1.
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
2.
Forestry
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Forestry is the science and craft of creating, managing, using, conserving, and repairing forests and associated resources to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human and environment benefits. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands, the science of forestry has elements that belong to the biological, physical, social, political and managerial sciences. A practitioner of forestry is known as a forester, other terms are used a verderer and a silviculturalist being common ones. Silviculture is narrower than forestry, being concerned only with forest plants, Forest ecosystems have come to be seen as the most important component of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital applied science, craft, and technology. Forestry is an important economic segment in various industrial countries, the preindustrial age has been dubbed by Werner Sombart and others as the wooden age, as timber and firewood were the basic resources for energy, construction and housing. The development of forestry is closely connected with the rise of capitalism, economy as a science and varying notions of land use. Roman Latifundiae, large estates, were quite successful in maintaining the large supply of wood that was necessary for the Roman Empire. Large deforestations came with respectively after the decline of the Romans, however already in the 5th century, monks in the then Byzantine Romagna on the Adriatic coast, were able to establish stone pine plantations to provide fuelwood and food. This was the beginning of the massive forest mentioned by Dante Alighieri in his 1308 poem Divine Comedy, the use and management of many forest resources has a long history in China as well, dating back to the Han Dynasty and taking place under the landowning gentry. A similar approach was used in Japan and it was also later written about by the Ming Dynasty Chinese scholar Xu Guangqi. In Europe, land rights in medieval and early modern times allowed different users to access forests. The notion of commons refers to the traditional legal term of common land. The idea of enclosed private property came about during modern times, however, most hunting rights were retained by members of the nobility which preserved the right of the nobility to access and use common land for recreation, like fox hunting. Systematic management of forests for a yield of timber is said to have begun in the German states in the 14th century, e. g. in Nuremberg. Typically, a forest was divided into sections and mapped. Large firs in the black forest were called „Holländer“, as they were traded to the Dutch ship yards, large timber rafts on the Rhine were 200 to 400m in length, 40m in width and consisted of several thousand logs. The crew consisted of 400 to 500 men, including shelter, bakeries, ovens, timber rafting infrastructure allowed for large interconnected networks all over continental Europe and is still of importance in Finland. The notion of Nachhaltigkeit, sustainability in forestry, is connected to the work of Hans Carl von Carlowitz
3.
Forest management
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This includes management for aesthetics, fish, recreation, urban values, water, wilderness, wildlife, wood products, forest genetic resources, and other forest resource values. Management can be based on conservation, economics, or a mixture of the two, techniques include timber extraction, planting and replanting of various species, cutting roads and pathways through forests, and preventing fire. The forest is a system that can supply different products. The working of this system is influenced by the environment, climate, topography, soil, etc. The actions of humans in forests constitute forest management, in developed societies, this management tends to be elaborate and planned in order to achieve the objectives that are considered desirable. Some forests have been and are managed to obtain traditional forest products such as firewood, fiber for paper, nevertheless, as a result of the progression of environmental awareness, management of forests for multiple use is becoming more common. There has been increased public awareness of natural resource policy, including forest management, increased environmental awareness may contribute to an increased public mistrust of forest management professionals. But it can lead to greater understanding about what professionals do re forests for nature conservation. The importance of taking care of the forests for ecological as well as economical sustainable reasons has been shown in the TV show Ax Men, many tools like GIS and photogrammetry modelling have been developed to improve forest inventory and management planning. Since 1953, the volume of standing trees in the United States have increased by 90% due to sustainable forest management, the abundance and diversity of birds, mammals, amphibians and other wildlife are affected by strategies and types of forest management. Forest management varies in intensity from a leave alone, natural situation to a highly intensive regime with silvicultural interventions, management is generally increased in intensity to achieve either economic criteria or ecological criteria
4.
Forest protection
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Thus due to this the different emphases around the world paradoxically suggest different things for forest protection. In German speaking countries forest protection would focus on the biotic and abiotic factors that are non-crime related, a protected forest is not the same as a protection forest. These terms can lead to confusion in English, although they are clearer in other languages. As a result, reading English literature can be problematic for non-experts due to localization and conflation of meanings, enforcement of laws regarding purchased forest land is weak or non-existent in most parts of the world. In the increasingly dangerous South America, home of major rainforests, one simple type of forest protection is the purchasing of land in order to secure it, or in order to plant trees. It can also mean forest management or the designation of such as natural reservoirs which are intended to be left to themselves. However, merely purchasing a piece of land does not prevent it from being used by others for poaching and illegal logging. A better way to protect a forest, particularly old growth forests in areas, is to obtain a part of it and to live on. Even in the United States, these measures sometimes dont suffice because arson can burn a forest to the ground, another issue about living on purchased forest-land is that there may not be a suitable site for a standard home without clearing land, which defies the purpose of protection. Alternatives include building a treehouse or an earthhouse and this is being done currently by indigenous people in South America to protect large reservoirs. In former times, North American Native Americans used to live in tipies or mandan earthhouses, an undertaking to develop modern treehouses is being taken by a company from Germany called TrueSchool treehouses. A number of successful methods of forest protection have been tried. Protecting a small section of land in a larger forest may also have limited value, for example, tropical rainforests can die if they decrease in size, since they are dependent on the moist microclimate which they create. There is an excellent article in National Geographic October issue concerning redwood forest in California, a compromise is to conduct agriculture and stock farming, or sustainable wood management. This ascribes different values to forest land and farmland, for many areas are clear felled. Two conflicting studies on the idea that protecting forests only relocates deforestation, according to the paradox of forest protection protected areas such as rural settlements near protected zones grew at twice the rate of those elsewhere. The IUCN implements such protocols that protect over 670 eco-regions, 46% of the eco-regions had less than 10% forest protection. Which means that areas are not being monitored as they should
5.
Forest restoration
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Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a factor that determines climax forest composition. Forest restoration is a form of reforestation, but it differs from conventional tree plantations in that its primary goals are biodiversity recovery. Tree species planted are those that are typical of, or provide a critical function in. However, wherever people live in or near restoration sites, restoration projects include economic species amongst the planted trees. Economic indices of success include the value of forest products and ecological services generated, payments for such ecological services and forest products can provide strong incentives for local people to implement restoration projects. Even in protected areas, there are often large deforested sites, if protected areas are to act as Earth’s last wildlife refuges, restoration of such areas will be needed. FLR recognizes that forest restoration has social and economic functions and it aims to achieve the best possible compromise between meeting both conservation goals and the needs of rural communities. As human pressure on landscapes increases, forest restoration will most commonly be practiced within a mosaic of other forms of forest management, tree planting is not always essential to restore forest ecosystems. A lot can be achieved by studying how forests regenerate naturally, identifying the factors that limit regeneration and these can include weeding and adding fertilizer around natural tree seedlings, preventing fire, removing cattle and so on. This is accelerated or assisted natural regeneration and it is simple and cost-effective, but it can only operate on trees that are already present, mostly light-loving pioneer species. Because this is a process, biodiversity recovery can usually be accelerated by planting some climax forest tree species, especially large-seeded. It is not feasible to plant all the species that may have formerly grown in the original primary forest and it is usually unnecessary to do so. In large parts of the world, forest fires cover a heavy toll on forests and that can be because of provoked deforestation in order to substitute forests by crop areas, or in dry areas, because of wild fires occurring naturally or intentionally. This indeed has dire consequences on both the quality of the habitats and their related fauna, the primary stakeholders in this cooperative restoration effort are the U. S. Forest Service, the City of Ashland, Lomaktsi Restoration Project, and the Nature Conservancy. Located in the dry forests of southern Oregon, the threat of wildfire is a reality for land managers, the boundaries of the city of Ashland intersect with the surrounding forest in what is referred to as the wildland-urban interface. Historically, the forests of this region experienced a relatively frequent fire return interval, a century of fire exclusion and suppression on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest has led to increased forest density and fuel loads, and thus a more persistent threat of devastating wildfire. The AFR project has implemented restoration techniques and prescriptions that aim to replicate the process of succession in dry
6.
