement of knowledge sharing within fields of plural and this kind of knowledge sharing is called transdisciplinarity. It has links with the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and the works of Italo Calvino. As Calvino put it, enlarge the sphere of what we can imagine and it also has connections with Leibnizs Enlightenment project where, the sciences are simultaneously abridged while also being enlarged. The situation is complicated however by the recognition of the fact that connections are both non-linear and linear, the ecological humanities therefore, require both linear and non-linear modes of language through which reasoning about justice can be done. Thus there is a motivation to find linguistic modes which can express both linear and non-linear connectivities. From the second axiom the notions of “ecological embodiment/ embeddedness” and “habitat” have emerged from Political Theory with a fundamental connectivity to rights, democracy, the third axiom comes from the strong self-reflective tradition of all humanities scholarship and it encourages ecological humanities to investigate its own theoretical basis. Some theorists have suggested that the inclusion of non-humans in the consideration of justice links ecocentric philosophy with political economics and this is because the theorising of justice is a central activity of political economic philosophy. e. The question of language can best depict the linear and non-linear causal connections of ecological systems appears to have been taken up by the school of ecology known as systems ecology. To depict the linear and non-linear internal relatedness of ecosystems where the laws of thermodynamics hold significant consequences, odum predicated the Energy Systems Language on the principles of ecological energetics. In ecological energetics, just as in ecological humanities, the bond between connections is considered an ontic category. Ecocentric Political theory Systems ecology Ecological economics Biophysical economics Value theory Principles of energetics Biosemiotics Ecosemiotics ^ S. Kingsland, ^ L. Courtart, translated by D. Rutherford, R. T. Monroe. CS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Ecological Humanities website Environmental Humanities What is the Environmental Humanities, nye, L. Rugg, J. Fleming, and R. Emmett, Background Paper, The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities. Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, R. Hutchings Understanding of and Vision for the Environmental Humanities, Environmental Humanities, vol
8.
Environmental law
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The core environmental law regimes address environmental pollution. Other areas, such as environmental impact assessment, may not fit neatly into either category, early examples of legal enactments designed to consciously preserve the environment, for its own sake or human enjoyment, are found throughout history. In the common law, the protection was found in the law of nuisance. Thus smells emanating from pig stys, strict liability against dumping rubbish, private enforcement, however, was limited and found to be woefully inadequate to deal with major environmental threats, particularly threats to common resources. During the Great Stink of 1858, the dumping of sewerage into the River Thames began to smell so ghastly in the heat that Parliament had to be evacuated. In 19 days, Parliament passed a further Act to build the London sewerage system, London also suffered from terrible air pollution, and this culminated in the Great Smog of 1952, which in turn triggered its on legislative response, the Clean Air Act 1956. The basic regulatory structure was to set limits on emissions for households, notwithstanding early analogues, the concept of environmental law as a separate and distinct body of law is a twentieth-century development. Air quality laws govern the emission of air pollutants into the atmosphere, a specialized subset of air quality laws regulate the quality of air inside buildings. Air quality laws are designed specifically to protect human health by limiting or eliminating airborne pollutant concentrations. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing air pollutants, setting limits on acceptable emissions levels, Water quality laws govern the release of pollutants into water resources, including surface water, ground water, and stored drinking water. Some water quality laws, such as drinking water regulations, may be designed solely with reference to human health, regulatory areas include sewage treatment and disposal, industrial and agricultural waste water management, and control of surface runoff from construction sites and urban environments. Waste management laws govern the transport, treatment, storage, and disposal of all manner of waste, including solid waste, hazardous waste. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing waste types and mandating transport, treatment, storage, Environmental cleanup laws govern the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, sediment, surface water, or ground water. Chemical safety laws govern the use of chemicals in human activities, as contrasted with media-oriented environmental laws, chemical control laws seek to manage the pollutants themselves. Regulatory efforts include banning specific chemical constituents in consumer products, Environmental impact assessment is the assessment of the environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or concrete projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. Environmental assessments may be governed by rules of administrative procedure regarding public participation and documentation of decision making, Water resources laws govern the ownership and use of water resources, including surface water and ground water. Regulatory areas may include water conservation, use restrictions, and ownership regimes, mineral resource laws cover several basic topics, including the ownership of the mineral resource and who can work them. Mining is also affected by regulations regarding the health and safety of miners
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Environmental policy
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Environmental policy refers to the commitment of an organization to the laws, regulations, and other policy mechanisms concerning environmental issues. These issues generally include air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem management, maintenance of biodiversity, policies concerning energy or regulation of toxic substances including pesticides and many types of industrial waste are part of the topic of environmental policy. It is useful to consider that environmental policy comprises two terms, environment and policy. Environment refers to the ecosystems, but can also take into consideration the social dimension. Policy can be defined as a course of action or principle adopted or proposed by a government, party, relatively recently, environmental policy has also attended to the communication of environmental issues. An example of an externality is when a factory produces waste pollution which may be dumped into a river, the cost of such action is paid by society-at-large, when they must clean the water before drinking it and is external to the costs of the factory. The tragedy of the commons is the problem that, because no one owns the commons. Without governmental involvement, the commons is overused, examples of tragedies of the commons are overfishing and overgrazing. Environmental policy instruments are used by governments to implement their environmental policies. Governments may use a number of different types of instruments, for example, economic incentives and market-based instruments such as taxes and tax exemptions, tradable permits, and fees can be very effective to encourage compliance with environmental policy. Corporate companies who engage in efficient environmental management and are transparent about their environmental data, bilateral agreements between the government and private firms and commitments made by firms independent of government requirement are examples of voluntary environmental measures. Another instrument is the implementation of public purchasing programs. Several instruments are combined in a policy mix to address a certain environmental problem. Since environmental issues have many aspects, several policy instruments may be needed to address each one. Furthermore, a combination of different policies may give greater flexibility in policy compliance and reduce uncertainty as to the cost of such compliance. Government policies must be formulated so that the individual measures do not undermine one another, or create a rigid. Overlapping policies result in administrative costs, increasing the cost of implementation. To help governments realize their goals, the OECD Environment Directorate collects data on the efficiency
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Environmental social science
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Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. List of environmental degree-granting institutions List of environmental social science journals List of environmental studies topics Berkhout, Frans, Melissa Leach, shifting perspectives in environmental social science. Pp. 1–31 in Negotiating Environmental Change, New Perspectives from Social Science, ISBN 978-1843761532 Folmer, Henk, and Olof Johansson-Stenman. Does Environmental Economics Produce Aeroplanes Without Engines, on the Need for an Environmental Social Science, Environmental and Resource Economics 48, 337-361. Environmental Social Science, Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability, New Ecology and the Social Sciences, What Prospects for a Fruitful Engagement. Annual Review of Anthropology 28, 479-507, vaccaro, Ismael, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, eds. Environmental Social Sciences, Methods and Research Design, Cambridge, UK, and New York, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-12571-0 Environment and Society, Scholarly Journals
11.
