1.
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
2.
Natural Force
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Natural Force is the second studio album by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, released in May 1978 by RCA Records. In the United States, the album was titled Its a Heartache, as with her debut, Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe wrote most of the tracks on the album. David Mackay returned again to produce, with Scott and Wolfe, other songs include covers of American artists Stevie Wonder and Carole King. Five singles were released from Natural Force, the second single, Its a Heartache, is among the best-selling singles of all time, with sales of over 6 million copies. It became Tylers first charting single in the United States, where it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, many other singles from Natural Force also fared well in Europe. The album was a commercial success for Tyler. In the United States, it reached number 2 on the Top Country Albums chart, the album was also a success in Europe, but like its predecessor, it failed to chart in the United Kingdom. Tyler began recording songs for Natural Force in 1977, which resulted in the release of Heaven five following her debut album The World Starts Tonight in February of the same year. Natural Force sustained the style of its predecessor, with pop rock songs composed by Tylers producers and managers, Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolfe, Natural Force became the best-selling of her four albums with RCA Records, with over 500,000 copies sold in the United States. Heaven was released as the lead single in July 1977. The song was criticised for having less impact than her previous singles and it was only a hit in Germany, where it reached number 24. Its a Heartache became the single from Natural Force in November 1977. Tylers raspy vocal quality had her compared to Rod Stewart, with viewing the song as superior to Lost in France. Its a Heartache was a success, selling over 6 million copies worldwide. The song became Tylers first hit in the United States, reaching number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and it also reached number four in the United Kingdom, and number one hit in countries such as Canada, France and Norway. Here Am I was released as the single from Natural Force on 7 April 1978. The song was not as successful as Its a Heartache, only charting in Germany. Record Mirror stated that the song lacked the irresistible hook of Its a Heartache, hey Love was released as the fourth single in June 1978, and failed to chart worldwide
3.
Hopetoun Falls
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The Hopetoun Falls is a waterfall across the Aire River that is located in The Otways region of Victoria, Australia. The falls are located approximately 5 kilometres south of the locality of Beech Forest at an elevation of 314 metres above sea level and range between 45–49 metres in height. Hopetoun Falls adjacent to the Apollo Bay – Beech Forest Road about 4 kilometres south of the Beauchamp Falls turnoff, much attention has been given to preserving the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls while allowing ample access for visitors. The falls have a set of well-built and maintained stairs that lead down a natural patio to a viewing platform very close to the foot of the waterfall. Hopetoun Falls plunges 30 m in a rectangular shape, many visitors come every year to look at its natural beauty. List of waterfalls of Victoria Media related to Hopetoun Falls at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
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Sahara
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The Sahara is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometres is comparable to the area of the United States. The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of tropical savanna around the Niger River valley. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including, the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, the name Sahara is derived from ṣaḥārā, the plural of the Arabic word for desert. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and it covers 9 million square kilometres, amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with an annual precipitation of less than 250 mm were included. It is one of three physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada, Ergs form only a minor part, wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features, sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, dry lakes, and salt flats. Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania, several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad. The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation, the northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are subdivisions of the great desert, Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years, the northern limit also corresponds to the 100 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, the southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha, or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the limit of the Sahara corresponds to the 150 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. The Sahara is the worlds largest low-latitude hot desert and this steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere
6.
Polar desert
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Polar deserts are areas with annual precipitation less than 250 mm and a mean temperature of less than 10 °C during the warmest months. Polar deserts on Earth cover nearly 5,000,000 km2, polar deserts are one of two polar biomes, polar deserts and Arctic tundra. These biomes are located at the poles of the earth, specifically, the Arctic, northernmost North America, Europe, and Asia, polar deserts are located in the Arctic and Antarctic. Unlike the tundra that can support plant and animal life in the summer and these organisms are closely related to cyanobacteria which have a variety of functions, particularly, fixing carbon dioxide from the melting water. Temperature changes in polar deserts frequently cross the freezing point of water and this freeze-thaw alternation forms patterned textures on the ground, as much as 5 m in diameter. Most of the interior of Antarctica is polar desert, despite the thick ice cover, conversely, the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, although they have had no ice for thousands of years due to katabatic wind, are not necessarily polar desert. Polar deserts are relatively common during ice ages, as ice ages tend to be dry, climate scientists have voiced concerns about the effects of global warming to the ice poles in these polar biomes. This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Geological Survey document, Types of Deserts
7.
Life
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Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved. The definition of life is controversial, the current definition is that organisms maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, and reproduce. However, many other definitions have been proposed, and there are some borderline cases. Modern definitions are more complex, with input from a diversity of scientific disciplines, biophysicists have proposed many definitions based on chemical systems, there are also some living systems theories, such as the Gaia hypothesis, the idea that the Earth itself is alive. Another theory is that life is the property of systems, and yet another is elaborated in complex systems biology. Abiogenesis describes the process of life arising from non-living matter. Properties common to all organisms include the need for certain chemical elements to sustain biochemical functions. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28 billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, Earths current life may have descended from an RNA world, although RNA-based life may not have been the first. The mechanism by which began on Earth is unknown, though many hypotheses have been formulated and are often based on the Miller–Urey experiment. The earliest known forms are microfossils of bacteria. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes believed to be present in the last universal ancestor of all living organisms. Since its primordial beginnings, life on Earth has changed its environment on a time scale. To survive in most ecosystems, life must often adapt to a range of conditions. Some microorganisms, called extremophiles, thrive in physically or geochemically extreme environments that are detrimental to most other life on Earth, Aristotle was the first person to classify organisms. Later, Carl Linnaeus introduced his system of nomenclature for the classification of species. Eventually new groups and categories of life were discovered, such as cells and microorganisms, cells are sometimes considered the smallest units and building blocks of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many such as proteins
8.
Nature
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Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, or material world or universe. Nature can refer to the phenomena of the world. The study of nature is a part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or essential qualities, innate disposition, and in ancient times, literally meant birth. Natura is a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals. This usage continued during the advent of scientific method in the last several centuries. Within the various uses of the word today, nature often refers to geology, for example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, human nature or the whole of nature. Depending on the context, the term natural might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural. Earth is the planet known to support life, and its natural features are the subject of many fields of scientific research. Within the solar system, it is third closest to the sun, it is the largest terrestrial planet and its most prominent climatic features are its two large polar regions, two relatively narrow temperate zones, and a wide equatorial tropical to subtropical region. Precipitation varies widely with location, from several metres of water per year to less than a millimetre,71 percent of the Earths surface is covered by salt-water oceans. The remainder consists of continents and islands, with most of the land in the Northern Hemisphere. Earth has evolved through geological and biological processes that have left traces of the original conditions, the outer surface is divided into several gradually migrating tectonic plates. The interior remains active, with a layer of plastic mantle. This iron core is composed of a solid phase. Convective motion in the core generates electric currents through dynamo action, the atmospheric conditions have been significantly altered from the original conditions by the presence of life-forms, which create an ecological balance that stabilizes the surface conditions. Geology is the science and study of the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth, the geology of an area evolves through time as rock units are deposited and inserted and deformational processes change their shapes and locations
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Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
10.
Species
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In biology, a species is the basic unit of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. While this definition is often adequate, looked at more closely it is problematic, for example, with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, or in a ring species, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear. Other ways of defining species include similarity of DNA, morphology, all species are given a two-part name, a binomial. The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs, the second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet. For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the Boa genus, Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed kinds that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time, Charles Darwins 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal transfer, and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, a kind was distinguished by its attributes, for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood. A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance, when observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical, animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently, one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa. In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics and he established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships. At the time, however, it was widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, by the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals and this required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what appear to be, ideas
11.