Forest
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A forest is a large area dominated by trees. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as density, tree height, land use, legal standing. According to the widely used Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered four billion hectares or approximately 30 percent of the land area in 2006. Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe, Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earths biosphere, and contain 80% of the Earths plant biomass. Forests at different latitudes and elevations form distinctly different ecozones, boreal forests near the poles, tropical forests near the equator, higher elevation areas tend to support forests similar to those at higher latitudes, and amount of precipitation also affects forest composition. Human society and forests influence each other in both positive and negative ways, Forests provide ecosystem services to humans and serve as tourist attractions. Forests can also affect peoples health, human activities, including harvesting forest resources, can negatively affect forest ecosystems. Although forest is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition, there are three broad categories of forest definitions in use, administrative, land use, and land cover. Land use definitions are based upon the purpose that the land serves. For example, a forest may be defined as any land that is used primarily for production of timber, land cover definitions define forests based upon the type and density of vegetation growing on the land. Such definitions typically define a forest as an area growing trees above some threshold and these thresholds are typically the number of trees per area, the area of ground under the tree canopy or the section of land that is occupied by the cross-section of tree trunks. Under such land cover definitions, and area of land only be defined as forest if it is growing trees, areas that fail to meet the land cover definition may be still included under while immature trees are establishing if they are expected to meet the definition at maturity. Under land use definitions, there is variation on where the cutoff points are between a forest, woodland, and savanna. Under some definitions, forests require high levels of tree canopy cover, from 60% to 100%, excluding savannas. Other definitions consider savannas to be a type of forest, the term was not endemic to Romance languages, and cognates in Romance languages, such as Italian foresta, Spanish and Portuguese floresta, etc. are all ultimately borrowings of the French word. The exact origin of Medieval Latin foresta is obscure, uses of the word forest in English to denote any uninhabited area of non-enclosure are now considered archaic. The word was introduced by the Norman rulers of England as a term denoting an uncultivated area legally set aside for hunting by feudal nobility. These hunting forests were not necessarily wooded much, if at all, however, as hunting forests did often include considerable areas of woodland, the word forest eventually came to mean wooded land more generally
7.
Plantation
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A plantation is an area of land or water where one crop is specifically planted for widespread commercial sale. The crops grown include cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, rubber trees, protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations were located. Among the earliest examples of plantations were the latifundia of the Roman Empire, Plantation agriculture grew rapidly with the increase in international trade and the development of a worldwide economy that followed the expansion of European colonial empires. Like every economic activity, it has changed over time, Industrial plantations are established to produce a high volume of wood in a short period of time. Plantations are grown by state forestry authorities and/or the paper and wood industries, christmas trees are often grown on plantations as well. In southern and southeastern Asia, teak plantations have replaced the natural forest. Industrial plantations are managed for the commercial production of forest products. Individual blocks are usually even-aged and often consist of just one or two species and these species can be exotic or indigenous. Forest genetic resources are the basis for genetic alteration, selected individuals grown in seed orchards are a good source for seeds to develop adequate planting material. Wood production on a plantation is generally higher than that of natural forests. In 2000, while plantations accounted for 5% of global forest, in the first year, the ground is prepared usually by the combination of burning, herbicide spraying, and/or cultivation and then saplings are planted by human crew or by machine. The saplings are usually obtained in bulk from industrial nurseries, which may specialize in breeding in order to produce fast growing disease-. In the first few years until the canopy closes, the saplings are looked after, after the canopy closes, with the tree crowns touching each other, the plantation is becoming dense and crowded, and tree growth is slowing due to competition. This stage is termed pole stage, when competition becomes too intense, it is time to thin out the section. There are several methods for thinning, but where topography permits, the most popular is row-thinning, many trees are removed, leaving regular clear lanes through the section so that the remaining trees have room to expand again. The removed trees are delimbed, forwarded to the forest road, loaded onto trucks, a typical pole stage plantation tree is 7–30 cm in diameter at breast height. Such trees are not suitable for timber, but are used as pulp for paper and particleboard. As the trees grow and become dense and crowded again, the process is repeated
8.
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
9.
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
10.
Water cycle
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The water cycle, also known as the hydrological cycle or the hydrologic cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. In doing so, the water goes through different forms, liquid, solid, the water cycle involves the exchange of energy, which leads to temperature changes. For instance, when water evaporates, it takes up energy from its surroundings, when it condenses, it releases energy and warms the environment. The evaporative phase of the cycle purifies water which then replenishes the land with freshwater, the flow of liquid water and ice transports minerals across the globe. It is also involved in reshaping the geological features of the Earth, the water cycle is also essential for the maintenance of most life and ecosystems on the planet. The sun, which drives the cycle, heats water in oceans. Water evaporates as water vapor into the air, ice and snow can sublimate directly into water vapour. Evapotranspiration is water transpired from plants and evaporated from the soil, the water vapour molecule H 2O has less density compared to the major components of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, N2 andO2. Due to the significant difference in mass, water vapor in gas form gains height in open air as a result of buoyancy. However, as increases, air pressure decreases and the temperature drops. The lowered temperature causes water vapour to condense into a liquid water droplet which is heavier than the air. A huge concentration of these droplets over a space up in the atmosphere become visible as cloud. Fog is formed if the water vapour condenses near ground level, as a result of moist air, air currents move water vapour around the globe, cloud particles collide, grow, and fall out of the upper atmospheric layers as precipitation. Some precipitation falls as snow or hail, sleet, and can accumulate as ice caps and glaciers, most water falls back into the oceans or onto land as rain, where the water flows over the ground as surface runoff. A portion of runoff enters rivers in valleys in the landscape, runoff and water emerging from the ground may be stored as freshwater in lakes. Not all runoff flows into rivers, much of it soaks into the ground as infiltration, some water infiltrates deep into the ground and replenishes aquifers, which can store freshwater for long periods of time. Some infiltration stays close to the surface and can seep back into surface-water bodies as groundwater discharge. Some groundwater finds openings in the surface and comes out as freshwater springs
11.
Modulation
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Most radio systems in the 20th century used frequency modulation or amplitude modulation to make the carrier carry the radio broadcast. Modulation of a sine waveform transforms a narrow frequency range baseband message signal into a passband signal, a modulator is a device that performs modulation. A demodulator is a device that performs demodulation, the inverse of modulation, a modem can perform both operations. The aim of digital modulation is to transfer a digital bit stream over an analog bandpass channel, in music synthesizers, modulation may be used to synthesise waveforms with an extensive overtone spectrum using a small number of oscillators. In this case the carrier frequency is typically in the order or much lower than the modulating waveform. In analog modulation, the modulation is applied continuously in response to the information signal. Where an AM carrier also carries a variable phase f. TM is f In digital modulation, a carrier signal is modulated by a discrete signal. Digital modulation methods can be considered as digital-to-analog conversion, and the corresponding demodulation or detection as analog-to-digital conversion, the changes in the carrier signal are chosen from a finite number of M alternative symbols. A simple example, A telephone line is designed for transferring audible sounds, for example tones, computers may however communicate over a telephone line by means of modems, which are representing the digital bits by tones, called symbols. If there are four symbols, the first symbol may represent the bit sequence 00, the second 01, the third 10. If the modem plays a melody consisting of 1000 tones per second, since each tone represents a message consisting of two digital bits in this example, the bit rate is twice the symbol rate, i. e.2000 bits per second. This is similar to the used by dialup modems as opposed to DSL modems. According to one definition of digital signal, the signal is a digital signal. According to another definition, the modulation is a form of digital-to-analog conversion, most textbooks would consider digital modulation schemes as a form of digital transmission, synonymous to data transmission, very few would consider it as analog transmission. The most fundamental digital modulation techniques are based on keying, PSK, FSK, a finite number of frequencies are used. ASK, a number of amplitudes are used. QAM, a number of at least two phases and at least two amplitudes are used
12.
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
13.
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
14.
