1.
Vichada Department
–
Vichada Department is a department of the Republic of Colombia in South America. Vichada is located in the plains of Colombia, in the Orinoquía Region within the Orinoco river basin bordering the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the north. The department is the second largest in Colombia and scarcely populated in comparison to other departments, the department was previously a commissary established in 1913. The largest town and capital of the department is Puerto Carreño located in northeastern part of the department. The department is subdivided into four municipalities, Puerto Carreño, La Primavera, Santa Rosalía and it also contains 46 indigenous reserves and 6 communities. The department is located on the plains of Colombia known colloquially as the Llanos. The department is located to the margin of the Orinoco River. Part of the department lies on the Guiana Shield, soil lacks sediments due to the lack of alluvions from rivers coming from the Andes mountains. Climate in the department is predominantly hot and humid with a temperature of 28 °C throughout the year. In 1913 the government of Colombia created the commissary of Vichada, the town was named Puerto Carreño in honor of Pedro María Carreño, then acting Minister of Government. In August 1974, Puerto Carreño was elevated to the category of municipality by decree 1594 of that same year, on July 5,1991 Vichada was elevated to the category of department and Puerto Carreño as its capital. Cumaribo La Primavera Puerto Carreño Santa Rosalía Revista Semana, Será Vichada la tierra prometida, Government of Vichada official website Vichada Music llanera Territorial-Environmental Information System of Colombian Amazon SIAT-AC website
2.
Colombia
–
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a transcontinental country largely situated in the northwest of South America, with territories in Central America. Colombia shares a border to the northwest with Panama, to the east with Venezuela and Brazil and to the south with Ecuador and it shares its maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments, the territory of what is now Colombia was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples including the Muisca, the Quimbaya and the Tairona. The Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of conquest and colonization ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada, independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 the Gran Colombia Federation was dissolved. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada, the new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation, and then the United States of Colombia, before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886. Since the 1960s the country has suffered from an asymmetric low-intensity armed conflict, Colombia is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in the world, and thereby possesses a rich cultural heritage. Cultural diversity has also influenced by Colombias varied geography. The urban centres are located in the highlands of the Andes mountains. Colombian territory also encompasses Amazon rainforest, tropical grassland and both Caribbean and Pacific coastlines, ecologically, it is one of the worlds 17 megadiverse countries, and the most densely biodiverse of these per square kilometer. Colombia is a power and a regional actor with the fourth-largest economy in Latin America, is part of the CIVETS group of six leading emerging markets and is an accessing member to the OECD. Colombia has an economy with macroeconomic stability and favorable growth prospects in the long run. The name Colombia is derived from the last name of Christopher Columbus and it was conceived by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda as a reference to all the New World, but especially to those portions under Spanish and Portuguese rule. The name was adopted by the Republic of Colombia of 1819. When Venezuela, Ecuador and Cundinamarca came to exist as independent states, New Granada officially changed its name in 1858 to the Granadine Confederation. In 1863 the name was changed, this time to United States of Colombia. To refer to country, the Colombian government uses the terms Colombia. Owing to its location, the present territory of Colombia was a corridor of early human migration from Mesoamerica, the oldest archaeological finds are from the Pubenza and El Totumo sites in the Magdalena Valley 100 km southwest of Bogotá. These sites date from the Paleoindian period, at Puerto Hormiga and other sites, traces from the Archaic Period have been found
3.
Pinus resinosa
–
Pinus resinosa, known as red pine or Norway pine, is a pine native to North America. Red pine is a evergreen tree characterized by tall, straight growth in a variety of habitats. It usually ranges from 20–35 m in height and 1 m in trunk diameter, the crown is conical, becoming a narrow rounded dome with age. The bark is thick and gray-brown at the base of the tree, but thin, flaky and bright orange-red in the upper crown, some red color may be seen in the fissures of the bark. The species is self pruning, there not to be dead branches on the trees. The leaves are needle-like, dark yellow-green, in fascicles of two, 12–18 cm long, and brittle, the leaves snap cleanly when bent, this character, stated as diagnostic for red pine in some texts, is however shared by several other pine species. The cones are ovoid, 4–6 cm long by 2.5 cm broad, and purple before maturity, ripening to nut-blue and opening to 4–5 cm broad. Red pine is notable for its very constant morphology and low genetic variation throughout its range and it is intolerant of shade, but does well in windy sites, it grows best in well-drained soil. It is a tree, reaching a maximum age of about 500 years. The wood is valuable in forestry for timber and paper pulp. The red pine is the tree of Minnesota. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, international Union for Conservation of Nature. Media related to Pinus resinosa at Wikimedia Commons Gymnosperm Database, Pinus resinosa Interactive Distribution Map of Red Pine
4.
Ontario
–
Ontario, one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada, is located in east-central Canada. It is Canadas most populous province by a margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians. Ontario is fourth-largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and it is home to the nations capital city, Ottawa, and the nations most populous city, Toronto. There is only about 1 km of land made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border. Ontario is sometimes divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontarios population and arable land is located in the south, in contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and is heavily forested. The province is named after Lake Ontario, a thought to be derived from Ontarí, io, a Huron word meaning great lake, or possibly skanadario. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes, the province consists of three main geographical regions, The thinly populated Canadian Shield in the northwestern and central portions, which comprises over half the land area of Ontario. Although this area mostly does not support agriculture, it is rich in minerals and in part covered by the Central and Midwestern Canadian Shield forests, studded with lakes, Northern Ontario is subdivided into two sub-regions, Northwestern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. The virtually unpopulated Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north and northeast, mainly swampy. Southern Ontario which is further sub-divided into four regions, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Golden Horseshoe, the highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at 693 metres above sea level located in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over 500 m are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands, the Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment, the Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario occupies roughly 87 percent of the area of the province. Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario that is the southernmost extent of Canadas mainland, Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the border of California. The climate of Ontario varies by season and location, the effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontarios climate is classified as humid continental, Ontario has three main climatic regions
5.
Forest
–
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
6.
Woodland
–
Woodland /ˈwʊdlənd/ is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses, woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of primary or secondary succession. Higher density areas of trees with a closed canopy that provides extensive. Conservationists have worked hard to preserve woodlands, because people are destroying animals habitats when building homes, for example, the woodlands in Northwest Indiana have been preserved as part of the Indiana Dunes. The term ancient woodland is used in British nature conservation to refer to any wooded land that has existed since 1600, woodlot is a closely related American term, which refers to a stand of trees generally used for firewood. While woodlots often technically have closed canopies, they are so small that light penetration from the edge makes them ecologically closer to woodland than forest, in Australia, a woodland is defined as an area with sparse cover of trees, and an open woodland has very sparse cover. Woodlands are also subdivided into tall woodlands, or low woodlands and this contrasts with forests, which have greater than 30% cover by trees
7.
Forestation
–
Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees in an area where there was no previous tree cover. Reforestation is the reestablishment of forest cover, either naturally or artificially, forestation is the establishment of forest growth on areas that either had forest or lacked it. Reforestation and afforestation are categories of forestation, special tools, e. g. tree planting bar, are used to make planting of trees easier and faster. Gap dynamics is the pattern of plant growth that occurs following the creation of a forest gap, gap dynamics are a typical characteristic of temperate and tropical forests, and have a wide variety of causes and effects on forest life. In some places, forests need help to themselves because of environmental factors. For example, in zones, once forest cover is destroyed. Other factors include overgrazing by livestock, especially such as goats, cows. Together these may lead to desertification and the loss of topsoil, without soil, in some tropical areas, forest cover removal may result in a duricrust or duripan that effectively seal off the soil to water penetration and root growth. In many areas, reforestation is impossible because people are using the land, in other areas, mechanical breaking up of duripans or duricrusts is necessary, careful and continued watering may be essential, and special protection, such as fencing, may be needed. There is extensive and ongoing Amazon deforestation. )China has deforested most of its wooded areas. China reached the point where timber yields declined far below historic levels, although it has set official goals for reforestation, these goals are set over an 80-year time horizon and have not been significantly met by 2008. China is trying to correct these problems by projects as the Green Wall of China, a law promulgated in 1981 requires that every school student over the age of 11 plants at least one tree per year. As a result, China has the highest afforestation rate of any country or region in the world, however, the forest area per capita is still far lower than the international average. There has also been criticism regarding the effectiveness of planting so many trees especially in regions where they never grew prior. Studies reveal that the table of those areas is becoming deeper indicating significant water loss. India has witnessed an increase in the percentage of the land area under forest cover from 1950 to 2006. In 1950 around 40.48 million hectares was covered by forest, in 1980 it increased to 67.47 million hectares and in 2006 it was found to be 69 million hectares. 23% of India is covered by forest, the forests of India are grouped into 5 major categories and 16 types based on biophysical criteria
8.
