Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is electricity produced from hydropower. In 2015, hydropower generated 16.6% of the world's total electricity and 70% of all renewable electricity, was expected to increase about 3.1% each year for the next 25 years. Hydropower is produced in 150 countries, with the Asia-Pacific region generating 33 percent of global hydropower in 2013. China is the largest hydroelectricity producer, with 920 TWh of production in 2013, representing 16.9 percent of domestic electricity use. The cost of hydroelectricity is low, making it a competitive source of renewable electricity; the hydro station consumes no water, unlike gas plants. The average cost of electricity from a hydro station larger than 10 megawatts is 3 to 5 U. S. cents per kilowatt hour. With a dam and reservoir it is a flexible source of electricity since the amount produced by the station can be varied up or down rapidly to adapt to changing energy demands. Once a hydroelectric complex is constructed, the project produces no direct waste, in many cases, has a lower output level of greenhouse gases than fossil fuel powered energy plants.
Hydropower has been used since ancient times to perform other tasks. In the mid-1770s, French engineer Bernard Forest de Bélidor published Architecture Hydraulique which described vertical- and horizontal-axis hydraulic machines. By the late 19th century, the electrical generator was developed and could now be coupled with hydraulics; the growing demand for the Industrial Revolution would drive development as well. In 1878 the world's first hydroelectric power scheme was developed at Cragside in Northumberland, England by William Armstrong, it was used to power a single arc lamp in his art gallery. The old Schoelkopf Power Station No. 1 near Niagara Falls in the U. S. side began to produce electricity in 1881. The first Edison hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Plant, began operating September 30, 1882, in Appleton, with an output of about 12.5 kilowatts. By 1886 there were 45 hydroelectric power stations in the U. S. and Canada. By 1889 there were 200 in the U. S. alone. At the beginning of the 20th century, many small hydroelectric power stations were being constructed by commercial companies in mountains near metropolitan areas.
Grenoble, France held the International Exhibition of Hydropower and Tourism with over one million visitors. By 1920 as 40% of the power produced in the United States was hydroelectric, the Federal Power Act was enacted into law; the Act created the Federal Power Commission to regulate hydroelectric power stations on federal land and water. As the power stations became larger, their associated dams developed additional purposes to include flood control and navigation. Federal funding became necessary for large-scale development and federally owned corporations, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Power Administration were created. Additionally, the Bureau of Reclamation which had begun a series of western U. S. irrigation projects in the early 20th century was now constructing large hydroelectric projects such as the 1928 Hoover Dam. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers was involved in hydroelectric development, completing the Bonneville Dam in 1937 and being recognized by the Flood Control Act of 1936 as the premier federal flood control agency.
Hydroelectric power stations continued to become larger throughout the 20th century. Hydropower was referred to as white coal for its plenty. Hoover Dam's initial 1,345 MW power station was the world's largest hydroelectric power station in 1936; the Itaipu Dam opened in 1984 in South America as the largest, producing 14,000 MW but was surpassed in 2008 by the Three Gorges Dam in China at 22,500 MW. Hydroelectricity would supply some countries, including Norway, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Brazil, with over 85% of their electricity; the United States has over 2,000 hydroelectric power stations that supply 6.4% of its total electrical production output, 49% of its renewable electricity. The technical potential for hydropower development around the world is much greater than the actual production: the percent of potential hydropower capacity that has not been developed is 71% in Europe, 75% in North America, 79% in South America, 95% in Africa, 95% in the Middle East, 82% in Asia-Pacific.
The political realities of new reservoirs in western countries, economic limitations in the third world and the lack of a transmission system in undeveloped areas result in the possibility of developing 25% of the remaining technically exploitable potential before 2050, with the bulk of that being in the Asia-Pacific area. Some countries have developed their hydropower potential and have little room for growth: Switzerland produces 88% of its potential and Mexico 80%. Most hydroelectric power comes from the potential energy of dammed water driving a water turbine and generator; the power extracted from the water depends on the volume and on the difference in height between the source and the water's outflow. This height difference is called the head. A large pipe delivers water from the reservoir to the turbine; this method produces electricity to supply high peak demands by moving water between reservoirs at different elevations. At times of low electrical demand, the excess generation capacity is used to pump water into the higher reservoir.