Taiga
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Taiga also known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces and larches. The taiga is the worlds largest biome apart from the oceans, in North America it covers most of inland Canada and Alaska as well as parts of the extreme northern continental United States, where it is known as the Northwoods or North woods. However, the tree species, the length of the growing season. Hoffman discusses the origin of this use in North America. Although at high elevations taiga grades into alpine tundra through Krummholz, it is not an alpine biome only like subalpine forest, Taiga is the worlds largest land biome, and makes up 29% of the worlds forest cover, the largest areas are located in Russia and Canada. The taiga is the terrestrial biome with the lowest annual average temperatures after the tundra, extreme winter minimums in the northern taiga are typically lower than those of the tundra. The lowest reliably recorded temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were recorded in the taiga of northeastern Russia, the taiga or boreal forest has a subarctic climate with very large temperature range between seasons, but the long and cold winter is the dominant feature. This climate is classified as Dfc, Dwc, Dsc, Dfd and Dwd in the Köppen climate classification scheme, meaning that the summer lasts 1–3 months. In Siberian taiga the average temperature of the coldest month is between −6 °C and −50 °C, the mean annual temperature generally varies from -5 °C to 5 °C, but there are taiga areas in eastern Siberia and interior Alaska-Yukon where the mean annual reaches down to -10 °C. According to some sources, the boreal forest grades into a mixed forest when mean annual temperature reaches about 3 °C. The winters, with temperatures below freezing, last five to seven months. Temperatures vary from −54 °C to 30 °C throughout the whole year, the summers, while short, are generally warm and humid. In much of the taiga, -20 °C would be a winter day temperature and 18 °C an average summer day. In Canada, Scandinavia and Finland, the season is often estimated by using the period of the year when the 24-hour average temperature is +5 °C or more. For the Taiga Plains in Canada, growing season varies from 80 to 150 days, some sources claim 130 days growing season as typical for the taiga. Other sources mention that 50–100 frost-free days are characteristic, data for locations in southwest Yukon gives 80–120 frost-free days. The closed canopy boreal forest in Kenozersky National Park near Plesetsk, Arkhangelsk Province, Russia, the longest growing season is found in the smaller areas with oceanic influences, in coastal areas of Scandinavia and Finland, the growing season of the closed boreal forest can be 145–180 days. High latitudes mean that the sun not rise far above the horizon
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Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest
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Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial biome, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions. The term Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is used by the World Wildlife Fund in global biogeography as one of the biome designations under which to organize ecoregions, the typical structure of these forests includes four layers. The uppermost layer is the canopy composed of mature trees ranging from 30 to 61 m high. Below the canopy is the three-layered, shade-tolerant understory that is roughly 9 to 15 m shorter than the canopy, the top layer of the understory is the sub-canopy composed of smaller mature trees, saplings, and suppressed juvenile canopy layer trees awaiting an opening in the canopy. Below the sub-canopy is the layer, composed of low growing woody plants. Typically the lowest growing layer is the cover or herbaceous layer. In the Northern hemisphere, characteristic dominant broadleaf trees in this biome include oaks, beeches, maples, the term mixed forest comes from the inclusion of coniferous trees as a canopy component of some of these forests. Typical coniferous trees include, Pines, firs, and spruces, in some areas of this biome the conifers may be a more important canopy species than the broadleaf species. In the Southern hemisphere, endemic genera such as Nothofagus and Eucalyptus occupy this biome, Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests occur in areas with distinct warm and cool season, which give it a moderate annual average temperature —3 to 15.6 °C. These forests occur in warm and rainy climates, sometimes also with a distinct dry season. A dry season occurs in the winter in East Asia and in summer on the wet fringe of the Mediterranean climate zones. Other areas, as in the central and upper eastern United States and southeastern Canada, have an even distribution of rainfall, annual rainfall is typically over 600 mm
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Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests
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The biome includes several types of forests, Lowland equatorial evergreen rain forests, commonly known as tropical rainforests, are forests which receive high rainfall throughout the year. These forests occur in a belt around the equator, with the largest areas in the Amazon basin of South America, the Congo basin of central Africa, some trees in these forests drop some or all of their leaves during the winter dry season. These forests are found in parts of South America, in Central America and around the Caribbean, in coastal West Africa, parts of the Indian subcontinent, montane rain forests, are found in cooler-climate mountainous areas. Those with elevations high enough to regularly encounter low-level cloud cover are known as cloud forests, flooded forests, including freshwater swamp forests and peat swamp forests. In contrast to TSMF, tropical forest regions with lower levels of rainfall are home to tropical dry broadleaf forests, temperate rain forests also occur in certain humid temperate coastal regions. Rainforests now cover less than 6% of Earths land surface, scientists estimate that more than half of all the worlds plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests
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Tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests
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The tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forest biome, also known as tropical dry forest, vine thicket, and vine scrub is located at tropical and subtropical latitudes. These seasonal droughts have great impact on all living things in the forest, deciduous trees are predominate in most of these forests, and during the drought a leafless period occurs, which varies with species type. Because trees lose moisture through their leaves, the shedding of leaves allows trees such as teak, the newly bare trees open up the canopy layer, enabling sunlight to reach ground level and facilitate the growth of thick underbrush. Trees on moister sites and those with access to ground water tend to be evergreen, infertile sites also tend to support evergreen trees. Mammalian biomass tends to be higher in dry forests than in rain forests, many of these species display extraordinary adaptations to the difficult climate. This biome is alternately known as the tropical bane forest biome or the tropical and subtropical deciduous forest biome, locally some of these forests are also called monsoon forests, and they tend to merge into savannas. The most diverse dry forests in the occur in southern Mexico. The dry forests of the Pacific Coast of northwestern South America support a wealth of species due to their dry climate. The Maputaland-Pondoland bushland and thickets along the east coast of South Africa are diverse, the dry forests of central India and Indochina are notable for their diverse large vertebrate faunas. Madagascar dry deciduous forests and New Caledonia dry forests are highly distinctive for a wide range of taxa. Trees use underground water during the dry seasons, effective conservation of dry broadleaf forests requires the preservation of large and continuous areas of forest. Large natural areas are required to maintain larger predators and other vertebrates, the persistence of riparian forests and water sources is critical for many dry forest species. Large swathes of intact forest are required to allow species to recover from occasional large events, holdridge life zones in Guatemala Seasonal tropical forest Tropical vegetation WWF - Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forest Ecoregions. Much material in this article has been reworked from Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests, the Tropical Dry Forest of Costa Rica
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Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub
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Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund, is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters. Summers are typically hot in low-lying inland locations but can be cool near colder seas, winters are typically mild to cool in low-lying locations but can be cold in inland and higher locations. All these ecoregions are highly distinctive, collectively harboring 10% of the Earths plant species, much of the woody vegetation in Mediterranean-climate regions is sclerophyll, which means hard-leaved in Greek. Sclerophyll vegetation generally has small, dark leaves covered with an outer layer to retain moisture in the dry summer months. This is equivalent to about 40% of the plant species of the United States and Canada combined, forests are often found in riparian areas, where they receive more summer water. Coniferous forests also occur, especially around the Mediterranean, pine and deciduous oak forest are widespread across California Woodland, Oak woodlands are characteristic of the Mediterranean Basin and in California. Pine woodlands are also present in the Mediterranean Basin, savanna and grassland, The California Central Valley grasslands are the largest Mediterranean grassland eco-region, although these grasslands have mostly been converted to agriculture. The remaining woodlands feature mainly oak, walnut and pine, the cork oak savanna in Portugal, known as montado, is a good example of a mediterranean savanna. Shrubland, Shrublands are dense thickets of evergreen shrubs and small trees. They are most common near the seacoast, and are adapted to wind. Northern coastal scrub and coastal scrub, also known as soft chaparral. In some places shrublands are of the vegetation type, and in other places are the result of degradation of former forest or woodland by logging or overgrazing. Fire, both natural and human-caused, has played a role in shaping the ecology of Mediterranean ecoregions. The hot, dry summers make much of the prone to fires. Many of the plants are pyrophytes, or fire-loving, adapted or even depending on fire for reproduction, recycling of nutrients, and the removal of dead or senescent vegetation. The plant communities in these areas adapted to the frequent human-caused fires, the European shrublands have also been shaped by anthropogenic fire, historically associated with transhumance herding of sheep and goats. Mediterranean ecoregions are some of the most endangered and vulnerable on the planet, media related to Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub at Wikimedia Commons National Geographic Global 200 Ecoregions, Mediterranean Forest, Woodland and Scrub. Part of National Geographics Wild World Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World mapping project, Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia FAO
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Riparian zone