Deforestation
–
Deforestation, clearance or clearing is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non-forest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, the most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 30% of Earths land surface is covered by forests, Deforestation occurs for multiple reasons, trees are cut down to be used for building or sold as fuel, while cleared land is used as pasture for livestock and plantation. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and it has adverse impacts on biosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforestation has also used in war to deprive the enemy of cover for its forces. Modern examples of this were the use of Agent Orange by the British military in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency, as of 2005, net deforestation rates have ceased to increase in countries with a per capita GDP of at least US$4,600. Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland, disregard of ascribed value, lax forest management and deficient environmental laws are some of the factors that allow deforestation to occur on a large scale. In many countries, deforestation, both naturally occurring and human-induced, is an ongoing issue, Deforestation causes extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations as observed by current conditions and in the past through the fossil record. More than half of all plant and land animal species in the live in tropical forests. Between 2000 and 2012,2.3 million square kilometres of forests around the world were cut down, as a result of deforestation, only 6.2 million square kilometres remain of the original 16 million square kilometres of forest that formerly covered the Earth. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, subsistence farming is responsible for 48% of deforestation, commercial agriculture is responsible for 32%, logging is responsible for 14%, and fuel wood removals make up 5%. Experts do not agree on whether industrial logging is an important contributor to global deforestation, some argue that poor people are more likely to clear forest because they have no alternatives, others that the poor lack the ability to pay for the materials and labour needed to clear forest. One study found that population increases due to fertility rates were a primary driver of tropical deforestation in only 8% of cases. Other causes of contemporary deforestation may include corruption of government institutions, the distribution of wealth and power, population growth and overpopulation. Globalization is often viewed as another cause of deforestation, though there are cases in which the impacts of globalization have promoted localized forest recovery. The degradation of forest ecosystems has also traced to economic incentives that make forest conversion appear more profitable than forest conservation. Some commentators have noted a shift in the drivers of deforestation over the past 30 years, Deforestation is ongoing and is shaping climate and geography. Deforestation is a contributor to global warming, and is cited as one of the major causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect
9.
Pollution
–
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution, Air pollution has always accompanied civilizations. Pollution started from prehistoric times when man created the first fires, metal forging appears to be a key turning point in the creation of significant air pollution levels outside the home. The burning of coal and wood, and the presence of horses in concentrated areas made the cities the cesspools of pollution. The Industrial Revolution brought an infusion of untreated chemicals and wastes into local streams that served as the water supply, king Edward I of England banned the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London in 1272, after its smoke became a problem. But the fuel was so common in England that this earliest of names for it was acquired because it could be carted away from some shores by the wheelbarrow and it was the industrial revolution that gave birth to environmental pollution as we know it today. London also recorded one of the extreme cases of water quality problems with the Great Stink on the Thames of 1858. Pollution issues escalated as population growth far exceeded view ability of neighborhoods to handle their waste problem, reformers began to demand sewer systems, and clean water. In 1870, the conditions in Berlin were among the worst in Europe. There were no toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called, in the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive. As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870. Chicago and Cincinnati were the first two American cities to enact laws ensuring cleaner air in 1881, as historian Martin Melosi notes, The generation that first saw automobiles replacing the horses saw cars as miracles of cleanliness. By the 1940s, however, automobile-caused smog was an issue in Los Angeles. Other cities followed around the country early in the 20th century. Extreme smog events were experienced by the cities of Los Angeles and Donora, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s, Air pollution would continue to be a problem in England, especially later during the industrial revolution, and extending into the recent past with the Great Smog of 1952. Awareness of atmospheric pollution spread widely after World War II, with fears triggered by reports of fallout from atomic warfare. Then a non-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London and this prompted some of the first major modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Act of 1956
10.
Habitat
–
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
11.
Ecosystem
–
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment, interacting as a system. These biotic and abiotic components are regarded as linked together through nutrient cycles, as ecosystems are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces. Energy, water, nitrogen and soil minerals are other essential components of an ecosystem. The energy that flows through ecosystems is obtained primarily from the sun and it generally enters the system through photosynthesis, a process that also captures carbon from the atmosphere. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and they also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, other external factors include time and potential biota. Ecosystems are dynamic entities—invariably, they are subject to disturbances and are in the process of recovering from some past disturbance. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can have different characteristics simply because they contain different species. The introduction of species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function. Internal factors not only control ecosystem processes but are controlled by them and are often subject to feedback loops. Other internal factors include disturbance, succession and the types of species present, although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate. Biodiversity affects ecosystem function, as do the processes of disturbance, classifying ecosystems into ecologically homogeneous units is an important step towards effective ecosystem management, but there is no single, agreed-upon way to do this. The term ecosystem was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley, Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as The whole system, including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment. Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as mental isolates, Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term ecotope. G. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas one step further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the driver of the ecosystem. Most mineral nutrients, on the hand, are recycled within ecosystems. Ecosystems are controlled both by external and internal factors, external factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem
12.
Global warming
–
Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earths climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of evidence show that the climate system is warming. The largest human influence has been emission of gases such as carbon dioxide, methane. These findings have been recognized by the science academies of the major industrialized nations and are not disputed by any scientific body of national or international standing. Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region around the globe, anticipated effects include warming global temperature, rising sea levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the retreat of glaciers, permafrost. Effects significant to humans include the threat to security from decreasing crop yields. Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Public reactions to global warming and concern about its effects are also increasing, a global 2015 Pew Research Center report showed a median of 54% consider it a very serious problem. There are significant regional differences, with Americans and Chinese among the least concerned, the global average surface temperature shows a warming of 0.85 °C in the period 1880 to 2012, based on multiple independently produced datasets. Earths average surface temperature rose by 0. 74±0.18 °C over the period 1906–2005, the rate of warming almost doubled for the last half of that period. The rest has melted ice and warmed the continents and atmosphere, the average temperature of the lower troposphere has increased between 0.12 and 0.135 °C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. The warming that is evident in the temperature record is consistent with a wide range of observations. The probability that these changes could have occurred by chance is virtually zero, temperature changes vary over the globe. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures, ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean loses more heat by evaporation. Since the beginning of industrialisation the temperature difference between the hemispheres has increased due to melting of sea ice and snow in the North. Average arctic temperatures have been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past 100 years, the thermal inertia of the oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that climate can take centuries or longer to adjust to changes in forcing. Some of this warming will be driven by past natural forcings which are still seeking equilibrium in the climate system
13.
Biosequestration
–
Biosequestration is the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by biological processes. Biosequestration as a process has occurred in the past, and was responsible for the formation of the extensive coal. It is a key concept in the climate change mitigation debate. After water vapour carbon dioxide is the most abundant and stable greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from about 280 ppm in 1750 to 383 ppm in 2007 and is increasing at an average rate of 2 ppm pr year. The worlds oceans have previously played an important role in sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide through solubility and this, and the likely adverse consequences for humans and the biosphere of associated global warming, increases the significance of investigating policy mechanisms for encouraging biosequestration. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the cutting down of forests is now contributing close to 20 per cent of the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Candell and Raupach argue that there are four ways in which reforestation. First, by increasing the volume of existing forest, second, by increasing the carbon density of existing forests at a stand and landscape scale. Third, by expanding the use of forest products that will sustainably replace fossil-fuel emissions, fourth, by reducing carbon emissions that are caused from deforestation and degradation. Land clearing reductions, the majority of the time, create biodiversity benefits in a vast expanse of land regions, since 1990, however, emissions from the energy sector have increased 35 per cent. By comparison, emissions from LULUCF have fallen by 73%, satellite imaging has become crucial in obtaining data on levels of deforestation and reforestation. The project yielded deforestation maps for the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, biosequestration may be enhanced by improving photosynthetic efficiency by modifying RuBisCO genes in plants to increase the catalytic and/or oxygenation activity of that enzyme. One such research area involves increasing the Earths proportion of C4 carbon fixation photosynthetic plants, C4 plants represent about 5% of Earths plant biomass and 1% of its known plant species, but account for around 30% of terrestrial carbon fixation. In leaves of C3 plants, captured photons of solar energy undergo photosynthesis which assimilates carbon into carbohydrates in the chloroplasts of the mesophyll cells, the C4 photosynthetic pathway, however, concentrates CO2 at the site of the reaction of Rubisco, thereby reducing the biosequestration-inhibiting photorespiration. A new frontier in crop science consists of attempts to genetically engineer C3 staple food crops with the photosynthetic apparatus of C4 plants. Biochar is a potent form of longterm biosequestration of atmosphereic CO2 derived from investigation of the extremely fertile Terra preta soils of the Amazon Basin, placing biochar in soils also improves water quality, increases soil fertility, raises agricultural productivity and reduce pressure on old growth forests. Ceasing ploughing has been alleged to encourage more ants to become predators of wood-eating termites, allows weeds to regenerate soils, Soil holds more carbon than vegetation and atmosphere combined, and most soil lies under grazing land. Holistic Planned Grazing holds tremendous potential in mitigating global warming, while building soil, increasing biodiversity, dedicated biofuel and biosequestration crops, such as switchgrass, are also being developed
14.
