Old-growth forest
An old-growth forest — termed primary forest or late seral forest — is a forest that has attained great age without significant disturbance and thereby exhibits unique ecological features and might be classified as a climax community. Old-growth features include diverse tree-related structures that provide diverse wildlife habitat that increases the biodiversity of the forested ecosystem; the concept of diverse tree structure includes multi-layered canopies and canopy gaps varying tree heights and diameters, diverse tree species and classes and sizes of woody debris. Old-growth forests are valuable for economic reasons and for the ecosystem services they provide; this can be a point of contention when some in the logging industry may desire to cut down the forests to obtain valuable timber, while environmentalists seek to preserve the forests for benefits such as maintenance of biodiversity, water regulation, nutrient cycling. Old-growth forests tend to have large trees and standing dead trees, multilayered canopies with gaps that result from the deaths of individual trees, coarse woody debris on the forest floor.
Forest regenerated after a severe disturbance, such as wildfire, insect infestation, or harvesting, is called second-growth or'regeneration' until enough time passes for the effects of the disturbance to be no longer evident. Depending on the forest, this may take from a century to several millennia. Hardwood forests of the eastern United States can develop old-growth characteristics in 150–500 years. In British Columbia, old growth is defined as 120 to 140 years of age in the interior of the province where fire is a frequent and natural occurrence. In British Columbia’s coastal rainforests, old growth is defined as trees more than 250 years, with some trees reaching more than 1,000 years of age. In Australia, eucalypt trees exceed 350 years of age due to frequent fire disturbance. Forest types have different development patterns, natural disturbances and appearances. A Douglas-fir stand may grow for centuries without disturbance while an old-growth ponderosa pine forest requires frequent surface fires to reduce the shade-tolerant species and regenerate the canopy species.
In the Boreal-West Forest Region, catastrophic disturbances like wildfires minimize opportunities for major accumulations of dead and downed woody material and other structural legacies associated with old growth conditions. Typical characteristics of old-growth forest include presence of older trees, minimal signs of human disturbance, mixed-age stands, presence of canopy openings due to tree falls, pit-and-mound topography, down wood in various stages of decay, standing snags, multilayered canopies, intact soils, a healthy fungal ecosystem, presence of indicator species. Old-growth forests are biologically diverse, home to many rare species, threatened species, endangered species of plants and animals, such as the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and fisher, making them ecologically significant. Levels of biodiversity may be higher or lower in old-growth forests compared to that in second-growth forests, depending on specific circumstances, environmental variables, geographic variables.
Logging in old-growth forests is a contentious issue in many parts of the world. Excessive logging reduces biodiversity, affecting not only the old-growth forest itself, but indigenous species that rely upon old-growth forest habitat. A forest in old-growth stage has a mix of tree ages, due to a distinct regeneration pattern for this stage. New trees regenerate at different times from each other, because each one of them has different spatial location relative to the main canopy, hence each one receives a different amount of light; the mixed age of the forest is an important criterion in ensuring that the forest is a stable ecosystem in the long term. A climax stand, uniformly aged becomes senescent and degrades within a short time to result in a new cycle of forest succession. Thus, uniformly aged stands are less stable ecosystems. Forest canopy gaps are essential in maintaining mixed-age stands; some herbaceous plants only become established in canopy openings, but persist beneath an understory.
Openings are a result of tree death due to small impact disturbances such as wind, low-intensity fires, tree diseases. Old-growth forests are unique having multiple horizontal layers of vegetation representing a variety of tree species, age classes, sizes, as well as "pit and mound" soil shape with well-established fungal nets; because old-growth forest is structurally diverse, it provides higher-diversity habitat than forests in other stages. Thus, sometimes higher biological diversity can be sustained in old-growth forest, or at least a biodiversity, different from other forest stages; the characteristic topography of much old-growth forest consists of mounds. Mounds are caused by decaying fallen trees, pits by the roots pulled out of the ground when trees fall due to natural causes, including being pushed over by animals. Pits expose humus-poor, mineral-rich soil and collect moisture and fallen leaves, forming a thick organic layer, able to nurture certain types of organisms. Mounds provide a place free of leaf inundation and saturation, where other types of organisms thrive.