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A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth, Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by hydrophilic plants. In some regions the terms riparian woodland, riparian forest, riparian buffer zone, the word riparian is derived from Latin ripa, meaning river bank. Riparian zones may be natural or engineered for soil stabilization or restoration and these zones are important natural biofilters, protecting aquatic environments from excessive sedimentation, polluted surface runoff and erosion. They supply shelter and food for aquatic animals and shade that limits stream temperature change. When riparian zones are damaged by construction, agriculture or silviculture, biological restoration can take place, usually by human intervention in erosion control and revegetation. If the area adjacent to a watercourse has standing water or saturated soil for as long as a season, because of their prominent role in supporting a diversity of species, riparian zones are often the subject of national protection in a Biodiversity Action Plan. These are also known as a Plant or Vegetation Waste Buffer, research shows that riparian zones are instrumental in water quality improvement for both surface runoff and water flowing into streams through subsurface or groundwater flow. Particularly, the attenuation of nitrate or denitrification of the nitrates from fertilizer in this zone is important. The use of wetland riparian zones shows a high rate of removal of nitrate entering a stream. The meandering curves of a river, combined with vegetation and root systems, slow the flow of water, sediment is trapped, reducing suspended solids to create less turbid water, replenish soils, and build stream banks. Pollutants are filtered from surface runoff, enhancing water quality via biofiltration, the riparian zones also provide wildlife habitat, increased biodiversity, and wildlife corridors, enabling aquatic and riparian organisms to move along river systems avoiding isolated communities. Riparian vegetation can also forage for wildlife and livestock. They provide native landscape irrigation by extending seasonal or perennial flows of water, nutrients from terrestrial vegetation are transferred to aquatic food webs. The vegetation surrounding the stream helps to shade the water, mitigating water temperature changes, the vegetation also contributes wood debris to streams, which is important to maintaining geomorphology. From a social aspect, riparian zones contribute to nearby property values through amenity and views, space is created for riparian sports such as fishing, swimming and launching for vessels and paddlecraft. The protection of zones is often a consideration in logging operations. The undisturbed soil, soil cover, and vegetation provide shade, plant litter, and woody material, factors such as soil types and root structures, climatic conditions and vegetative cover determine the effectiveness of riparian buffering
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Mangrove forest
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A mangrove is a shrub or small tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are salt tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to life in coastal conditions. They contain a complex filtration system and complex root system to cope with salt water immersion. They are adapted to the low oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud, the saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater, to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater. The term mangrove comes to English from Spanish, and is likely to originate from Guarani and it was earlier mangrow, but this word was corrupted via folk etymology influence of the word grove. Mangrove swamps are found in tropical and subtropical tidal areas, areas where mangal occurs include estuaries and marine shorelines. The intertidal existence to which trees are adapted represents the major limitation to the number of species able to thrive in their habitat. High tide brings in water, and when the tide recedes. The return of tide can flush out these soils, bringing back to salinity levels comparable to that of seawater. At low tide, organisms are exposed to increases in temperature and desiccation. About 110 species are considered mangroves, in the sense of being a tree grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus. However, a mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home for a great variety of other organisms. Mangrove plants require a number of adaptations to overcome the problems of anoxia, high salinity. Each species has its own solutions to problems, this may be the primary reason why, on some shorelines. Small environmental variations within a mangal may lead to greatly differing methods for coping with the environment, once established, mangrove roots provide an oyster habitat and slow water flow, thereby enhancing sediment deposition in areas where it is already occurring
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Kelp forest
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Kelp forests are underwater areas with a high density of kelp. They are recognized as one of the most productive and dynamic ecosystems on Earth, smaller areas of anchored kelp are called kelp beds. Kelp forests occur worldwide throughout temperate and polar coastal oceans, in 2007, kelp forests were also discovered in tropical waters near Ecuador. Physically formed by brown macroalgae, kelp forests provide a unique, over the last century, they have been the focus of extensive research, particularly in trophic ecology, and continue to provoke important ideas that are relevant beyond this unique ecosystem. For example, kelp forests can influence coastal oceanographic patterns and provide ecosystem services. However, the influence of humans has often contributed to kelp forest degradation, of particular concern are the effects of overfishing nearshore ecosystems, which can release herbivores from their normal population regulation and result in the overgrazing of kelp and other algae. This can rapidly result in transitions to barren landscapes where relatively few species persist, the term kelp refers to marine algae belonging to the order Laminariales. Though not considered a taxonomically diverse order, kelps are highly diverse structurally and functionally, the most widely recognized species are the giant kelps, although numerous other genera such as Laminaria, Ecklonia, Lessonia, Alaria, and Eisenia are described. Many marine mammals and birds are found, including seals, sea lions, whales, sea otters, gulls, terns, snowy egrets, great blue herons. Frequently considered an ecosystem engineer, kelp provides a physical substrate, in algae, the body of an individual organism is known as a thallus rather than as a plant. The stipe is analogous to a plant stalk, extending vertically from the holdfast, the fronds are leaf- or blade-like attachments extending from the stipe, sometimes along its full length, and are the sites of nutrient uptake and photosynthetic activity. In addition, many species have pneumatocysts, or gas-filled bladders. These structures provide the necessary buoyancy for kelp to maintain a position in the water column. The environmental factors necessary for kelp to survive include hard substrate, high nutrients, water flow and turbulence facilitate nutrient assimilation across kelp fronds throughout the water column. Water clarity affects the depth to which sufficient light can be transmitted, in ideal conditions, giant kelp can grow as much as 30-60 cm vertically per day. Some species, such as Nereocystis, are annuals, while others such as Eisenia are perennials, in perennial kelp forests, maximum growth rates occur during upwelling months and die-backs correspond to reduced nutrient availability, shorter photoperiods, and increased storm frequency. Kelps are primarily associated with temperate and arctic waters worldwide, the region with the greatest diversity of kelps is the northeastern Pacific, from north of San Francisco, California, to the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Although kelp forests are unknown in tropical waters, a few species of Laminaria have been known to occur exclusively in tropical deep waters
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Sequoia sempervirens
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Sequoia sempervirens /sᵻˈkɔɪ. ə sɛmpərˈvaɪrənz/ is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood and California redwood and it is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1, 200–1,800 years or more. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 379 feet in height and these trees are also among the oldest living things on Earth. The name sequoia sometimes refers to the subfamily Sequoioideae, which includes S. sempervirens along with Sequoiadendron, here, the term redwood on its own refers to the species covered in this article, and not to the other two species. Scottish botanist David Don described the redwood as the evergreen taxodium in his colleague Aylmer Bourke Lamberts 1824 work A description of the genus Pinus, austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher erected the genus Sequoia in his 1847 work Synopsis coniferarum, giving the redwood its current binomial name of Sequoia sempervirens. The redwood is one of three living species, each in its own genus, in the subfamily Sequoioideae, molecular studies have shown the three to be each others closest relatives, generally with the redwood and giant sequoia as each others closest relatives. However, Yang and colleagues in 2010 queried the polyploid state of the redwood, further analysis strongly supported the hypothesis that Sequoia was the result of a hybridization event involving Metasequoia and Sequoiadendron. Thus, Yang and colleagues hypothesize that the inconsistent relationships among Metasequoia, Sequoia, the coast redwood can reach 115 m tall with a trunk diameter of 9 m. It has a crown, with horizontal to slightly drooping branches. The bark can be thick, up to 1-foot, and quite soft and fibrous, with a bright red-brown color when freshly exposed. The root system is composed of shallow, wide-spreading lateral roots, the leaves are variable, being 15–25 mm long and flat on young trees and shaded shoots in the lower crown of old trees. On the other hand, they are scale-like, 5–10 mm long on shoots in full sun in the crown of older trees. They are dark green above and have two blue-white stomatal bands below, leaf arrangement is spiral, but the larger shade leaves are twisted at the base to lie in a flat plane for maximum light capture. The species is monoecious, with pollen and seed cones on the same plant, the seed cones are ovoid, 15–32 millimetres long, with 15–25 spirally arranged scales, pollination is in late winter with maturation about 8–9 months after. Each cone scale bears three to seven seeds, each seed 3–4 millimetres long and 0.5 millimetres broad, the seeds are released when the cone scales dry out and open at maturity. The pollen cones are ovular and 4–6 millimetres long and its genetic makeup is unusual among conifers, being a hexaploid and possibly allopolyploid. Both the mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of the redwood are paternally inherited, the prevailing elevation range is 98–2,460 ft above sea level, occasionally down to 0 and up to 3,000 ft. They usually grow in the mountains where precipitation from the incoming moisture off the ocean is greater, the tallest and oldest trees are found in deep valleys and gullies, where year-round streams can flow, and fog drip is regular
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Evergreen
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In botany, an evergreen is a plant that has leaves throughout the year, always green. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage during the winter or dry season. There are many different kinds of plants, both trees and shrubs. Deciduous trees shed their leaves, usually as an adaptation to a cold or dry/wet season, evergreen trees do lose leaves, but each tree loses its leaves gradually and not all at once. Most warm temperate climate plants are also evergreen, in cool temperate climates, fewer plants are evergreen, with a predominance of conifers, as few evergreen broadleaf plants can tolerate severe cold below about −30 °C. In areas where there is a reason for being deciduous, being evergreen is usually an adaptation to low nutrient levels, deciduous trees lose nutrients whenever they lose their leaves. In warmer areas, species such as pines and cypresses grow on poor soils. In Rhododendron, a genus with many broadleaf evergreens, several species grow in forests but are usually found on highly acidic soil where the nutrients are less available to plants. In taiga or boreal forests, it is too cold for the matter in the soil to decay rapidly, so the nutrients in the soil are less easily available to plants. These conditions favour the growth of more evergreens and make it difficult for deciduous plants to persist. In addition, the shelter provided by existing evergreen plants can make it easier for younger evergreen plants to survive cold and/or drought
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Plant reproductive morphology