When the demand becomes greater, water is released back into the lower reservoir through a turbine. Pumped-storage schemes provide the most commercially important means of large-scale grid energy storage and improve the daily capacity factor of the generation system. Pumped storag
Department of Junín
Junín is a region in the central highlands and westernmost Peruvian Amazon. Its capital is Huancayo; the region has a heterogeneous topography. The western range located near the border with the Lima Region, has ice-covered peaks. On the east, there are high glacier valleys. Among them is the Junín Plateau, located between the cities of La Oroya and Cerro de Pasco; the Mantaro Valley becomes wider before Jauja up to the limit with the Huancavelica Region. This area concentrates a large share of the region's population. Towards the east, near the jungle, there is an abundance of narrow and deep canyons, with inclined hillsides, covered by woods under low-lying clouds; the Waytapallana mountain range is located in the south central area of the region. This range holds a great fault, the reason earthquakes happen in the area; the upper jungle, with valleys of great length, modelled by the Tulumayu, Perené and Ene rivers, is located on the eastern side of the region. Lake Junin, the largest lake within Peru, is located in the region, except for its northernmost tip which belongs to the Pasco Region.
Junín Region is home to Mount Toromocho. The Junín Region borders the regions of Pasco in the north, Ucayali in the northeast and Cusco in the east; the Mantaro River marks the border of the region with the Ayacucho and Huancavelica regions in the south and in the west it is bordered by the Lima Region. The Junín Region has an average annual temperature of 13.1 °C, a maximum high of 17 °C and a minimum low of 0 °C. The rainy season runs from November to April, from December to March in tropical areas; the region is divided into nine provinces. The provinces and their capitals are: According to the 2007 Peru Census, the language learnt first by most of the residents was Spanish followed by Quechua; the Quechua varieties spoken in Junín are Yaru Quechua and Chanka Quechua. The following table shows the results concerning the language learnt first in the Junín Region by province: Until the arrival of the Incas the plains of Junin region known as the Pampas were inhabited by a semi-wild, rowdy group of people whose rivals were the Tarumas.
Meanwhile, the Mantaro Valley was inhabited by the Huancas. Inca Pachacuti won all these races in 1460, which became part of the Inca Empire. Huancayo became the region's main highway rest stop on the Inca Trail. Woolen mills were created during the viceroyalty, when the tissue and the tissue became a tradition that continues today. On September 13, 1825, Simón Bolívar issued a decree creating what is now the Junín Region, to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Junín, the last real cavalry charge in the Western world where no shot was fired, but knowing only used. Major events of national importance occurred during this period: Huancayo hosted the Assembly that issued the 1839 Constitution and in December 3, 1854, Ramón Castilla signed a decree that granted freedom to Afro-Peruvian slaves. Asháninka Communal Reserve Chacamarca Historical Sanctuary Nor Yauyos-Cochas Landscape Reserve Otishi National Park Pampa Hermosa Reserved Zone Gobierno Regional Junín – Junín Regional Government official website
Eutrophication
Eutrophication, or hypertrophication, is when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients which induce excessive growth of plants and algae. This process may result in oxygen depletion of the water body. One example is an "algal bloom" or great increase of phytoplankton in a water body as a response to increased levels of nutrients. Eutrophication is induced by the discharge of nitrate or phosphate-containing detergents, fertilizers, or sewage into an aquatic system. Eutrophication most arises from the oversupply of nutrients, most as nitrogen or phosphorus, which leads to overgrowth of plants and algae in aquatic ecosystems. After such organisms die, bacterial degradation of their biomass results in oxygen consumption, thereby creating the state of hypoxia. According to Ullmann's Encyclopedia, "the primary limiting factor for eutrophication is phosphate." The availability of phosphorus promotes excessive plant growth and decay, favouring simple algae and plankton over other more complicated plants, causes a severe reduction in water quality.