Information science
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Information science should not be confused with information theory or library science. Information theory is the study of the types of communications we use, such as verbal, signal transmission, encoding, Information science as an academic discipline is often taught in combination with Library science as Library and Information Science. Library science as such is a related to the dissemination of information through libraries making use of the principles of information science. Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the involved and then applying information. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system and it must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus, but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information foci and it is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information. It has both a pure science component, which inquires into the subject without regard to its application, and an applied science component, some authors use informatics as a synonym for information science. This is especially true when related to the concept developed by A. I, Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid-1960s. The Mikhailov school saw informatics as a related to the study of scientific information. Informatics is difficult to define because of the rapidly evolving. Definitions reliant on the nature of the used for deriving meaningful information from data are emerging in Informatics academic programs. Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem, some people note that much of what is called Informatics today was once called Information Science – at least in fields such as Medical Informatics. Brian Campbell Vickerys Information Systems places information systems within IS, ellis, Allen, & Wilson, on the other hand, provide a bibliometric investigation describing the relation between two different fields, information science and information systems. Philosophy of information studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of science, information technology. In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and it can be used to reason about the entities within that domain and may be used to describe the domain. More specifically, an ontology is a model for describing the world consists of a set of types, properties. Exactly what is provided around these varies, but they are the essentials of an ontology, there is also generally an expectation that there be a close resemblance between the real world and the features of the model in an ontology. In theory, an ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation, an ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations
12.
Ecology
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Ecology is the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment. It is a field that includes biology, geography. Ecology includes the study of interactions that organisms have with other, other organisms. Ecosystems are composed of dynamically interacting parts including organisms, the communities make up. Ecosystem processes, such as production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits, biodiversity, which refers to the varieties of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services. Ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, natural history and it is closely related to evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology. An important focus for ecologists is to improve the understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function, Ecology is a human science as well. For example, the Circles of Sustainability approach treats ecology as more than the environment out there and it is not treated as separate from humans. Organisms and resources compose ecosystems which, in turn, maintain biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living and non-living components of the planet, the word ecology was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics, ancient Greek philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of ecology in their studies on natural history. Modern ecology became a more rigorous science in the late 19th century. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection became the cornerstones of modern ecological theory, the scope of ecology contains a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level to a planetary scale phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain abiotic resources and interacting life forms, an ecosystems area can vary greatly, from tiny to vast. A single tree is of consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem. Several generations of a population can exist over the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, support diverse bacterial communities, biodiversity describes the diversity of life from genes to ecosystems and spans every level of biological organization. The term has several interpretations, and there are ways to index, measure, characterize
13.
Biology
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Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, identification and taxonomy. Modern biology is a vast and eclectic field, composed of branches and subdisciplines. However, despite the broad scope of biology, there are certain unifying concepts within it that consolidate it into single, coherent field. In general, biology recognizes the cell as the unit of life, genes as the basic unit of heredity. It is also understood today that all organisms survive by consuming and transforming energy and by regulating their internal environment to maintain a stable, the term biology is derived from the Greek word βίος, bios, life and the suffix -λογία, -logia, study of. The Latin-language form of the term first appeared in 1736 when Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus used biologi in his Bibliotheca botanica, the first German use, Biologie, was in a 1771 translation of Linnaeus work. In 1797, Theodor Georg August Roose used the term in the preface of a book, karl Friedrich Burdach used the term in 1800 in a more restricted sense of the study of human beings from a morphological, physiological and psychological perspective. The science that concerns itself with these objects we will indicate by the biology or the doctrine of life. Although modern biology is a recent development, sciences related to. Natural philosophy was studied as early as the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, however, the origins of modern biology and its approach to the study of nature are most often traced back to ancient Greece. While the formal study of medicine back to Hippocrates, it was Aristotle who contributed most extensively to the development of biology. Especially important are his History of Animals and other works where he showed naturalist leanings, and later more empirical works that focused on biological causation and the diversity of life. Aristotles successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botany that survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to the plant sciences, even into the Middle Ages. Scholars of the medieval Islamic world who wrote on biology included al-Jahiz, Al-Dīnawarī, who wrote on botany, biology began to quickly develop and grow with Anton van Leeuwenhoeks dramatic improvement of the microscope. It was then that scholars discovered spermatozoa, bacteria, infusoria, investigations by Jan Swammerdam led to new interest in entomology and helped to develop the basic techniques of microscopic dissection and staining. Advances in microscopy also had a impact on biological thinking. In the early 19th century, a number of biologists pointed to the importance of the cell. Thanks to the work of Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow, however, meanwhile, taxonomy and classification became the focus of natural historians
14.
Physics
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Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
15.
Chemistry
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Chemistry is a branch of physical science that studies the composition, structure, properties and change of matter. Chemistry is sometimes called the science because it bridges other natural sciences, including physics. For the differences between chemistry and physics see comparison of chemistry and physics, the history of chemistry can be traced to alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world. The word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to a set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, metallurgy, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mysticism. An alchemist was called a chemist in popular speech, and later the suffix -ry was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as chemistry, the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία and this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, which is in turn derived from the word Chemi or Kimi, which is the ancient name of Egypt in Egyptian. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning cast together, in retrospect, the definition of chemistry has changed over time, as new discoveries and theories add to the functionality of the science. The term chymistry, in the view of noted scientist Robert Boyle in 1661, in 1837, Jean-Baptiste Dumas considered the word chemistry to refer to the science concerned with the laws and effects of molecular forces. More recently, in 1998, Professor Raymond Chang broadened the definition of chemistry to mean the study of matter, early civilizations, such as the Egyptians Babylonians, Indians amassed practical knowledge concerning the arts of metallurgy, pottery and dyes, but didnt develop a systematic theory. Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, arising in works by such as Democritus and Epicurus. In 50 BC, the Roman philosopher Lucretius expanded upon the theory in his book De rerum natura, unlike modern concepts of science, Greek atomism was purely philosophical in nature, with little concern for empirical observations and no concern for chemical experiments. Work, particularly the development of distillation, continued in the early Byzantine period with the most famous practitioner being the 4th century Greek-Egyptian Zosimos of Panopolis. He formulated Boyles law, rejected the four elements and proposed a mechanistic alternative of atoms. Before his work, though, many important discoveries had been made, the Scottish chemist Joseph Black and the Dutchman J. B. English scientist John Dalton proposed the theory of atoms, that all substances are composed of indivisible atoms of matter. Davy discovered nine new elements including the alkali metals by extracting them from their oxides with electric current, british William Prout first proposed ordering all the elements by their atomic weight as all atoms had a weight that was an exact multiple of the atomic weight of hydrogen. The inert gases, later called the noble gases were discovered by William Ramsay in collaboration with Lord Rayleigh at the end of the century, thereby filling in the basic structure of the table. Organic chemistry was developed by Justus von Liebig and others, following Friedrich Wöhlers synthesis of urea which proved that organisms were, in theory
16.