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Plant reproductive morphology is the study of the physical form and structure of those parts of plants directly or indirectly concerned with sexual reproduction. Among all living organisms, flowers, which are the structures of angiosperms, are the most varied physically. Plants that are not flowering plants also have complex interplays between morphological adaptation and environmental factors in their sexual reproduction, christian Konrad Sprengel studied the reproduction of flowering plants and for the first time it was understood that the pollination process involved both biotic and abiotic interactions. Charles Darwins theories of natural selection utilized this work to build his theory of evolution, Plants have complex lifecycles involving alternation of generations. One generation, the sporophyte, gives rise to the next generation asexually via spores, spores may be identical isospores or come in different sizes, but strictly speaking, spores and sporophytes are neither male nor female because they do not produce gametes. The alternate generation, the gametophyte, produces gametes, eggs and/or sperm, a gametophyte can be be monoicous, producing both eggs and sperm or dioicous, either female or male. In the bryophytes, the gametophyte is the dominant generation. In ferns and seed plants the sporophyte is the dominant generation, the obvious visible plant, whether a small herb or a large tree, is the sporophyte, and the gametophyte is very small. In seed plants, each female gametophyte, and the spore that gives rise to it, is hidden within the sporophyte and is dependent on it for nutrition. Each male gametophyte consists of from two to four cells enclosed within the protective wall of a pollen grain. The sporophyte of a plant is often described using sexual terms based on the sexuality of the gametophyte it gives rise to. For example, a sporophyte that produces spores that give rise only to male gametophytes may be described as male, even though the sporophyte itself is asexual, producing only spores. Similarly, flowers produced by the sporophyte may be described as unisexual or bisexual, the flower is the characteristic structure concerned with sexual reproduction in flowering plants. Flowers vary enormously in their construction, a complete flower, like that of Ranunculus glaberrimus shown in the figure, has a calyx of outer sepals and a corolla of inner petals. The sepals and petals form the perianth. Next inwards there are numerous stamens, which produce pollen grains, stamens may be called the male parts of a flower and collectively form the androecium. Finally in the middle there are carpels, which at maturity one or more ovules. Carpels may be called the parts of a flower and collectively form the gynoecium
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Tree
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In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, supporting branches and leaves in most species. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. Trees are not a group but include a variety of plant species that have independently evolved a woody trunk. In looser senses, the palms, the tree ferns, bananas. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old, the tallest known tree, a coast redwood named Hyperion, stands 115.6 m high. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years and it is estimated that there are just over 3 trillion mature trees in the world. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk and this trunk typically contains woody tissue for strength, and vascular tissue to carry materials from one part of the tree to another. For most trees it is surrounded by a layer of bark which serves as a protective barrier, below the ground, the roots branch and spread out widely, they serve to anchor the tree and extract moisture and nutrients from the soil. Above ground, the divide into smaller branches and shoots. The shoots typically bear leaves, which light energy and convert it into sugars by photosynthesis, providing the food for the trees growth. Flowers and fruit may also be present, but some trees, such as conifers, instead have pollen cones and seed cones, others, such as tree ferns, trees play a significant role in reducing erosion and moderating the climate. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store large quantities of carbon in their tissues, trees and forests provide a habitat for many species of animals and plants. Tropical rainforests are one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, trees provide shade and shelter, timber for construction, fuel for cooking and heating, and fruit for food as well as having many other uses. In parts of the world, forests are shrinking as trees are cleared to increase the amount of available for agriculture. Because of their longevity and usefulness, trees have always revered, with sacred groves in various cultures. Although tree is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. In its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the form of an elongated stem, or trunk. Trees are also defined by height, with smaller plants from 0.5 to 10 m being called shrubs
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Root
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In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. Roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is growing up above the ground or especially above water, furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either. Therefore, the root is best defined as the non-leaf, non-nodes bearing parts of the plants body, however, important internal structural differences between stems and roots exist. The fossil record of roots – or rather, infilled voids where roots rotted after death – spans back to the late Silurian and their identification is difficult, because casts and molds of roots are so similar in appearance to animal burrows. They can be discriminated using a range of features, the first root that comes from a plant is called the radicle. In response to the concentration of nutrients, roots also synthesise cytokinin, Roots often function in storage of food and nutrients. The roots of most vascular plant species enter into symbiosis with fungi to form mycorrhizae. In its simplest form, the root architecture refers to the spatial configuration of a plant’s root system. This system can be complex and is dependent upon multiple factors such as the species of the plant itself, the composition of the soil. The configuration of root systems serves to support the plant, compete with other plants. Roots grow to specific conditions, which, if changed, can impede a plants growth. For example, a system that has developed in dry soil may not be as efficient in flooded soil, yet plants are able to adapt to other changes in the environment. Root architecture plays the important role of providing a supply of nutrients and water as well as anchorage. The main terms used to classify the architecture of a system are, Branch magnitude. Root angle, the angle of a lateral root’s base around the parent root’s circumference, the angle of a lateral root from its parent root. Link radius, the diameter of a root, all components of the root architecture are regulated through a complex interaction between genetic responses and responses due to environmental stimuli. These developmental stimuli are categorised as intrinsic, the genetic and nutritional influences, or extrinsic, the main hormones and respective pathways responsible for root architecture development include, Auxin – Auxin promotes root initiation, root emergence and primary root elongation. Cytokinins – Cytokinins regulate root apical meristem size and promote lateral root elongation, gibberellins – Together with ethylene they promote crown primordia growth and elongation
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Diameter at breast height
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Diameter at breast height, or DBH, is a standard method of expressing the diameter of the trunk or bole of a standing tree. DBH is one of the most common dendrometric measurements, Tree trunks are measured at the height of an adults breast. However, this is defined differently in different countries and situations, in continental Europe, the UK, and Canada the diameter is measured at 1.3 metres above ground. In the US, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, India, Malaysia, in many cases the height makes little difference to the measured diameter. Ornamental trees are usually measured at 1.5 metres above ground, instead Dx was proposed whereby the x denotes the exact height above the floor at which the diameter is measured. For instance D130 denotes a diameter measured at 130 cm above the floor, on sloping ground, the above ground reference point is usually taken as the highest point on the ground touching the trunk, but some use the average between the highest and lowest points of ground. If the DBH point falls on a swelling in the trunk it is customary to measure the girth below the swelling at the point where the diameter is smallest, other ambiguous settings for determining the exact place where to measure the diameter is given in Dahdouh-Guebas & Koedam. Treetec, a company based in Melbourne, has created an online calculator to determine the DBH for multi-stemmed trees as per AS 4970-2009 Protection of Trees on Development Sites. The two most common used to measure DBH are a girthing tape and calipers. A girthing tape actually measures the girth of the tree, the tape is calibrated in divisions of π centimetres. The measure assumes the trunk has a circular cross-section and gives a directly converted reading of the diameter and it is accurate for most plantation trees. Calipers consist of two parallel arms one of which is fixed and the able to slide along a scale. Calipers are held at right-angles to the trunk with the arms on either side of the trunk, precision can be improved on non-circular stems by averaging two caliper measurements taken at right-angles. Electronic calipers are also available enabling highly accurate measurements to be taken, DBH is used in estimating the amount of timber volume in a single tree or stand of trees utilising the allometric correlation between stem diameter, tree height and timber volume. It can also be used in the estimation of the age of trees, given that diameter increment is the only. Biltmore stick Crown Tree crown measurement Forest inventory Site index Site tree Brokaw, N. and Thompson, Forest Ecology and Management 129, 89-91. Hamilton, G. J. Forest Mensuration Handbook, mackie, E. D. and Matthews, R. W. Forest Mensuration, a handbook for practitioners. ISBN 0-85538-621-5 White, J. Estimating the Age of Large and Veteran Trees in Britain
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Native plant
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Native plants are plants indigenous to a given area in geologic time. This includes plants that have developed, occur naturally, or existed for years in an area. Some native plants have adapted to limited, unusual environments or very harsh climates or exceptional soil conditions. Although some types of plants for these reasons exist only within a limited range. Research has found that insects depend on native plants, an ecosystem consists of interactions of plants, animals, and microorganisms with their physical and climatic conditions. Native plants form a part of an environment, or plant community. That could be a case if a plant exists because a certain animal pollinates the plant, some native plants rely on natural conditions, such as occasional wildfires, to release their seeds or to provide a fertile environment in which their seedlings can become established. As societies move plants or introduce them to new locations for cultivation as crops or ornamentals, some of them may become invasive species, besides ecological damage, these species can also damage agriculture, infrastructure, and cultural assets. Government agencies and environmental groups are directing increasing resources to addressing these species, non-native species can have profound effects on ecosystems by changing ecosystem structure, function, species abundance, and community composition. To prevent erosion of the sand dunes at the western edge of the Los Angeles International Airport in 1975. Unfortunately, the mix was representative of coastal sage scrub. As a result, the El Segundo blue butterfly became an endangered species, the rich diversity of unique species across many parts of the world exists only because bioregions are separated by barriers, particularly large rivers, seas, oceans, mountains and deserts. Humans, migratory birds, ocean currents, etc. can introduce species that have never met in their evolutionary history, humans are moving species across the globe at an unprecedented rate. Those working to address invasive species view this as a risk to indigenous species. The term nativar is becoming accepted as cultivars of native plants. The use of nativars is a widely disputed practice among native plant activists, the identification of local plant communities provides a basis for their work. Returning Essential Wildflowers to America’s Landscapes, Project Milkweed, Xerces Society Milkweeds are the required host plants for caterpillars of the monarch butterfly, mary M. Walker, Native Plant Societies of the United States and Canada. Introduced birds of the world, The worldwide history, distribution, New York, Universe Books, New York City, Sydney, Reed ISBN 0-589-50260-3 Vermeij, Geerat J.1991
29.
