Bushfires in Australia
Bushfires frequenT t events during the warmer months of the year, due to Australia's hot, dry climate. Each year, such fires impact extensive areas. On one hand, they can cause property loss of human life. Certain native flora in Australia have evolved to rely on bushfires as a means of reproduction, fire events are an interwoven and an essential part of the ecology of the continent. For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have used fire to foster grasslands for hunting and to clear tracks through dense vegetation. Major firestorms that result in severe loss of life are named based on the day on which they occur, such as Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday; some of the most intense and deadly bushfires occur during droughts and heat waves, such as the 2009 Southern Australia heat wave, which precipitated the conditions during the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in which 173 people lost their lives. Other major conflagrations include the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, the 2003 Eastern Victorian alpine bushfires and the 2006 December Bushfires.
In 2013 the non-profit Climate Council reported that Global warming is increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires. The word "bushfire" builds on the concept of "the bush". Bushfires in Australia are defined as uncontrolled, non-structural fires burning in a grass, bush, or forested area. Australia, being a geographically and meteorogically diverse continent, experiences many types of bushfires. There are two main categories, depending on local topography. Hilly/mountainous fires – burn in hilly, mountainous or alpine areas which are densely forested; the land is less accessible and not conducive to agriculture, thus many of these densely forested areas have been saved from deforestation and are protected by national and other parks. The steep terrain increases the intensity of a firestorm. Where settlements are located in hilly or mountainous areas, bushfires can pose a threat to both life and property. Flat/grassland fires – burn along flat plains or areas of small undulation, predominantly covered in grasses or scrubland.
These fires can move fanned by high winds in flat topography, they consume the small amounts of fuel/vegetation available. These fires pose less of a threat to settlements as they reach the same intensity seen in major firestorms as the land is flat, the fires are easier to map and predict, the terrain is more accessible for firefighting personnel. Many regions of predominantly flat terrain in Australia have been completely deforested for agriculture, reducing the fuel loads which would otherwise facilitate fires in these areas. Common causes of bushfires include lightning, arcing from overhead power lines, accidental ignition in the course of agricultural clearing and welding activities, campfires and dropped matches, sparks from machinery, controlled burn escapes; the natural fire regime in Australia was altered by the arrival of humans. Fires became more frequent, fire-loving species—notably eucalypts—greatly expanded their range, it is assumed that a good deal of this change came about as the result of deliberate action by early humans, setting fires to clear undergrowth or drive game.
Plants have evolved a variety of strategies to survive bushfires, or encourage fire as a way to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant species. Some native animals are adept at surviving bushfires. In 2009, a standardised Fire Danger Rating was adopted by all Australian states. During the fire season the Bureau of Meteorology provides fire weather forecasts and by considering the predicted weather including temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and dryness of vegetation, fire agencies determine the appropriate Fire Danger Rating. In 2010, following a national review of the bush fire danger ratings, new trigger points for each rating were introduced for grassland areas in most jurisdictions. See for example the following glossaryFire Danger Ratings are a feature of weather forecasts and alert the community to the actions they should take in preparation of the day. Ratings are broadcast via newspapers, radio, TV, the internet; the Australasian Fire Authorities Council is the peak body responsible for representing fire, emergency services and land management agencies in the Australasian region.
The Rural Fire Service is a volunteer-based firefighting agency and operates as part of the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service is a volunteer-based firefighting,agency and statutory body of the Government of New South Wales; the Country Fire Service is a volunteer based fire service in the state of South Australia. The CFS operates as a part of Emergency Services Commission. Bushfires tend to occur near Adelaide. In Victoria, the Country Fire Authority provides firefighting and other emergency services to country areas and regional townships within the state, as well as large portions of the outer suburban areas and growth corridors of Melbourne not covered by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Responsibility for fire suppression and management, including planned burning on public land such as State Forests and National Parks, which makes up about 7.1 million hectares or about one third of the State, sits with the Department of Environment, Water an
Trunk (botany)
In botany, the trunk is the stem and main wooden axis of a tree, an important feature in tree identification, which differs markedly from the bottom of the trunk to the top, depending on the species. The trunk is the most important part of the tree for timber production. Trunks occur both in "true" woody plants as well as non-woody plants such as palms and other monocots, though the internal physiology is different in each case. In all plants, trunks thicken over time due to formation of secondary growth. Trunks can be vulnerable to damage, including sunburn. Trunks which are cut down in logging are called logs and if cut to a specific length bolts; the trunk consists of five main parts: the bark, inner bark, cambium and heartwood. From the outside of the tree working in, the first layer is the bark. Under this is the inner bark, made of the phloem; the phloem is. The next layer is the cambium, a thin layer of undifferentiated cells that divide to replenish the phloem cells on the outside and the xylem cells to the inside.
