1.
White Mountains (California)
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The White Mountains of California and Nevada are a triangular fault-block mountain range facing the Sierra Nevada across the upper Owens Valley. They extend for approximately 60 mi as an elevated plateau about 20 mi wide on the south. The ranges broad southern end is near the community of Big Pine, the narrow northern end is at Montgomery Pass, where U. S. Route 6 crosses. The range lies within the section of the Inyo National Forest. Middle slopes from 6,500 to 8,200 ft have somewhat denser stands of piñon pine and these upper and lower conifer zones are often separated by a zone of mountain mahogany brush. Various subspecies of sagebrush extend from surrounding valleys to the alpine zone. A bristlecone pine in the part of the range is the oldest known living tree in the world. Pine nuts from piñon pine stands were harvested as a staple food by Paiute Indians whose descendants still live in adjacent valleys. The White Mountains also have small remnant groves of pine, Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine, Sierra juniper. A number of plant species are endemic to the White Mountains, fauna include two herds of bighorn sheep, mule deer, marmots and feral horses. Permanent streams have no fish, but there are naturalized populations of trout including rare Paiute cutthroat trout which is protected from angling. Birds include Clarks nutcracker and other Corvidae which eat and cache pine nuts, cattle from ranches in surrounding valleys are still grazed under permit as high as the alpine zone. Historically sheep were grazed in large numbers, introducing diseases from which the native Bighorn Sheep populations are still slowly recovering. Before European colonization of surrounding valleys in the mid 19th century, Paiute Indians occupied summer hunting camps up to about 13,100 ft, the highest point in the range is White Mountain Peak, which at 14,252 ft is the third-highest summit in California. This peak is actually an extinct volcano rising about 1,600 ft above the plateau surface, the summit is composed of Mesozoic metavolcanic rock – lava lifted and melted by rising granite. The volcano itself is long since gone, the White Mountains are the highest range completely inside the Great Basin, although the adjacent Sierra Nevada Range along the basins western edge has two higher summits. The entire range is within the Inyo National Forest, a four-wheel drive road reaches the summit from the south to service the summit laboratory of the White Mountain Research Station. The road is normally gated seven miles from the summit at an elevation of 11,680 ft, the bench includes Mt. Hogue at 12,743 ft. and further north Mt. Dubois at 13,559 ft. the high point on the plateau
2.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
3.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
4.
Plant
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Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. The term is generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae. This includes the plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts and their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although reproduction is also common. There are about 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, green plants provide most of the worlds molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earths ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankinds basic foodstuffs, Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in variety, they have served as the source of most medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology, Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided, the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus created the basis of the system of scientific classification. Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, however, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a group of organisms or taxon. The evolutionary history of plants is not yet settled. Those which have been called plants are in bold, the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce energy through photosynthesis, most conspicuous among the algae are the seaweeds, multicellular algae that may roughly resemble land plants, but are classified among the brown, red and green algae. Each of these groups also includes various microscopic and single-celled organisms
5.
Pinophyta
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The Pinophyta, also known as Coniferophyta or Coniferae, or commonly as conifers, are a division of vascular land plants containing a single class, Pinopsida. They are gymnosperms, cone-bearing seed plants, all extant conifers are perennial woody plants with secondary growth. The great majority are trees, though a few are shrubs, examples include cedars, Douglas firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews. As of 1998, the division Pinophyta was estimated to contain eight families,68 genera, although the total number of species is relatively small, conifers are ecologically important. They are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably the taiga of the Northern Hemisphere, boreal conifers have many wintertime adaptations. The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, many of them seasonally alter their biochemistry to make them more resistant to freezing. While tropical rainforests have more biodiversity and turnover, the conifer forests of the world represent the largest terrestrial carbon sink. Conifers are of economic value for softwood lumber and paper production. The earliest conifers in the record date to the late Carboniferous period, possibly arising from Cordaites. Pinophytes, Cycadophytes, and Ginkgophytes all developed at this time, an important adaptation of these gymnosperms was allowing plants to live without being so dependent on water. Other adaptations are pollen and the seed, which allows the embryo to be transported and developed elsewhere, Conifers appear to be one of the taxa that benefited from the Permian–Triassic extinction event, and were the dominant land plants of the Mesozoic. They were overtaken by the plants, which first appeared in the Cretaceous. They were the food of herbivorous dinosaurs, and their resins and poisons would have given protection against herbivores. Reproductive features of modern conifers had evolved by the end of the Mesozoic era, Conifer is a Latin word, a compound of conus and ferre, meaning the one that bears cone. A descriptive name in use for the conifers is Coniferae. Alternatively, descriptive botanical names may also be used at any rank above family and this means that if conifers are considered a division, they may be called Pinophyta or Coniferae. As a class they may be called Pinopsida or Coniferae, as an order they may be called Pinales or Coniferae or Coniferales. Conifers are the largest and economically most important component group of the gymnosperms, the division Pinophyta consists of just one class, Pinopsida, which includes both living and fossil taxa
6.