Standing snags provide food sources and habitat for many types of organisms. In particular, many species of dead-wood predators such as woodpeckers must have standing snags available for feeding. In North America, the spotted owl is well known for needing standing snags for nesting habitat. Fallen timber, or coarse woody debris, contributes carbon-rich organic matter directly to the soil, providing a substrate for mosses and seedlings, cr
George Shaw
George Kearsley Shaw was an English botanist and zoologist. Shaw was born at Bierton and was educated at Magdalen Hall, receiving his M. A. in 1772. He took up the profession of medical practitioner. In 1786 he became the assistant lecturer in botany at Oxford University, he was a co-founder of the Linnean Society in 1788, became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1789. In 1791 Shaw became assistant keeper of the natural history department at the British Museum, succeeding Edward Whitaker Gray as keeper in 1806, he found that most of the items donated to the museum by Hans Sloane were in bad condition. Medical and anatomical material was sent to the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, but many of the stuffed animals and birds had deteriorated and had to be burnt, he was succeeded after his death by his assistant Charles Konig. Shaw published one of the first English descriptions with scientific names of several Australian animals in his "Zoology of New Holland", he was among the first scientists to examine a platypus and published the first scientific description of it in The Naturalist's Miscellany in 1799.
In the field of herpetology he described numerous new species of amphibians. His other publications included: Musei Leveriani explicatio, anglica et Latina', containing select specimens from the museum of the late Sir Ashton Lever, moved to be displayed at the Blackfriars Rotunda. General Zoology, or Systematic Natural History The Naturalist's Miscellany: Or, Coloured Figures Of Natural Objects; the standard botanical author abbreviation G. Shaw is applied to species. Mullens and Swann - A Bibliography of British Ornithology William T. Stearn - The Natural History Museum at South Kensington ISBN 0-434-73600-7 Zoologica Göttingen State and University Library Digitised'The Naturalist's Miscellany and Musei Leveriani explicatio
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east. North Carolina is the 28th-most extensive and the 9th-most populous of the U. S. states. The state is divided into 100 counties; the capital is Raleigh, which along with Durham and Chapel Hill is home to the largest research park in the United States. The most populous municipality is Charlotte, the second-largest banking center in the United States after New York City; the state has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet at Mount Mitchell, the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. The climate of the coastal plains is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate. Woodland-culture Native Americans were in the area around 1000 BCE.
During this time, important buildings were constructed as flat-topped buildings. By 1550, many groups of American Indians lived in present-day North Carolina, including Chowanoke, Pamlico, Coree, Cape Fear Indians, Waxhaw and Catawba. Juan Pardo explored the area in 1566–1567, establishing Fort San Juan in 1567 at the site of the Native American community of Joara, a Mississippian culture regional chiefdom in the western interior, near the present-day city of Morganton; the fort lasted only 18 months. A expedition by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe followed in 1584, at the direction of Sir Walter Raleigh. In June 1718, the pirate Blackbeard ran his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, in present-day Carteret County. After the grounding her crew and supplies were transferred to smaller ships. In November, after appealing to the governor of North Carolina, who promised safe-haven and a pardon, Blackbeard was killed in an ambush by troops from Virginia.
In 1996 Intersal, Inc. a private firm, discovered the remains of a vessel to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, added to the US National Register of Historic Places. North Carolina became one of the English Thirteen Colonies and with the territory of South Carolina was known as the Province of North-Carolina; the northern and southern parts of the original province separated in 1729. Settled by small farmers, sometimes having a few slaves, who were oriented toward subsistence agriculture, the colony lacked cities or towns. Pirates menaced the coastal settlements. Growth was strong in the middle of the 18th century, as the economy attracted Scots-Irish, Quaker and German immigrants. A majority of the colonists supported the American Revolution, a smaller number of Loyalists than in some other colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, New York. During colonial times, Edenton served as the state capital beginning in 1722, New Bern was selected as the capital in 1766. Construction of Tryon Palace, which served as the residence and offices of the provincial governor William Tryon, began in 1767 and was completed in 1771.
In 1788 Raleigh was chosen as the site of the new capital, as its central location protected it from coastal attacks. Established in 1792 as both county seat and state capital, the city was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, sponsor of Roanoke, the "lost colony" on Roanoke Island; the population of the colony more than quadrupled from 52,000 in 1740 to 270,000 in 1780 from high immigration from Virginia and Pennsylvania plus immigrants from abroad. North Carolina made the smallest per-capita contribution to the war of any state, as only 7,800 men joined the Continental Army under General George Washington. There was some military action in 1780–81. Many Carolinian frontiersmen had moved west over the mountains, into the Washington District, but in 1789, following the Revolution, the state was persuaded to relinquish its claim to the western lands, it ceded them to the national government so that the Northwest Territory could be organized and managed nationally. After 1800, cotton and tobacco became important export crops.