Logging
–
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. In forestry, the logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest. However, in usage, the term may be used to indicate a range of forestry or silviculture activities. Illegal logging refers to what in forestry might be called timber theft by the timber mafia and it can also refer to the harvesting, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. Clearcut logging is not necessarily considered a type of logging but a harvesting or silviculture method, in the forest products industry logging companies may be referred to as logging contractors, with the smaller, non-union crews referred to as gyppo loggers. Cutting trees with the highest value and leaving those with lower value and it is sometimes called selective logging, and confused with selection cutting, the practice of managing stands by harvesting a proportion of trees. Logging usually refers to above-ground forestry logging, submerged forests exist on land that has been flooded by damming to create reservoirs. Such trees are logged using underwater logging or by the lowering of the reservoirs in question, ootsa Lake and Williston Lake in British Columbia, Canada are notable examples where timber recovery has been needed to remove inundated forests. Clearcutting, or clearfelling, is a method of harvesting that removes all the standing trees in a selected area. Silviculture objectives for clearcutting, and a focus on forestry distinguish it from deforestation, other methods include shelterwood cutting, group selective, single selective, seed-tree cutting, patch cut, and retention cutting. The above operations can be carried out by different methods, of which the three are considered industrial methods, Trees are felled and then delimbed and topped at the stump. The log is then transported to the landing, where it is bucked and loaded on a truck and this leaves the slash in the cut area, where it must be further treated if wild land fires are of concern. This ability is due to the advancement in the style felling head that can be used, the trees are then delimbed, topped, and bucked at the landing. This method requires that slash be treated at the landing, in areas with access to cogeneration facilities, the slash can be chipped and used for the production of electricity or heat. Full-tree harvesting also refers to utilization of the tree including branches. Cut-to-length logging is the process of felling, delimbing, bucking, harvesters fell the tree, delimb, and buck it, and place the resulting logs in bunks to be brought to the landing by a skidder or forwarder. This method is available for trees up to 900 mm in diameter. Harvesters are employed effectively in level to steep terrain
15.
Lumber
–
Lumber, or timber is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber may also refer to currently un-needed furniture, as in Lumber room, or an awkward gait, ultimately derived from the look of unfashionable, Lumber may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and it is available in many species, usually hardwoods, but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has other uses as well. It is classified more commonly as a softwood than as a hardwood, in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Britain, the term timber describes sawn wood products, such as floor boards. In the United States and Canada, generally timber describes standing or felled trees, before they are milled into boards, Timber there also describes sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. The latter includes the often partly finished lumber used in timber-frame construction, remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of previously milled lumber. Specifically, it is cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not usually processed by a primary sawmill, resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing, structural lumber may also be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock. Its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength, durability, logs are converted into timber by being sawn, hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with grain and large knots. There are various types of sawing, Plain sawn —A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log, quarter sawn and rift sawn—These terms have been confused in history but generally mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart—The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure, heart center—the center core of a log. Free of heart center —A side-cut timber without any pith, free of knots —No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4, the length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth
16.
Non-timber forest product
–
They include game animals, fur-bearers, nuts, seeds, berries, mushrooms, oils, foliage, medicinal plants, peat, fuelwood, fish, spices and forage. All research promote forest products as valuable commodities and tools that can promote the conservation of forests and these definitions include wild and managed game, fish and insects. NTFPs are commonly grouped into such as floral greens, decoratives, medicinal plants, foods, flavors and fragrances, fibers. Other terms similar to NTFPs include special, non-wood, minor, alternative, NTFPs in particular highlight forest products which are of value to local people and communities but have been overlooked in the wake of forest management priorities. In recent decades, interest has grown in using NTFPs as alternatives or supplements to forest management practices, black truffle cultivation in the mediterranean area is a good example of a high profitability when well managed. The harvest of NTFPs remains widespread throughout the world, Other terms synonymous with harvesting include wild-crafting, gathering, collecting and foraging. NTFPs also serve as raw materials for industries ranging from large-scale floral greens suppliers, one exception to this is the maple syrup industry, which in 2002 in the US alone yielded 1.4 million US gallons worth USD$38.3 million. In temperate forests such as in the US, wild edible mushrooms such as matsutake, medicinal plants such as ginseng, while these high-value species may attract the most attention, a diversity of NTFPs can be found in most forests of the world. In tropical forests, for example, NTFPs can be an important source of income that can supplement farming and/or other activities, gums & resin exuding plants 5. Dyes & colour yielding plants 6, fiber & floss yielding plants 7. Leaves for plates Minority people in Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos are living away from the mainstream settlements, the hill tribes and many other minority groups are closely associated with forests for centuries. Much of their subsistence and part of the income is generated from the sale of a variety of NTFP products. In the Highlands of Vietnam, NTFPs calendar is spread almost throughout the year that provides an income for the ethnic minority people. From June to August is the wild berry called Uoi collection that provides the bulk of household income, every family sends several people into the forest on a regular basis during this period where they stay for 2–3 days during which 5–6 kg of berries is collected. A kilogram of dried berries is sold for $1.50, the next comes bamboo shoots, mushrooms and vegetable collection that goes through to February. The minority people in Sa Pa area depends mainly on a variety of NTFPs for their livelihoods, among the products collected are fruits, berries, leaves, mushrooms, fish, bees honey, bamboo shoots, wild orchids and the list goes on. The Friday market is full of orchids and other wild plants put forward by people for the tourists. Between 10-15% of the household income is derived from the sale of NTFPs
17.
Afforestation
–
Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees in an area where there was no previous tree cover. Reforestation is the reestablishment of forest cover, either naturally or artificially, forestation is the establishment of forest growth on areas that either had forest or lacked it. Reforestation and afforestation are categories of forestation, special tools, e. g. tree planting bar, are used to make planting of trees easier and faster. Gap dynamics is the pattern of plant growth that occurs following the creation of a forest gap, gap dynamics are a typical characteristic of temperate and tropical forests, and have a wide variety of causes and effects on forest life. In some places, forests need help to themselves because of environmental factors. For example, in zones, once forest cover is destroyed. Other factors include overgrazing by livestock, especially such as goats, cows. Together these may lead to desertification and the loss of topsoil, without soil, in some tropical areas, forest cover removal may result in a duricrust or duripan that effectively seal off the soil to water penetration and root growth. In many areas, reforestation is impossible because people are using the land, in other areas, mechanical breaking up of duripans or duricrusts is necessary, careful and continued watering may be essential, and special protection, such as fencing, may be needed. There is extensive and ongoing Amazon deforestation. )China has deforested most of its wooded areas. China reached the point where timber yields declined far below historic levels, although it has set official goals for reforestation, these goals are set over an 80-year time horizon and have not been significantly met by 2008. China is trying to correct these problems by projects as the Green Wall of China, a law promulgated in 1981 requires that every school student over the age of 11 plants at least one tree per year. As a result, China has the highest afforestation rate of any country or region in the world, however, the forest area per capita is still far lower than the international average. There has also been criticism regarding the effectiveness of planting so many trees especially in regions where they never grew prior. Studies reveal that the table of those areas is becoming deeper indicating significant water loss. India has witnessed an increase in the percentage of the land area under forest cover from 1950 to 2006. In 1950 around 40.48 million hectares was covered by forest, in 1980 it increased to 67.47 million hectares and in 2006 it was found to be 69 million hectares. 23% of India is covered by forest, the forests of India are grouped into 5 major categories and 16 types based on biophysical criteria
18.