Climate
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Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval. Climate differs from weather, in that weather only describes the conditions of these variables in a given region. A regions climate is generated by the system, which has five components, atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere. The climate of a location is affected by its latitude, terrain, climates can be classified according to the average and the typical ranges of different variables, most commonly temperature and precipitation. The most commonly used classification scheme was the Köppen climate classification, the Bergeron and Spatial Synoptic Classification systems focus on the origin of air masses that define the climate of a region. Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient climates, Climate models are mathematical models of past, present and future climates. Climate change may occur long and short timescales from a variety of factors. For example, a 3°C change in mean annual temperature corresponds to a shift in isotherms of approximately 300–400 km in latitude or 500 m in elevation, therefore, species are expected to move upwards in elevation or towards the poles in latitude in response to shifting climate zones. Climate is commonly defined as the weather averaged over a long period, the standard averaging period is 30 years, but other periods may be used depending on the purpose. Climate also includes statistics other than the average, such as the magnitudes of day-to-day or year-to-year variations, the classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system. The World Meteorological Organization describes climate normals as reference points used by climatologists to compare current climatological trends to that of the past or what is considered normal, a Normal is defined as the arithmetic average of a climate element over a 30-year period. A30 year period is used, as it is enough to filter out any interannual variation or anomalies. The WMO originated from the International Meteorological Organization which set up a commission for climatology in 1929. At its 1934 Wiesbaden meeting the commission designated the thirty-year period from 1901 to 1930 as the reference time frame for climatological standard normals. In 1982 the WMO agreed to update climate normals, and in these were completed on the basis of climate data from 1 January 1961 to 31 December 1990. The difference between climate and weather is usefully summarized by the popular phrase Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. Over historical time spans there are a number of nearly constant variables that determine climate, including latitude, altitude, proportion of land to water and these change only over periods of millions of years due to processes such as plate tectonics
12.
Microorganism
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A microorganism or microbe is a microscopic organism, which may be single-celled or multicellular. The study of microorganisms is called microbiology, a subject that began with the discovery of microorganisms in 1674 by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, microorganisms are very diverse and include all bacteria, archaea and most protozoa. This group also contains some fungi, algae, and some such as rotifers. Many macroscopic animals and plants have microscopic juvenile stages, some microbiologists classify viruses and viroids as microorganisms, but others consider these as nonliving. In July 2016, scientists identified a set of 355 genes from the last universal ancestor of all life, including microorganisms. Microorganisms, under certain test conditions, have observed to thrive in the vacuum of outer space. Microorganisms likely far outweigh all other living things combined, the mass of prokaryote microorganisms including the bacteria and archaea may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon, out of the total biomass of between 1 and 4 trillion tons. Microorganisms appear to thrive in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earths oceans, in August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of microorganisms living 800 m below the ice of Antarctica. According to one researcher, You can find microbes everywhere — theyre extremely adaptable to conditions, microorganisms are crucial to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers. As some microorganisms can fix nitrogen, they are a part of the nitrogen cycle. Microorganisms are also exploited in biotechnology, both in food and beverage preparation, and in modern technologies based on genetic engineering. A small proportion of microorganisms are pathogenic, causing disease and even death in plants, Robert Hooke coined the term cell after viewing plant cells under his microscope. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek was one of the first people to observe microorganisms in 1673, later, in the 19th century, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In 1876 Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms cause diseases, single-celled microorganisms were the first forms of life to develop on Earth, approximately 3–4 billion years ago. Further evolution was slow, and for about 3 billion years in the Precambrian eon, so, for most of the history of life on Earth, the only forms of life were microorganisms. Bacteria, algae and fungi have been identified in amber that is 220 million years old, microorganisms tend to have a relatively fast rate of evolution. Most microorganisms can reproduce rapidly, and bacteria are able to freely exchange genes through conjugation, transformation and transduction. This rapid evolution is important in medicine, as it has led to the development of multidrug resistant pathogenic bacteria, superbugs, the possible existence of microorganisms was discussed for many centuries before their discovery in the 17th century
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Soil
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
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Rock (geology)
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Rock or stone is a natural substance, a solid aggregate of one or more minerals or mineraloids. For example, granite, a rock, is a combination of the minerals quartz, feldspar. The Earths outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock, rock has been used by mankind throughout history. The minerals and metals found in rocks have been essential to human civilization, three major groups of rocks are defined, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The scientific study of rocks is called petrology, which is a component of geology. At a granular level, rocks are composed of grains of minerals, the aggregate minerals forming the rock are held together by chemical bonds. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which the rock was formed, many rocks contain silica, a compound of silicon and oxygen that forms 74. 3% of the Earths crust. This material forms crystals with other compounds in the rock, the proportion of silica in rocks and minerals is a major factor in determining their name and properties. Rocks are geologically classified according to such as mineral and chemical composition, permeability, the texture of the constituent particles. These physical properties are the end result of the processes that formed the rocks, over the course of time, rocks can transform from one type into another, as described by the geological model called the rock cycle. These events produce three general classes of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, the three classes of rocks are subdivided into many groups. However, there are no hard and fast boundaries between allied rocks, hence the definitions adopted in establishing rock nomenclature merely correspond to more or less arbitrary selected points in a continuously graduated series. Igneous rock forms through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava and this magma can be derived from partial melts of pre-existing rocks in either a planets mantle or crust. Typically, the melting of rocks is caused by one or more of three processes, an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition, igneous rocks are divided into two main categories, plutonic rock and volcanic. Plutonic or intrusive rocks result when magma cools and crystallizes slowly within the Earths crust, a common example of this type is granite. Volcanic or extrusive rocks result from magma reaching the surface either as lava or fragmental ejecta, the chemical abundance and the rate of cooling of magma typically forms a sequence known as Bowens reaction series. Most major igneous rocks are found along this scale, about 64. 7% of the Earths crust by volume consists of igneous rocks, making it the most plentiful category. Of these, 66% are basalts and gabbros, 16% are granite, only 0. 6% are syenites and 0. 3% peridotites and dunites
15.
Atmosphere of Earth
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The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earths gravity. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by absorbing solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention. By volume, dry air contains 78. 09% nitrogen,20. 95% oxygen,0. 93% argon,0. 04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains an amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5. 15×1018 kg, the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km, or 1. 57% of Earths radius, is used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. Atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft at an altitude of around 120 km, several layers can be distinguished in the atmosphere, based on characteristics such as temperature and composition. The study of Earths atmosphere and its processes is called atmospheric science, early pioneers in the field include Léon Teisserenc de Bort and Richard Assmann. The three major constituents of air, and therefore of Earths atmosphere, are nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor accounts for roughly 0. 25% of the atmosphere by mass. The remaining gases are often referred to as gases, among which are the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide. Filtered air includes trace amounts of other chemical compounds. Various industrial pollutants also may be present as gases or aerosols, such as chlorine, fluorine compounds, sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide may be derived from natural sources or from industrial air pollution. In general, air pressure and density decrease with altitude in the atmosphere, however, temperature has a more complicated profile with altitude, and may remain relatively constant or even increase with altitude in some regions. In this way, Earths atmosphere can be divided into five main layers, excluding the exosphere, Earth has four primary layers, which are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. It extends from the exobase, which is located at the top of the thermosphere at an altitude of about 700 km above sea level, to about 10,000 km where it merges into the solar wind. This layer is composed of extremely low densities of hydrogen, helium and several heavier molecules including nitrogen, oxygen. The atoms and molecules are so far apart that they can travel hundreds of kilometers without colliding with one another, thus, the exosphere no longer behaves like a gas, and the particles constantly escape into space. These free-moving particles follow ballistic trajectories and may migrate in and out of the magnetosphere or the solar wind, the exosphere is located too far above Earth for any meteorological phenomena to be possible