Aldo Leopold
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Aldo Leopold was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac, Leopold was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation. His ethics of nature and wildlife preservation had a impact on the environmental movement. He emphasized biodiversity and ecology and was a founder of the science of wildlife management, Rand Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa, on January 11,1887. His father, Carl Leopold, was a businessman who made walnut desks, charles Starker, father of Clara and uncle of Carl, was a German immigrant, educated in engineering and architecture. Rand Aldo was named two of Carls business partners—C. W. Rand and Aldo Sommers—although the Rand was eventually dropped, the Leopold family included younger siblings Mary Luize, Carl Starker, and Frederic. Leopolds first language was German, although he mastered English at an early age, Aldo Leopolds early life was highlighted by the outdoors. Carl would take his children on excursions into the woods and taught his oldest son woodcraft, Aldo showed an aptitude for observation, spending hours counting and cataloging birds near his home. Mary would later say of her brother, He was very much an outdoorsman. He was always out climbing around the bluffs, or going down to the river and he attended Prospect Hill Elementary, where he ranked at the top of his class, and then, the overcrowded Burlington High School. Every August, the family vacationed in Michigan at the forested Les Cheneaux Islands in Lake Huron, which the children took to exploring. In 1900, Gifford Pinchot, who oversaw the newly implemented Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, hearing of this development, the teenage Leopold decided on forestry as a vocation. His parents agreed to let him attend The Lawrenceville School, a college in New Jersey in order to improve his chances of admission to Yale. The Burlington High School principal wrote in a letter to the headmaster at Lawrenceville that Leopold was as earnest a boy as we have in school. He arrived at his new school in January 1904, shortly before he turned seventeen and he was considered an attentive student, although he was again drawn to the outdoors. Lawrenceville was suitably rural, and Leopold spent much time mapping the area, Leopold studied at the Lawrenceville School for a year, during which time he was accepted to Yale University. Because the Yale School of Forestry granted only graduate degrees, he first enrolled in Sheffield Scientific Schools preparatory forestry courses for his undergraduate studies, in 1909, Leopold was assigned to the Forest Services District 3 in the Arizona and New Mexico territories
30.
A Sand County Almanac
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A Sand County Almanac, And Sketches Here and There is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Edited and published by his son, Luna, a year after Leopolds death, the book has had over two million copies printed and has been translated into twelve languages. It has informed and changed the environmental movement and stimulated a widespread interest in ecology as a science, a Sand County Almanac is a combination of natural history, scene painting with words, and philosophy. It is perhaps best known for the quote, which defines his land ethic, A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability. It is wrong when it tends otherwise, the original publication format was issued by Oxford University Press in 1949. It incorporated a number of published essays that Leopold had been contributing to popular hunting and conservation magazines, along with a set of longer. The final format was assembled by Luna Leopold shortly after his fathers death, subsequent editions have changed both the format and the content of the essays included in the original. In the original publishing, the book begins with a set of essays under the heading Sand County Almanac and these essays mostly follow the changes in the ecology on Leopolds farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin. There are anecdotes and observations about flora and fauna reactions to the seasons as well as mentions of conservation topics, the second section of the book, Sketches Here and There, shifts the rhetorical focus from time to place. The essays are organized around farms and wildernesses in Canada, Mexico. Some of these essays are autobiographical, red Legs Kicking, for example, recounts Leopolds boyhood experience of hunting in Iowa. The seminal essay Thinking Like a Mountain recalls another hunting experience later in life that was formative for Leopolds later views. Here Leopold describes the death of a killed by his party during a time when conservationists were operating under the assumption that elimination of top predators would make game plentiful. The essay provides a non-technical characterization of the cascade where the removal of single species carries serious implications for the rest of the ecosystem. The book ends with a section of philosophical essays grouped together under the heading The Upshot and he suggests that the best trophy is the experience of wilderness itself, along with its character building aspects. Leopold also rails against the way that policy makers need to find a motive for conservation. In the concluding essay, A Land Ethic, Leopold delves into a more appropriate rationale for conservation, in The Ecological Conscience section, he wrote, Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Leopold felt it was agreed that more conservation education was needed, however quantity
31.
Environmental ethics
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Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. It exerts influence on a range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology. There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment, for example, Should humans continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption. Why should humans continue to propagate its species, and life itself, should humans continue to make gasoline-powered vehicles. What environmental obligations do humans need to keep for future generations, is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the convenience of humanity. How should humans best use and conserve the environment to secure. Two papers published in Science had an impact, Lynn Whites The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis. The first British based journal of this kind, Environmental Values, was launched in 1992, some scholars have tried to categorise the various ways the natural environment is valued. Alan Marshall and Michael Smith are two examples of this, as cited by Peter Vardy in The Puzzle of Ethics, according to Marshall, three general ethical approaches have emerged over the last 40 years, Libertarian Extension, the Ecologic Extension and Conservation Ethics. Marshall’s Libertarian extension echoes a civil liberty approach, in environmentalism, though, the community is generally thought to consist of non-humans as well as humans. Andrew Brennan was an advocate of ecologic humanism, the argument that all entities, animate and in-animate. The work of Arne Næss and his collaborator Sessions also falls under the libertarian extension, Deep ecology is the argument for the intrinsic value or inherent worth of the environment – the view that it is valuable in itself. Their argument, incidentally, falls under both the extension and the ecologic extension. Peter Singers work can be categorized under Marshalls libertarian extension and he reasoned that the expanding circle of moral worth should be redrawn to include the rights of non-human animals, and to not do so would be guilty of speciesism. This approach is then, bio-centric. Alan Marshalls category of ecologic extension places emphasis not on human rights but on the recognition of the interdependence of all biological entities. Whereas Libertarian Extension can be thought of as flowing from a reflection of the natural world. Holmes Rolston, among others, has taken this approach, the planet is characterized as a unified, holistic entity with ethical worth of which the human race is of no particular significance in the long run
32.
Wilderness
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Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. Some governments establish them by law or administrative acts, usually in land tracts that have not been modified by human action in great measure, the main feature of them is that human activity is restricted significantly. These actions seek not only to preserve what already exists, but also to promote and advance a natural expression, Wilderness areas can be found in preserves, conservation preserves, National Forests, National Parks and even in urban areas along rivers, gulches or otherwise undeveloped areas. These areas are considered important for the survival of species, biodiversity, ecological studies, conservation, solitude. Wilderness is deeply valued for cultural, spiritual, moral, some nature writers believe wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and creativity. They may also preserve historic genetic traits and provide habitat for flora and fauna that may be difficult to recreate in zoos. The word wilderness derives from the notion of other words. The mere presence or activity of people does not disqualify an area from being wilderness, many ecosystems that are, or have been, inhabited or influenced by activities of people may still be considered wild. This way of looking at wilderness includes areas within which natural processes operate without human interference, the WILD Foundation states that wilderness areas have two dimensions, they must be biologically intact and legally protected. The World Conservation Union classifies wilderness at two levels, Ia and Ib, activities on the margins of specific wilderness areas, such as fire suppression and the interruption of animal migration also affect the interior of wildernesses. Especially in wealthier, industrialized nations, it has a legal meaning as well. Many nations have designated wilderness, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, looked at through the lens of the visual arts, nature and wildness have been important subjects in various epochs of world history. An early tradition of landscape art occurred in the Tang Dynasty, the tradition of representing nature as it is became one of the aims of Chinese painting and was a significant influence in Asian art. In the 13th century, Shih Erh Chi recommended avoiding painting scenes lacking any places made inaccessible by nature, for most of human history, the greater part of the Earths terrain was wilderness, and human attention was concentrated in settled areas. The first known laws to protect parts of nature date back to the Babylonian Empire, Ashoka, the Great Mauryan King, defined the first laws in the world to protect flora and fauna in Edicts of Ashoka around 3rd Century B. C. In the Middle Ages, the Kings of England initiated one of the world’s first conscious efforts to natural areas. They were motivated by a desire to be able to hunt wild animals in private hunting preserves rather than a desire to protect wilderness, nevertheless, in order to have animals to hunt they would have to protect wildlife from subsistence hunting and the land from villagers gathering firewood. Similar measures were introduced in other European countries, the idea of wilderness having intrinsic value emerged in the Western world in the 19th century
33.