Grassland
–
Grasslands are areas where the vegetation is dominated by grasses, however sedge and rush families can also be found. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica, grasslands are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. For example, there are five terrestrial ecoregion classifications of the grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. Grassland vegetation can vary in height from short, as in chalk grassland, to quite tall, as in the case of North American tallgrass prairie, South American grasslands. Woody plants, shrubs or trees, may occur on some grasslands – forming savannas, scrubby grassland or semi-wooded grassland, as flowering plants and trees, grasses grow in great concentrations in climates where annual rainfall ranges between 500 and 900 mm. The root systems of perennial grasses and forbs form complex mats that hold the soil in place, graminoids are among the most versatile life forms. Existing forest biomes declined, and grasslands became much more widespread, following the Pleistocene ice ages, grasslands expanded in range in the hotter, drier climates, and began to become the dominant land feature worldwide. Grasslands often occur in areas with annual precipitation between 600 mm and 1,500 mm and average annual temperatures ranges from −5 and 20 °C. However, some occur in colder and hotter climatic conditions. Grassland can exist in habitats that are disturbed by grazing or fire. Grasslands dominated by unsown wild-plant communities can be called natural or semi-natural habitats. The majority of grasslands in temperate climates are semi-natural and these grasslands contain many species of wild plants – grasses, sedges, rushes and herbs –25 or more species per square metre is not unusual. Chalk downlands in England can support over 40 species per square metre, in many parts of the world, few examples have escaped agricultural improvement. For example, original North American prairie grasslands or lowland wildflower meadows in the UK are now rare and their associated wild flora equally threatened. Some of the worlds largest expanses of grassland are found in African savanna, grasslands may occur naturally or as the result of human activity. Grasslands created and maintained by human activity are called anthropogenic grasslands, hunting peoples around the world often set regular fires to maintain and extend grasslands, and prevent fire-intolerant trees and shrubs from taking hold. The tallgrass prairies in the U. S. Midwest may have been extended eastward into Illinois, Indiana, much grassland in northwest Europe developed after the Neolithic Period, when people gradually cleared the forest to create areas for raising their livestock. Grassland types by Schimper, meadow steppe savannah Grassland types by Ellenberg & Mueller-Dombois, terrestrial herbaceous communities A. Savannas and related grasslands B
19.
Old-growth forest
–
Old-growth features include diverse tree-related structures that provide diverse wildlife habitat that increases the biodiversity of the forested ecosystem. The concept of tree structure includes multi-layered canopies and canopy gaps, greatly varying tree heights and diameters. Old-growth forests are valuable, and logging of these forests has been a point of contention between the logging industry and environmentalists. Old-growth forests tend to have trees and standing dead trees, multi-layered canopies with gaps that result from the deaths of individual trees. Depending on the forest, this may take anywhere from a century to several millennia, hardwood forests of the eastern United States can develop old-growth characteristics in one or two generations of trees, or 150–500 years. In British Columbia, Canada, old growth is defined as 120 to 140 years of age in the interior of the province where fire is a frequent and natural occurrence. In British Columbia’s coastal rainforests, old growth is defined as more than 250 years. In Australia, eucalypt trees rarely exceed 350 years of age due to frequent fire disturbance, Forest types have very different development patterns, natural disturbances and appearances. Levels of biodiversity may be higher or lower in old-growth forests compared to that in second-growth forests, depending on circumstances, environmental variables. Logging in old-growth forests is an issue in many parts of the world. Excessive logging reduces biodiversity, affecting not only the old-growth forest itself, a forest in old-growth stage has a mix of tree ages, due to a distinct regeneration pattern for this stage. New trees regenerate at different times from other, because each one of them has different spatial location relative to the main canopy. The mixed age of the forest is an important criterion in ensuring that the forest is a stable ecosystem in the long term. A climax stand that is uniformly aged becomes senescent and degrades within a relatively short time-period to result in a new cycle of forest succession, thus, uniformly aged stands are a less stable ecosystem. Forest canopy gaps are essential in creating and maintaining mixed-age stands, also, some herbaceous plants only become established in canopy openings, but persist beneath an understory. Openings are a result of death due to small impact disturbances such as wind, low-intensity fires. Because old-growth forest is structurally diverse it provides higher-diversity habitat than forests in other stages, thus, sometimes higher biological diversity can be sustained in old-growth forest, or at least a biodiversity that is different from other forest stages. The characteristic topography of much old-growth forest consists of pits and mounds, mounds are caused by decaying fallen trees, and pits by the roots pulled out of the ground when trees fall due to natural causes, including being pushed over by animals
20.
Biodiversity
–
Biodiversity, a contraction of biological diversity, generally refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. One of the most widely used definitions defines it in terms of the variability within species and it is a measure of the variety of organisms present in different ecosystems. This can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation within an area, biome, terrestrial biodiversity tends to be greater near the equator, which seems to be the result of the warm climate and high primary productivity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, and is richest in the tropics and these tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10 per cent of earths surface, and contain about 90 percent of the worlds species. Marine biodiversity tends to be highest along coasts in the Western Pacific, there are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, the number and variety of plants, animals and other organisms that exist is known as biodiversity. It is a component of nature and it ensures the survival of human species by providing food, fuel, shelter, medicines. The richness of biodiversity depends on the conditions and area of the region. All species of plants taken together are known as flora and about 300,000 species of plants are known to date, all species of animals taken together are known as fauna which includes birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, etc. Rapid environmental changes typically cause mass extinctions, more than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earths current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described, the total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC. In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living on Earth. The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, there are microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland. More recently, in 2015, remains of 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
21.
Monoculture
–
Monoculture is the agricultural practice of producing or growing a single crop, plant, or livestock species, variety, or breed in a field or farming system at a time. Polyculture, where more than one crop is grown in the space at the same time, is the alternative to monoculture. Monoculture is widely used in both farming and organic farming and has allowed increased efficiency in planting and harvest. The practice has been criticized for its effects and for putting the food supply chain at risk. Diversity can be added both in time, as with a rotation or sequence, or in space, with a polyculture. Oligoculture has been suggested to describe a crop rotation of just a few crops, the term monoculture is frequently applied for other uses to describe any group dominated by a single variety, e. g. The term is used in agriculture and describes the practice of planting the same cultivar over an extended area, each cultivar has the same standardized planting, maintenance and harvesting requirements resulting in greater yields and lower costs. It also is beneficial because a crop can be tailor-planted for a location that has special problems – like soil salt or drought or a growing season. When a crop is matched to its environment, a monoculture can produce higher yields than a polyculture. In the last 40 years, modern practices such as monoculture planting, however, planting the same crop in the same place each year depletes the nutrients from the earth that the plant relies on and leaves soil weak and unable to support healthy plant growth. Because soil structure and quality is so poor, farmers are forced to use chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth and these fertilizers, in turn, disrupt the natural makeup of the soil and contribute further to nutrient depletion. Monocropping also creates the spread of pests and diseases, which have to be treated with yet more chemicals, the effects of monocropping on the environment are severe when pesticides and fertilizers make their way into ground water or become airborne, creating pollution. In forestry, monoculture refers to the planting of one species of tree, monoculture plantings provide great yields and more efficient harvesting than natural stands of trees. Single-species stands of trees are often the natural way trees grow, the mechanical harvesting of trees can compact soils, which can adversely affect understory growth. Single-species planting of trees also are more vulnerable when infected with a pathogen, or are attacked by insects, examples of monoculture include lawns and most field cs wheat or corn. The term is used where a single breed of farm animal is raised in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations. Crops used in agriculture are usually single strains that have bred for high yield. Since all plants in a monoculture are genetically similar, if a disease strikes to which they have no resistance, polyculture, which is the mixing of different crops, reduces the likelihood that one or more of the crops will be resistant to any particular pathogen
22.
Clearcutting
–
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
23.
Wildfire
–
A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or rural area. Fossil charcoal indicates that wildfires began soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants 420 million years ago, wildfire’s occurrence throughout the history of terrestrial life invites conjecture that fire must have had pronounced evolutionary effects on most ecosystems flora and fauna. Earth is an intrinsically flammable planet owing to its cover of vegetation, seasonally dry climates, atmospheric oxygen, widespread lightning. Wildfires can be characterised in terms of the cause of ignition, their properties, the combustible material present. Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, but they have beneficial effects on native vegetation, animals. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for growth, however, wildfire in ecosystems where wildfire is uncommon or where non-native vegetation has encroached may have negative ecological effects. Wildfire behaviour and severity result from the combination of such as available fuels, physical setting. Strategies of wildfire prevention, detection and suppression have varied over the years, one common and inexpensive technique is controlled burning, permitting or even igniting smaller fires to minimise the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire. Vegetation may be burned periodically to maintain species diversity and frequent burning of surface fuels limits fuel accumulation. Wildland fire use is the cheapest and most ecologically appropriate policy for many forests, fuels may also be removed by logging, but fuels treatments and thinning have no effect on severe fire behaviour. Wildfires can also be started in communities experiencing shifting cultivation, where land is cleared quickly and farmed until the soil loses fertility, forested areas cleared by logging encourage the dominance of flammable grasses, and abandoned logging roads overgrown by vegetation may act as fire corridors. The most common cause of wildfires throughout the world. In Canada and northwest China, for example, lightning operates as the source of ignition. In other parts of the world, human involvement is a major contributor, in China and in the Mediterranean Basin, human carelessness is a major cause of wildfires. In the United States and Australia, the source of wildfires can be traced both to lightning strikes and to human activities. Coal seam fires burn in the thousands around the world, such as those in Burning Mountain, New South Wales, Centralia, Pennsylvania and they can also flare up unexpectedly and ignite nearby flammable material. The spread of wildfires based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight, overall, fire types can be generally characterized by their fuels as follows, Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff and other buried organic matter
24.