Directly to the inside of this is the living xylem cells. These cells transport the water through the tree. At the center of the tree is the heartwood; the heartwood is made up of old xylem cells that have been filled with resins and minerals to keep other organisms from growing and infecting the center of the tree. Bark Basal area Tree measurement Tree volume measurement Diameter at breast height Inside a tree trunk from the University of the Western Cape
Leaf
A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant and is the principal lateral appendage of the stem. The leaves and stem together form the shoot. Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in "autumn foliage". A leaf is a thin, dorsiventrally flattened organ borne above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. In most leaves, the primary photosynthetic tissue, the palisade mesophyll, is located on the upper side of the blade or lamina of the leaf but in some species, including the mature foliage of Eucalyptus, palisade mesophyll is present on both sides and the leaves are said to be isobilateral. Most leaves have distinct upper surface and lower surface that differ in colour, the number of stomata, the amount and structure of epicuticular wax and other features. Leaves can have many different shapes and textures; the broad, flat leaves with complex venation of flowering plants are known as megaphylls and the species that bear them, the majority, as broad-leaved or megaphyllous plants. In the clubmosses, with different evolutionary origins, the leaves are simple and are known as microphylls.
Some leaves, such as bulb scales, are not above ground. In many aquatic species the leaves are submerged in water. Succulent plants have thick juicy leaves, but some leaves are without major photosynthetic function and may be dead at maturity, as in some cataphylls and spines. Furthermore, several kinds of leaf-like structures found in vascular plants are not homologous with them. Examples include flattened plant stems called phylloclades and cladodes, flattened leaf stems called phyllodes which differ from leaves both in their structure and origin; some structures of non-vascular plants function much like leaves. Examples include the phyllids of liverworts. Leaves are the most important organs of most vascular plants. Green plants are autotrophic, meaning that they do not obtain food from other living things but instead create their own food by photosynthesis, they capture the energy in sunlight and use it to make simple sugars, such as glucose and sucrose, from carbon dioxide and water. The sugars are stored as starch, further processed by chemical synthesis into more complex organic molecules such as proteins or cellulose, the basic structural material in plant cell walls, or metabolised by cellular respiration to provide chemical energy to run cellular processes.
The leaves draw water from the ground in the transpiration stream through a vascular conducting system known as xylem and obtain carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by diffusion through openings called stomata in the outer covering layer of the leaf, while leaves are orientated to maximise their exposure to sunlight. Once sugar has been synthesized, it needs to be transported to areas of active growth such as the plant shoots and roots. Vascular plants transport sucrose in a special tissue called the phloem; the phloem and xylem are parallel to each other but the transport of materials is in opposite directions. Within the leaf these vascular systems branch to form veins which supply as much of the leaf as possible, ensuring that cells carrying out photosynthesis are close to the transportation system. Leaves are broad and thin, thereby maximising the surface area directly exposed to light and enabling the light to penetrate the tissues and reach the chloroplasts, thus promoting photosynthesis.
They are arranged on the plant so as to expose their surfaces to light as efficiently as possible without shading each other, but there are many exceptions and complications. For instance plants adapted to windy conditions may have pendent leaves, such as in many willows and eucalyptss; the flat, or laminar, shape maximises thermal contact with the surrounding air, promoting cooling. Functionally, in addition to carrying out photosynthesis, the leaf is the principal site of transpiration, providing the energy required to draw the transpiration stream up from the roots, guttation. Many gymnosperms have thin needle-like or scale-like leaves that can be advantageous in cold climates with frequent snow and frost; these are interpreted as reduced from megaphyllous leaves of their Devonian ancestors. Some leaf forms are adapted to modulate the amount of light they absorb to avoid or mitigate excessive heat, ultraviolet damage, or desiccation, or to sacrifice light-absorption efficiency in favour of protection from herbivory.