Pine
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A pine is any conifer in the genus Pinus, /ˈpiːnuːs/, of the family Pinaceae. Pinus is the genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The Plant List compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts 126 species names of pines as current, together with 35 unresolved species, the modern English name pine derives from Latin pinus, which some have traced to the Indo-European base *pīt- ‘resin’. Before the 19th century, pines were often referred to as firs, the genus is divided into three subgenera, which can be distinguished by cone, seed, and leaf characters, Pinus subg. Pinus, the yellow, or hard pine group, generally harder wood. Ducampopinus, the foxtail or pinyon group Pinus subg, strobus, the white, or soft pine group, generally with softer wood and five needles per fascicle Most regions of the Northern Hemisphere host some native species of pines. One species crosses the equator in Sumatra to 2°S, in North America, various species occur in regions at latitudes from as far north as 66°N to as far south as 12°N. Various species have been introduced to temperate and subtropical regions of both hemispheres, where they are grown as timber or cultivated as ornamental plants in parks, a number of such introduced species have become invasive and threaten native ecosystems. Pine trees are evergreen, coniferous trees growing 3–80 m tall. The smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon, and the tallest is a 81.79 m tall ponderosa pine located in southern Oregons Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, the bark of most pines is thick and scaly, but some species have thin, flaky bark. The branches are produced in regular pseudo whorls, actually a very tight spiral, the spiral growth of branches, needles, and cone scales are arranged in Fibonacci number ratios. The new spring shoots are sometimes called candles, they are covered in brown or whitish bud scales and point upward at first, then turn green. These candles offer foresters a means to evaluate fertility of the soil, pines are long-lived, and typically reach ages of 100–1,000 years, some even more. The longest-lived is the Great Basin bristlecone pine, Pinus longaeva, one individual of this species, dubbed Methuselah, is one of the worlds oldest living organisms at around 4,600 years old. This tree can be found in the White Mountains of California, an older tree, now cut down, was dated at 4,900 years old. It was discovered in a grove beneath Wheeler Peak and it is now known as Prometheus after the Greek immortal, pines have four types of leaf, Seed leaves on seedlings, born in a whorl of 4–24. Juvenile leaves, which follow immediately on seedlings and young plants, 2–6 cm long, single, green or often blue-green and these are produced for six months to five years, rarely longer. Scale leaves, similar to bud scales, small, brown and non-photosynthetic, needles, the adult leaves, are green and bundled in clusters called fascicles
7.