Botany
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Botany, also called plant science, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who specialises in this field, the term botany comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη meaning pasture, grass, or fodder, βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν, to feed or to graze. Nowadays, botanists study approximately 410,000 species of plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants of medical importance and they were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards. One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden and these gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, in the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis, including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with inputs from most other areas of science, dominant themes in 21st century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics, which are the mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues. Botany originated as herbalism, the study and use of plants for their medicinal properties, many records of the Holocene period date early botanical knowledge as far back as 10,000 years ago. This early unrecorded knowledge of plants was discovered in ancient sites of human occupation within Tennessee, the early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BC, in archaic Avestan writings. His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, constitute the most important contributions to science until the Middle Ages. De Materia Medica was widely read for more than 1,500 years, important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyyas Nabatean Agriculture, Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarīs the Book of Plants, and Ibn Bassals The Classification of Soils. In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, and Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner and these gardens continued the practical value of earlier physic gardens, often associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for medical use. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject, lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens and their medical uses demonstrated. Botanical gardens came much later to northern Europe, the first in England was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden in 1621, throughout this period, botany remained firmly subordinate to medicine. German physician Leonhart Fuchs was one of the three German fathers of botany, along with theologian Otto Brunfels and physician Hieronymus Bock, Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification, physician Valerius Cordus authored a botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium in 1546. Naturalist Conrad von Gesner and herbalist John Gerard published herbals covering the medicinal uses of plants, naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi was considered the father of natural history, which included the study of plants
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Zoology
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The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion, i. e. animal and λόγος, logos, i. e. knowledge, study. The history of zoology traces the study of the kingdom from ancient to modern times. This ancient work was developed in the Middle Ages by Muslim physicians. During the Renaissance and early period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism. Microscopy revealed the unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, over the 18th and 19th centuries, zoology became an increasingly professional scientific discipline. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction, cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in Charles Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1859, Darwin placed the theory of evolution on a new footing, by his discovery of a process by which organic evolution can occur. Darwin gave new direction to morphology and physiology, by uniting them in a biological theory. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation, cell biology studies the structural and physiological properties of cells, including their behavior, interactions, and environment. This is done on both the microscopic and molecular levels, for single-celled organisms such as bacteria as well as the cells in multicellular organisms such as humans. Understanding the structure and function of cells is fundamental to all of the biological sciences, the similarities and differences between cell types are particularly relevant to molecular biology. Anatomy considers the forms of macroscopic structures such as organs and organ systems and it focuses on how organs and organ systems work together in the bodies of humans and animals, in addition to how they work independently. Anatomy and cell biology are two studies that are related, and can be categorized under structural studies. Physiology studies the mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes of living organisms by attempting to understand how all of the function as a whole. The theme of structure to function is central to biology, for example, what is learned about the physiology of yeast cells can also apply to human cells. The field of animal physiology extends the tools and methods of physiology to non-human species
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Mineralogy
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Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, the German Renaissance specialist Georgius Agricola wrote works such as De re metallica and De Natura Fossilium which began the scientific approach to the subject. Systematic scientific studies of minerals and rocks developed in post-Renaissance Europe, the modern study of mineralogy was founded on the principles of crystallography and to the microscopic study of rock sections with the invention of the microscope in the 17th century. Nicholas Steno first observed the law of constancy of interfacial angles in quartz crystals in 1669 and this was later generalized and established experimentally by Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de lIslee in 1783. In 1814, Jöns Jacob Berzelius introduced a classification of minerals based on their chemistry rather than their crystal structure, james D. Dana published his first edition of A System of Mineralogy in 1837, and in a later edition introduced a chemical classification that is still the standard. It, however, retains a focus on the structures commonly encountered in rock-forming minerals. An initial step in identifying a mineral is to examine its physical properties and these can be classified into density, measures of mechanical cohesion, macroscopic visual properties, magnetic and electric properties, radioactivity and solubility in hydrogen chloride. If the mineral is crystallized, it will also have a distinctive crystal habit that reflects the crystal structure or internal arrangement of atoms. It is also affected by crystal defects and twinning. Many crystals are polymorphic, having more than one crystal structure depending on factors such as pressure and temperature. ”Examples of polymorphs are calcite and aragonite - two minerals with identical chemical composition, distinguished by their crystallography, calcite is rhombohedral and aragonite is orthorhombic. The crystal structure is the arrangement of atoms in a crystal and it is represented by a lattice of points which repeats a basic pattern, called a unit cell, in three dimensions. The lattice can be characterized by its symmetries and by the dimensions of the unit cell and these dimensions are represented by three Miller indices. The lattice remains unchanged by certain symmetry operations about any point in the lattice, reflection, rotation, inversion, and rotary inversion. Together, they make up an object called a crystallographic point group or crystal class. There are 32 possible crystal classes, in addition, there are operations that displace all the points, translation, screw axis, and glide plane. In combination with the point symmetries, they form 230 possible space groups, most geology departments have X-ray powder diffraction equipment to analyze the crystal structures of minerals. X-rays have wavelengths that are the order of magnitude as the distances between atoms. In a sample that is ground to a powder, the X-rays sample a random distribution of all crystal orientations, powder diffraction can distinguish between minerals that may appear the same in a hand sample, for example quartz and its polymorphs tridymite and cristobalite
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Limnology
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Limnology, is the study of inland waters. It is often regarded as a division of ecology or environmental science and it covers the biological, chemical, physical, geological, and other attributes of all inland waters. This includes the study of lakes and ponds, rivers, springs, streams, a more recent sub-discipline of limnology, termed landscape limnology, studies, manages, and conserves these aquatic ecosystems using a landscape perspective. Limnology is closely related to ecology and hydrobiology, which study aquatic organisms in particular regard to their hydrological environment. Although limnology is sometimes equated with science, this is erroneous since limnology also comprises the study of inland salt lakes. The term limnology was coined by François-Alphonse Forel who established the field with his studies of Lake Geneva, interest in the discipline rapidly expanded, and in 1922 August Thienemann and Einar Naumann co-founded the International Society of Limnology. Forels original definition of limnology, the oceanography of lakes, was expanded to encompass the study of all inland waters, prominent early American limnologists included G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Ed Deevey, E. A. Birge, and C. Limnology classifies lakes according to the trophic state index, an oligotrophic lake is characterised by relatively low levels of primary production and low levels of nutrients. A eutrophic lake has high levels of productivity due to very high nutrient levels. Eutrophication of a lake can lead to algal blooms, dystrophic lakes have high levels of humic matter and typically has yellow-brown, tea-coloured waters. These categories do not have rigid specifications, the system can be seen as more of a spectrum encompassing the various levels of aquatic productivity. Hynes, The Ecology of Running Waters Jacob Kalff, Limnology B, moss, Ecology of Fresh Waters Robert G. Wetzel and Gene E. Likens, Limnological Analyses, 3rd ed. Patrick E. OSullivan and Colin S. Much of the collection comes from the archives of the UW–Madison Center for Limnology and it focuses on three important pioneers of limnology, Dr. Edward A. Birge, Chancey Juday and Arthur D. Hasler, as well as Wisconsin research laboratories and field equipment. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center, Limnological Institute of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences
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Soil science
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Sometimes terms which refer to branches of soil science, such as pedology and edaphology, are used as if synonymous with soil science. The diversity of names associated with this discipline is related to the various associations concerned, Soil occupies the pedosphere, one of Earths spheres that the geosciences use to organize the Earth conceptually. This is the perspective of pedology and edaphology, the two main branches of soil science. Pedology is the study of soil in its natural setting, edaphology is the study of soil in relation to soil-dependent uses. Both branches apply a combination of physics, soil chemistry. Due to the interactions between the biosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere that are hosted within the pedosphere, more integrated. Many concepts essential to understanding soil come from individuals not identifiable strictly as soil scientists and this highlights the interdisciplinary nature of soil concepts. Dependence on and curiosity about soil, exploring the diversity and dynamics of this continues to yield fresh discoveries. New avenues of research are compelled by a need to understand soil in the context of climate change, greenhouse gases. Interest in maintaining the biodiversity and in exploring past cultures has also stimulated renewed interest in achieving a more refined understanding of soil. Most empirical knowledge of soil in nature comes from soil survey efforts, Soil survey, or soil mapping, is the process of determining the soil types or other properties of the soil cover over a landscape, and mapping them for others to understand and use. It relies heavily on distinguishing the individual influences of the five classic soil forming factors and this effort draws upon geomorphology, physical geography, and analysis of vegetation and land-use patterns. Primary data for the survey are acquired by field sampling. As of 2006, the World Reference Base for Soil Resources and it replaces the previous FAO soil classification. The WRB borrows from modern soil classification concepts, including USDA soil taxonomy, the classification is based mainly on soil morphology as an expression pedogenesis. A major difference with USDA soil taxonomy is that climate is not part of the system. Many other classification schemes exist, including vernacular systems, the structure in vernacular systems are either nominal, giving unique names to soils or landscapes, or descriptive, naming soils by their characteristics such as red, hot, fat, or sandy. Soils are distinguished by obvious characteristics, such as appearance, performance
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Geology
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Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
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Physical geography
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Physical geography is one of the two major sub-fields of geography. Geomorphology seeks to understand landform history and dynamics, and predict future changes through a combination of observation, physical experiment. Thus the field encompasses water in rivers, lakes, aquifers and to an extent glaciers, in which the field examines the process and dynamics involved in these bodies of water. Similar to most fields of physical geography it has sub-fields that examine the bodies of water or their interaction with other spheres e. g. limnology and ecohydrology. Glaciology is the study of glaciers and ice sheets, or more commonly the cryosphere or ice, glaciology groups the latter as continental glaciers and the former as alpine glaciers. Glaciology also has a vast array of sub-fields examining the factors and processes involved in ice sheets and glaciers e. g. snow hydrology, Biogeography is the science which deals with geographic patterns of species distribution and the processes that result in these patterns. The main stimulus for the field since its founding has been that of evolution, plate tectonics, climatology examines both the nature of micro and macro climates and the natural and anthropogenic influences on them. The field is also sub-divided largely into the climates of various regions, meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and short term forecasting. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the eighteenth century, meteorological phenomena are observable weather events which illuminate and are explained by the science of meteorology. Pedology is the study of soils in their natural environment and it is one of two main branches of soil science, the other being edaphology. Pedology mainly deals with pedogenesis, soil morphology, soil classification, palaeogeography is a cross-disciplinary study that examines the preserved material in the stratigraphic record to determine the distribution of the continents through geologic time. Almost all the evidence for the positions of the continents comes from geology in the form of fossils or paleomagnetism, the use of this data has resulted in evidence for continental drift, plate tectonics, and supercontinents. This, in turn, has supported palaeogeographic theories such as the Wilson cycle, coastal geography is the study of the dynamic interface between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography and the human geography of the coast. It involves an understanding of coastal weathering processes, particularly wave action, sediment movement and weathering, coastal geography, although predominantly geomorphological in its research, is not just concerned with coastal landforms, but also the causes and influences of sea level change. Oceanography is the branch of geography that studies the Earths oceans. These diverse topics reflect multiple disciplines that oceanographers blend to further knowledge of the world ocean, Quaternary science is an inter-disciplinary field of study focusing on the Quaternary period, which encompasses the last 2.6 million years. The field was founded by the German geographer Carl Troll. Landscape ecology typically deals with problems in an applied and holistic context, geomatics is the field of gathering, storing, processing, and delivering geographic information, or spatially referenced information
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Geodesy
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Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal motion, tides, and polar motion. For this they design global and national networks, using space and terrestrial techniques while relying on datums. Geodesy — from the Ancient Greek word γεωδαισία geodaisia — is primarily concerned with positioning within the temporally varying gravity field, such geodetic operations are also applied to other astronomical bodies in the solar system. It is also the science of measuring and understanding the earths geometric shape, orientation in space and this applies to the solid surface, the liquid surface and the Earths atmosphere. For this reason, the study of the Earths gravity field is called physical geodesy by some, the geoid is essentially the figure of the Earth abstracted from its topographical features. It is an idealized surface of sea water, the mean sea level surface in the absence of currents, air pressure variations etc. The geoid, unlike the ellipsoid, is irregular and too complicated to serve as the computational surface on which to solve geometrical problems like point positioning. The geometrical separation between the geoid and the ellipsoid is called the geoidal undulation. It varies globally between ±110 m, when referred to the GRS80 ellipsoid, a reference ellipsoid, customarily chosen to be the same size as the geoid, is described by its semi-major axis a and flattening f. The quantity f = a − b/a, where b is the axis, is a purely geometrical one. The mechanical ellipticity of the Earth can be determined to high precision by observation of satellite orbit perturbations and its relationship with the geometrical flattening is indirect. The relationship depends on the density distribution, or, in simplest terms. The 1980 Geodetic Reference System posited a 6,378,137 m semi-major axis and this system was adopted at the XVII General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. It is essentially the basis for geodetic positioning by the Global Positioning System and is also in widespread use outside the geodetic community. The locations of points in space are most conveniently described by three cartesian or rectangular coordinates, X, Y and Z. Since the advent of satellite positioning, such systems are typically geocentric. The X-axis lies within the Greenwich observatorys meridian plane, the coordinate transformation between these two systems is described to good approximation by sidereal time, which takes into account variations in the Earths axial rotation. A more accurate description also takes polar motion into account, a closely monitored by geodesists
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Atmospheric sciences
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Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climatology is the study of changes that define average climates and their change over time. Aeronomy is the study of the layers of the atmosphere. Atmospheric science has been extended to the field of planetary science, experimental instruments used in atmospheric sciences include satellites, rocketsondes, radiosondes, weather balloons, and lasers. The term aerology is sometimes used as a term for the study of Earths atmosphere. Early pioneers in the field include Léon Teisserenc de Bort and Richard Assmann, Atmospheric chemistry is a branch of atmospheric science in which the chemistry of the Earths atmosphere and that of other planets is studied. It is a field of research and draws on environmental chemistry, physics, meteorology, computer modeling, oceanography, geology and volcanology. Research is increasingly connected with other areas of such as climatology. The composition and chemistry of the atmosphere is of importance for several reasons, the composition of the Earths atmosphere has been changed by human activity and some of these changes are harmful to human health, crops and ecosystems. Examples of problems which have been addressed by atmospheric chemistry include acid rain, photochemical smog, Atmospheric dynamics involves the study of observations and theory dealing with all motion systems of meteorological importance. Common topics studied include diverse phenomena such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, gravity waves, tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, jet streams, the goal of dynamical studies is to explain the observed circulations on the basis of fundamental principles from physics. Atmospheric physics is the application of physics to the study of the atmosphere, in the United Kingdom, atmospheric studies are underpinned by the Meteorological Office. Divisions of the U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oversee research projects, the U. S. National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center also carries out studies of the high atmosphere. The Earths magnetic field and the solar wind interact with the atmosphere, creating the ionosphere, Van Allen radiation belts, telluric currents, and radiant energy. In contrast to meteorology, which studies short term weather systems lasting up to a few weeks, climatology studies the frequency and it studies the periodicity of weather events over years to millennia, as well as changes in long-term average weather patterns, in relation to atmospheric conditions. Climatologists, those who practice climatology, study both the nature of climates – local, regional or global – and the natural or human-induced factors that cause climates to change, climatology considers the past and can help predict future climate change. Related disciplines include astrophysics, atmospheric physics, chemistry, ecology, physical geography, geology, geophysics, glaciology, hydrology, oceanography, all of the Solar Systems planets have atmospheres. This is because their gravity is enough to keep gaseous particles close to the surface