For xerophytes the major constraint drought. Some window plants such as Fenestraria species and some Haworthia species such as Haworthia tesselata and Haworthia truncata are examples of xerophytes. and Bulbine mesembryanthemoides. Leaves function to store chemical energy and water and may become specialised organs serving other functions, such as tendrils of peas and other legumes, the protective spines of cacti and the insect traps in carnivorous plants such as Nepenthes and Sarracenia. Leaves are the fundamental structural units from which cones are constructed in gymnosperms and from which flowers are constructed in flowering plants; the internal organisation of most kinds of leaves has evolved to maximise exposure of the photosynthetic organelles, the chloroplasts, to light and to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide while at the same time controlling water loss. Their surfaces are waterproofed by the plant cuticle and gas exchange between the mesophyll cells and the atmosphere is controlled by minute openings called stomata which open or close to regulate the rate exchange of carbon dioxide and water vapour into
Angophora
Angophora is a genus of flowering plants in the myrtle family, described as a genus in 1797. It is endemic to Australia, where species are distributed in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria; the centre of diversity is along the central coast of New South Wales. Angophora is related to Corymbia and Eucalyptus, all three genera are referred to as "eucalypts". Collectively the eucalypts, or gum trees, dominate many Australian ecosystems. Angophora can be distinguished from other eucalypts by its oppositely arranged leaves and flowers which lack opercula, cap-like structures which fall off as the flowers open. Taxonomists have long recognised the relationships between the eucalypt taxa, but have not agreed upon a classification scheme; some have proposed merging Angophora and Corymbia into genus Eucalyptus as subgenera, a plan, rejected by others. Some authors maintain Angophora as a genus. Among the eucalypts, Angophora species were nicknamed "apples" by European settlers, who thought they resembled apple trees.
Many are still known as apples today. Angophora are shrubs. Most have rough bark; the opposite leaves are hairy and glandular when new, hairless when mature. The inflorescence is an arrangement of several clusters of 3 to 7 flowers each; the flower has 4 or 5 small, green sepals, overlapping white petals, whorls of many stamens. The fruit is a papery or woody capsule with thick ribs and a coat of hairs; the following are accepted species: Angophora bakeri. A tree up to 10 metres tall. - NSW Angophora costata. A tree up to 30 metres tall with scaly bark. On sandstone. - NSW Angophora × clelandii - hybrid A. bakeri × A. hispida - NSW Angophora crassifolia, a tree up to 15 metres tall endemic to New South Wales. - NSW Angophora × dichromophloia - hybrid, A. costata × A. hispida - NSW Angophora euryphylla, a tree up to 25 metres tall. - NSW Angophora exul, a threatened species known only from a small area at Gibraltar Rock, New South Wales. A tree up to 8 metres tall with terminal inflorescences. - NSW Angophora floribunda.
A common tree up to 30 metres tall - NSW, Vic Angophora hispida. A tree or mallee up to 7 metres tall. - NSW Angophora inopina, a vulnerable species. A tree up to 8 metres tall. - NSW Angophora leiocarpa, a tree up to 25 metres tall. - NSW, Qld Angophora melanoxylon. A multi-stemmed tree up to 15 metres tall. - NSW, Qld Angophora paludosa, a tree up to 15 metres tall. - NSW Angophora robur, a vulnerable species. A tree up to 10 metres tall. - NSW Angophora subvelutina. A tree up to 20 metres tall. - NSW, Qld Angophora woodsiana, a tree up to 20 metres tall. - NSW, Qld Lucid Online Player - EUCLID Eucalypts of Australia Angophora costata. Growing Native Plants. Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research, Australian National Herbarium
Eucalyptus deglupta
Eucalyptus deglupta is a tall tree known as the rainbow eucalyptus, Mindanao gum, or rainbow gum. It is native to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, is the only Eucalyptus species with a natural range that extends into the northern hemisphere, it is characterized by multi-colored bark featuring hues of blue, purple and maroon. It is intolerant of frost. In its native habitat, E. deglupta grows over 80 m tall. Outside of its natural habitat, it will only grow up to 38 m tall. E. deglupta is known as the Mindanao gum tree, named after the island of Mindanao in the Philippines to which the tree is native. Gum trees are a group of eucalyptus trees that are characterized by their smooth bark that periodically sheds. E. deglupta are planted as ornamental trees in frost-free climates such as Hawaii, Southern California and Louisiana. E. deglupta features evergreen foliage and flowers once a year. Flowering may occur within the 1st year but begins after 2 years and continues annually; the tree produces white flowers with moderately wide leaves.