Harvesting
–
Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, on smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting utilizes the most expensive and sophisticated farm machinery, the term harvesting in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling. Harvest, a noun, came from the Old English word hærfest, meaning autumn, harvest-time, the harvest came to also mean the activity of reaping, gathering, and storing grain and other grown products during the autumn, and also the grain and other grown products themselves. Harvest was also verbified, To harvest means to reap, gather, people who harvest and equipment that harvests are harvesters, while they do it, they are harvesting. In history, crop failures and subsequent famines have triggered human migration, rural exodus, over years, unsustainable farming of land degrades soil fertility and diminishes crop yield. With a steadily growing population and local overpopulation, even slightly diminishing yields are already the equivalent to a partial harvest failure. Fortunately, fertilizers obviate the need for regeneration in the first place. Harvesting commonly refers to grain and produce, but also has other uses, the term harvest is also used in reference to harvesting grapes for wine. Within the context of irrigation, water harvesting refers to the collection, instead of harvest, the term exploit is also used, as in exploiting fisheries or water resources. Energy harvesting is the process of capturing and storing energy that would otherwise go unexploited, body harvesting, or cadaver harvesting, is the process of collecting and preparing cadavers for anatomical study. In a similar sense, organ harvesting is the removal of tissues or organs from a donor for purposes of transplanting. Harvesting or Domestic Harvesting in Canada refers to hunting, fishing, and plant gathering by First Nations, Métis, for example, in the Gwichin Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement, Harvesting means gathering, hunting, trapping or fishing. Similarly, in the Tlicho Land Claim and Self Government Agreement, Harvesting means, in relation to wildlife, hunting, trapping or fishing and, in relation to plants or trees, combine Harvester Harvest Harvest festival Overharvesting Threshing Winnowing
25.
Finland
–
Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north. Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland, Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia. Finlands population is 5.5 million, and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region,88. 7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, the second major group are the Finland-Swedes. In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, from the late 12th century, Finland was an integral part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns, nevertheless, in 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1906, Finland became the nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared itself independent, in 1918, the fledgling state was divided by civil war, with the Bolshevik-leaning Reds supported by the equally new Soviet Russia, fighting the Whites, supported by the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the became a republic. During World War II, the Soviet Union sought repeatedly to occupy Finland, with Finland losing parts of Karelia, Salla and Kuusamo, Petsamo and some islands, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics during the Cold War era, Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity, however, Finnish GDP growth has been negative in 2012–2014, with a preceding nadir of −8% in 2009. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, a large majority of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, though freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. The first known appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti, the third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi and dates from the 13th century, the name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD98. The name Suomi has uncertain origins, but a candidate for a source is the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, in addition to the close relatives of Finnish, this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian
26.
Pulp and paper industry
–
The pulp and paper industry comprises companies that use wood as raw material and produce pulp, paper, paperboard and other cellulose-based products. The industry is dominated by North American, northern European and East Asian countries, australasia and Brazil also have significant pulp and paper enterprises. The United States had been the leading producer of paper until it was overtaken by China in 2009. The industry is criticized by groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council for unsustainable deforestation. The industry trend is to expand globally to countries like Russia, China and Indonesia with low wages, considering that the pulp and paper industry is a practitioner of nanotechnology, then it is easily the worlds largest. The pulp is fed to a machine where it is formed as a paper web. On the paper machine the most common is the steam heated can dryer, the first mechanised paper machine was installed at Frogmore Mill, Apsley, Hertfordshire in 1803, followed by another in 1804. The site operates currently as a museum
27.
Tree planting
–
Tree planting is the process of transplanting tree seedlings, generally for forestry, land reclamation, or landscaping purpose. It differs from the transplantation of larger trees in arboriculture, and from the lower cost but slower, in silviculture the activity is known as reforestation, or afforestation, depending on whether the area being planted has or has not recently been forested. It involves planting seedlings over an area of land where the forest has been harvested or damaged by fire, Tree planting is carried out in many different parts of the world, and strategies may differ widely across nations and regions and among individual reforestation companies. Tree planting is grounded in forest science, and if performed properly can result in the regeneration of a deforested area. Because trees remove carbon dioxide from the air as they grow, australian forests have been heavily affected since European colonisation, and some attempts have been made to restore native habitats, both by government and individuals. Greening Australia is a national Non profit set up to run the National Tree Program initiated by the Federal Government in 1982, greening Australia completed the 1 Billion Tree target and has gone on to become one of the major tree planting organisations in the country. There is a strong movement for conservation in Australia through Landcare. National Tree Day is organised annually by Planet Ark in the last week in July, growing trees for Timber industries is a long-term project. It may take years for a tree to mature to an age. Some trees are hundreds of years old. Many state governments run their own Million Tree programs each year to community involvement. Most tree planting in Canada is carried out by private reforestation companies, treeplanting is typically piece work and tree prices can vary widely depending on the difficulty of the terrain and on the winning contracts bid price. As a result, there is a saying among planters, There is no bad land,4 months of hard work can yield enough to live on for an entire year, but conditions are harsh. Tree planting crews often do not permanently reside in the areas where they work, bush camp accommodations usually consist of a mess tent, cook shack, dry goods tent, first aid tent, freshly dug outhouses, and a shower tent or trailer. Planters are responsible for bringing either a tent or car to sleep in, a camp also contains camp cooks and support staff. Planting is carried out in accordance to the specifications. Planted clearcuts are spot checked on a regular basis and these concerns vary from region to region, and from contract to contract. The average British Columbian planter plants 1600 trees per day and these numbers are higher in central and eastern Canada, where the terrain is generally faster, however the price per tree is slightly lower as a result
28.
Weyerhaeuser
–
Weyerhaeuser is one of the worlds largest private owners of timberlands. It owns more than 13 million acres of timberlands, primarily in the U. S. the company also manufactures wood and cellulose fiber products. Weyerhaeuser is a real estate investment trust, fifteen partners and 900,000 acres of Washington timberland were involved in the founding, and the land was purchased from James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway. In 1929, the company built what was then the worlds largest sawmill in Longview, Weyerhaeusers pulp mill in Longview, which began production in 1931, sustained the company financially during the Great Depression. In 1959, the company eliminated the word Timber from its name to reflect its operations. In 1965, Weyerhaeuser built its first bleached kraft pulp mill in Canada, Weyerhaeuser implemented its High Yield Forestry Plan in 1967 which drew upon 30 years of forestry research and field experience. It called for the planting of seedlings within one year of a harvest, soil fertilization, thinning, rehabilitation of brushlands, Weyerhaeuser consolidated its core businesses in the late 1990s and ended its services in mortgage banking, personal care products, financial services, and information systems consulting. Weyerhaeuser also expanded into South America, Australia, and Asia, in 1999, Weyerhaeuser purchased MacMillan Bloedel Limited, a large Canadian forestry company. Then in 2002 after a hostile buyout, the company acquired Willamette Industries, Inc. of Portland. In March 2008, Weyerhaeuser Company announced the sale of its Containerboard Packaging and Recycling business to International Paper for $6 billion in cash, the transaction included nine containerboard mills,72 packaging locations,10 specialty-packaging plants, four kraft bag and sack locations and 19 recycling facilities. The transaction affected approximately 14,300 employees, Weyerhaeuser converted into a real estate investment trust when it filed its 2010 tax return. In 2013, Weyerhaeuser purchased Longview Timber for $2.65 billion including debt from Brookfield Asset Management, the acquisition added 645,000 acres of timberland to Weyerhaeusers holdings in Oregon and Washington. In 2014, Weyerhaeuser spun off its home building unit to TRI Pointe Homes in a $2.8 billion transaction, the company also announced its intention to sell its Federal Way headquarters and relocate to Seattles Pioneer Square in 2016. The sale and move were completed in 2016, on November 8,2015, it was announced that Weyerhaeuser would buy Plum Creek Timber for $8.4 billion, forming the largest private owner of timberland in the United States. The companys operations are divided into three business segments, Timberlands — Growing and harvesting trees in renewable cycles. Wood products — Manufacturing and distribution of building materials for homes, cellulose fiber — Research and development, manufacturing and distribution of pulp products. Doyle Simons is the CEO and president of Weyerhaeuser Company, the Weyerhaeuser board of directors consists of, Debra A. Cafaro, Mark Emmert, John I. Kieckhefer, Wayne W. Murdy, Nicole Piasecki, Doyle R. Simons, Richard Sinkfield, D. Michael Steuert, Kim Williams, hidy, Ralph W, Hill, Frank Ernest, Nevins, Allan
29.