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Natural phenomenon
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A natural phenomenon is an observable event which is not man-made. Types of natural phenomena include, but are not limited to, decomposition – by which organic substances are broken down into a much simpler form of matter Metabolism Catabolism Anabolism Fermentation – converts sugar to acids, gases and/or alcohol. Violent Meteorological phenomena are called storms, regular, cyclical phenomena include seasons and atmospheric circulation. Elementary particle interactions Supernova Oceanographic phenomena include tsunamis, ocean currents and breaking waves
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Natural resource
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Natural resources are resources that exist without actions of humankind. This includes all valued characteristics such as magnetic, gravitational, on earth it includes, sunlight, atmosphere, water, land along with all vegetation and animal life that naturally subsists upon or within the heretofore identified characteristics and substances. Particular areas such as the rainforest in Fatu-Hiva are often characterized by the biodiversity and geodiversity existent in their ecosystems, Natural resources may be further classified in different ways. Natural resources are materials and components that can be found within the environment, every man-made product is composed of natural resources. Some natural resources such as sunlight and air can be found everywhere, however, most resources only occur in small sporadic areas, and are referred to as localised resources. There are very few resources that are considered inexhaustible – these are solar radiation, geothermal energy, the vast majority of resources are theoretically exhaustible, which means they have a finite quantity and can be depleted if managed improperly. There are various methods of categorizing natural resources, these include source of origin, stage of development, fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are also included in this category because they are formed from decayed organic matter. Abiotic – Abiotic resources are those that come from non-living, non-organic material, examples of abiotic resources include land, fresh water, air and heavy metals including ores such as gold, iron, copper, silver, etc. For example, petroleum occurs with sedimentary rocks in various regions, Actual resources — Actual resources are those that have been surveyed, their quantity and quality determined and are being used in present times. The development of a resource, such as wood processing depends upon the technology available. Reserve resources — The part of a resource which can be developed profitably in the future is called a reserve resource. Stock resources — Stock resources are those that have been surveyed, renewability is a very popular topic and many natural resources can be categorized as either renewable or non-renewable, Renewable resources — Renewable resources can be replenished naturally. Some of these resources, like sunlight, air, wind, water, etc. are continuously available, though many renewable resources do not have such a rapid recovery rate, these resources are susceptible to depletion by over-use. Non-renewable resources – Non-renewable resources either form slowly or do not naturally form in the environment, minerals are the most common resource included in this category. Some resources actually naturally deplete in amount without human interference, the most notable of these being radio-active elements such as uranium, of these, the metallic minerals can be re-used by recycling them, but coal and petroleum cannot be recycled. Once they are used they take millions of years to replenish. Resource extraction involves any activity that withdraws resources from nature and this can range in scale from the traditional use of preindustrial societies, to global industry. Extractive industries are, along with agriculture, the basis of the sector of the economy
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Phenomenon
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A phenomenon is any thing which manifests itself. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as things that appear or experiences for a sentient being, the term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon. In contrast to a phenomenon, a noumenon can not be directly observed, Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in this part of his philosophy, in which phenomenon and noumenon serve as interrelated technical terms. In modern philosophical use, the phenomena has come to mean what is experienced is the basis of reality. He wrote that humans could infer only as much as their senses allowed, thus, the term phenomenon refers to any incident deserving of inquiry and investigation, especially events that are particularly unusual or of distinctive importance. According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, Modern philosophers have used phenomenon to designate what is apprehended before judgment is applied and this may not be possible if observation is theory laden. In scientific usage, a phenomenon is any event that is observable, however common it might be, even if it requires the use of instrumentation to observe, record, another example of scientific phenomena can be found in the experience of phantom limb sensations. This occurrence, the sensation of feeling in amputated limbs, is reported by over 70% of amputees, although the limb is no longer present, they report still experiencing sensations. This is an event that defies typical logic and has been a source of much curiosity within the medical and physiological fields. A mechanical phenomenon is a phenomenon associated with the equilibrium or motion of objects. Some examples are Newtons cradle, engines, and double pendulums, in gemology, a phenomenon is an unusual optical effect that is displayed by a gem. Play-of-color, labradorescence, iridescence, adularescence, chatoyancy, asterism, aventurescence, lustre, group phenomena concern the behavior of a particular group of individual entities, usually organisms and most especially people. The behavior of individuals often changes in a setting in various ways. Social phenomena apply especially to organisms and people in that states are implicit in the term. Attitudes and events particular to a group may have effects beyond the group, in popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. The term is most commonly used to refer to occurrences that at first defy explanation or baffle the observer
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Energy
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In physics, energy is the property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on – or to heat – the object, and can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. The SI unit of energy is the joule, which is the transferred to an object by the mechanical work of moving it a distance of 1 metre against a force of 1 newton. Mass and energy are closely related, for example, with a sensitive enough scale, one could measure an increase in mass after heating an object. Living organisms require available energy to stay alive, such as the humans get from food. Civilisation gets the energy it needs from energy resources such as fuels, nuclear fuel. The processes of Earths climate and ecosystem are driven by the radiant energy Earth receives from the sun, the total energy of a system can be subdivided and classified in various ways. It may also be convenient to distinguish gravitational energy, thermal energy, several types of energy, electric energy. Many of these overlap, for instance, thermal energy usually consists partly of kinetic. Some types of energy are a mix of both potential and kinetic energy. An example is energy which is the sum of kinetic. Whenever physical scientists discover that a phenomenon appears to violate the law of energy conservation. Heat and work are special cases in that they are not properties of systems, in general we cannot measure how much heat or work are present in an object, but rather only how much energy is transferred among objects in certain ways during the occurrence of a given process. Heat and work are measured as positive or negative depending on which side of the transfer we view them from, the distinctions between different kinds of energy is not always clear-cut. In contrast to the definition, energeia was a qualitative philosophical concept, broad enough to include ideas such as happiness. The modern analog of this property, kinetic energy, differs from vis viva only by a factor of two, in 1807, Thomas Young was possibly the first to use the term energy instead of vis viva, in its modern sense. Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described kinetic energy in 1829 in its modern sense, the law of conservation of energy was also first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system. It was argued for years whether heat was a physical substance, dubbed the caloric, or merely a physical quantity. In 1845 James Prescott Joule discovered the link between mechanical work and the generation of heat and these developments led to the theory of conservation of energy, formalized largely by William Thomson as the field of thermodynamics
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Radiation
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In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. Radiation is often categorized as either ionizing or non-ionizing depending on the energy of the radiated particles, Ionizing radiation carries more than 10 eV, which is enough to ionize atoms and molecules, and break chemical bonds. This is an important distinction due to the difference in harmfulness to living organisms. A common source of ionizing radiation is radioactive materials that emit α, β, or γ radiation, consisting of helium nuclei, electrons or positrons, gamma rays, X-rays and the higher energy range of ultraviolet light constitute the ionizing part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The lower-energy, longer-wavelength part of the spectrum including visible light, infrared light, microwaves and this type of radiation only damages cells if the intensity is high enough to cause excessive heating. Ultraviolet radiation has some features of both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation and these properties derive from ultraviolets power to alter chemical bonds, even without having quite enough energy to ionize atoms. The word radiation arises from the phenomenon of waves radiating from a source and this aspect leads to a system of measurements and physical units that are applicable to all types of radiation. This law does not apply close to a source of radiation or for focused beams. Radiation with sufficiently high energy can ionize atoms, that is to say it can knock electrons off atoms, ionization occurs when an electron is stripped from an electron shell of the atom, which leaves the atom with a net positive charge. Because living cells and, more importantly, the DNA in those cells can be damaged by this ionization, thus ionizing radiation is somewhat artificially separated from particle radiation and electromagnetic radiation, simply due to its great potential for biological damage. While an individual cell is made of trillions of atoms, only a fraction of those will be ionized at low to moderate radiation powers. If the source of the radiation is a radioactive material or a nuclear process such as fission or fusion. Particle radiation is subatomic particles accelerated to relativistic speeds by nuclear reactions, because of their momenta they are quite capable of knocking out electrons and ionizing materials, but since most have an electrical charge, they dont have the penetrating power of ionizing radiation. The exception is neutron particles, see below, there are several different kinds of these particles, but the majority are alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, and protons. Roughly speaking, photons and particles with energies above about 10 electron volts are ionizing, particle radiation from radioactive material or cosmic rays almost invariably carries enough energy to be ionizing. The radiation is invisible and not directly detectable by human senses, as a result, in some cases, it may lead to secondary emission of visible light upon its interaction with matter, as in the case of Cherenkov radiation and radio-luminescence. Ionizing radiation has many uses in medicine, research and construction. Ultraviolet, of wavelengths from 10 nm to 125 nm, ionizes air molecules, causing it to be absorbed by air
