1.
Ripuarian language
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Ripuarian is a German dialect group, part of the West Central German language group. It is spoken in the Rhineland, south of the Benrath line, from northwest of Düsseldorf and Cologne, to Aachen in the west, and Waldbröl in the east. The language area also comprises the north of the German-speaking Community of Belgium as well as the edge of the Limburg province of the Netherlands. The name derives from the Ripuarian Franks, who settled in the area from the 4th century onward, the most famous member is Kölsch, the local dialect of Cologne. Dialects belonging to the Ripuarian group almost always call themselves Platt like Öcher Platt or Eischwiele Platt, most of the more than one hundred Ripuarian dialects are bound to one specific village or municipality. Usually there are distinctive differences between neighbouring dialects, and increasingly bigger differences between the more distant dialects. These are described by a set of isoglosses called the Rhenish fan in linguistics, the way people talk, even if they are not using Ripuarian, often allows them to be traced precisely to a village or city quarter where they learned to speak. About a million people speak a variation of Ripuarian dialect, which constitutes about one quarter of the inhabitants of the area, penetration of Ripuarian in everyday communication varies considerably, as does the percentage of Ripuarian speakers from one place to another. In some places there may only be a few speakers left. Both in the genuine Ripuarian area and far around it, the number of people passively understanding Ripuarian to some extent exceeds the number of speakers by far. Estimates assume some ten, and up to twenty million speakers, most of the historic roots of Ripuarian languages are in Middle High German, but there were other influences too, such as Latin, Low German, Dutch, French, and Southern Meuse-Rhenish. Several elements of grammar are unique to Ripuarian, existing in no other German language, Belgium and the Netherlands officially recognise some Ripuarian dialects as minority languages, and the European Union likewise follows. Low Dietsch Southern Meuse-Rhenish Rheinische Dokumenta
2.
Lake Erie
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Lake Erie is the fourth-largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the thirteenth-largest globally if measured in terms of surface area. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes, at its deepest point Lake Erie is 210 feet deep. Lake Eries northern shore is bounded by the Canadian province of Ontario, with the U. S. states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and these jurisdictions divide the surface area of the lake by water boundaries. The lake was named by the Erie people, a Native Americans people who lived along its southern shore and that Iroquoian tribe called it Erige because of its unpredictable and sometimes violently dangerous nature. It is a matter of whether the lake was named after the tribe. Situated below Lake Huron, Eries primary inlet is the Detroit River, Lake Erie has a mean elevation of 571 feet above sea level. It has an area of 9,990 square miles with a length of 241 statute miles. The warm summer of 1999 caused lake temperatures to come close to the 85 °F limit necessary to keep the plants cool, also because of its shallowness, and in spite of being the warmest lake in the summer, it is also the first to freeze in the winter. The waves build very quickly, according to other accounts, after being trapped for an hour-and-a-half, Baker was back on dry land, exhausted and battered but alive. This area is known as the thunderstorm capital of Canada with breathtaking lightning displays. Lake Erie is primarily fed by the Detroit River and drains via the Niagara River, navigation downstream is provided by the Welland Canal, part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Other major contributors to Lake Erie include the Grand River, the Huron River, the Maumee River, the Sandusky River, the Buffalo River, the drainage basin covers 30,140 square miles. Point Pelee National Park, the southernmost point of the Canadian mainland, is located on a peninsula extending into the lake. Several islands are found in the end of the lake, these belong to Ohio except for Pelee Island and eight neighboring islands. Major cities along Lake Erie include Buffalo, Erie, Pennsylvania, Toledo, Ohio, Islands tend to be located in the western side of the lake and total 31 in number. The island-village of Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island attracts young crowds who sometimes wear red hats and are prone to break off cartwheels in the park. Pelee Island is the largest of Eries islands, accessible by ferry from Leamington, Ontario and Sandusky, songbirds migrate to Pelee in spring, and monarch butterflies stop over during the fall. Lake Erie has a retention time of 2.6 years
3.
River
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A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water, small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the term river as applied to geographic features. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location, examples are run in parts of the United States, burn in Scotland and northeast England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always, Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Potamology is the study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general. Extraterrestrial rivers of liquid hydrocarbons have recently found on Titan. Channels may indicate past rivers on other planets, specifically outflow channels on Mars and rivers are theorised to exist on planets, a river begins at a source, follows a path called a course, and ends at a mouth or mouths. The water in a river is confined to a channel. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Floodplains may be wide in relation to the size of the river channel. This distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred, especially in areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing. Rivers can flow down mountains, through valleys or along plains, the term upriver refers to the direction towards the source of the river, i. e. against the direction of flow. Likewise, the term describes the direction towards the mouth of the river. The term left bank refers to the bank in the direction of flow. The river channel typically contains a stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water. Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide and they also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers and are quite rare
4.