Plantation
–
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
30.
Teak
–
Teak is a tropical hardwood tree species placed in the flowering plant family Lamiaceae. Tectona grandis is a large, deciduous tree that occurs in mixed hardwood forests and it has small, fragrant white flowers and large papery leaves that are often hairy on the lower surface. It is sometimes known as the Burmese teak, Teak wood has a leather-like smell when it is freshly milled. It is particularly valued for its durability and water resistance, and is used for building, exterior construction, veneer, furniture, carving, turnings. Myanmars teak forests account for half of the worlds naturally occurring teak. Molecular studies show there are two centres of genetic origin of teak, one in India and the other in Myanmar. CP teak is a description of teak from the states of India. Nagpur teak is another regional Indian teak and it produces small, white flowers arranged in dense clusters at the end of the branches. Flowers contain both types of reproductive organs The word teak comes from, Tamil tekku, Malayalam word thekku, the plant is known as Thekka in Sinhala by Sri Lankan people. Teak is a large, deciduous tree up to 40 m tall with gray to grayish brown branches, leaves are ovate-elliptic to ovate, 15–45 cm long by 8–23 cm wide, and are held on robust petioles that are 2–4 cm long. Fragrant white flowers are borne on 25–40 cm long by 30 cm wide panicles from June to August, the corolla tube is 2. 5–3 mm long with 2 mm wide obtuse lobes. Tectona grandis sets fruit from September to December, fruits are globose and 1. 2-1.8 cm in diameter, flowers are weakly protandrous in that the anthers precede the stigma in maturity and pollen is shed within a few hours of the flower opening. The flowers are entomophilous, but can occasionally be anemophilous. A1996 study found that in its range in Thailand. Heartwood is brownish red in colour, sometimes there are dark patches on it. There is a scent in newly cut wood. Sapwood is whitish to yellowish brown in colour. It can easily separate from heartwood, wood texture is hard and ring porous
31.
Costa Rica
–
It has a population of around 4.5 million, of whom nearly a quarter live in the metropolitan area of the capital and largest city, San José. Costa Rica was sparsely inhabited by people before coming under Spanish rule in the 16th century. Since then, Costa Rica has remained among the most stable, prosperous, following a brief civil war, it permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming one of only a few sovereign nations without a standing army. Costa Rica is a member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. The country has consistently performed favourably in the Human Development Index, placing 69th in the world as of 2015 and its rapidly developing economy, once heavily dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism. Costa Rica is known for its environmental policies, being the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability. Costa Rica officially plans to become a country by 2021. In 2012, it became the first country in the Americas to ban recreational hunting, historians have classified the indigenous people of Costa Rica as belonging to the Intermediate Area, where the peripheries of the Mesoamerican and Andean native cultures overlapped. More recently, pre-Columbian Costa Rica has also described as part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. The oldest evidence of occupation in Costa Rica is associated with the arrival of various groups of hunter-gatherers about 10,000 to 7,000 years BCE in the Turrialba Valley. The presence of Clovis culture type spearheads and arrows from South America opens the possibility that, in this area, agriculture became evident in the populations that lived in Costa Rica about 5,000 years ago. They mainly grew tubers and roots, for the first and second millennia BCE there were already settled farming communities. These were small and scattered, although the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture as the livelihood in the territory is still unknown. The earliest use of pottery appears around 2,000 to 3,000 BCE, shards of pots, cylindrical vases, platters, gourds and other forms of vases decorated with grooves, prints, and some modelled after animals have been found. The impact of indigenous peoples on modern Costa Rican culture has been small compared to other nations. Costa Rica was described as the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all America by a Spanish governor in 1719, for all these reasons, Costa Rica was, by and large, unappreciated and overlooked by the Spanish Crown and left to develop on its own. Costa Rica became a democracy with no oppressed mestizo or indigenous class. It was not long before Spanish settlers turned to the hills, where they found rich volcanic soil, like the rest of Central America, Costa Rica never fought for independence from Spain
32.
Mahogany
–
West Indian or Cuban mahogany, native to southern Florida and the Caribbean, formerly dominant in the mahogany trade, but not in widespread commercial use since World War II. Swietenia humilis, a small and often twisted mahogany tree limited to dry forests in Pacific Central America that is of limited commercial utility. Some botanists believe that S. humilis is a variant of S. macrophylla. While the three Swietenia species are classified officially as genuine mahogany, other Meliaceae species with timber uses are classified as true mahogany, some may or may not have the word mahogany in their trade or common name. Some members of the genus Shorea of the family Dipterocarpaceae are also sold as Philippine mahogany. Mahogany is an important lumber prized for its beauty, durability, and color. The leading importer of mahogany is the United States, followed by Britain, while the largest exporter today is Peru and it was estimated that in 2000, some 57,000 mahogany trees were harvested to supply the U. S. furniture trade alone. Mahogany is the tree of the Dominican Republic and Belize. A mahogany tree with two woodcutters bearing an axe and a paddle also appears on the Belizean national coat of arms, under the motto, Sub umbra floreo. The natural distribution of species within the Americas is geographically distinct. In the 20th century various botanists attempted to further define S. macrophylla in South America as a new species, such as S. candollei Pittier, but many authorities consider these spurious. According to Record and Hess, all of the mahogany of continental North and South America can be considered as one botanical species, the name mahogany was initially associated only with those islands in the West Indies under British control. When transported to Jamaica as slaves, they gave the name to the similar trees they saw there. Though this interpretation has been disputed, no one has suggested a more plausible origin, the indigenous Arawak name for the tree is not known. In 1671 the word appeared in print for the first time. Among botanists and naturalists, however, the tree was considered a type of cedar, the following year it was assigned to a new genus by Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, and named Swietenia mahagoni. Until the 19th century all of the mahogany was regarded as one species, although varying in quality and character according to soil and climate. In 1836 the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini identified a species while working on specimens collected on the Pacific coast of Mexico
33.
Pine
–
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
34.
Eucalyptus
–
Eucalyptus /ˌjuːkəˈlɪptəs/ LHeritier 1789 is a diverse genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the flora of Australia. There are more than 700 species of eucalyptus and most are native to Australia, one species, Eucalyptus deglupta, ranges as far north as the Philippines. Of the 15 species found outside Australia, just nine are exclusively non-Australian, species of eucalyptus are cultivated widely in the tropical and temperate world, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East, China, and the Indian subcontinent. However, the range over which many eucalypts can be planted in the zone is constrained by their limited cold tolerance. Australia is covered by 92,000,000 hectares of eucalypt forest, Eucalyptus is one of three similar genera that are commonly referred to as eucalypts, the others being Corymbia and Angophora. Many species, though by no means all, are known as gum trees because they exude copious kino from any break in the bark. The generic name is derived from the Greek words ευ well and καλύπτω to cover, Eucalyptus oil finds many uses like in aromatherapy, as a cure for joint pains. Eucalyptus trees show allelopathic effects, they release compounds which inhibit other plant species from growing nearby, on warm days, eucalyptus forests are sometimes shrouded in a smog-like mist of vaporised volatile organic compounds, the Australian Blue Mountains take their name from the haze. A mature eucalyptus may take the form of a low shrub or a large tree. The species can be divided into three main habits and four size categories, as a generalisation forest trees are single-stemmed and have a crown forming a minor proportion of the whole tree height. Woodland trees are single-stemmed, although they may branch at a distance above ground level. Many mallee trees may be so low-growing as to be considered a shrub, two other tree forms are notable in Western Australia and described using the native names mallet and marlock. The mallet is a small to medium-sized tree that does not produce lignotubers and has a long trunk. This is the habit of mature healthy specimens of Eucalyptus occidentalis, E. astringens, E. spathulata, E. gardneri, E. dielsii, E. forrestiana, E. salubris, E. clivicola. The smooth bark of mallets often has a satiny sheen and may be white, cream, grey, green, or copper. The term marlock has been used, in Forest Trees of Australia, it is defined as a small tree without lignotubers. They usually grow in more or less pure stands, clearly recognisable examples are stands of E. platypus, E. vesiculosa, and the unrelated E. stoatei
35.