The flower buds contain stamens and pistil and are pollinated via bee. After fertilization, the flower capsule becomes a woody fruit, known as a gum nut, which contains the seeds. Plants can be grown from cuttings of trees younger than 5 years old. Once a tree reaches 5 years of age, root inhibition prevent the generation of roots from cuttings; the unique multi-hued bark is the most distinctive feature of the tree. Patches of outer bark are shed annually at different times; this darkens and matures to give blue, purple and maroon tones. The previous season’s bark peels off in strips to reveal a brightly colored new bark below; the peeling process results in vertical streaks of red, green and gray. The colours of the bark are not as intense outside the tree's native range; this tree is grown around the world in tree plantations for pulpwood used in making white paper. It is the dominant species used for pulpwood plantations in the Philippines. Worldagroforestrycentre.org - detailed description: Eucalyptus deglupta
Philippines
The Philippines the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon and Mindanao; the capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east, Malaysia and Indonesia to the south; the Philippines' location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and close to the equator makes the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons, but endows it with abundant natural resources and some of the world's greatest biodiversity. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 km2, according to the Philippines Statistical Authority and the WorldBank and, as of 2015, had a population of at least 100 million.
As of January 2018, it is the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, comprising one of the world's largest diasporas. Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, they were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Malay, Indian and Chinese nations occurred. Various competing maritime states were established under the rule of datus, rajahs and lakans; the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for the Spanish, in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Hispanic colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the first Hispanic settlement in the archipelago was established.
The Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. This resulted in Catholicism becoming the dominant religion. During this time, Manila became the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade connecting Asia with Acapulco in the Americas using Manila galleons; as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the Philippine Revolution followed, which spawned the short-lived First Philippine Republic, followed by the bloody Philippine–American War. The war, as well as the ensuing cholera epidemic, resulted in the deaths of thousands of combatants as well as tens of thousands of civilians. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until after World War II, when the Philippines was recognized as an independent nation. Since the unitary sovereign state has had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a dictatorship by a non-violent revolution; the Philippines is a founding member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the East Asia Summit.
It hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank. The Philippines is considered to be an emerging market and a newly industrialized country, which has an economy transitioning from being based on agriculture to one based more on services and manufacturing. Along with East Timor, the Philippines is one of Southeast Asia's predominantly Christian nations; the Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte and Samar Felipinas after the then-Prince of Asturias; the name Las Islas Filipinas would be used to cover all the islands of the archipelago. Before that became commonplace, other names such as Islas del Poniente and Magellan's name for the islands San Lázaro were used by the Spanish to refer to the islands; the official name of the Philippines has changed several times in the course of its history. During the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic.
From the period of the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War until the Commonwealth period, American colonial authorities referred to the country as the Philippine Islands, a translation of the Spanish name. Since the end of World War II, the official name of the country has been the Republic of the Philippines. Philippines has gained currency as the common name since being the name used in Article VI of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, with or without the definite article. Discovery in 2018 of stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains in Rizal, Kalinga has pushed back evidence of early hominins in the archipelago to as early as 709,000 years. However, the metatarsal of the Callao Man, reliably dated by uranium-series dating to 67,000 years ago remains the oldest human remnant found in the archipelago to date; this distinction belonged to the Tabon Man of Palawan, carbon-dated to around 26,500 years ago. Negritos were among the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, but their first settlement in the Philippines has not been reliably dated.