Phosphorus is a necessary nutrient for plants to live, is the limiting factor for plant growth in many freshwater ecosystems. Phosphate adheres to soil, so it is transported by erosion. Once translocated to lakes, the extraction of phosphate into water is slow, hence the difficulty of reversing the effects of eutrophication. However, numerous literature report that nitrogen is the primary limiting nutrient for the accumulation of algal biomass; the sources of these excess phosphates are phosphates in detergent, industrial/domestic run-offs, fertilizers. With the phasing out of phosphate-containing detergents in the 1970s, industrial/domestic run-off and agriculture have emerged as the dominant contributors to eutrophication. Cultural eutrophication is the process that speeds up natural eutrophication because of human activity. Due to clearing of land and building of towns and cities, land runoff is accelerated and more nutrients such as phosphates and nitrate are supplied to lakes and rivers, to coastal estuaries and bays.
Extra nutrients are supplied by treatment plants, golf courses, farms, as well as untreated sewage in many countries. When algae die, they decompose and the nutrients contained in that organic matter are converted into inorganic form by microorganisms; this decomposition process consumes oxygen. The depleted oxygen levels in turn may lead to fish kills and a range of other effects reducing biodiversity. Nutrients may become concentrated in an anoxic zone and may only be made available again during autumn turn-over or in conditions of turbulent flow; the dead algae and the organic load carried by the water inflows in to the lake settle at its bottom and undergoes anaerobic digestion releasing greenhouse gases like methane and CO2. Some part of methane gas is consumed by the anaerobic methane oxidation bacteria which in turn works as food source to the zooplankton. In case the lake is not deficit of dissolved oxygen at all depths the aerobic methane oxidation bacteria like Methylococcus capsulatus can consume most of the methane by releasing CO2 which in turn aid the production of algae.
Thus a self-sustaining biological process can take place to generate primary food source for the phytoplankton and zooplankton depending on availability of adequate dissolved oxygen in the water bodies which are subjected to higher organic pollution loads. Adequate dissolved oxygen in water bodies is crucial for fisheries production and elimination of green house gas emissions. Enhanced growth of aquatic vegetation or phytoplankton and algal blooms disrupts normal functioning of the ecosystem, causing a variety of problems such as a lack of oxygen needed for fish and shellfish to survive; the water becomes cloudy coloured a shade of green, brown, or red. Eutrophication decreases the value of rivers and aesthetic enjoyment. Health problems can occur. Human activities can accelerate the rate. Runoff from agriculture and development, pollution from septic systems and sewers, sewage sludge spreading, other human-related activities increase the flow of both inorganic nutrients and organic substances into ecosystems.
Elevated levels of atmospheric compounds of nitrogen can increase nitrogen availability. Phosphorus is regarded as the main culprit in cases of eutrophication in lakes subjected to "point source" pollution from sewage pipes; the concentration of algae and the trophic state of lakes correspond well to phosphorus levels in water. Studies conducted in the Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario have shown a relationship between the addition of phosphorus and the rate of eutrophication. Humankind has increased the rate of phosphorus cycling on Earth by four times due to agricultural fertilizer production and application. Between 1950 and 1995, an estimated 600,000,000 tonnes of phosphorus was applied to Earth's surface on croplands. Although eutrophication is caused by human activities, it can be a natural process in lakes. Eutrophy occurs for instance. Paleolimnologists now recognise that climate change and other external influences are critical in regulating the natural productivity of lakes; some lakes demonstrate the reverse process, becoming less nutrient rich with time.