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Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
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Medicine
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Medicine is the science and practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. The word medicine is derived from Latin medicus, meaning a physician, Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Medicine has existed for thousands of years, during most of which it was an art frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an ancient philosopher. In recent centuries, since the advent of modern science, most medicine has become a combination of art, while stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, the knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science. Prescientific forms of medicine are now known as medicine and folk medicine. They remain commonly used with or instead of medicine and are thus called alternative medicine. For example, evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture is variable and inconsistent for any condition, in contrast, treatments outside the bounds of safety and efficacy are termed quackery. Medical availability and clinical practice varies across the world due to differences in culture. In modern clinical practice, physicians personally assess patients in order to diagnose, treat, the doctor-patient relationship typically begins an interaction with an examination of the patients medical history and medical record, followed by a medical interview and a physical examination. Basic diagnostic medical devices are typically used, after examination for signs and interviewing for symptoms, the doctor may order medical tests, take a biopsy, or prescribe pharmaceutical drugs or other therapies. Differential diagnosis methods help to rule out conditions based on the information provided, during the encounter, properly informing the patient of all relevant facts is an important part of the relationship and the development of trust. The medical encounter is then documented in the record, which is a legal document in many jurisdictions. Follow-ups may be shorter but follow the general procedure. The diagnosis and treatment may take only a few minutes or a few weeks depending upon the complexity of the issue, the components of the medical interview and encounter are, Chief complaint, the reason for the current medical visit. They are in the patients own words and are recorded along with the duration of each one, also called chief concern or presenting complaint. History of present illness, the order of events of symptoms. Distinguishable from history of illness, often called past medical history
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Age of Enlightenment
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The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, The Century of Philosophy. In France, the doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy. French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution, some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific revolution. Les philosophes of the widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church, a variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution, earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, and Baruch Spinoza. The major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence, others like James Madison incorporated them into the Constitution in 1787. The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie, the ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by an intellectual movement known as Romanticism. René Descartes rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking and his attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John Lockes 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his dualism was challenged by Spinozas uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his Tractatus and Ethics. Both lines of thought were opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment. In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines, the political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. Francis Hutcheson, a philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words. Much of what is incorporated in the method and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy. Immanuel Kant tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the sphere through private
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Ecosystem
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An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles, as ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces. Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun and it generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and they also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present, although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate. Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance, classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this. The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley, Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as The whole system, including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment. Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates, Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope. G. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the driver of the ecosystem. Most mineral nutrients, on the hand, are recycled within ecosystems. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, external factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem
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Environmental engineering
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It also includes studies on the environmental impact of proposed construction projects. Environmental engineers study the effect of advances on the environment. To do so, they conduct studies on management to evaluate the significance of such hazards, advise on treatment and containment. Environmental engineers design municipal water supply and industrial wastewater treatment systems, at many universities environmental engineering programs are offered at either the department of civil engineering or the department of chemical engineering at engineering faculties. Environmental civil engineers focus on hydrology, water management, bioremediation. Environmental chemical engineers, on the hand, focus on environmental chemistry, advanced air and water treatment technologies. Additionally, engineers are more frequently obtaining specialized training in law and are utilizing their technical expertise in the practices of environmental engineering law, most jurisdictions also impose licensing and registration requirements. Ever since people first recognized that their health is related to the quality of their environment, the ancient Indian Harappan civilization utilized early sewers in some cities more than 5000 years ago. The Romans constructed aqueducts to prevent drought and to create a clean, in the 15th century, Bavaria created laws restricting the development and degradation of alpine country that constituted the regions water supply. However, its roots back to early efforts in public health engineering. The introduction of drinking water treatment and sewage treatment in industrialized countries reduced waterborne diseases from leading causes of death to rarities, in many cases, as societies grew, actions that were intended to achieve benefits for those societies had longer-term impacts which reduced other environmental qualities. One example is the application of the pesticide DDT to control agricultural pests in the years following World War II. The story of DDT as vividly told in Rachel Carsons Silent Spring is considered to be the birth of the environmental movement. Conservation movements and laws restricting public actions that would harm the environment have been developed by various societies for millennia. Notable examples are the laws decreeing the construction of sewers in London and Paris in the 19th century, to some extent, this field overlaps the desire to decrease carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from combustion processes. If impacts are expected, they then develop mitigation measures to limit or prevent such impacts, in the United States, the practice of environmental assessment was formally initiated on January 1,1970, the effective date of the National Environmental Policy Act. Since that time, more than 100 developing and developed nations either have planned specific analogous laws or have adopted procedure used elsewhere, NEPA is applicable to all federal agencies in the United States. Water is treated to water quality objectives for the end uses
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Alternative energy