The eastern half of the state the Tidewater region, developed a slave society based on a plantation system and slave labor. Many free people of color migrated to the frontier along with their European-American neighbors, where the social system was looser. By 1810, nearly 3 percent of the free population consisted of free people of color, who numbered more than 10,000; the western areas were dominated by white families Scots-Irish, who operated small subsistence farms. In the early national period, the state became a center of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, with a strong Whig presence in the West. After Nat Turner's slave uprising in 1831, North Carolina and other southern states reduced the rights of free blacks. In 1835 the legislature withdrew their right to vote. On May 20, 1861, North Carolina was the last of the Confederate states to declare secession from the Union, 13 days after the Tennessee legislature voted for secession; some 125,000 North Carolinians served in the military.
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region on the West Coast of the United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho; the parallel 42 ° north delineates the southern boundary with Nevada. Oregon is one of only four states of the continental United States to have a coastline on the Pacific Ocean. Oregon was inhabited by many indigenous tribes before Western traders and settlers arrived. An autonomous government was formed in the Oregon Country in 1843 before the Oregon Territory was created in 1848. Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859. Today, at 98,000 square miles, Oregon is the ninth largest and, with a population of 4 million, 27th most populous U. S. state. The capital, Salem, is the second most populous city in Oregon, with 169,798 residents. Portland, with 647,805, ranks as the 26th among U. S. cities. The Portland metropolitan area, which includes the city of Vancouver, Washington, to the north, ranks the 25th largest metro area in the nation, with a population of 2,453,168.
Oregon is one of the most geographically diverse states in the U. S. marked by volcanoes, abundant bodies of water, dense evergreen and mixed forests, as well as high deserts and semi-arid shrublands. At 11,249 feet, Mount Hood, a stratovolcano, is the state's highest point. Oregon's only national park, Crater Lake National Park, comprises the caldera surrounding Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States; the state is home to the single largest organism in the world, Armillaria ostoyae, a fungus that runs beneath 2,200 acres of the Malheur National Forest. Because of its diverse landscapes and waterways, Oregon's economy is powered by various forms of agriculture and hydroelectric power. Oregon is the top timber producer of the contiguous United States, the timber industry dominated the state's economy in the 20th century. Technology is another one of Oregon's major economic forces, beginning in the 1970s with the establishment of the Silicon Forest and the expansion of Tektronix and Intel.
Sportswear company Nike, Inc. headquartered in Beaverton, is the state's largest public corporation with an annual revenue of $30.6 billion. The earliest evidence of the name Oregon has Spanish origins; the term "orejón" comes from the historical chronicle Relación de la Alta y Baja California written by the new Spaniard Rodrigo Montezuma and made reference to the Columbia River when the Spanish explorers penetrated into the actual North American territory that became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This chronicle is the first topographical and linguistic source with respect to the place name Oregon. There are two other sources with Spanish origins, such as the name Oregano, which grows in the southern part of the region, it is most probable that the American territory was named by the Spaniards, as there are some populations in Spain such as "Arroyo del Oregón" considering that the individualization in Spanish language "El Orejón" with the mutation of the letter "g" instead of "j". Another early use of the name, spelled Ouragon, was in a 1765 petition by Major Robert Rogers to the Kingdom of Great Britain.
The term referred to the then-mythical River of the West. By 1778, the spelling had shifted to Oregon. In his 1765 petition, Rogers wrote: The rout...is from the Great Lakes towards the Head of the Mississippi, from thence to the River called by the Indians Ouragon... One theory is that the name comes from the French word ouragan, applied to the River of the West based on Native American tales of powerful Chinook winds on the lower Columbia River, or from firsthand French experience with the Chinook winds of the Great Plains. At the time, the River of the West was thought to rise in western Minnesota and flow west through the Great Plains. Joaquin Miller explained in Sunset magazine, in 1904, how Oregon's name was derived: The name, Oregon, is rounded down phonetically, from Ouve água—Oragua, Or-a-gon, Oregon—given by the same Portuguese navigator that named the Farallones after his first officer, it in a large way, means cascades:'Hear the waters.' You should steam up the Columbia and hear and feel the waters falling out of the clouds of Mount Hood to understand the full meaning of the name Ouve a água, Oregon.
Another account, endorsed as the "most plausible explanation" in the book Oregon Geographic Names, was advanced by George R. Stewart in a 1944 article in American Speech. According to Stewart, the name came from an engraver's error in a French map published in the early 18th century, on which the Ouisiconsink River was spelled "Ouaricon-sint", broken on two lines with the -sint below, so there appeared to be a river flowing to the west named "Ouaricon". According to the Oregon Tourism Commission, present-day Oregonians pronounce the state's name as "or-uh-gun, never or-ee-gone". After being drafted by the Detroit Lions in 2002, former Oregon Ducks quarterback Joey Harrington distributed "Orygun" stickers to members of the media as a reminder of how to pronounce the name of his home state; the stickers are sold by the University of Oregon Bookstore. Oregon is 295 miles north to south at longest distance, 395 miles east to west. With an area of 98,381 square miles, Oregon is larger than the United Kingdom.