Wildlife management
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Wildlife management attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include game keeping, wildlife conservation and pest control, Wildlife management draws on disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, ecology, climatology and geography to gain the best results. Most wildlife biologists are concerned with the preservation and improvement of habitats although rewilding is increasingly being used, techniques can include reforestation, pest control, nitrification and denitrification, irrigation, coppicing and hedge laying. Pest control is the control of real or perceived pests and can be used for the benefit of wildlife, farmers, in the United States, wildlife management practices are often implemented by a governmental agency to uphold a law, such as the Endangered Species Act. Legislation has also passed to protect wildlife such as the Wildlife. The UK government also give farmers subsidies through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to improve the value of their farms. The history of wildlife management begins with the laws, which regulated the right to kill certain kinds of fish. In Britain game laws developed out of the forest laws, which in the time of the Norman kings were very oppressive, under William the Conqueror, it was as great a crime to kill one of the kings deer as to kill one of his subjects. The Game Act of 1831 protected game birds by establishing close seasons when they could not be legally taken, the act made it lawful to take game only with the provision of a game licence and provided for the appointment of gamekeepers around the country. The purposes of the law was to balance the needs for preservation and harvest, early game laws were also enacted in the US, - in 1839 Rhode Island closed the hunting season for white-tailed deer from May to November. Other regulations during this time focused primarily on restricting hunting, at this time, lawmakers did not consider population sizes or the need for preservation or restoration of wildlife habitats. The late 19th century saw the passage of the first pieces of wildlife conservation legislation, the Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869 was passed in Britain as the first nature protection law in the world after extensive lobbying from the Association for the Protection of Seabirds. The group gained popularity and eventually amalgamated with the Fur and Feather League in Croydon to form the RSPB, the Society attracted growing support from the suburban middle-classes as well as support from many other influential figures, such as the ornithologist Professor Alfred Newton. The National Trust formed in 1895 with the manifesto to. promote the permanent preservation, for the benefit of the nation, of lands. to preserve their natural aspect. On 1 May 1899, the Trust purchased two acres of Wicken Fen with a donation from the amateur naturalist Charles Rothschild, establishing the first nature reserve in Britain. Rothschild was a pioneer of conservation in Britain, and went on to establish many other nature reserves, such as one at Woodwalton Fen, near Huntingdon. During his lifetime he built and managed his estate at Ashton Wold in Northamptonshire to maximise its suitability for wildlife, concerned about the loss of wildlife habitats, in 1912 he set up the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, the forerunner of The Wildlife Trusts partnership. During the societys early years, membership tended to be made up of specialist naturalists and its growth was comparatively slow and these early Trusts tended to focus on purchasing land to establish nature reserves in the geographical areas they served
34.
Cleaning (forestry)
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Used correctly, the term cleaning refers to the removal or killing of overtopping competitors that are significantly taller than the desired trees, and is usually done in the sapling stage. Colloquially, these treatments are often referred to as crop tree release when they are practiced in sapling sized stands, cleaning is common in softwood plantations, clearcuts, and overstory removals, where the desired conifers are overtopped by rapidly growing early-successional hardwood species. Herbicides are often used in these cleaning operations because the chemical at the correct dose and time will kill only broadleaved species, leaving the conifers unharmed. Chemical treatments may be applied by foliage sprays, mists or pellets and this can be from a vehicle or by aerial spraying. Where chemicals are impractical or unpalatable to the landowner, a cutter is used to cut competing trees close to the ground. Other methods of cleaning include mowing with brush hogs attached to a tractor, foresters will often conduct these treatments as early as possible, but not so early that new growth of hardwoods can overtake the planted seedlings again. Their goal is to maintain the health and vigor of tree species that are preferred for some use, liberation cutting is similar to cleaning, with the exception that the competing trees are much older than the desired trees. Cleaning is often done at a stage, to allocate growing space to selected individuals that have demonstrated superior quality. This usually means a straight trunk that will make a good sawlog, in any case, desirable qualities have been identified in each particular tree, and competing trees are removed to promote the desired trees. To help distinguish between cleaning and weeding, consider these two images from the northeastern United States, both pictures focus on an eastern white pine of good future sawlog quality. In the first, the short-lived and undesired balsam fir has overtopped the pine and this is a cleaning situation, albeit an abnormally late one. In the second, the balsam fir compete from the sides, the good quality pine will almost certainly not die and this is a normal weeding situation. This treatment is a standard and well developed feature of management on large landbases that produce pulp, later intervention is usually a cleaning, and requires a certain amount of brute force and precision. Small woodlot owners often perform this operation in large sapling sized stands that have acquired from defunct timber companies. They do this to improve the quality of their woodlots and to produce their own firewood, competing trees at this stage are often large enough to burn, but small enough for fit and properly trained landowners to comfortably handle felling and transporting. Trees get their energy from the sun, and there is only so much sunlight falling on a given area, if that area is occupied by a very large number of trees, each receives a small portion. There may be a lot of energy being captured, but it is being distributed between so many stems that grow very quickly
35.
Forest degradation
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A secondary forest is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. However, often after natural disturbance the timber is harvested and removed from the system, depending on the forest, the development of primary characteristics may take anywhere from a century to several millennia. Hardwood forests of the eastern United States, for example, can develop primary characteristics in one or two generations of trees, or 150–500 years. Often the disruption is the result of activity, such as logging. Secondary forests tend to have trees closer spaced than primary forests, Secondary forests typically were thought to lack biodiversity compared to primary forests, however this has been challenged in recent years. Usually, secondary forests have only one layer, whereas primary forests have several. Secondary forestation is common in areas where forests have been lost by the slash-and-burn method, Secondary forests re-establish by the process of succession. Openings created in the forest canopy allow sunlight to reach the forest floor, an area that has been cleared will first be colonized by pioneer species. Even though some species loss may occur with primary forest removal, Secondary forests may also buffer edge effects around mature forest fragments and increase connectivity between them. They may also be a source of wood and other forest products, today most of the forest of the United States, the eastern part of North America and Europe consist of secondary forest. In the case of tropical rainforests, where soil nutrient levels are characteristically low, in Panama, growth of new forests from abandoned farmland exceeded loss of primary rainforest in 1990. However, due to the quality of soil, among other factors. Land use, land-use change and forestry Land use CIFOR Secondary Forest FAO Forestry World Resource Institute M. van Breugel,2007, U Sezen,2007, Parentage analysis of a regenerating palm tree in a tropical second-growth forest. Ecological Society of America, Ecology 88, 3065-3075
36.
Sustainable forest management
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Sustainable forest management is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management has to keep the balance between three pillars, ecological, economic and socio-cultural. A number of sets of criteria and indicators have since developed to evaluate the achievement of SFM at the global, regional, country. These were all attempts to codify and provide for independent assessment of the degree to which the objectives of sustainable forest management are being achieved in practice. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Non-Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests, a definition of SFM was developed by the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, and has since been adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization. This balance is critical to the survival of forests, and to the prosperity of forest-dependent communities. For forest managers, sustainably managing a particular forest tract means determining, in a way, how to use it today to ensure similar benefits, health. In most cases, forest managers develop their forest plans in consultation with citizens, businesses, organizations and other interested parties in, the tools and visualization have been recently evolving for better management practices. Because forests and societies are in constant flux, the outcome of sustainable forest management is not a fixed one. What constitutes a sustainably managed forest will change over time as values held by the public change, Criteria and indicators are tools which can be used to conceptualise, evaluate and implement sustainable forest management. Criteria define and characterize the essential elements, as well as a set of conditions or processes, periodically measured indicators reveal the direction of change with respect to each criterion. Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management are used and many countries produce national reports that assess their progress toward sustainable forest management. There are nine international and regional criteria and indicators initiatives, which involve more than 150 countries. Countries who are members of the same initiative usually agree to produce reports at the same time, within countries, at the management unit level, efforts have also been directed at developing local level criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. There appears to be growing international consensus on the key elements of sustainable forest management, seven common thematic areas of sustainable forest management have emerged based on the criteria of the nine ongoing regional and international criteria and indicators initiatives. This consensus on common thematic areas effectively provides a common, implicit definition of sustainable forest management, the seven thematic areas were acknowledged by the international forest community at the fourth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests and the 16th session of the Committee on Forestry. The Ecosystem Approach has been prominent on the agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity since 1995, the CBD definition of the Ecosystem Approach and a set of principles for its application were developed at an expert meeting in Malawi in 1995, known as the Malawi Principles. The definition,12 principles and 5 points of operational guidance were adopted by the fifth Conference of Parties in 2000, application of the ecosystem approach will help to reach a balance of the three objectives of the Convention
37.
Social forestry in India
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Social forestry means the management and protection of forests and afforestation of barren and deforested lands with the purpose of helping in the environmental, social and rural development. The term, social forestry, was first used in India in 1976 by The National Commission on Agriculture and it was then that India embarked upon a social forestry project with the aim of taking the pressure off currently existing forests by planting trees on all unused and fallow land. Government is trying to increase forest areas that are close to human settlement and have been degraded over the due to human activities needed to be afforested. Trees were to be planted in and around agricultural fields, plantation of trees along railway lines and roadsides, and river and canal banks were carried out. They were planted in village common land, government wasteland, Social forestry scheme was initiated in India to increase fuel availability in rural areas and to prevent soil erosion. Social forestry also aims at raising plantations by the man so as to meet the growing demand for timber, fuel wood, fodder. This concept of village forests to meet the needs of the people is not new. It has existed through the all over the country. Through the social scheme, the government has involved community participation, as part of a drive towards afforestation. A movement has been started called Plant a Tree Challenge, which invokes a sense among people to come and participate and take every occasion to Plant a Tree as is their own responsibility. This need for a social forestry scheme was felt as India has a dominant rural population still depends largely on fuel wood. This demand for fuel wood will not come down but the area under forest will reduce further due to the growing population, Social forestry scheme can be categorized into groups, farm forestry, community forestry, extension forestry and agroforestry. At present in almost all the countries where social forestry programmes have taken up. Individual farmers are being encouraged to plant trees on their own farmland to meet the needs of the family. In many areas, this tradition of growing trees on the farmland already exists, non-commercial farm forestry is the main thrust of most of the social forestry projects in the country today. It is not always necessary that the farmer grows trees for fuelwood and they may want it to provide shade for the agricultural crops, as wind shelters, soil conservation or to use wasteland. Farm Forestry is another name for Agroforestry, a part of Social Forestry, as a rough estimate, the total demand for pulpwood is approximately 10 million ADMT. Indian Paper Manufacturers Association is an organisation of Indian Pulp
38.