Gmelina arborea
–
Gmelina arborea, locally known as gamhar, is a fast-growing deciduous tree, occurring naturally throughout greater part of India at altitudes up to 1,500 meters. It is also planted in gardens and avenues, Gmelina arborea is a fast-growing tree, which grows on different localities and prefers moist fertile valleys with 750–4500 mm rainfall. It does not thrive on ill-drained soils and remains stunted on dry, sandy or poor soils, drought also reduces it to a shrubby form. The Gmelina arborea tree attains moderate to large height up to 30 m with girth of 1.2 to 4 a chlorophyll layer just under the outer bark, pale yellow white inside. Flowering takes place during February to April when the tree is more or less leafless whereas fruiting starts from May onwards up to June, the fruit is up to 2.5 cm long, smooth, dark green, turning yellow when ripe and has a fruity smell. This tree is planted as a garden and an avenue tree, growing in villages along agricultural land. It is light demander, tolerant of drought, but moderately frost hardy. It has good capacity to recover from frost injury, gamhar trees coppices very well with vigorous growth. Saplings and young plants need protection from deer and cattle, gamhar most commonly occurs in West Bengal forests in mixed forests. Gmelina arborea timber is reasonably strong for its weight and it is used in constructions, furniture, carriages, sports, musical instruments and artificial limbs. Once seasoned, it is a steady timber and moderately resistant to decay. It is also used for bentwood articles, in boat building it is used for decking and for oars. The wood is used for manufacturing tea chests and general purpose plywood, blackboards, frame core. In the instrument industry gambhar timber is widely employed for the manufacture of drawing boards, plane tables, instrument boxes, thermometer scales and it is also used in artificial limbs, carriages and bobbins. It is a timber for handles of tennis rackets, frames and reinforcements of carom boards. Gamhar is used in papermaking and matchwood industry too, Gmelina arborea leaves are considered good for cattle and are also used as a feed to eri-silkworm. Leaf paste is applied to relieve headache and juice is used as wash for ulcers, flowers are sweet, cooling, bitter, acrid and astringent. They are useful in leprosy and blood diseases, the plant is recommended in combination with other drugs for the treatment of snakebite and scorpion sting
36.
Native plant
–
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
37.
Hectare
–
The hectare is an SI accepted metric system unit of area equal to 100 ares and primarily used in the measurement of land as a metric replacement for the imperial acre. An acre is about 0.405 hectare and one hectare contains about 2.47 acres, in 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1⁄100 km2. When the metric system was further rationalised in 1960, resulting in the International System of Units, the are was not included as a recognised unit. The hectare, however, remains as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI units, the metric system of measurement was first given a legal basis in 1795 by the French Revolutionary government. At the first meeting of the CGPM in 1889 when a new standard metre, manufactured by Johnson Matthey & Co of London was adopted, in 1960, when the metric system was updated as the International System of Units, the are did not receive international recognition. The units that were catalogued replicated the recommendations of the CGPM, many farmers, especially older ones, still use the acre for everyday calculations, and convert to hectares only for official paperwork. Farm fields can have long histories which are resistant to change, with names such as the six acre field stretching back hundreds of years. The names centiare, deciare, decare and hectare are derived by adding the standard metric prefixes to the base unit of area. The centiare is a synonym for one square metre, the deciare is ten square metres. The are is a unit of area, equal to 100 square metres and it was defined by older forms of the metric system, but is now outside of the modern International System of Units. It is commonly used to measure real estate, in particular in Indonesia, India, and in French-, Portuguese-, Slovakian-, Serbian-, Czech-, Polish-, Dutch-, in Russia and other former Soviet Union states, the are is called sotka. It is used to describe the size of suburban dacha or allotment garden plots or small city parks where the hectare would be too large, the decare is derived from deka, the prefix for 10 and are, and is equal to 10 ares or 1000 square metres. It is used in Norway and in the former Ottoman areas of the Middle East, the hectare, although not strictly a unit of SI, is the only named unit of area that is accepted for use within the SI. The United Kingdom, United States, Burma, and to some extent Canada instead use the acre, others, such as South Africa, published conversion factors which were to be used particularly when preparing consolidation diagrams by compilation. In many countries, metrication redefined or clarified existing measures in terms of metric units, non-SI units accepted for use with the International System of Units
38.
Plant community
–
The components of each plant community are influenced by soil type, topography, climate and human disturbance. In many cases there are several soil types within a given phytocoenosis, a plant community can be described floristically and/or physiognomically. For example, a forest includes the overstory, or upper layer of the canopy, as well as the understory, further subdivided into the shrub layer, herbaceous layer. In some cases of complex forests there is also a well-defined lower tree layer, a plant community can be rare even if none of the major species defining it are rare. This is because it is the association of species and relationship to their environment that may be rare, an example is the Sycamore Alluvial Woodland in California dominated by the California sycamore Platanus racemosa. The community is rare, being localized to an area of California and existing nowhere else. An example is a grassland on the northern Caucasus Steppes, where common grass species found are Festuca sulcata, a common sedge in this grassland phytocoenosis is Carex shreberi. Other representative forbs occurring in these grasslands are Artemisia austriaca. An example of a three tiered plant community is in Central Westland of South Island, New Zealand and these forests are the most extensive continuous reaches of podocarp/broadleaf forests in that country. The overstory includes miro, rimu and mountain totara, community Association size-asymmetric competition Ecosystem Habitat Phytosociology Salt Marsh Stand level modelling Jean-Michel Gobat, Michel Aragno, Willy Matthey and V. A. K. Sarma. The living soil C. Michael Hogan, crown Fern, Blechnum discolor, Globaltwitcher. com, ed. N. Stromberg J. M. Suttie, Stephen G. Reynolds and Caterina Batello. Grasslands of the world, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,514 pages
39.
Humus
–
In soil science, humus refers to the fraction of soil organic matter that is amorphous and without the cellular cake structure characteristic of plants, micro-organisms or animals. Humus significantly influences the bulk density of soil and contributes to moisture, soil formation begins with the weathering of humus. In agriculture, humus is sometimes used to describe mature. It is also used to describe a topsoil horizon that contains organic matter, humus is the dark organic matter that forms in the soil when plant and animal matter decays. Humus contains many nutrients for healthy soil, nitrogen being the most important of all. A great part of the material that reaches the soil is broken down by the action of microorganisms. In this way the nitrogen and the nutrients are recycled. These organic polymers are stable, that is resistant to the action of microorganisms and this stability implies that once formed humus integrates the permanent structure of soil, contributing to its improvement. It is difficult to define precisely, it is a highly complex substance. Humus should be differentiated from decomposing organic matter, the latter is rough-looking material and remains of the original plant are still visible. Fully humified organic matter, on the hand, has a uniform dark, spongy, jelly-like appearance. It may remain like this for millennia or more and it has no determinate shape, structure or character. However, humified organic matter, when examined under the microscope may reveal tiny plant, animal or microbial remains that have been mechanically and this suggests a fuzzy boundary between humus and organic matter. In most literature, humus is considered a part of soil organic matter. The process of humification can occur naturally in soil, or in the production of compost, organic matter is degraded into humus by a combination of mycorrhizal fungi, bacteria, microbes and animals such as earthworms, nematodes, protozoa and various arthropods. It helps the soil retain moisture by increasing microporosity, and encourages the formation of soil structure. Humus allows soil organisms to feed and reproduce, and is described as the life-force of the soil. Plant remains contain organic compounds, sugars, starches, proteins, carbohydrates, lignins, waxes, resins, simple proteins, organic acids, starches and sugars break down rapidly, while crude proteins, fats, waxes and resins remain relatively unchanged for longer periods of time
40.