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Electric charge
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Electric charge is the physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field. There are two types of charges, positive and negative. Like charges repel and unlike attract, an absence of net charge is referred to as neutral. An object is charged if it has an excess of electrons. The SI derived unit of charge is the coulomb. In electrical engineering, it is common to use the ampere-hour. The symbol Q often denotes charge, early knowledge of how charged substances interact is now called classical electrodynamics, and is still accurate for problems that dont require consideration of quantum effects. The electric charge is a conserved property of some subatomic particles. Electrically charged matter is influenced by, and produces, electromagnetic fields, the interaction between a moving charge and an electromagnetic field is the source of the electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental forces. 602×10−19 coulombs. The proton has a charge of +e, and the electron has a charge of −e, the study of charged particles, and how their interactions are mediated by photons, is called quantum electrodynamics. Charge is the property of forms of matter that exhibit electrostatic attraction or repulsion in the presence of other matter. Electric charge is a property of many subatomic particles. The charges of free-standing particles are integer multiples of the charge e. Michael Faraday, in his electrolysis experiments, was the first to note the discrete nature of electric charge, robert Millikans oil drop experiment demonstrated this fact directly, and measured the elementary charge. By convention, the charge of an electron is −1, while that of a proton is +1, charged particles whose charges have the same sign repel one another, and particles whose charges have different signs attract. The charge of an antiparticle equals that of the corresponding particle, quarks have fractional charges of either −1/3 or +2/3, but free-standing quarks have never been observed. The electric charge of an object is the sum of the electric charges of the particles that make it up. An ion is an atom that has lost one or more electrons, giving it a net charge, or that has gained one or more electrons
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Magnetism
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Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena that are mediated by magnetic fields. Electric currents and the moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field. The most familiar effects occur in materials, which are strongly attracted by magnetic fields and can be magnetized to become permanent magnets. Only a few substances are ferromagnetic, the most common ones are iron, nickel and cobalt, the prefix ferro- refers to iron, because permanent magnetism was first observed in lodestone, a form of natural iron ore called magnetite, Fe3O4. The magnetic state of a material depends on temperature and other such as pressure. A material may exhibit more than one form of magnetism as these variables change, magnetism was first discovered in the ancient world, when people noticed that lodestones, naturally magnetized pieces of the mineral magnetite, could attract iron. The word magnet comes from the Greek term for lodestone, magnítis líthos, in ancient Greece, Aristotle attributed the first of what could be called a scientific discussion of magnetism to the philosopher Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 625 BC to about 545 BC. Around the same time, in ancient India, the Indian surgeon Sushruta was the first to use of the magnet for surgical purposes. In ancient China, the earliest literary reference to magnetism lies in a 4th-century BC book named after its author, the 2nd-century BC annals, Lüshi Chunqiu, also notes, The lodestone makes iron approach, or it attracts it. The earliest mention of the attraction of a needle is in a 1st-century work Lunheng, by the 12th century the Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation. They sculpted a directional spoon from lodestone in such a way that the handle of the spoon always pointed south, alexander Neckam, by 1187, was the first in Europe to describe the compass and its use for navigation. In 1269, Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt wrote the Epistola de magnete, in 1282, the properties of magnets and the dry compass were discussed by Al-Ashraf, a Yemeni physicist, astronomer, and geographer. In 1600, William Gilbert published his De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, in this work he describes many of his experiments with his model earth called the terrella. From his experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and this landmark experiment is known as Ørsteds Experiment. James Clerk Maxwell synthesized and expanded these insights into Maxwells equations, unifying electricity, magnetism, in 1905, Einstein used these laws in motivating his theory of special relativity, requiring that the laws held true in all inertial reference frames. Magnetism, at its root, arises from two sources, Electric current, Spin magnetic moments of elementary particles. The magnetic moments of the nuclei of atoms are thousands of times smaller than the electrons magnetic moments. Nuclear magnetic moments are very important in other contexts, particularly in nuclear magnetic resonance
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Built environment
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In social science, the term built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from buildings to parks. It has been defined as the space in which people live, work. The built environment encompasses places and spaces created or modified by people including buildings, parks, in recent years, public health research has expanded the definition of built environment to include healthy food access, community gardens, mental health, walkability and bikeability. The effort was in partnership with others who believed that beautifying American cities would improve the moral compass of the cities and this beautification process included parks and architectural design. For example, community forest user group in Nepal is multidimensional institution, in public health, built environment refers to physical environments that are designed with health and wellness as integral parts of the communities. Research has indicated that the way neighborhoods are created can affect both the activity and mental health of the communities’ residents. Studies have shown that built environments that were designed to improve physical activity are linked to higher rates of physical activity. Neighborhoods with more walkability had lower rates of obesity as well as increased physical activity among its residents and they also had lower rates of depression, higher social capital, and less alcohol abuse. Walkability features in these neighborhoods include safety, sidewalk construction, as well as destinations in which to walk, in addition, the perception of a walkable neighborhood, one that is perceived to have good sidewalks and connectivity, is correlated with higher rates of physical activity. Assessments of walkability have been completed through the use of GIS programs and this example of a walkability assessment tool determines distances to grocery stores and other amenities, as well as connectivity and intersection frequency using specific addresses. Assessments such as the Street Smart Walk Score can be utilized by city, public health also addresses additional components of built environments including “bikeability” and healthy food access such as proximity to grocery stores and community gardens. Bikeability refers to the access that an area has granted to safe biking through multiple bike paths, both walkability and bikeability have been cited as determinants of physical activity. Access to healthy food is also an important component of the built environment, a higher density of convenience stores has been associated with obesity in children. In contrast, improved access to community supermarkets and farmer’s markets is correlated with lower overweight status, specifically in low income neighborhoods, the presence of a local grocery store is correlated with lower BMI/overweight risk. Community gardens are considered a part of the built environment. The intersection of health with other disciplines is evident in the design process of built environments which includes environmental planning, policy development. Research suggests that people are active in mixed-use communities or those that incorporate retail and residential. Those who preferred to walk and live in walkable environments often have lower obesity rates, in landscape architecture, the built environment is understood to mean a human-made landscape, as distinguished from the natural environment, for example, a city park is a built environment
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Land development
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In an economics context, land development is also sometimes advertised as land improvement or land amelioration. It refers to investments making land more usable by humans, for accounting purposes it refers to any variety of projects that increase the value of the property. Most are depreciable, but some improvements are not able to be depreciated because a useful life cannot be determined. Home building and containment are two of the most common and the oldest types of development and this profit enhancement means identifying and developing the best scheme for the local marketplace, whilst satisfying the local planning process. Development Analysis puts development prospects and the development process itself under the microscope, development analysis can add significantly to the value of land and development, and as such is a crucial tool for landowners and developers. It is a step in Kevin A. Lynchs 1960 book The Image of the City. The landowner can share in additional planning gain via an awareness of the development potential. This is done via a residual development appraisal or residual valuation, the residual appraisal calculates the sale value of the end product, and hypothetically deducts costs, including planning and construction costs, finance costs and developers profit. The residue, or leftover proportion, represents the land value, therefore, in maximising the GDV, land value is concurrently enhanced. Land value is highly sensitive to supply and demand, build costs, planning and affordable housing contributions, understanding the intricacies of the development system and the effect of value drivers can result in massive differences in the landowners sale value. Land improvement in the economic sense can often lead to degradation from the ecological perspective. Land development and the change in land value does not usually take into account changes in the ecology of the developed area, new creation of farmland will rely on the conversion and development of previous forests, savannas or grassland. Recreation of farmland from wasteland, deserts or previous impervious surfaces is considerably less frequent because of the degraded or missing fertile soil in the latter, starting from forests, land is made arable by assarting or slash-and-burn. Agricultural development furthermore includes, Hydrological measures Soil improvement, road construction Because the newly created farmland is more prone to erosion than soil stabilized by tree roots, such a conversion may mean irreversible crossing of an ecological threshold. The resulting deforestation is not easily compensated for by reforestation or afforestation. Examples of land restoration/land rehabilitation counted as land development in the strict sense are still rare, however, renaturation, reforestation, stream restoration may all contribute to a healthier environment and quality of life, especially in densely populated regions. The same is true for planned vegetation like parks and gardens, but restoration plays a particular role, because it reverses previous conversions to built and agricultural areas