Bristlecone pine
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A bristlecone pine is one of three species of pine trees. All three species are long-lived and highly resilient to harsh weather and bad soils, One of the three species, Pinus longaeva, is among the longest-lived life forms on Earth. The oldest Pinus longaeva is more than 5,000 years old, despite their potential age and low reproductive rate, bristlecone pines, particularly Pinus longaeva, are usually a first-succession species, tending to occupy new open ground. They generally compete poorly in less-than-harsh environments, making hard to cultivate. In gardens, they succumb quickly to root rot and they do very well, however, where most other plants cannot even grow, such as in rocky dolomitic soils in areas with virtually no rainfall. Bristlecone pines grow in scattered subalpine groves at high altitude in arid regions of the Western United States, the name comes from the prickles on the female cones. There are three related species of bristlecone pines, Great Basin bristlecone pine in Utah, Nevada. The famous longest-lived species, often the term Bristlecone pine refers to this tree in particular, Rocky Mountains bristlecone pine in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The most populous species, capable of forming closed canopies and, foxtail pine with two disjunct populations found in the Klamath Mountains and the southern Sierra Nevada. A small outlying population was reported in southern Oregon, but was proven to have been misidentified, forms the thickest groves of the three. At least some of the three species can hybridize in cultivation, but the ranges of wild populations do not overlap, Bristlecone pines grow in isolated groves just below the tree line, between 5,600 and 11,200 ft elevation on dolomitic soils. The trees grow in soils that are shallow lithosols, usually derived from dolomite and sometimes limestone, dolomite soils are alkaline, high in calcium and magnesium, and low in phosphorus. Those factors tend to other plant species, allowing bristlecones to thrive. Because of cold temperatures, dry soils, high winds, and short growing seasons, even the trees needles, which grow in bunches of five, can remain on the tree for forty years, which gives the trees terminal branches the unique appearance of a long bottle brush. The bristlecone pines root system is composed of highly branched, shallow roots, while a few large. The bristlecone pine is extremely drought tolerant due to its branched shallow root system, its waxy needles, the wood is very dense and resinous, and thus resistant to invasion by insects, fungi, and other potential pests. The trees longevity is due in part to the extreme durability. While other species of trees that grow nearby suffer rot, bare bristlecone pines can endure, even death, often still standing on their roots
8.
Nevada
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Nevada is a state in the Western, Mountain West, and Southwestern regions of the United States of America. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 34th most populous, nearly three-quarters of Nevadas people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area where three of the states four largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada is officially known as the Silver State because of the importance of silver to its history and economy. It is also known as the Battle Born State, because it achieved statehood during the Civil War, as the Sage-brush State, for the plant of the same name. Nevada borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, Nevada is largely desert and semi-arid, much of it located within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are located within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe, about 86% of the states land is managed by various jurisdictions of the U. S. federal government, both civilian and military. Before European contact, Native Americans of the Paiute, Shoshone, the first Europeans to explore the region were Spanish. They called the region Nevada because of the snow covered the mountains in winter. The area formed part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the United States annexed the area in 1848 after its victory in the Mexican–American War, and it was incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a boom that became an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31,1864, as the second of two added to the Union during the Civil War. Nevada has a reputation for its libertarian laws, in 1940, with a population of just over 110,000 people, Nevada was by far the least-populated state, with less than half the population of the next least-populated state. However, legalized gambling and lenient marriage and divorce laws transformed Nevada into a major tourist destination in the 20th century, Nevada is the only U. S. state where prostitution is legal, though it is illegal in Clark County, Washoe County and Carson City. The tourism industry remains Nevadas largest employer, with mining continuing as a sector of the economy. The name Nevada comes from the Spanish nevada, meaning snow-covered, most Nevadans pronounce the second syllable of their state name using the vowel of trap. Many from outside the Western United States pronounce it with the vowel of father, although the latter pronunciation is closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation preferred by most Nevadans. State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson proposed a bill to recognize the alternate pronunciation of Nevada, though the bill was not supported by most legislators, the Nevadan pronunciation is the de facto official one, since it is the one used by the state legislature. Nevada is almost entirely within the Basin and Range Province, and is broken up by many mountain ranges
9.