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Alternative energy is any energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are intended to address concerns about such fossil fuels, such as its carbon dioxide emissions. Marine energy, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal and solar power are all sources of energy. The nature of what constitutes an alternative energy source has changed considerably over time, because of the variety of energy choices and differing goals of their advocates, defining some energy types as alternative is considered very controversial. Historians of economies have examined the key transitions to alternative energies, prior to the shift to an alternative energy, supplies of the dominant energy type became erratic, accompanied by rapid increases in energy prices. In the late period, coal was the new alternative fuel to save the society from overuse of the dominant fuel. The deforestation had resulted in shortage of wood, at that time soft coal appeared as a savior, historian Norman F. Cantor describes how, Europeans had lived in the midst of vast forests throughout the earlier medieval centuries. After 1250 they became so skilled at deforestation that by 1500 AD they were running short of wood for heating and cooking. By 1500 Europe was on the edge of a fuel and nutritional disaster, which it was saved in the century only by the burning of soft coal. In 1917, Alexander Graham Bell advocated ethanol from corn, wheat and other foods as an alternative to coal and oil, for Bell, the problem requiring an alternative was lack of renewability of orthodox energy sources. Since the 1970s, Brazil has had an ethanol fuel program which has allowed the country to become the second largest producer of ethanol. Brazil’s ethanol fuel program uses modern equipment and cheap sugar cane as feedstock, there are no longer light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline. By the end of 2008 there were 35,000 filling stations throughout Brazil with at least one ethanol pump, cellulosic ethanol can be produced from a diverse array of feedstocks, and involves the use of the whole crop. As of 2008, there are nine commercial cellulosic ethanol plants which are operating, or under construction. Second-generation biofuels technologies are able to manufacture biofuels from inedible biomass, as of July 2010, there is one commercial second-generation ethanol plant Inbicon Biomass Refinery, which is operating in Denmark. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carters administration advocated coal gasification as an alternative to imported oil. The program, including the Synthetic Fuels Corporation was scrapped when petroleum prices plummeted in the 1980s, the carbon footprint and environmental impact of coal gasification are both very high. Hydro electricity captures energy from falling water, nuclear energy uses nuclear fission to release energy stored in the atomic bonds of heavy elements
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Pollution
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Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956
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Natural resource management
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Natural resource management deals with managing the way in which people and natural landscapes interact. It brings together land use planning, water management, biodiversity conservation, Natural resource management specifically focuses on a scientific and technical understanding of resources and ecology and the life-supporting capacity of those resources. Environmental management is similar to natural resource management. In academic contexts, the sociology of natural resources is closely related to and this type of analysis coalesced in the 20th century with recognition that preservationist conservation strategies had not been effective in halting the decline of natural resources. A more integrated approach was implemented recognising the social, cultural, economic. A more holistic, national and even global form evolved, from the Brundtland Commission, in 2005 the government of New South Wales, established a Standard for Quality Natural Resource Management, to improve the consistency of practice, based on an adaptive management approach. In the United States, the most active areas of natural resource management are wildlife management often associated with ecotourism, in Australia, water sharing, such as the Murray Darling Basin Plan and catchment management are also significant. Individuals or groups may be able to use of the resources. National forest, National parks and military reservations are some US examples, private property, Any property owned by a defined individual or corporate entity. Both the benefit and duties to the fall to the owner. Private land is the most common example, Common property, It is a private property of a group. The group may vary in size, nature and internal structure e. g. indigenous neighbours of village, some examples of common property are community forests. Non-property, There is no owner of these properties. Each potential user has equal ability to use it as they wish and these areas are the most exploited. It is said that Everybodys property is nobodys property, an example is a lake fishery. Common land may exist without ownership, in case in the UK it is vested in a local authority. Stakeholder analysis originated from business management practices and has incorporated into natural resource management in ever growing popularity. Stakeholder analysis in the context of natural resource management identifies distinctive interest groups affected in the utilisation and conservation of natural resources, There is no definitive definition of a stakeholder as illustrated in the table below
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Effects of global warming
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The effects of global warming are the environmental and social changes caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a consensus that climate change is occurring. Many impacts of change have already been observed, including glacier retreat, changes in the timing of seasonal events. Future effects of change will vary depending on climate change policies. The two main policies to address climate change are reducing human greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change, near-term climate change policies could significantly affect long-term climate change impacts. Stringent mitigation policies might be able to limit warming to around 2 °C or below. Without mitigation, increased demand and extensive use of fossil fuels might lead to global warming of around 4 °C. Higher magnitudes of warming would be more difficult to adapt to. In this article, climate change means a change in climate that persists over a period of time. The World Meteorological Organization defines this time period as 30 years, examples of climate change include increases in global surface temperature, changes in rainfall patterns, and changes in the frequency of extreme weather events. Changes in climate may be due to causes, e. g. changes in the suns output, or due to human activities. Also, the term anthropogenic forcing refers to the influence exerted on a habitat or chemical environment by humans and this article breaks down some of the impacts of climate change according to different levels of future global warming. This way of describing impacts has, for instance, been used in the IPCC Assessment Reports on climate change, the instrumental temperature record shows global warming of around 0.6 °C during the 20th century. The future level of warming is uncertain, but a wide range of estimates have been made. The IPCCs SRES scenarios have been used to make projections of future climate change. The SRES scenarios are baseline scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit GHG emissions, emissions projections of the SRES scenarios are broadly comparable in range to the baseline emissions scenarios that have been developed by the scientific community. In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, changes in global mean temperature were projected using the six SRES marker emissions scenarios. Emissions projections for the six SRES marker scenarios are representative of the set of forty SRES scenarios
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Environmental issue
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Environmental issues are harmful effects of human activity on the biophysical environment. Environmental protection is a practice of protecting the environment on individual, organizational or governmental levels. Environmentalism, a social and environmental movement, addresses environmental issues through advocacy, education, the carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has already exceeded 400 parts per million. This level is considered a tipping point, the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change. We are already at risk of many areas of pollution. Its not next year or next decade, its now. Report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Environment destruction caused by humans is a problem. By year 2050, the human population is expected to grow by 2 billion people. The human effects on Earth can be seen in different ways. A main one is the rise, and according to the report ”Our Changing Climate”. Since 1895, the U. S. average temperature has increased from 1.3 °F to 1.9 °F, major current environmental issues may include climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource depletion etc. The conservation movement lobbies for protection of endangered species and protection of any ecologically valuable areas, genetically modified foods. The level of understanding of Earth has increased markebly in recent times through science especially with the application of the scientific method, environmental science is now a multi-disciplinary academic study taught and researched at many universities. This is used as a basis for addressing environmental issues, large amounts of data have been gathered and these are collated into reports, of which a common type is the State of the Environment publications. Environmental issues are addressed at a regional, national or international level by government organizations, the largest international agency, set up in 1972, is the United Nations Environment Programme. International non-governmental organizations include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and World Wide Fund for Nature, governments enact environmental policy and enforce environmental law and this is done to differing degrees around the world. Sustainability is the key to prevent or reduce the effect of environmental issues, for humans to live sustainably, the Earths natural resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished. Concerns for the environment have prompted the formation of green parties, initially these were formed in Australia, New Zealand and Germany but are now present in many other countries. There are a number of films being produced on environmental issues, especially on climate change
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Rachel Carson