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Hut
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A hut is a primitive dwelling, which may be constructed of various local materials. A hut is a shape of a lower quality than a house, huts exist in practically all nomadic cultures. Some huts are transportable and can stand most conditions of weather, the designs in tropical and sub-tropical areas favour high airflow configurations built from non-conducting materials, which allow heat dissipation. The term house or home is considered by some to be more appropriate, in the Western world the word hut is often used for a wooden shed. The term has also adopted by climbers and backpackers to refer to a more solid. These vary from simple bothies – which are more than very basic shelters – to mountain huts that are far more luxurious. Apparently first in English as a military word, old Saxon hutta, Danish hytte, Swedish hytta, Frisian and Middle Dutch hutte, Dutch hut are from High German. Huts are used by shepherds when moving livestock between seasonal grazing areas such as mountainous and lowland pastures and they are also commonly used by backpackers and other travelers in rural areas. Some displaced populations of people use throughout the world during a diaspora. For example, temporary collectors in the agricultural workers at plantations in the Amazon jungle. Huts have been built for other than as a dwelling such as storage, workshops. Balok – A Siberian wilderness hut made of logs, usually communal, used by hunters, fishermen, some baloks are mobile and mounted on sleds. Bothy – Originally a one-room hut for men farm workers in the United Kingdom, burdei or bordei – a dugout or pit-house with a sod roof in Ukraine, Canada Cabana – an open shelter Chozo also spelled chozo – Spanish for hut, term also used in Mexico. Designed 1940 for barrack accommodation Lodge is a term for a hut or cabin such as a log cabin or cottage. Lodge is used to refer to a tipi, sweat lodge, and hunting, fishing, skiing, and safari lodge. Mitato – A small, dry stone hut in Greece Orri – A French dry stone, rondavel – Central and South Africa Sheiling – Originally a temporary shelter or hut for shepherds, now may be a stone building. Sod house – A pioneer house type on the American Plains where wood was scarce, construction often does not require specialized tools or knowledge. Hut is used to name commercial stores, companies, and concepts, the name implies a small, casual venue, often with a fun and friendly atmosphere
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Photovoltaic system
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A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is a power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It may also use a tracking system to improve the systems overall performance and include an integrated battery solution. Strictly speaking, a solar array only encompasses the ensemble of solar panels, the part of the PV system. Moreover, PV systems convert light directly into electricity and shouldnt be confused with other technologies, such as concentrated solar power or solar thermal, used for heating and cooling. PV systems range from small, rooftop-mounted or building-integrated systems with capacities from a few to tens of kilowatts. Nowadays, most PV systems are grid-connected, while off-grid or stand-alone systems only account for a portion of the market. A rooftop system recoups the energy for its manufacturing and installation within 0.7 to 2 years. Due to the growth of photovoltaics, prices for PV systems have rapidly declined in recent years. However, they vary by market and the size of the system, a photovoltaic system converts the suns radiation into usable electricity. It comprises the solar array and the balance of system components, other distinctions may include, systems with microinverters vs. central inverter, systems using crystalline silicon vs. thin-film technology, and systems with modules from Chinese vs. About 99 percent of all European and 90 percent of all U. S. solar power systems are connected to the grid, while off-grid systems are somewhat more common in Australia. PV systems rarely use battery storage and this may change soon, as government incentives for distributed energy storage are being implemented and investments in storage solutions are gradually becoming economically viable for small systems. A solar array of a typical residential PV system is rack-mounted on the roof, rather than integrated into the roof or facade of the building, utility-scale solar power stations are ground-mounted, with fixed tilted solar panels rather than using expensive tracking devices. Crystalline silicon is the predominant material used in 90 percent of worldwide produced solar modules, about 70 percent of all solar cells and modules are produced in China and Taiwan, leaving only 5 percent to European and US-manufacturers. S. Which are less opposed to ground-mounted solar farms and cost-effectiveness is more emphasized by investors, driven by advances in technology and increases in manufacturing scale and sophistication, the cost of photovoltaics is declining continuously. There are several million PV systems distributed all over the world, mostly in Europe, in exceptionally irradiated locations, or when thin-film technology is used, the so-called energy payback time decreases to one year or less. Net metering and financial incentives, such as preferential feed-in tariffs for solar-generated electricity, have greatly supported installations of PV systems in many countries. As of 2015, the fast-growing global PV market is approaching the 200 GW mark – about 40 times the installed capacity of 2006
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Desert
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A desert is a barren area of land where little precipitation occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to the processes of denudation, about one third of the land surface of the world is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the regions where little precipitation occurs. Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation falls, by the temperature that prevails. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks which consequently break in pieces, although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter and the resulting fragments and this picks up particles of sand and dust and wafts them aloft in sand or dust storms. Wind-blown sand grains striking any solid object in their path can abrade the surface, rocks are smoothed down, and the wind sorts sand into uniform deposits. The grains end up as level sheets of sand or are piled high in billowing sand dunes, other deserts are flat, stony plains where all the fine material has been blown away and the surface consists of a mosaic of smooth stones. These areas are known as desert pavements and little further erosion takes place, other desert features include rock outcrops, exposed bedrock and clays once deposited by flowing water. Temporary lakes may form and salt pans may be left when waters evaporate, there may be underground sources of water in the form of springs and seepages from aquifers. Where these are found, oases can occur, plants and animals living in the desert need special adaptations to survive in the harsh environment. Plants tend to be tough and wiry with small or no leaves, water-resistant cuticles, some annual plants germinate, bloom and die in the course of a few weeks after rainfall while other long-lived plants survive for years and have deep root systems able to tap underground moisture. Animals need to cool and find enough food and water to survive. Many are nocturnal and stay in the shade or underground during the heat of the day and they tend to be efficient at conserving water, extracting most of their needs from their food and concentrating their urine. Some animals remain in a state of dormancy for long periods and they then reproduce rapidly while conditions are favorable before returning to dormancy. People have struggled to live in deserts and the surrounding lands for millennia. Nomads have moved their flocks and herds to wherever grazing is available, the cultivation of semi-arid regions encourages erosion of soil and is one of the causes of increased desertification. Many trade routes have been forged across deserts, especially across the Sahara Desert, large numbers of slaves were also taken northwards across the Sahara
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Beaver dam
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Beaver dams are dams built by beavers to provide ponds as protection against predators such as coyotes, wolves, and bears, and to provide easy access to food during winter. These structures modify the environment in such a way that the overall ecosystem builds upon the change. Beavers work at night and are prolific builders, carrying mud and stones with their fore-paws, beavers can rebuild primary dams overnight, though they may not defend secondary dams as vigorously. A minimum water level of 0.6 to 0.9 metres is required to keep the underwater entrance to beaver lodges from being blocked by ice during the winter. In lakes, rivers and large streams with deep water, beavers may not build dams and instead live in bank burrows. If the water is not deep enough to keep beavers safe from predators and their lodge entrances ice-free, beavers start construction by diverting the stream to lessen the waters flow pressure. Branches and logs are then driven into the mud of the bed to form a base. Then sticks, bark, rocks, mud, grass, leaves, masses of plants, the average height of a dam is about 1.8 metres with an average depth of water behind the dam of 1.2 to 1.8 m. The thickness of the dam is often around 1 m or more, the length depends on the stream width, but averages about 4.5 m long. Beavers vary the type of dam built and how they build it, in slow-moving water, they build a straight dam, whereas in fast-moving water they tend to be curved. Spillways and passageways are built into the dam to allow water to drain off without damaging it. Dams are generally built wider at the base and the top is usually tilted upstream to resist the force of the current, beavers can transport their own weight in material, they drag logs along mudslides and float them through canals to get them in place. Once the dam has flooded enough area to the depth to form a protective moat for the lodge. Trees approaching a diameter of 90 centimetres may be used to construct a dam, the length depends on the diameter of the tree and the size of the beaver. There are recorded cases of beavers felling logs of as much 45 m tall and 115 cm in diameter. Logs of this size are not intended to be used as members of the dam, but rather the bark is used for food. It takes a beaver about 20 minutes to cut down a 15 cm wide aspen, a beavers jaws are so powerful they can cut a 1.5 cm sapling in one bite. Maintenance work on the dam and lodges is particularly heavy in autumn, Beaver dams typically range in length from a few meters to about 100 metres