Utah
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Utah is a state in the western United States. It became the 45th state admitted to the U. S. on January 4,1896, Utah is the 13th-largest by area, 31st-most-populous, and 10th-least-densely populated of the 50 United States. Utah has a population of more than 3 million, approximately 80% of whom live along the Wasatch Front, Utah is bordered by Colorado to the east, Wyoming to the northeast, Idaho to the north, Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west. It also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast, approximately 62% of Utahns are reported to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS, which greatly influences Utahn culture and daily life. The LDS Churchs world headquarters is located in Salt Lake City, Utah is the only state with a majority population belonging to a single church. The state is a center of transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, in 2013, the U. S. Census Bureau estimated that Utah had the second fastest-growing population of any state. St. George was the metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah also has the 14th highest median income and the least income inequality of any U. S. state. A2012 Gallup national survey found Utah overall to be the best state to live in based on 13 forward-looking measurements including various economic, lifestyle, the name Utah is derived from the name of the Ute tribe. It means people of the mountains in the Ute language, according to other sources Utah is derived from the Apache name Yudah which means Tall. These Native American tribes are subgroups of the Ute-Aztec Native American ethnicity and were sedentary, the Ancestral Pueblo people built their homes through excavations in mountains, and the Fremont people built houses of straw before disappearing from the region around the 15th century. Another group of Native Americans, the Navajo, settled in the region around the 18th century, in the mid-18th century, other Uto-Aztecan tribes, including the Goshute, the Paiute, the Shoshone, and the Ute people, also settled in the region. These five groups were present when the first European explorers arrived, the southern Utah region was explored by the Spanish in 1540, led by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, while looking for the legendary Cíbola. A group led by two Catholic priests—sometimes called the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the coast of California, the expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. The Spanish made further explorations in the region, but were not interested in colonizing the area because of its desert nature, in 1821, the year Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, the region became known as part of its territory of Alta California. European trappers and fur traders explored some areas of Utah in the early 19th century from Canada, the city of Provo, Utah was named for one, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah was named after Peter Skene Ogden, in late 1824, Jim Bridger became the first known English-speaking person to sight the Great Salt Lake. Due to the salinity of its waters, Bridger thought he had found the Pacific Ocean
10.
Vegetative reproduction
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Vegetative reproduction is a form of asexual reproduction in plants. It is a process by which new organisms arise without production of seeds or spores and it can occur naturally or be induced by horticulturists. Although most plants normally reproduce sexually, many have the ability for vegetative propagation and this is because meristematic cells capable of cellular differentiation are present in many plant tissues. Horticulturalists are interested in understanding how meristematic cells can be induced to reproduce an entire plant, success rates and difficulty of propagation vary greatly. For example, willow and coleus can be propagated merely by inserting a stem in water or moist soil, on the other hand, monocotyledons, unlike dicotyledons, typically lack a vascular cambium and therefore are harder to propagate. In a wide sense, methods of propagation include cutting, vegetative apomixis, layering, division, budding, grafting. Cutting exploits the ability of plants to grow adventitious roots under certain conditions, vegetative propagation is usually considered a cloning method. However, there are cases where vegetatively propagated plants are not genetically identical. Root cuttings of thornless blackberries will revert to type because the adventitious shoot develops from a cell that is genetically thorny. Thornless blackberry is a chimera, with the epidermal layers genetically thornless, similarly, leaf cutting propagation of certain chimeral variegated plants, such as snake plant, will produce mainly nonvariegated plants. Grafting is often not a complete cloning method because seedlings are used as rootstocks, in that case only the top of the plant is clonal. In some crops, particularly apples, the rootstocks are vegetatively propagated so the entire graft can be if the scion. Apomixis is a type of reproduction that does not involve fertilisation, in flowering plants, unfertilized seeds are involved, or plantlets that grow instead of flowers. Hawkweed, dandelion, some citrus and many such as Kentucky blue grass all use this form of asexual reproduction. Bulbils are sometimes formed instead of the flowers of garlic, virtually all types of shoots and roots are capable of vegetative propagation, including stems, basal shoots, tubers, rhizomes, stolons, corms, bulbs, and buds. In a few species, leaves are involved in vegetative reproduction, the rhizome is a modified underground stem serving as an organ of vegetative reproduction, e. g. Polypodium, iris, couch grass and nettles, prostrate aerial stems, called runners or stolons are important vegetative reproduction organs in some species, such as the strawberry, numerous grasses, and some ferns. Adventitious buds form on roots near the surface, on damaged stems
11.