It is the ninth largest state in the United States. Oregon's highest point is the summit of Mount Hood, at 11,249 feet, its lowest point is the sea level of the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon Coas
Rodent
Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents, they are the most diversified mammalian order and live in a variety of terrestrial habitats, including human-made environments. Species can be fossorial, or semiaquatic. Well-known rodents include mice, squirrels, prairie dogs, chinchillas, beavers, guinea pigs, hamsters and capybaras. Other animals such as rabbits and pikas, whose incisors grow continually, were once included with them, but are now considered to be in a separate order, the Lagomorpha. Nonetheless and Lagomorpha are sister groups, sharing a most recent common ancestor and forming the clade of Glires. Most rodents are small animals with robust bodies, short limbs, long tails, they use their sharp incisors to gnaw food, excavate burrows, defend themselves. Most eat seeds or other plant material, they tend to be social animals and many species live in societies with complex ways of communicating with each other.
Mating among rodents can vary from monogamy, to polygyny, to promiscuity. Many have litters of altricial young, while others are precocial at birth; the rodent fossil record dates back to the Paleocene on the supercontinent of Laurasia. Rodents diversified in the Eocene, as they spread across continents, sometimes crossing oceans. Rodents reached both South America and Madagascar from Africa and were the only terrestrial placental mammals to reach and colonize Australia. Rodents have been used as food, for clothing, as pets, as laboratory animals in research; some species, in particular, the brown rat, the black rat, the house mouse, are serious pests and spoiling food stored by humans and spreading diseases. Accidentally introduced species of rodents are considered to be invasive and have caused the extinction of numerous species, such as island birds isolated from land-based predators; the distinguishing feature of the rodents is their pairs of continuously growing, razor-sharp, open-rooted incisors.
These incisors little enamel on the back. Because they do not stop growing, the animal must continue to wear them down so that they do not reach and pierce the skull; as the incisors grind against each other, the softer dentine on the rear of the teeth wears away, leaving the sharp enamel edge shaped like the blade of a chisel. Most species have up to 22 teeth with no canines or anterior premolars. A gap, or diastema, occurs between the cheek teeth in most species; this allows rodents to suck in their cheeks or lips to shield their mouth and throat from wood shavings and other inedible material, discarding this waste from the sides of their mouths. Chinchillas and guinea pigs have a high-fiber diet. In many species, the molars are large, intricately structured, cusped or ridged. Rodent molars are well equipped to grind food into small particles; the jaw musculature is strong. The lower jaw is pulled backwards during chewing. Rodent groups differ in the arrangement of the jaw muscles and associated skull structures, both from other mammals and amongst themselves.
The Sciuromorpha, such as the eastern grey squirrel, have a large deep masseter, making them efficient at biting with the incisors. The Myomorpha, such as the brown rat, have enlarged temporalis muscles, making them able to chew powerfully with their molars; the Hystricomorpha, such as the guinea pig, have larger superficial masseter muscles and smaller deep masseter muscles than rats or squirrels making them less efficient at biting with the incisors, but their enlarged internal pterygoid muscles may allow them to move the jaw further sideways when chewing. The cheek pouch is a specific morphological feature used for storing food and is evident in particular subgroups of rodents like kangaroo rats, hamsters and gophers which have two bags that may range from the mouth to the front of the shoulders. True mice and rats do not contain this structure but their cheeks are elastic due to a high degree of musculature and innervation in the region. While the largest species, the capybara, can weigh as much as 66 kg, most rodents weigh less than 100 g.