The main difference between natural and anthropogenic eutrophication is that the natural process is slow, occurring on geological time scales. Eutrophication is a common phenomenon i
Bolivia
Bolivia the Plurinational State of Bolivia is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. The capital is Sucre; the largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales a flat region in the east of Bolivia. The sovereign state of Bolivia is a constitutionally unitary state, divided into nine departments, its geography varies from the peaks of the Andes in the West, to the Eastern Lowlands, situated within the Amazon Basin. It is bordered to the north and east by Brazil, to the southeast by Paraguay, to the south by Argentina, to the southwest by Chile, to the northwest by Peru. One-third of the country is within the Andean mountain range. With 1,098,581 km2 of area, Bolivia is the fifth largest country in South America, the 27th largest in the world and the largest landlocked country in the Southern Hemisphere; the country's population, estimated at 11 million, is multiethnic, including Amerindians, Europeans and Africans.
The racial and social segregation that arose from Spanish colonialism has continued to the modern era. Spanish is the official and predominant language, although 36 indigenous languages have official status, of which the most spoken are Guarani and Quechua languages. Before Spanish colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was part of the Inca Empire, while the northern and eastern lowlands were inhabited by independent tribes. Spanish conquistadors arriving from Cuzco and Asunción took control of the region in the 16th century. During the Spanish colonial period Bolivia was administered by the Royal Audiencia of Charcas. Spain built its empire in large part upon the silver, extracted from Bolivia's mines. After the first call for independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century Bolivia lost control of several peripheral territories to neighboring countries including the seizure of its coastline by Chile in 1879.
Bolivia remained politically stable until 1971, when Hugo Banzer led a coup d'état which replaced the socialist government of Juan José Torres with a military dictatorship headed by Banzer. Banzer's regime cracked down on leftist and socialist opposition and other forms of dissent, resulting in the torture and deaths of a number of Bolivian citizens. Banzer was ousted in 1978 and returned as the democratically elected president of Bolivia from 1997 to 2001. Modern Bolivia is a charter member of the UN, IMF, NAM, OAS, ACTO, Bank of the South, ALBA and USAN. For over a decade Bolivia has had one of the highest economic growth rates in Latin America, it is a developing country, with a medium ranking in the Human Development Index, a poverty level of 38.6%, one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America. Its main economic activities include agriculture, fishing and manufacturing goods such as textiles, refined metals, refined petroleum. Bolivia is rich in minerals, including tin and lithium. Bolivia is named after Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan leader in the Spanish American wars of independence.
The leader of Venezuela, Antonio José de Sucre, had been given the option by Bolívar to either unite Charcas with the newly formed Republic of Peru, to unite with the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, or to formally declare its independence from Spain as a wholly independent state. Sucre opted to create a brand new state and on 6 August 1825, with local support, named it in honor of Simón Bolívar; the original name was Republic of Bolívar. Some days congressman Manuel Martín Cruz proposed: "If from Romulus comes Rome from Bolívar comes Bolivia"; the name was approved by the Republic on 3 October 1825. In 2009, a new constitution changed the country's official name to "Plurinational State of Bolivia" in recognition of the multi-ethnic nature of the country and the enhanced position of Bolivia's indigenous peoples under the new constitution; the region now known as Bolivia had been occupied for over 2,500 years. However, present-day Aymara associate themselves with the ancient civilization of the Tiwanaku culture which had its capital at Tiwanaku, in Western Bolivia.
The capital city of Tiwanaku dates from as early as 1500 BC when it was a small, agriculturally based village. The community grew to urban proportions between AD 600 and AD 800, becoming an important regional power in the southern Andes. According to early estimates, the city covered 6.5 square kilometers at its maximum extent and had between 15,000 and 30,000 inhabitants. In 1996 satellite imaging was used to map the extent of fossilized suka kollus across the three primary valleys of Tiwanaku, arriving at population-carrying capacity estimates of anywhere between 285,000 and 1,482,000 people. Around AD 400, Tiwanaku went from being a locally dominant force to a predatory state. Tiwanaku expanded its reaches into the Yungas and brought its culture and way of life to many other cultures in Peru and Chile. Tiwanaku was not a violent culture in many respects. In order to expand its reach, Tiwanaku exercised great political astuteness, creating colonies, fostering trade agree
Amphibian
Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. Modern amphibians are all Lissamphibia, they inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this; the young undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely on their skin, they are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are ecological indicators; the earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian period from sarcopterygian fish with lungs and bony-limbed fins, features that were helpful in adapting to dry land.