Diameter tape
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A diameter tape is a measuring tape used to estimate the diameter of a cylinder object, typically the stem of a tree or pipe. A diameter tape has either metric or imperial measurements reduced by the value of π and this means the tape measures the diameter of the object. It is assumed that the object is a perfect circle. The diameter tape provides an approximation of diameter, most commonly used in dendrometry, Diameter tapes are usually made of cloth or metal, and on one side of the tape have diameter measurements and on the other standard measurements. Diameter tapes are used to measure tree stems, other parts of such as branches and roots. Standard Diameter Height is the height at which tree diameter is measured, DBH is not usually measured at ground level to avoid measuring a trees butt swell. Butt swell is where the base of the tree is unconventionally thicker than the rest of the tree, Height and diameter are used to determine the volume of a given tree, measuring above the butt swell is required to provide the most accurate measurement. For single-stem trees, DBH is a useful and is easily measured, DBH measurements can be used with other measurements, such as height, to estimate the volume of wood in an individual tree. Usually DBH and height of the trees in a plot or quadrat is measured and used to estimate wood volume for the plot, DBH measures can be used to calculate basal area. To measure the diameter of a tree, the tape is wrapped around the tree. Where the number 0 aligns with the rest of the tape, see Tree girth measurement for some cautions about placement, and errors that may be introduced, by reporting this diameter for a trunk, or any material, that is not nearly circular. Precision diameter tapes are used for measuring the true diameters of both round and out-of-round forms, used in the metal working industry, these tapes are precision tools made of 1095 clock spring steel. The precision-diameter gages consist of a narrow metal ribbon bearing special graduations vernier scale, the vernier scale allows the user more accurately measure diameter. The tapes are checked over master gauges at 0.001 in accuracy for standard tapes up to 144 inches, precision diameter tapes are used in precision or advance manufacturing industries, such as aero-space field and the plastic pipe industry. Biltmore stick Timber cruise Tree girth measurement Tree allometry
39.
Leaf Area Index
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Leaf area index is a dimensionless quantity that characterizes plant canopies. It is defined as the green leaf area per unit ground surface area in broadleaf canopies. LAI is used to predict photosynthetic primary production, evapotranspiration and as a tool for crop growth. As such, LAI plays an role in theoretical production ecology. This inverse exponential function is called the production function. LAI can be determined directly by taking a significant sample of foliage from a plant canopy, measuring the leaf area per sample plot. Indirect methods measure canopy geometry or light extinction and relate it to LAI, direct methods can be easily applied on deciduous species by collecting leaves during leaf fall in traps of certain area distributed below the canopy. The area of the leaves can be measured using a leaf area meter or an image scanner. The measured leaf area can then be divided by the area of the traps to obtain LAI, alternatively, leaf area can be measured on a sub-sample of the collected leaves and linked to the leaf dry mass. That way it is not necessary to measure the area of all one by one. Leaf dry mass multiplied by the leaf area is converted into leaf area. Direct methods in evergreen species are necessarily destructive, however, they are widely used in crops and pastures by harvesting the vegetation and measuring leaf area within a certain ground surface area. It is very difficult to apply such destructive techniques in natural ecosystems, foresters have developed techniques that determine leaf area in evergreen forests through allometric relationships. Due to the difficulties and the limitations of the methods for estimating LAI. Hemispherical photography methods estimate LAI and other canopy structure attributes from analyzing upward-looking fisheye photographs taken beneath the plant canopy, the LAI-2200 calculates LAI and other canopy structure attributes from solar radiation measurements made with a wide-angle optical sensor. Measurements made above and below the canopy are used to determine canopy light interception at five angles, for reasons of convenience when compared to the direct methods, these tools are becoming more and more important. The disadvantage of the method is that it is destructive, time consuming and expensive. Ignorance of non-randomness within canopies may cause underestimation of LAI up to 25%, T. Arkebauer, J. L. Campbell, J. Chen, O. Sun, M. Schwartz, C. van Ingen, S. Verma
40.
Charles Lathrop Pack
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Charles Lathrop Pack, a third-generation timberman, was one of the five wealthiest men in America prior to World War I. He owed his start in life to the success of his father, George Willis Pack. Growing up on Lake Huron in Michigans Lower Peninsula, Charles L, Pack lived in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1871 to the early years of the 20th century. Banking and real estate, Pack became a multi-millionaire, during World War I, he was a principal organizer and was heavily involved in the war garden movement in the United States. In March 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack organized the US National War Garden Commission, after the war, he documented the victory garden movement in The War Garden Victorious. Pack was a world-famous philatelist, recognized for his collections of postage stamps. Pack was noted for his collections of stamps of New South Wales, New Zealand, Canada, Cape of Good Hope, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay. He was especially noted for his plating of early stamps of Brazil, pack’s collection of postage stamps of Victoria led to his publication in 1923 of his famous book Victoria, the Half-length Portraits and the Twopence Queen Enthroned. Pack received worldwide recognition and numerous awards and he signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1921. He was the first American to receive the Crawford Medal in 1923 from the Royal Philatelic Society London. He was also the first American to receive the Lindenberg Medal in 1926 from the Berliner Philatelisten-Klub, Pack is named in the American Philatelic Society Hall of Fame for 1941. According to his biographer, Alexandra Eyle, Charles Lathrop Pack spent $2.8 million on forestry conservation and this is a low figure, however. Packs remains were buried in 1937 under a stand of pine in the Charles Lathrop Pack Demonstration Forest in Warrensburg. A site of his own choosing, Victoria, the Half-length Portraits and the Twopence Queen Enthroned Euclid Avenue Victory garden Philately Philatelic literature Wellington R. Burt Eyle, Alexandra. Charles Lathrop Pack, Timberman, Forest Conservationist, and Pioneer in Forest Education, syracuse, NY, ESF College Foundation, Inc. and College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Available, Google books Works by Charles Lathrop Pack at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Charles Lathrop Pack at Internet Archive
41.
Clearcutting
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Clearcutting, clearfelling, or clearcut logging is a forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down. Logging companies and forest-worker unions in some support the practice for scientific, safety. Detractors see clearcutting as synonymous with deforestation, destroying natural habitats, Clearcutting is the most common and economically profitable method of logging. Aside from the purpose of harvesting wood, clearcutting is also used to land for farming. The insatiable human demand for wood and arable land through clearcutting, the same reasons for preserving the world’s tropical rainforests also apply to the taiga, as do the reasons for destroying them. Long-term studies of clearcut forests, such as studies of the Pasoh Rainforest in Malaysia, are important in providing insights into the preservation of forest resources worldwide. Many variations of clearcutting exist, the most common practices are, Standard clearcut – removal of every stem. Patch clearcut – removal of all the stems in a limited, predetermined area, strip clearcut – removal of all the stems in a row, usually placed perpendicular to the prevailing winds in order to minimize the possibility of windthrow. Clearcutting-with-reserves – removal of the majority of standing stems save a few reserved for other purposes, slash-and-burn – the permanent conversion of tropical and subtropicals forests for agricultural purposes. This is most prevalent in tropical and subtropical forests in overpopulated regions in developing, slash-and-burn entails the removal of all stems in a particular area. This can be a form of deforestation, when the land is converted to other uses, however, some indigenous forest peoples, for example the 19th century Forest Finns rotate over the land and it does return to forest and this would be sustainable. Slash and burn techniques are used by civilians in search of land for living. The forest is first clear cut, and the material is burned. One of the forces behind this process is a result of overpopulation. These methods also occur as a result of commercial farming, the lumber is sold for profit, and the land, cleared of all remaining brush and suitable for agricultural development, is sold to farmers. Selection cutting – which can be done for timber harvesting or for ecological reasons, when so done it is often called ecoforestry. Clearcutting contrasts with selective cutting, such as high grading, in which only commercially valuable trees are harvested and this practice can reduce the genetic viability of the forest over time, resulting in poorer or less vigorous offspring in the stand. Clearcutting also differs from a system, by allowing revegetation by seedlings
42.
Felling
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Felling is the process of downing individual trees, an element of the task of logging. The person cutting the trees is a feller, in hand felling, an axe, saw, or chainsaw is used to fell a tree, followed up by limbing, bucking in traditional applications. In the modern commercial logging industry, felling is typically followed by limbing and skidding, a feller-buncher is a motorized vehicle with an attachment which rapidly cuts and gathers several trees in the process of felling them. In cut-to-length logging a harvester performs the tasks of a feller-buncher additionally doing the delimbing and bucking of the trees as well