The smallest rodent is the Baluchistan pygmy jerboa, which averages only 4.4 cm in head and body length, with adult females weighing only 3.75 g. Rodents have wide-ranging morphologies, but have squat bodies and short limbs; the fore limbs have five digits, including an opposable thumb, while the hind limbs have three to five digits. The elbow gives the forearms great flexibility; the majority of species are plantigrade, walking on both the palms and soles of their feet, have claw-like nails. The nails of burrowing species tend to be long and strong, while arboreal rodents have shorter, sharper nails. Rodent species use a wide variety of methods of locomotion including quadrupedal walking, burrowing, bipedal hopping and gliding. Scaly-tailed squirrels and flying squirrels, although not related, can both glide from tree to tree using parachute-like membranes that stretch from the fore to the hind limbs; the agouti is antelope-like, being digitigrade and having hoof-like nails. The majority of rodents have tails, which can be of many shapes and siz
Gliding flight
Gliding flight is heavier-than-air flight without the use of thrust. It is employed by aircraft such as gliders; this mode of flight involves flying a significant distance horizontally compared to its descent and therefore can be distinguished from a straight downward descent like with a round parachute. Although the human application of gliding flight refers to aircraft designed for this purpose, most powered aircraft are capable of gliding without engine power; as with sustained flight, gliding requires the application of an airfoil, such as the wings on aircraft or birds, or the gliding membrane of a gliding possum. However, gliding can be achieved with a flat wing, as with a simple paper plane, or with card-throwing. However, some aircraft with lifting bodies and animals such as the flying snake can achieve gliding flight without any wings by creating a flattened surface underneath. Most winged aircraft can glide to some extent, but there are several types of aircraft designed to glide: Glider known as a sailplane Hang glider Paraglider Speed glider Ram-air parachute Rotor kite, if untethered, known as a rotary glider, or gyroglider.
Military glider Paper aeroplane Radio-controlled glider Rocket glider WingsuitThe main human application is recreational, though during the Second World War military gliders were used for carrying troops and equipment into battle. The types of aircraft that are used for sport and recreation are classified as gliders, hang gliders and paragliders; these two latter types are foot-launched. The design of all three types enables them to climb using rising air and to glide before finding the next source of lift; when done in gliders, the sport is known as sometimes as soaring. For foot-launched aircraft, it is known as hang paragliding. Radio-controlled gliders with fixed wings are soared by enthusiasts. In addition to motor gliders, some powered aircraft are designed for routine glides during part of their flight; these include: Experimental aircraft such as the North American X-15, which glided back having used their fuel Spacecraft such as the Space Shuttles, SpaceShipOne and the Russian BuranSome aircraft are not designed to glide except in an emergency, such as engine failure.
See list of airline flights that required gliding flight. Gliding in a helicopter is called autorotation. A number of animals have separately evolved gliding many times, without any single ancestor. Birds in particular use gliding flight to minimise their use of energy. Large birds are notably adept at gliding, including: Albatross Condor Vulture Eagle Stork FrigatebirdLike recreational aircraft, birds can alternate periods of gliding with periods of soaring in rising air, so spend a considerable time airborne with a minimal expenditure of energy; the great frigatebird in particular is capable of continuous flights up to several weeks. To assist gliding, some mammals have evolved a structure called the patagium; this is a membranous structure found stretched between a range of body parts. It is most developed in bats. For similar reasons to birds, bats can glide efficiently. In bats, the skin forming the surface of the wing is an extension of the skin of the abdomen that runs to the tip of each digit, uniting the forelimb with the body.
The patagium of a bat has four distinct parts: Propatagium: the patagium present from the neck to the first digit Dactylopatagium: the portion found within the digits Plagiopatagium: the portion found between the last digit and the hindlimbs Uropatagium: the posterior portion of the body between the two hindlimbsOther mammals such as gliding possums and flying squirrels glide using a patagium, but with much poorer efficiency than bats. They cannot gain height; the animal launches itself from a tree, spreading its limbs to expose the gliding membranes to get from tree to tree in rainforests as an efficient means of both locating food and evading predators. This form of arboreal locomotion, is common in tropical regions such as Borneo and Australia, where the trees are tall and spaced. In flying squirrels, the patagium stretches from the fore- to the hind-limbs along the length of each side of the torso. In the sugar glider, the patagia extend between the fifth finger of each hand to the first toe of each foot.
This creates an aerofoil enabling them to glide 50 metres or more. This gliding flight is regulated by changing the curvature of the membrane or moving the legs and tail. In addition to mammals and birds, other animals notably flying fish, flying snakes, flying frogs and flying squid glide; the flights of flying fish are around 50 meters, though they can use updrafts at the leading edge of waves to cover distances of up to 400 m. To glide upward out of the water, a flying fish moves its tail up to 70 times per second, it spreads its pectoral fins and tilts them upward to provide lift. At the end of a glide, it folds its pectoral fins to re-enter the sea, or drops its tail into the water to push against the water to lift itself for another glide changing direction; the curved profile of the "wing" is comparable to the aerodynamic shape of a bird wing. The fish is able to increase its time in the air by flying straight into or at an angle to the direction of updrafts created by a combination of air and ocean currents.
Snakes of the genus Chrysopelea are known by the common name "flying snake". Before launching from a branch, the snake makes a J-shape bend. After thrusting its body up and away from the tree, it sucks in its abdomen and flaring out its ribs to turn its bo
North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
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