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Mound-building termites
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Mound-building termites or just mound builders are a group of termite species that live in mounds. This group of live in Africa, Australia and South America. The mounds sometimes have a diameter of 30 metres, most of the mounds are found in well drained areas. Termite mounds usually out live the colonies themselves, if the inner tunnels of the nest are exposed it is usually dead, however, sometimes other colonies occupy a mound after the death of the original builders. The new colonizers may be of the same or a different species, the structure of the mounds can be very complicated. Inside the mound is a system of tunnels and conduits that serves as a ventilation system for the underground nest. In order to get good ventilation, the termites will construct several shafts leading down to the cellar located beneath the nest, the mound is built above the subterranean nest. The nest itself is a structure consisting of numerous gallery chambers. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some, like Odontotermes termites build open chimneys or vent holes into their mounds, the Amitermes mounds are created tall, thin, wedge-shaped, usually oriented north-south. Workers, smallest in size, are the most numerous of the castes and they are all completely blind, wingless, and sexually immature. Their job is to feed and groom all of the dependent castes and they also dig tunnels, locate food and water, maintain colony atmospheric homeostasis, and build and repair the nest. The soldiers job is to defend the colony from any unwanted animals, when the large soldiers attack they emit a drop of brown, corrosive salivary liquid which spreads between the open mandibles. When they bite, the liquid spreads over the opponent, the secretion is commonly stated to be toxic or else undergoes coagulation with the air, which renders it glue-like. They include the king and the queen, the queen can sometimes grow up to six centimeters long while the lower classes are generally less than one centimeter. Vegetation on termite mounds usually differs highly from vegetation in the surrounding, in African savannas, Macrotermes mounds form islands with high tree densities. This is usually attributed to the fact that due to the digging of termites and due to their decomposition of plant material, on top of that, mound soils have been found to contain more water than their surroundings, a clear advantage for plant growth in savannas
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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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Habitat
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A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant, or other type of organism. The term typically refers to the zone in which the organism lives and it is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds a species population. Every organism has certain habitat needs for the conditions in which it will thrive, habitat types include polar, temperate, subtropical and tropical. The terrestrial vegetation type may be forest, steppe, grassland, the word habitat has been in use since about 1755 and derives from the Latin third-person singular present indicative of habitāre, to inhabit, from habēre, to have or to hold. Habitat can be defined as the environment of an organism. It is similar in meaning to a biotope, an area of environmental conditions associated with a particular community of plants. Generally speaking, animal communities are reliant on specific types of plant communities, some plants and animals are generalists, and their habitat requirements are met in a wide range of locations. The small white butterfly for example is found on all the continents of the world apart from Antarctica and its larvae feed on a wide range of Brassicas and various other plant species, and it thrives in any open location with diverse plant associations. Disturbance is important in the creation of biodiverse habitats, in the absence of disturbance, a climax vegetation cover develops that prevents the establishment of other species. Lightning strikes and toppled trees in tropical forests allow species richness to be maintained as pioneering species move in to fill the gaps created. Similarly coastal habitats can become dominated by kelp until the seabed is disturbed by a storm, another cause of disturbance is when an area may be overwhelmed by an invasive introduced species which is not kept under control by natural enemies in its new habitat. Terrestrial habitat types include forests, grasslands, wetlands and deserts, within these broad biomes are more specific habitats with varying climate types, temperature regimes, soils, altitudes and vegetation types. Many of these habitats grade into each other and each one has its own communities of plants. A habitat may suit a particular species well, but its presence or absence at any particular location depends to some extent on chance, on its dispersal abilities, freshwater habitats include rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, marshes and bogs. Although some organisms are found across most of these habitats, the majority have more specific requirements, similarly, aquatic plants can be floating, semi-submerged, submerged or grow in permanently or temporarily saturated soils besides bodies of water. Marine habitats include brackish water, estuaries, bays, the sea, the intertidal zone. Further variations include rock pools, sand banks, mudflats, brackish lagoons, sandy and pebbly beaches, the benthic zone or seabed provides a home for both static organisms, anchored to the substrate, and for a large range of organisms crawling on or burrowing into the surface. A desert is not the kind of habitat that favours the presence of amphibians, with their requirement for water to keep their skins moist, nevertheless, some frogs live in deserts, creating moist habitats underground and hibernating while conditions are adverse
32.
Savanna
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A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland grassland ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support a herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. Savannas maintain an open canopy despite a high tree density and it is often believed that savannas feature widely spaced, scattered trees. However, in savannas, tree densities are higher and trees are more regularly spaced than in forests. Savanna covers approximately 20% of the Earths land area, the word originally entered English in 1555 as the Latin Zauana, equivalent in the orthography of the times to zavana. Peter Martyr reported it as the name for the plain around Comagre. The accounts are inexact, but this is placed in present-day Madugandí or at points on the nearby Guna Yala coast opposite Ustupo or on Point Mosquitos. These areas are now given over to modern cropland or jungle. The common usage meaning to describe vegetation now conflicts with a simplified yet widespread climatic concept meaning, the divergence has sometimes caused areas such as extensive savannas north and south of the Congo and Amazon Rivers to be excluded from mapped savanna categories. Barrens has been used almost interchangeably with savanna in different parts of North America, sometimes midwestern savanna were described as grassland with trees. Different authors have defined the limits of savanna tree coverage as 5–10%. Two factors common to all environments are rainfall variations from year to year. In the Americas, e. g. in Belize, Central America, savanna vegetation is similar from Mexico to South America, savannas are subject to regular wildfires and the ecosystem appears to be the result of human use of fire. For example, Native Americans created the Pre-Columbian savannas of North America by periodically burning where fire-resistant plants were the dominant species, pine barrens in scattered locations from New Jersey to coastal New England are remnants of these savannas. Aboriginal burning appears to have responsible for the widespread occurrence of savanna in tropical Australia and New Guinea. The maquis shrub savannas of the Mediterranean region were created and maintained by anthropogenic fire. These fires are usually confined to the layer and do little long term damage to mature trees. However, these either kill or suppress tree seedlings, thus preventing the establishment of a continuous tree canopy which would prevent further grass growth
33.
Volcano
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A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. Earths volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major, therefore, on Earth, volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of plate hypothesis volcanism, Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes. These so-called hotspots, for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the boundary,3,000 km deep in the Earth. Volcanoes are usually not created where two plates slide past one another. Erupting volcanoes can pose hazards, not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption. Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines, the word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology. The study of volcanoes is called volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology, at the mid-oceanic ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as new oceanic crust is formed by the cooling and solidifying of hot molten rock. Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans, therefore, most volcanic activity is submarine, black smokers are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea-level, volcanic islands are formed, for example, subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. In this case, the plate subducts, or submerges under the continental plate forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the temperature of the overlying mantle wedge. This magma tends to be very viscous due to its high content, so it often does not reach the surface. When it does reach the surface, a volcano is formed, typical examples of this kind of volcano are Mount Etna and the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Because tectonic plates move across them, each volcano becomes dormant and is eventually re-formed as the plate advances over the postulated plume and this theory is currently under criticism, however. The most common perception of a volcano is of a mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit, however. The features of volcanoes are more complicated and their structure. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have features such as massive plateaus
34.