Carbon cycle
–
The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth. The global carbon budget is the balance of the exchanges of carbon between the reservoirs or between one specific loop of the carbon cycle. An examination of the budget of a pool or reservoir can provide information about whether the pool or reservoir is functioning as a source or sink for carbon dioxide. The carbon cycle was discovered by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier. Carbon-based molecules are crucial for life on Earth, because it is the component of biological compounds. Carbon is also a component of many minerals. Carbon also exists in forms in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is responsible for the greenhouse effect and is one of the most important human-contributed greenhouse gases. In the past two centuries, human activities have altered the global cycle, most significantly in the atmosphere. Although carbon dioxide levels have changed naturally over the past several thousand years, changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2 are considerably altering weather patterns and indirectly influencing oceanic chemistry. The Earths interior, carbon from the Earths mantle and crust, the ocean contains the largest active pool of carbon near the surface of the Earth. The natural flows of carbon between the atmosphere, ocean, terrestrial ecosystems, and sediments is fairly balanced, so that carbon levels would be stable without human influence. Carbon in the Earths atmosphere exists in two forms, carbon dioxide and methane. Both of these gases absorb and retain heat in the atmosphere and are responsible for the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide leaves the atmosphere through photosynthesis, thus entering the terrestrial, Carbon dioxide also dissolves directly from the atmosphere into bodies of water, as well as dissolving in precipitation as raindrops fall through the atmosphere. When dissolved in water, carbon reacts with water molecules and forms carbonic acid. It can then be absorbed by rocks through weathering and it also can acidify other surfaces it touches or be washed into the ocean. g. by burning fossil fuels and manufacturing concrete. The terrestrial biosphere includes the carbon in all land-living organisms
41.
Photosynthesis
–
Photosynthesis is a process used by plants and other organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organisms activities. In most cases, oxygen is released as a waste product. Most plants, most algae, and cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis, such organisms are called photoautotrophs, in plants, these proteins are held inside organelles called chloroplasts, which are most abundant in leaf cells, while in bacteria they are embedded in the plasma membrane. In these light-dependent reactions, some energy is used to strip electrons from suitable substances, such as water, in the Calvin cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide is incorporated into already existing organic carbon compounds, such as ribulose bisphosphate. Using the ATP and NADPH produced by the light-dependent reactions, the compounds are then reduced and removed to form further carbohydrates. Cyanobacteria appeared later, the oxygen they produced contributed directly to the oxygenation of the Earth. Today, the rate of energy capture by photosynthesis globally is approximately 130 terawatts. Photosynthetic organisms also convert around 100–115 thousand million tonnes of carbon into biomass per year. Photosynthetic organisms are photoautotrophs, which means that they are able to synthesize food directly from carbon dioxide, however, not all organisms that use light as a source of energy carry out photosynthesis, photoheterotrophs use organic compounds, rather than carbon dioxide, as a source of carbon. In plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, photosynthesis releases oxygen and this is called oxygenic photosynthesis and is by far the most common type of photosynthesis used by living organisms. Although there are differences between oxygenic photosynthesis in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, the overall process is quite similar in these organisms. There are also varieties of anoxygenic photosynthesis, used mostly by certain types of bacteria. Carbon dioxide is converted into sugars in a process called carbon fixation, photosynthesis provides the energy in the form of free electrons that are used to split carbon from carbon dioxide that is then used to fix that carbon once again as carbohydrate. Carbon fixation is a redox reaction, so photosynthesis supplies the energy that drives both process. In the first stage, light-dependent reactions or light reactions capture the energy of light and use it to make the energy-storage molecules ATP, during the second stage, the light-independent reactions use these products to capture and reduce carbon dioxide. Most organisms that utilize oxygenic photosynthesis use visible light for the light-dependent reactions, some organisms employ even more radical variants of photosynthesis. Some archea use a method that employs a pigment similar to those used for vision in animals. The bacteriorhodopsin changes its configuration in response to sunlight, acting as a proton pump and this produces a proton gradient more directly, which is then converted to chemical energy
42.
Greenhouse gas
–
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earths atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earths surface would be about −18 °C, rather than the present average of 15 °C. In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have produced a 40% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 400 ppm in 2015. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of a portion of the emissions by various natural sinks involved in the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions come from combustion of fuels, principally coal, oil. Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the range emitted by Earth. The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a time is the airborne fraction. The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the increase in a given year to that years total emissions. Over the last 50 years the annual airborne fraction for CO2 has been increasing at 0.25 ±0. 21%/year, therefore, they do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect and usually are omitted when discussing greenhouse gases. Some gases have indirect radiative effects and this happens in two main ways. One way is that when they break down in the atmosphere they produce another greenhouse gas, for example, methane and carbon monoxide are oxidized to give carbon dioxide. Oxidation of CO to CO2 directly produces an increase in radiative forcing although the reason is subtle. The peak of the thermal IR emission from Earths surface is close to a strong vibrational absorption band of CO2. On the other hand, the single CO vibrational band only absorbs IR at much higher frequencies, where the ~300 K thermal emission of the surface is at least a factor of ten lower. Oxidation of methane to CO2, which requires reactions with the OH radical, produces a reduction, since CO2 is a weaker greenhouse gas than methane. As described below this is not the story, since the oxidations of CO. In any case, the calculation of the radiative effect needs to include both the direct and indirect forcing
43.
Carbon sink
–
A carbon sink is a natural or artificial reservoir that accumulates and stores some carbon-containing chemical compound for an indefinite period. The process by which carbon sinks remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration, public awareness of the significance of CO2 sinks has grown since passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which promotes their use as a form of carbon offset. There are also different strategies used to enhance this process, because growing vegetation takes in carbon dioxide, the Kyoto Protocol allows Annex I countries with large areas of growing forests to issue Removal Units to recognize the sequestration of carbon. The additional units make it easier for them to achieve their target emission levels and it is estimated that forests absorb between 10 and 20 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare each year, through photosynthetic conversion into starch, cellulose, lignin, and wooden biomass. While this has been documented for temperate forests and plantations. Some countries seek to trade rights in carbon emission markets. If overall limits on greenhouse gas emission are put into place, cap, there is as yet no carbon audit regime for all such markets globally, and none is specified in the Kyoto Protocol. In the Clean Development Mechanism, only afforestation and reforestation are eligible to produce certified emission reductions in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Forest conservation activities or activities avoiding deforestation, which would result in emission reduction through the conservation of existing stocks, are not eligible at this time. Also, agricultural carbon sequestration is not possible yet, soils represent a short to long-term carbon storage medium, and contains more carbon than all terrestrial vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Plant litter and other biomass including charcoal accumulates as organic matter in soils, more recalcitrant organic carbon polymers such as cellulose, hemi-cellulose, lignin, aliphatic compounds, waxes and terpenoids are collectively retained as humus. Organic matter tends to accumulate in litter and soils of colder regions such as the forests of North America. Leaf litter and humus are rapidly oxidized and poorly retained in sub-tropical and tropical climate due to high temperatures. Areas where shifting cultivation or slash and burn agriculture are practiced are generally only fertile for 2–3 years before they are abandoned. These tropical jungles are similar to coral reefs in that they are efficient at conserving and circulating necessary nutrients. Much organic carbon retained in many areas worldwide has been severely depleted due to intensive farming practices. Grasslands contribute to organic matter, stored mainly in their extensive fibrous root mats. Due in part to the conditions of these regions, these soils can accumulate significant quantities of organic matter
44.
Fossil fuel
–
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing energy originating in ancient photosynthesis. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, Fossil fuels contain high percentages of carbon and include petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Other commonly used derivatives include kerosene and propane, Fossil fuels range from volatile materials with low carbon, hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquids like petroleum, to nonvolatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon fields either alone, associated with oil, non-fossil sources in 2006 included nuclear 8. 5%, hydroelectric 6. 3%, and others amounting to 0. 9%. World energy consumption was growing about 2. 3% per year, the use of fossil fuels raises serious environmental concerns. The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and it is estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year. Carbon dioxide is a gas that increases radiative forcing and contributes to global warming. A global movement towards the generation of energy is underway to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Over geological time, this matter, mixed with mud. Despite these heat driven transformations, the energy is still photosynthetic in origin. There is a range of organic, or hydrocarbon, compounds in any given fuel mixture. The specific mixture of hydrocarbons gives a fuel its characteristic properties, such as boiling point, melting point, density, viscosity, some fuels like natural gas, for instance, contain only very low boiling, gaseous components. Others such as gasoline or diesel contain much higher boiling components, terrestrial plants, on the other hand, tend to form coal and methane. Many of the coal fields date to the Carboniferous period of Earths history, terrestrial plants also form type III kerogen, a source of natural gas. Fossil fuels are of importance because they can be burned. The use of coal as a fuel predates recorded history, coal was used to run furnaces for the melting of metal ore. Semi-solid hydrocarbons from seeps were also burned in ancient times, commercial exploitation of petroleum, largely as a replacement for oils from animal sources, for use in oil lamps began in the 19th century. Natural gas, once flared-off as an byproduct of petroleum production, is now considered a very valuable resource
Commons