They diversified and became dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, but were displaced by reptiles and other vertebrates. Over time, amphibians shrank in size and decreased in diversity, leaving only the modern subclass Lissamphibia; the three modern orders of amphibians are Anura and Apoda. The number of known amphibian species is 8,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs; the smallest amphibian in the world is a frog from New Guinea with a length of just 7.7 mm. The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m Chinese giant salamander, but this is dwarfed by the extinct 9 m Prionosuchus from the middle Permian of Brazil. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology; the word "amphibian" is derived from the Ancient Greek term ἀμφίβιος, which means "both kinds of life", ἀμφί meaning "of both kinds" and βιος meaning "life". The term was used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters.
Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates. Amphibia in its widest sense was divided into three subclasses, two of which are extinct: Subclass Lepospondyli† Subclass Temnospondyli† Subclass Lissamphibia Salientia: Jurassic to present—6,200 current species in 53 families Caudata: Jurassic to present—652 current species in 9 families Gymnophiona: Jurassic to present—192 current species in 10 families The actual number of species in each group depends on the taxonomic classification followed; the two most common systems are the classification adopted by the website AmphibiaWeb, University of California and the classification by herpetologist Darrel Frost and the American Museum of Natural History, available as the online reference database "Amphibian Species of the World". The numbers of species cited above follows Frost and the total number of known amphibian species as of March 31, 2019 is 8,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. With the phylogenetic classification, the taxon Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a polyparaphyletic group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics.
Classification varies according to the preferred phylogeny of the author and whether they use a stem-based or a node-based classification. Traditionally, amphibians as a class are defined as all tetrapods with a larval stage, while the group that includes the common ancestors of all living amphibians and all their descendants is called Lissamphibia; the phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is uncertain, Lissamphibia may fall within extinct groups, like the Temnospondyli or the Lepospondyli, in some analyses in the amniotes. This means that advocates of phylogenetic nomenclature have removed a large number of basal Devonian and Carboniferous amphibian-type tetrapod groups that were placed in Amphibia in Linnaean taxonomy, included them elsewhere under cladistic taxonomy. If the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes is included in Amphibia, it becomes a paraphyletic group. All modern amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, considered a clade, a group of species that have evolved from a common ancestor.
The three modern orders are Anura and Gymnophiona. It has been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a Temnospondyl-like ancestor, that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, thus of amniotes. Although the fossils of several older proto-frogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest "true frog" is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona, it is anatomically similar to modern frogs. The oldest known caecilian is another Early Jurassic species, Eocaecilia micropodia from Arizona; the earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China. Authorities disagree as to whether Salientia is a superorder that includes the order Anura, or whether
Source of the Amazon River
The Source of the Amazon River has been a subject of speculation and exploration for centuries. Three definitions can apply to determining the source of a river; the source can be defined as the most distant upstream point in the drainage basin, or the most distant upstream point of the largest stream of the river, or the most distant source of an uninterrupted flow of water. The source of the Amazon River has been attributed to the headwaters of three different Peruvian rivers in the high Andes: the Marañón, the Apurímac, the Mantaro. Explorers and scholars have identified each of the three rivers as being the source of the Amazon under one of the three definitions; the Mantaro is the most distant upstream point. The Amazon River is the largest river in the world in terms of its discharge into the Atlantic Ocean and either the longest or second longest river in the world, contending with the Nile River for that honor. More than 3,700 kilometres from its mouth, upstream from the city of Iquitos, the Amazon divides into the Marañón and the Ucayali Rivers.