Stoma
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In botany, a stoma, also called a stomate, is a pore, found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, that is used to control gas exchange. The pore is bordered by a pair of specialized cells known as guard cells that are responsible for regulating the size of the stomatal opening. The term is used collectively to refer to the entire stomatal complex, consisting of the paired guard cells and the pore itself. Air enters the plant through these openings by gaseous diffusion, and contains carbon dioxide and oxygen, oxygen produced as a by-product of photosynthesis diffuses out to the atmosphere through these same openings. Also, water vapor is released into the atmosphere through these pores in a process called transpiration, stomata are present in the sporophyte generation of all land plant groups except liverworts. Dicotyledons usually have more stomata on the lower epidermis than the upper epidermis, monocotyledons, on the other hand, usually have the same number of stomata on the two epidermes. In plants with floating leaves, stomata may be only on the upper epidermis. Most tree species have leaves only on the lower surface, size varies across species, with end-to-end lengths ranging from 10 to 80 µm and width ranging from a few to 50 µm. Carbon dioxide, a key reactant in photosynthesis, is present in the atmosphere at a concentration of about 400 ppm, most plants require the stomata to be open during daytime. The air spaces in the leaf are saturated with water vapour, which exits the leaf through the stomata, therefore, plants cannot gain carbon dioxide without simultaneously losing water vapour. Ordinarily, carbon dioxide is fixed to ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate by the enzyme RuBisCO in mesophyll cells exposed directly to the air spaces inside the leaf. For both of these reasons, RuBisCo needs high carbon dioxide concentrations, which means wide stomatal apertures and, as a consequence, narrower stomatal apertures can be used in conjunction with an intermediary molecule with a high carbon dioxide affinity, PEPcase. Retrieving the products of carbon fixation from PEPCase is in an energy-intensive process, a group of mostly desert plants called CAM plants open their stomata at night, use PEPcarboxylase to fix carbon dioxide and store the products in large vacuoles. The following day, they close their stomata and release the carbon dioxide fixed the previous night into the presence of RuBisCO and this saturates RuBisCO with carbon dioxide, allowing minimal photorespiration. This approach, however, is limited by the capacity to store fixed carbon in the vacuoles. It is not entirely certain how these responses work, however, the basic mechanism involves regulation of osmotic pressure. When conditions are conducive to stomatal opening, a proton pump drives protons from the guard cells and this means that the cells electrical potential becomes increasingly negative. The negative potential opens potassium voltage-gated channels and so an uptake of ions occurs
12.
Snake Range
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The Snake Range is a mountain range in White Pine County, Nevada, United States. The south-central portion of the range is included within Great Basin National Park, the range reaches a maximum elevation of 13,065 feet at the summit of Wheeler Peak, the tallest independent mountain within Nevada and the second highest point within the state. The range also contains four of the five highest mountain peaks in Nevada, typical of other ranges in the Basin and Range Province, the Snake Range runs in a north-south direction, for approximately 60 miles. To the west are Spring Valley and the Schell Creek Range, and to the east across the Utah border are Snake Valley, Sacramento Pass is where U. S. Route 6-50, the Loneliest Highway in America, crosses the range. It is the means of eastbound access to this part of eastern Nevada. Great Basin National Park is located in the section of the Snake Range. Established in 1986, it protects the unique geologic and habitat features of the range and Great Basin Desert. The southern section includes the natural rock Lexington Arch. Several large groves of ancient Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees thrive in the Great Basin montane forests of the higher elevations. The higher elevations of the Snake Range in the section are protected by the Mount Moriah Wilderness Area. The Snake Range includes two groups of peaks, the southern section rises quickly from a point near the border with Lincoln County, reaching the summit of Granite Peak just 10 miles to the north. From there northwards the range continues to rise, passing Lincoln Peak, Mt. Washington, Pyramid Peak, Baker Peak and it finally reaching its apex at Wheeler Peak. North of Wheeler Peak the range begins to drop, reaching 7,154 feet at Sacramento Pass, Sacramento Pass is where the more remote northern section of the range begins. In just 12 miles the range rises past Silver Creek Canyon, to the north of this peak is an unusual formation, a flat plateau of sub-alpine tundra called The Table, covering about 2 square miles at an elevation of 11,000 feet. A grove of ancient Great Basin Bristlecone Pines grows on this plateau near the peak, north of The Table is another unusual geologic feature. Deadman Creek and Smith Creek, draining eastward into Snake Valley, the mouth of this canyon lies below 3, 000-foot cliffs,6,000 feet below and 6 miles away from the summit of Mt. Moriah