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Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries and her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U. S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the version of her first book. This sea trilogy explores the whole of life from the shores to the depths. Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, the result was the book Silent Spring, which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy. It also inspired a grassroots movement that led to the creation of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter, Rachel Carson was born on May 27,1907, on a family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, just up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. She was the daughter of Maria Frazier and Robert Warden Carson, an avid reader, she also spent a lot of time exploring around her familys 65-acre farm. She began writing stories at age eight, and had her first story published at age ten. She especially enjoyed the St. Nicholas Magazine, the works of Beatrix Potter, and the novels of Gene Stratton Porter, the natural world, particularly the ocean, was the common thread of her favorite literature. Carson attended Springdales small school through tenth grade, then completed school in nearby Parnassus, Pennsylvania. At the Pennsylvania College for Women, as in high school and she originally studied English, but switched her major to biology in January 1928, though she continued contributing to the schools student newspaper and literary supplement. After a summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, she continued her studies in zoology and genetics at Johns Hopkins in the fall of 1929. After her first year of school, Carson became a part-time student, taking an assistantship in Raymond Pearls laboratory. After false starts with pit vipers and squirrels, she completed a project on the embryonic development of the pronephros in fish. She earned a degree in zoology in June 1932. She had intended to continue for a doctorate, but in 1934 Carson was forced to leave Johns Hopkins to search for a teaching position to help support her family
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1969 Santa Barbara oil spill
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The Santa Barbara oil spill occurred in January and February 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the city of Santa Barbara in Southern California. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters at the time and it remains the largest oil spill to have occurred in the waters off California. The source of the spill was a blow-out on January 28,1969,6 miles from the coast on Union Oils Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field. The spill had a significant impact on life in the Channel, killing an estimated 3,500 sea birds, as well as marine animals such as dolphins, elephant seals. An economic boom accompanied the development of the Summerland field, which transformed the spiritualist community of Summerland into an oil town in just a few years, in 1927, the discovery of oil west of Santa Barbara led to the development of Ellwood Oil Field. This caused the city to be bracketed on east and west with oil fields, the new one a bonanza, in 1929, the Mesa Oil Field was discovered within the city itself, on the blufftop adjacent to present-day Santa Barbara City College. Residential construction in the vicinity of the Mesa field halted, as oil presented easier and faster money to the land developers, Oil derricks sprouted on the hilltop within easy view of the harbor, on narrow town lots intended originally for houses. While local protests were vocal, they failed to shut down the oil development, the oil derricks only went away when production on the small Mesa field abruptly declined and ended in the late 1930s. Nearer to the site of the oil spill, the first drilling island was built in 1958 by Richfield Oil Company, prospectors for oil sought ways to drill in deeper water. Seismic testing under the Channel began shortly after the Second World War, congress passed the Submerged Lands Act in 1953, which granted to the states all lands within 3 nautical miles of shore, known as the tidelands. However, several oil fields were found within state waters on either side of this zone. Development of these resources commenced, with the first offshore oil platform – Hazel – being built in 1957, Platform Hilda, adjacent to Hazel, was erected in 1960. Both platforms tapped into the Summerland Offshore Oil Field, and were visible from Santa Barbara on a clear day. Platform Holly, in the portion of the Ellwood Oil Field about 15 miles west of Santa Barbara, was emplaced in 1965. Development of leases in the waters was next. This was possible because a 1965 Supreme Court decision finally settled the claims on the submerged lands outside of 3 miles limit. The first lease sale took place on December 15,1966, the rig the three companies emplaced – Platform Hogan – was the first oil platform offshore of California in Federal waters. It became operational on September 1,1967, on February 6,1968, a total of 72 leases went up for bid
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Cuyahoga River
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The Cuyahoga River is a river in the United States, located in Northeast Ohio, that feeds into Lake Erie. The river is famous for having been so polluted that it caught fire in 1969, the event helped to spur the environmental movement in the US. The name Cuyahoga is believed to mean crooked river from the Mohawk Indian name Cayagaga, although the Senecas called it Cuyohaga and it then flows through Independence, Valley View, Cuyahoga Heights, Newburgh Heights and Cleveland to its northern terminus, emptying into Lake Erie. The Cuyahoga River and its tributaries drain 813 square miles of land in portions of six counties, the river is a relatively recent geological formation, formed by the advance and retreat of ice sheets during the last ice age. The final glacial retreat, which occurred 10, 000–12,000 years ago and this change in pattern caused the originally south-flowing Cuyahoga to flow to the north. As its newly reversed currents flowed toward Lake Erie, the river carved its way around glacial debris left by the ice sheet. These meanderings stretched the length of the river into a 100-mile trek from its headwaters to its mouth, the depth of the river ranges from 3 to 6 ft. The Cuyahoga River, at times during the 20th century, was one of the most polluted rivers in the United States, the reach from Akron to Cleveland was devoid of fish. Downstream of the bridge to the harbor, the depth is held constant by dredging. The surface is covered with the brown oily film observed upstream as far as the Southerly Plant effluent, in addition, large quantities of black heavy oil floating in slicks, sometimes several inches thick, are observed frequently. Debris and trash are commonly caught up in these slicks forming an unsightly floating mess, anaerobic action is common as the dissolved oxygen is seldom above a fraction of a part per million. The discharge of cooling water increases the temperature by 10 to 15 °F, the velocity is negligible, and sludge accumulates on the bottom. Only the algae Oscillatoria grows along the piers above the water line, the color changes from gray-brown to rusty brown as the river proceeds downstream. Transparency is less than 0.5 feet in this reach and this entire reach is grossly polluted. At least 13 fires have been reported on the Cuyahoga River, the largest river fire in 1952 caused over $1 million in damage to boats, a bridge, and a riverfront office building. On June 22,1969, a river fire captured the attention of Time magazine, no pictures of the 1969 fire are known to exist, as local media did not arrive on the scene until after the fire was under control. The 1969 fire caused approximately $50,000 in damage, mostly to an adjacent railroad bridge, as a result, large point sources of pollution on the Cuyahoga have received significant attention from the OEPA in recent decades. These events are referred to in Randy Newmans 1972 song Burn On, R. E. M. s 1986 song Cuyahoga, Great Lakes Brewing Company of Cleveland named its Burning River Pale Ale after the event
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Glossary of environmental science
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This is a glossary of environmental science. Environmental science is the study of interactions among physical, chemical, Environmental science provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems. 5Rs - reduce, remanufacture, reuse, recycle, recover, abiotic - non-living chemical and physical factors of the environment. Absorption pit – a hole dug in permeable ground and filled with stones or granular material. Absorption - one substance taking in another, either physically or chemically, acclimation - the process of an organism adjusting to chronic change in its environment. Acid mine drainage - the outflow of water from metal mines or coal mines. Acid rain - rain or other forms of precipitation that is unusually acidic, adaptation - a characteristic of an organism that has been favoured by natural selection. Adaptive radiation - closely related species that look different, as a result of having adapted to widely different ecological niches. Adsorption - one substance taking up another at its surface, aerobic - requiring air or oxygen, used in reference to decomposition processes that occur in the presence of oxygen. Aerosols - solid or liquid particles suspended within the atmosphere, affluenza - as defined in the book of the same name 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses, an epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the Australian dream. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth, the traditional Western environmentally unfriendly high consumption life-style, a play on the words affluence and influenza cf. froogle, freegan. Afforestation - planting new forests on lands that have not been recently forested, agroforestry - an ecologically based farming system, that, through the integration of trees in farms, increases social, environmental and economic benefits to land users. Air pollution - the modification of the characteristics of the atmosphere by a chemical, particulate matter. Albedo - reflectance, the ratio of light from the Sun that is reflected by the Earths surface, unreflected light is converted to infrared radiation, which causes atmospheric warming. Thus, surfaces with a high albedo, like snow and ice, generally contribute to cooling, whereas surfaces with a low albedo, like forests, changes in land use that significantly alter the characteristics of land surfaces can alter the albedo. Algal bloom - the rapid and excessive growth of algae, generally caused by nutrient levels combined with other favourable conditions. Blooms can deoxygenate the water leading to the loss of wildlife, alien species - see introduced species
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Public health