Lava
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Lava is the molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption. The resulting rock after solidification and cooling is called lava. The molten rock is formed in the interior of planets, including Earth. The source of the heat melts the rock within the earth is geothermal energy. When first erupted from a vent, lava is a liquid usually at temperatures from 700 to 1,200 °C. A lava flow is an outpouring of lava, which is created during a non-explosive effusive eruption. When it has stopped moving, lava solidifies to form igneous rock, the term lava flow is commonly shortened to lava. Although lava can be up to 100,000 times more viscous than water, lava can flow great distances before cooling and solidifying because of its thixotropic, explosive eruptions produce a mixture of volcanic ash and other fragments called tephra, rather than lava flows. The word lava comes from Italian, and is derived from the Latin word labes which means a fall or slide. The first use in connection with extruded magma was apparently in an account written by Francesco Serao on the eruption of Vesuvius between May 14 and June 4,1737. Serao described a flow of lava as an analogy to the flow of water. The composition of almost all lava of the Earths crust is dominated by silicate minerals, mostly feldspars, olivine, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, igneous rocks, which form lava flows when erupted, can be classified into three chemical types, felsic, intermediate, and mafic. These classes are primarily chemical, however, the chemistry of lava also tends to correlate with the temperature, its viscosity. Felsic or silicic lavas such as rhyolite and dacite typically form lava spines, most silicic lava flows are extremely viscous, and typically fragment as they extrude, producing blocky autobreccias. Felsic magmas can erupt at temperatures as low as 650 to 750 °C, unusually hot rhyolite lavas, however, may flow for distances of many tens of kilometres, such as in the Snake River Plain of the northwestern United States. Intermediate or andesitic lavas are lower in aluminium and silica, and usually somewhat richer in magnesium, intermediate lavas form andesite domes and block lavas, and may occur on steep composite volcanoes, such as in the Andes. Poorer in aluminium and silica than felsic lavas, and also commonly hotter, greater temperatures tend to destroy polymerized bonds within the magma, promoting more fluid behaviour and also a greater tendency to form phenocrysts. Higher iron and magnesium tends to manifest as a darker groundmass, mafic or basaltic lavas are typified by their high ferromagnesian content, and generally erupt at temperatures in excess of 950 °C
35.
Earth science
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Earth science or geoscience is a widely embraced term for the fields of science related to the planet Earth. Earth science can be considered to be a branch of planetary science, there are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences. The Earth sciences can include the study of geology, the lithosphere, and the structure of the Earths interior, as well as the atmosphere, hydrosphere. Typically, Earth scientists use tools from geography, chronology, physics, chemistry, biology, Geology describes the rocky parts of the Earths crust and its historic development. Major subdisciplines are mineralogy and petrology, geochemistry, geomorphology, paleontology, stratigraphy, structural geology, engineering geology, geophysics and geodesy investigate the shape of the Earth, its reaction to forces and its magnetic and gravity fields. Geophysicists explore the Earths core and mantle as well as the tectonic and seismic activity of the lithosphere, geophysics is commonly used to supplement the work of geologists in developing a comprehensive understanding of crustal geology, particularly in mineral and petroleum exploration. Soil science covers the outermost layer of the Earths crust that is subject to soil formation processes, major subdisciplines include edaphology and pedology. Ecology covers the interactions between the biota, with their natural environment and this field of study differentiates the study of the Earth, from the study of other planets in the Solar System, the Earth being the only planet teeming with life. Hydrology is a study revolved around the movement, distribution, and quality of the water and involves all the components of the cycle on the earth. Sub-disciplines of hydrology include hydrometeorology, surface hydrology, hydrogeology, watershed science, forest hydrology. Glaciology covers the icy parts of the Earth, atmospheric sciences cover the gaseous parts of the Earth between the surface and the exosphere. Major subdisciplines include meteorology, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, and atmospheric physics, plate tectonics, mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes are geological phenomena that can be explained in terms of physical and chemical processes in the Earths crust. Beneath the Earths crust lies the mantle which is heated by the decay of heavy elements. The mantle is not quite solid and consists of magma which is in a state of semi-perpetual convection and this convection process causes the lithospheric plates to move, albeit slowly. The resulting process is known as plate tectonics, plate tectonics might be thought of as the process by which the Earth is resurfaced. As the result of spreading, new crust and lithosphere is created by the flow of magma from the mantle to the near surface, through fissures. Through subduction, oceanic crust and lithosphere returns to the convecting mantle, volcanoes result primarily from the melting of subducted crust material. Crust material that is forced into the asthenosphere melts, and some portion of the material becomes light enough to rise to the surface—giving birth to volcanoes
36.
Lithosphere
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A lithosphere is the rigid, outermost shell of a terrestrial-type planet or natural satellite that is defined by its rigid mechanical properties. On Earth, it is composed of the crust and the portion of the mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of thousands of years or greater. The outermost shell of a planet, the crust, is defined on the basis of its chemistry. Earths lithosphere includes the crust and the uppermost mantle, which constitute the hard, the lithosphere is subdivided into tectonic plates. The uppermost part of the lithosphere that chemically reacts to the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere through the forming process is called the pedosphere. The lithosphere is underlain by the asthenosphere which is the weaker, hotter, the study of past and current formations of landscapes is called geomorphology. The concept of the lithosphere as Earth’s strong outer layer was described by A. E. H, love in his 1911 monograph Some problems of Geodynamics and further developed by Joseph Barrell, who wrote a series of papers about the concept and introduced the term lithosphere. The concept was based on the presence of significant gravity anomalies over continental crust and these ideas were expanded by Reginald Aldworth Daly in 1940 with his seminal work Strength and Structure of the Earth and have been broadly accepted by geologists and geophysicists. The temperature at which olivine begins to deform viscously is often used to set this isotherm because olivine is generally the weakest mineral in the upper mantle, the mantle part of the lithosphere consists largely of peridotite. The crust is distinguished from the mantle by the change in chemical composition that takes place at the Moho discontinuity. Oceanic lithosphere consists mainly of mafic crust and ultramafic mantle and is denser than continental lithosphere, oceanic lithosphere thickens as it ages and moves away from the mid-ocean ridge. This thickening occurs by conductive cooling, which converts hot asthenosphere into lithospheric mantle and causes the oceanic lithosphere to become increasingly thick, the thickness of the mantle part of the oceanic lithosphere can be approximated as a thermal boundary layer that thickens as the square root of time. H ∼2 κ t Here, h is the thickness of the mantle lithosphere, κ is the thermal diffusivity for silicate rocks. The age is equal to L/V, where L is the distance from the spreading centre of mid-oceanic ridge. Oceanic lithosphere is less dense than asthenosphere for a few tens of millions of years and this is because the chemically differentiated oceanic crust is lighter than asthenosphere, but thermal contraction of the mantle lithosphere makes it more dense than the asthenosphere. New oceanic lithosphere is constantly being produced at mid-ocean ridges and is recycled back to the mantle at subduction zones, geoscientists can directly study the nature of the subcontinental mantle by examining mantle xenoliths brought up in kimberlite, lamproite, and other volcanic pipes. The histories of these xenoliths have been investigated by many methods, such studies have confirmed that mantle lithospheres below some cratons have persisted for periods in excess of 3 billion years, despite the mantle flow that accompanies plate tectonics. Cryosphere Geosphere Kola Superdeep Borehole Plate tectonics Solid Earth Chernicoff, Stanley, Whitney, earths Crust, Lithosphere and Asthenosphere Crust and Lithosphere
37.
Hydrosphere
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The hydrosphere is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet or natural satellite. It has been estimated there are 1386 million cubic kilometers of water on Earth. This includes water in liquid and frozen forms in groundwater, oceans, lakes, saltwater accounts for 97. 5% of this amount. Fresh water accounts for only 2. 5%, of this fresh water,68. 9% is in the form of ice and permanent snow cover in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and mountain glaciers. 30. 8% is in the form of fresh groundwater, only 0. 3% of the fresh water on Earth is in easily accessible lakes, reservoirs and river systems. The total mass of the Earths hydrosphere is about 1.4 ×1018 tonnes, about 20 ×1012 tonnes of this is in Earths atmosphere. Approximately 75% of Earths surface, an area of some 361 million square kilometers, is covered by ocean, the average salinity of Earths oceans is about 35 grams of salt per kilogram of sea water. The hydrological cycle transfers water from one state or reservoir to another, reservoirs include atmospheric moisture, streams, oceans, rivers, lakes, groundwater, subterranean aquifers, polar icecaps and saturated soil. Solar energy, in the form of heat and light, most evaporation comes from the oceans and is returned to the earth as snow or rain. Sublimation refers to evaporation from snow and ice, transpiration refers to the expiration of water through the minute pores or stomata of trees. Evapotranspiration is the used by hydrologists in reference to the three processes together, transpiration, sublimation and evaporation. In his book Water, Marq de Villiers described the hydrosphere as a system in which water exists. The hydrosphere is intricate, complex, interdependent, all-pervading and stable, de Villiers claimed that, On earth, the total amount of water has almost certainly not changed since geological times, what we had then we still have. Water can be polluted, abused, and misused but it is neither created nor destroyed, there is no evidence that water vapor escapes into space. Every year the turnover of water on Earth involves 577,000 km3 of water and this is water that evaporates from the oceanic surface and from land. The same amount of falls as atmospheric precipitation,458,000 km3 on the ocean and 119,000 km3 on land. The difference between precipitation and evaporation from the surface represents the total runoff of the Earths rivers. These are the sources of fresh water to support life necessities
38.