There are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos. F. Landa Jocano theorizes. Wilhelm Solheim's Island Origin Theory postulates that the peopling of the archipelago transpired via trade networks originating in the Sundaland area around
Maluku Islands
The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago in eastern Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, north and east of Timor; the islands were known as the Spice Islands due to the nutmeg and cloves that were exclusively found there, the presence of which sparked colonial interest from Europe in the sixteenth century. The Maluku Islands formed a single province from Indonesian independence until 1999, when it was split into two provinces. A new province, North Maluku, incorporates the area between Morotai and Sula, with the arc of islands from Buru and Seram to Wetar remaining within the existing Maluku Province. North Maluku is predominantly Muslim, its capital is Sofifi on Halmahera island. Maluku province has a larger Christian population, its capital is Ambon. Though Melanesian, many island populations in the Banda Islands, were massacred in the seventeenth century during the spice wars.
A second influx of immigrants from Java began in the early twentieth century under the Dutch and continues in the Indonesian era. Between 1999 and 2002, conflict between Muslims and Christians killed thousands and displaced half a million people; the name Maluku is thought to have been derived from the term used by Arab traders for the region, Jazirat al-Moluk, from the word malik. However, since the name itself has been mentioned in a fourteenth-century Majapahit eulogy, that predates the arrival of Islam in Maluku at the late fifteenth century, other sources claim that the name comes from a local language with the meaning "the head of a bull" or "the head of something large"; the Maluku Islands were a single province from Indonesian independence until 1999 when they were split into North Maluku and Maluku. North Maluku province includes Ternate, Tidore and Halmahera. Arab merchants began bringing Islam. Peaceful conversion to Islam occurred in many islands in the centres of trade, while aboriginal animism persisted in the hinterlands and more isolated islands.
Archaeological evidence here relies on the occurrence of pigs' teeth, as evidence of pork eating or abstinence therefrom. The most significant lasting effects of the Portuguese presence was the disruption and reorganization of the Southeast Asian trade, in eastern Indonesia—including Maluku—the introduction of Christianity; the Portuguese had conquered the city-state of Malacca in the early sixteenth century and their influence was most felt in Maluku and other parts of eastern Indonesia. After the Portuguese annexed Malacca in August 1511, one Portuguese diary noted'it is thirty years since they became Moors'. Afonso de Albuquerque learned of the route to the Banda Islands and other'Spice Islands', sent an exploratory expedition of three vessels under the command of António de Abreu, Simão Afonso Bisigudo and Francisco Serrão. On the return trip, Francisco Serrão was shipwrecked at Hitu island in 1512. There he established ties with the local ruler, impressed with his martial skills; the rulers of the competing island states of Ternate and Tidore sought Portuguese assistance and the newcomers were welcomed in the area as buyers of supplies and spices during a lull in the regional trade due to the temporary disruption of Javanese and Malay sailings to the area following the 1511 conflict in Malacca.
The spice trade soon revived but the Portuguese would not be able to monopolize nor disrupt this trade. Allying himself with Ternate's ruler, Serrão constructed a fortress on that tiny island and served as the head of a mercenary band of Portuguese seamen under the service of one of the two local feuding sultans who controlled most of the spice trade. Both Serrão and Ferdinand Magellan, perished before they could meet one another; the Portuguese first landed in Ambon in 1513, but it only became the new centre for their activities in Maluku following the expulsion from Ternate. European power in the region was weak and Ternate became an expanding, fiercely Islamic and anti-European state under the rule of Sultan Baab Ullah and his son Sultan Said. Following Portuguese missionary work, there have been large Christian communities in eastern Indonesia through to contemporary times, which has contributed to a sense of shared interest with Europeans among the Ambonese; the Dutch competed with the Portuguese in the area for trade.
With the declaration of a single republic of Indonesia in 1950 to replace the federal state, a Republic of South Maluku was declared and attempted to secede. And led by Chris Soumokil and supported by the Moluccan members of the Netherlands special troops; this movement was defeated by the Indonesian army and by special agreement with the Netherlands the troops were transferred to the Netherlands. Maluku is one of the first provinces of Indonesia, proclaimed in 1945 until 1999, when the Maluku Utara and Halmahera Tengah Regencies were split off as a separate province of North Maluku, its capital used to be Ternate, on a small island to the west of the large island of Halmahera, but has been moved to Sofifi on Halmahera itself. The capital of the remaining part of Maluku province remains at Ambon. Religious conflict erupted across the islands in January 1999; the subsequent 18 months were characterized by fighting between local groups of Muslims and Christians, the destruction of thousands of houses, the displacement of approximately