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It is concerned with threats to health based on population health analysis. The population in question can be as small as a handful of people, Public health incorporates the interdisciplinary approaches of epidemiology, biostatistics and health services. Environmental health, community health, behavioral health, health economics, public policy, mental health and occupational safety, the focus of public health intervention is to improve health and quality of life through prevention and treatment of disease and other physical and mental health conditions. This is done through surveillance of cases and health indicators, there is a great disparity in access to health care and public health initiatives between developed nations and developing nations. In the developing world, public health infrastructures are still forming, many diseases are preventable through simple, nonmedical methods. For example, research has shown that the act of hand washing with soap can prevent many contagious diseases. Public health communications programs, vaccination programs and distribution of condoms are examples of public health measures. Measures such as these have contributed greatly to the health of populations, Public health plays an important role in disease prevention efforts in both the developing world and in developed countries, through local health systems and non-governmental organizations. The World Health Organization is the agency that coordinates and acts on global public health issues. Most countries have their own government public health agencies, sometimes known as ministries of health, for example, in the United States, the front line of public health initiatives are state and local health departments. In Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada is the agency responsible for public health, emergency preparedness and response. The Public health system in India is managed by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of the government of India with state-owned health care facilities. Public health programs providing vaccinations have made strides in promoting health, including the eradication of smallpox, antibiotic resistance, also known as drug resistance, was the theme of World Health Day 2011. Although the prioritization of pressing public health issues is important, Laurie Garrett argues that there are following consequences, when foreign aid is funnelled into disease-specific programs, the importance of public health in general is disregarded. This public health problem of stovepiping is thought to create a lack of funds to other existing diseases in a given country. For example, the WHO reports that at least 220 million people suffer from diabetes. Its incidence is increasing rapidly, and it is projected that the number of diabetes deaths will double by the year 2030, the risk of type 2 diabetes is closely linked with the growing problem of obesity. The WHO’s latest estimates highlighted that globally approximately 1.5 billion adults were overweight in 2008, the United States is the leading country with 30. 6% of its population being obese
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Atmosphere
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An atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding a planet or other material body, that is held in place by the gravity of that body. An atmosphere is likely to be retained if the gravity it is subject to is high. The atmosphere of Earth is mostly composed of nitrogen, oxygen, argon with carbon dioxide, the atmosphere helps protect living organisms from genetic damage by solar ultraviolet radiation, solar wind and cosmic rays. Its current composition is the product of billions of years of modification of the paleoatmosphere by living organisms. The term stellar atmosphere describes the region of a star. Stars with sufficiently low temperatures may form compound molecules in their outer atmosphere, Atmospheric pressure is the force per unit area that is applied perpendicularly to a surface by the surrounding gas. It is determined by a gravitational force in combination with the total mass of a column of gas above a location. On Earth, units of air pressure are based on the recognized standard atmosphere. It is measured with a barometer, the pressure of an atmospheric gas decreases with altitude due to the diminishing mass of gas above. The height at which the pressure from an atmosphere declines by a factor of e is called the height and is denoted by H. For such an atmosphere, the pressure declines exponentially with increasing altitude. However, atmospheres are not uniform in temperature, so the determination of the atmospheric pressure at any particular altitude is more complex. Surface gravity, the force that holds down an atmosphere, differs significantly among the planets, for example, the large gravitational force of the giant planet Jupiter is able to retain light gases such as hydrogen and helium that escape from objects with lower gravity. Thus, the distant and cold Titan, Triton, and Pluto are able to retain their atmospheres despite their relatively low gravities, rogue planets, theoretically, may also retain thick atmospheres. Since a collection of gas molecules may be moving at a range of velocities. Lighter molecules move faster than ones with the same thermal kinetic energy. It is thought that Venus and Mars may have lost much of their water when, after being photo dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen by solar ultraviolet, Earths magnetic field helps to prevent this, as, normally, the solar wind would greatly enhance the escape of hydrogen. However, over the past 3 billion years Earth may have lost gases through the polar regions due to auroral activity
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Meteorology
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Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences which includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics, with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century, the 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data, Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events that are explained by the science of meteorology. Different spatial scales are used to describe and predict weather on local, regional, Meteorology, climatology, atmospheric physics, and atmospheric chemistry are sub-disciplines of the atmospheric sciences. Meteorology and hydrology compose the interdisciplinary field of hydrometeorology, the interactions between Earths atmosphere and its oceans are part of a coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Meteorology has application in diverse fields such as the military, energy production, transport, agriculture. The word meteorology is from Greek μετέωρος metéōros lofty, high and -λογία -logia -logy, varāhamihiras classical work Brihatsamhita, written about 500 AD, provides clear evidence that a deep knowledge of atmospheric processes existed even in those times. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote Meteorology, Aristotle is considered the founder of meteorology. One of the most impressive achievements described in the Meteorology is the description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle and they are all called swooping bolts because they swoop down upon the Earth. Lightning is sometimes smoky, and is then called smoldering lightning, sometimes it darts quickly along, at other times, it travels in crooked lines, and is called forked lightning. When it swoops down upon some object it is called swooping lightning, the Greek scientist Theophrastus compiled a book on weather forecasting, called the Book of Signs. The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather, in 25 AD, Pomponius Mela, a geographer for the Roman Empire, formalized the climatic zone system. According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari wrote the Kitab al-Nabat, ptolemy wrote on the atmospheric refraction of light in the context of astronomical observations. St. Roger Bacon was the first to calculate the size of the rainbow. He stated that a rainbow summit can not appear higher than 42 degrees above the horizon, in the late 13th century and early 14th century, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī and Theodoric of Freiberg were the first to give the correct explanations for the primary rainbow phenomenon. Theoderic went further and also explained the secondary rainbow, in 1716, Edmund Halley suggested that aurorae are caused by magnetic effluvia moving along the Earths magnetic field lines. In 1441, King Sejongs son, Prince Munjong, invented the first standardized rain gauge and these were sent throughout the Joseon Dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmers potential harvest. In 1450, Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and was known as the first anemometer, in 1607, Galileo Galilei constructed a thermoscope
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Greenhouse gas
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A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earths atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earths surface would be about −18 °C, rather than the present average of 15 °C. In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have produced a 40% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 400 ppm in 2015. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of a portion of the emissions by various natural sinks involved in the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions come from combustion of fuels, principally coal, oil. Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the range emitted by Earth. The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a time is the airborne fraction. The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the increase in a given year to that years total emissions. Over the last 50 years the annual airborne fraction for CO2 has been increasing at 0.25 ±0. 21%/year, therefore, they do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect and usually are omitted when discussing greenhouse gases. Some gases have indirect radiative effects and this happens in two main ways. One way is that when they break down in the atmosphere they produce another greenhouse gas, for example, methane and carbon monoxide are oxidized to give carbon dioxide. Oxidation of CO to CO2 directly produces an increase in radiative forcing although the reason is subtle. The peak of the thermal IR emission from Earths surface is close to a strong vibrational absorption band of CO2. On the other hand, the single CO vibrational band only absorbs IR at much higher frequencies, where the ~300 K thermal emission of the surface is at least a factor of ten lower. Oxidation of methane to CO2, which requires reactions with the OH radical, produces a reduction, since CO2 is a weaker greenhouse gas than methane. As described below this is not the story, since the oxidations of CO. In any case, the calculation of the radiative effect needs to include both the direct and indirect forcing