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
39.
Biosphere
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The biosphere also known as the ecosphere, is the worldwide sum of all ecosystems. The two joined words are bio and sphere and it can also be termed as the zone of life on Earth, a closed system, and largely self-regulating. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoiesis or biogenesis, more recently, in 2015, remains of biotic life were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, If life arose relatively quickly on Earth, then it could be common in the universe. In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems and this includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons. The term biosphere was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, while the concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biospheres ecological context comes from the 1920s, preceding the 1935 introduction of the ecosystem by Sir Arthur Tansley. Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere and it is an interdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry, hydrology and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences. Geochemists define the biosphere as being the sum of living organisms. In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four components of the geochemical model. When these four component spheres are combined into one system, it is known as the Ecosphere and this term was coined during the 1960s and encompasses both biological and physical components of the planet. The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined biospherics as the science and technology of analogs and models of Earths biosphere, others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheres—for example, human-centered biospheres or a native Martian biosphere—as part of the topic of biospherics. Every part of the planet, from the ice caps to the equator. The actual thickness of the biosphere on earth is difficult to measure, birds typically fly at altitudes as high as 1,800 m and fish live as much as 8,372 m underwater in the Puerto Rico Trench. Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, microorganisms, under certain test conditions, have been observed to thrive in the vacuum of outer space. The total amount of soil and subsurface bacterial carbon is estimated as 5 ×1017 g, the mass of prokaryote microorganisms—which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms—may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon. Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of 10,000 m in the Mariana Trench, in fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, by the Challenger Deep, at depths of 11,034 m. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled more than 5,000 m into the Earths crust in Sweden, temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earths crust
40.
Water
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Water is a transparent and nearly colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of Earths streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most living organisms. Its chemical formula is H2O, meaning that its molecule contains one oxygen, Water strictly refers to the liquid state of that substance, that prevails at standard ambient temperature and pressure, but it often refers also to its solid state or its gaseous state. It also occurs in nature as snow, glaciers, ice packs and icebergs, clouds, fog, dew, aquifers, Water covers 71% of the Earths surface. It is vital for all forms of life. Only 2. 5% of this water is freshwater, and 98. 8% of that water is in ice and groundwater. Less than 0. 3% of all freshwater is in rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere, a greater quantity of water is found in the earths interior. Water on Earth moves continually through the cycle of evaporation and transpiration, condensation, precipitation. Evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land, large amounts of water are also chemically combined or adsorbed in hydrated minerals. Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other even though it provides no calories or organic nutrients. There is a correlation between access to safe water and gross domestic product per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the population will be facing water-based vulnerability. A report, issued in November 2009, suggests that by 2030, in developing regions of the world. Water plays an important role in the world economy, approximately 70% of the freshwater used by humans goes to agriculture. Fishing in salt and fresh water bodies is a source of food for many parts of the world. Much of long-distance trade of commodities and manufactured products is transported by boats through seas, rivers, lakes, large quantities of water, ice, and steam are used for cooling and heating, in industry and homes. Water is an excellent solvent for a variety of chemical substances, as such it is widely used in industrial processes. Water is also central to many sports and other forms of entertainment, such as swimming, pleasure boating, boat racing, surfing, sport fishing, Water is a liquid at the temperatures and pressures that are most adequate for life. Specifically, at atmospheric pressure of 1 bar, water is a liquid between the temperatures of 273.15 K and 373.15 K
41.
Cryosphere
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The cryosphere is those portions of Earths surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground. Thus, there is an overlap with the hydrosphere. Through these feedback processes, the plays a significant role in the global climate. The term deglaciation describes the retreat of cryospheric features, cryology is the study of cryospheres. Frozen water is found on the Earth’s surface primarily as cover, freshwater ice in lakes and rivers, sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets. The residence time of water in each of these cryospheric sub-systems varies widely, Snow cover and freshwater ice are essentially seasonal, and most sea ice, except for ice in the central Arctic, lasts only a few years if it is not seasonal. Most of the ice volume is in Antarctica, principally in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. In terms of areal extent, however, Northern Hemisphere winter snow and ice extent comprise the largest area, there are several fundamental physical properties of snow and ice that modulate energy exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere. The most important properties are the reflectance, the ability to transfer heat. These physical properties, together with surface roughness, emissivity, and dielectric characteristics, have important implications for observing snow, for example, surface roughness is often the dominant factor determining the strength of radar backscatter. Physical properties such as structure, density, length, and liquid water content are important factors affecting the transfers of heat and water. The surface reflectance of incoming radiation is important for the surface energy balance. It is the ratio of reflected to incident solar radiation, commonly referred to as albedo, climatologists are primarily interested in albedo integrated over the shortwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which coincides with the main solar energy input. Typically, albedo values for non-melting snow-covered surfaces are high except in the case of forests, summer and autumn are times of high-average cloudiness over the Arctic Ocean so the albedo feedback associated with the large seasonal changes in sea-ice extent is greatly reduced. Groisman et al. observed that snow cover exhibited the greatest influence on the Earth radiative balance in the period when incoming solar radiation was greatest over snow-covered areas. The thermal properties of cryospheric elements also have important climatic consequences, Snow and ice have much lower thermal diffusivities than air. Thermal diffusivity is a measure of the speed at which waves can penetrate a substance. Snow and ice are many orders of magnitude less efficient at diffusing heat than air, Snow cover insulates the ground surface, and sea ice insulates the underlying ocean, decoupling the surface-atmosphere interface with respect to both heat and moisture fluxes
42.
Ice
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Ice is water frozen into a solid state. Depending on the presence of such as particles of soil or bubbles of air. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far as away the Oort cloud objects, beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes, Ice molecules can exhibit up to sixteen different phases that depend on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly, up to three different types of ice can form depending on the history of its pressure and temperature. When cooled slowly correlated proton tunneling occurs below 20 K giving rise to macroscopic quantum phenomena, virtually all the ice on Earths surface and in its atmosphere is of a hexagonal crystalline structure denoted as ice Ih with minute traces of cubic ice denoted as ice Ic. The most common phase transition to ice Ih occurs when water is cooled below 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure. It may also be deposited directly by water vapor, as happens in the formation of frost, the transition from ice to water is melting and from ice directly to water vapor is sublimation. Ice is used in a variety of ways, including cooling, winter sports, as a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered a mineral. It possesses a regular crystalline structure based on the molecule of water, an unusual property of ice frozen at atmospheric pressure is that the solid is approximately 8. 3% less dense than liquid water. The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm3 at 0 °C, liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4 °C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid, density of ice increases slightly with decreasing temperature and has a value of 0.9340 g/cm³ at −180 °C. When water freezes, it increases in volume and it is also a common cause of the flooding of houses when water pipes burst due to the pressure of expanding water when it freezes. The result of this process is that ice floats on liquid water, sufficiently thin ice sheets allow light to pass through while protecting the underside from short-term weather extremes such as wind chill. This creates an environment for bacterial and algal colonies. When ice melts, it absorbs as much energy as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, during the melting process, the temperature remains constant at 0 °C. While melting, any energy added breaks the bonds between ice molecules. Energy becomes available to increase the thermal energy only after enough hydrogen bonds are broken that the ice can be considered liquid water, the amount of energy consumed in breaking hydrogen bonds in the transition from ice to water is known as the heat of fusion
43.
Science
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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science
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