The Marañón has the largest flow. The two most distant tributaries from the mouth of the Amazon are the Ucayali tributaries, the Apurimac and Mantaro Rivers; the Marañón, Mantaro rivers originate in the high Andes of Peru at elevations of more than 5,000 metres above sea level. All three have been claimed as the source of the Amazon; the Maraňón can claim to be the mainstream source of the Amazon, but the Ucayali and its tributaries are longer, 2,738 kilometres compared to 1,415 kilometres for the Maraňon. A Jesuit priest named Samuel Fritz published accounts of his life among the Indigenous people living along the Amazon and Maraňón Rivers; the map he drew in 1707 showed the Marañón as larger than the Ucayali, thus the main stream of the Amazon. He identified the source of the Maraňón as Lake Lauricocha in the Andes. Lake Lauricocha is located at -10.313 Latitude, -76.696 Longitude and has a surface elevation of 3,856 metres. The stream issuing from Lake Lauricocha is called the Lauricocha River.
A few miles down its course it is afterwards known as the Maraňón. Fritz's opinion about the source of the Amazon went unchallenged for nearly 200 years. However, in the late 19th century, the Italian-born geographer Antonio Raimondi said that Lake Lauricocha was not the real source of the Amazon, but rather the Nupe River which he said was larger and longer than the Lauricocha River; the Nupe rises from a chain of small lakes below Siula Grande, one of the highest peaks of the Huayhuash Range. The coordinates of Quesillococha, the uppermost lake, are -76.869 Longitude. Its elevation is 4,351 metres. In 1951 and 1952, two Englishmen, Sebastian Snow and John Brown, joined an expedition to confirm the source of the Amazon. Finding their way to Lake Lauricocha, they found a stream flowing into the lake which they followed through the Raura silver mine to a small glacier-fed lake, called Niñococha, in the Raura mountain range, they declared Niňococha the source of the Amazon. Starting at the lake, Snow descended the Amazon River all the way to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean.
Lake Nińococha is located at -76.764 Longitude at an elevation of 4,964 metres. Attention turned to the headwaters of the Apurímac River as early as 1935 when Lake Vilafro was identified as the source of the Amazon. Several other places in that vicinity were named in the decades that followed with the Carhuasanta River, flowing down from Mismi mountain, first identified as a possible ultimate source in 1969 by Carlos Peñaherrera del Aguila. In 1971, Loren McIntyre led a National Geographic Society expedition to this remote area, frequented only by llama and alpaca herders. On the northern slopes of Mismi, at the headwaters of the Carhuasanta, McIntyre identified a small pond as the source of the Amazon, he named the pond Lake McIntyre and it appeared on maps as Laguna Bohemia. It is located at -71.702 Longitude at an elevation of 5,148 metres. The next major expedition to search the Apurímac headwaters for the source of the Amazon was an expedition headed by Polish-born Jacek Palkiewicz and Peruvian Zaniel I.
Novoa Goicochea in 1996. Palkiewicz and Novoa refuted the source identified by McIntyre in favor of a site at the headwaters of the Apacheta River, their argument was that the Apacheta is longer. They located the source of the Amazon at a small spring beneath a cliff watering a patch of vegetation 20 metres in diameter; the spring is located at -71.761 Longitude at an elevation of 5,182 metres. It is about 5 kilometres from the Laguna Bohemia source. In 1999-2000, a Czech team headed by Bohumir Jansky identified the Carhuasanta River as the source of the Amazon. In 2011, Jansky and his team published the results of a years-long study of the Apurímac headwaters, they described four short rivers, ranging in length from 8.1 kilometres to 13.1 kilometres, which converge to form the Lloqueta river. The Carhuasanta River had the largest drainage area of the four, they identified two sources of the Carhuasanta, including Laguna Bohemia. They did not offer an opinion in their 2011 study of the authentic source of the Amazon, although the Carhuasanta received the bulk of their attention.
In 2011, the Peruvian government accepted the Apacheta River as the authentic source of the