Stream
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A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and banks. Streams are important as conduits in the cycle, instruments in groundwater recharge. The biological habitat in the vicinity of a stream is called a riparian zone. Given the status of the ongoing Holocene extinction, streams play an important corridor role in connecting fragmented habitats, the study of streams and waterways in general is known as surface hydrology and is a core element of environmental geography. Brook A stream smaller than a creek, especially one that is fed by a spring or seep and it is usually small and easily forded. A brook is characterised by its shallowness and its bed being composed primarily of rocks, creek In North America, Australia and New Zealand, a small to medium-sized natural stream. Sometimes navigable by motor craft and may be intermittent, in parts of Maryland, New England, the UK and India, a tidal inlet, typically in a salt marsh or mangrove swamp, or between enclosed and drained former salt marshes or swamps. In these cases, the stream is the stream, the course of the seawater through the creek channel at low. River A large natural stream, which may be a waterway, runnel the linear channel between the parallel ridges or bars on a shoreline beach or river floodplain, or between a bar and the shore. Tributary A contributory stream, or a stream which does not reach the sea, sometimes also called a branch or fork. There are a number of names for a stream. Allt is used in Highland Scotland, beck is used in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Dumfriesshire, Cumbria, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire. Bourne or winterbourne is used in the chalk downland of southern England, brook is used in the Midlands, Lancashire and Cheshire. Burn is used in Scotland and North East England, gill or ghyll is seen in the north of England and other areas influenced by Old Norse. Rivulet is an term encountered in Victorian era publications, stream is used in Southern England. Syke is used in lowland Scotland and Cumbria for a seasonal stream, branch is used to name streams in Maryland and Virginia. Falls is also used to name streams in Maryland, for streams/rivers which have waterfalls on them, little Gunpowder Falls and The Jones Falls are actually rivers named in this manner, unique to Maryland. Kill in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey comes from a Dutch language word meaning riverbed or water channel, run in Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or West Virginia can be the name of a stream
5.
Biome
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A biome /ˈbaɪoʊm/ is a community of plants and animals that have common characteristics for the environment they exist in, and can be found over a range of continents. Spanning continents, biomes are distinct biological communities that have formed in response to a shared physical climate, biome is a broader term than habitat, any biome can comprise a variety of habitats. While a biome can cover large ares, a microbiome is a mix of organisms that coexist in a space as well. For example, the microbiome is the collection of bacteria, viruses. The biotas of the Earth make up the biosphere, the term was suggested in 1916 by Clements, originally as a synonym for biotic community of Möbius. In 1935, Tansley added the climatic and soil aspects to the idea, the International Biological Program projects popularized the concept of biome. However, in contexts, the term biome is used in a different manner. Both includes many biomes in fact and their boundaries must therefore be drawn arbitrarily and their characterization made according to the average conditions that predominate in them. A1978 study on North American grasslands found a positive correlation between evapotranspiration in mm/yr and above-ground net primary production in g/m2/yr. These findings help explain the categories used in Holdridge’s bioclassification scheme, Holdridge uses the four axes to define 30 so-called humidity provinces, which are clearly visible in his diagram. While this scheme largely ignores soil and sun exposure, Holdridge acknowledged that these were important and his scheme can be seen as a simplification of Holdridges, more readily accessible, but missing Holdridges greater specificity. Whittaker based his approach on theoretical assertions and empirical sampling and he was in a unique position to make such a holistic assertion because he had previously compiled a review of biome classifications. Physiognomy, the apparent characteristics, outward features, or appearance of communities or species. Biome, a grouping of terrestrial ecosystems on a continent that are similar in vegetation structure, physiognomy, features of the environment. Formation, a kind of community of plants on a given continent. Biome-type, grouping of convergent biomes or formations of different continents, whittakers distinction between biome and formation can be simplified, formation is used when applied to plant communities only, while biome is used when concerned with both plants and animals. Whittakers convention of biome-type or formation-type is simply a method to categorize similar communities. Whittaker considered four main ecoclines in the terrestrial realm, changes in physiognomic complexity vary with how favorable of an environment exists
6.
Bank (geography)
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In geography, the word bank generally refers to the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as banks in different fields of geography, in limnology, a stream bank or river bank is the terrain alongside the bed of a river, creek, or stream. The bank consists of the sides of the channel, between which the flow is confined, stream banks are of particular interest in fluvial geography, which studies the processes associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. The shoreline of ponds, swamps, estuaries, reservoirs, or lakes are also of interest in limnology, the grade of all these banks or shorelines can vary from vertical to a shallow slope. In freshwater ecology, banks are of interest as the location of riparian habitats, riparian zones occur along upland and lowland river and stream beds. The ecology around and depending on a marsh, swamp, slough, or estuary, banks are also of interest in navigation, where the term can refer either to a barrier island or a submerged plateau, such as an ocean bank. A barrier island is a narrow island composed of sand. A submerged plateau is a flat topped elevation of the sea floor at shallow depth
7.
Aquatic plant
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Aquatic plants are plants that have adapted to living in aquatic environments. They are also referred to as hydrophytes or macrophytes and these plants require special adaptations for living submerged in water, or at the waters surface. The most common adaptation is aerenchyma, but floating leaves and finely dissected leaves are also common, aquatic plants can only grow in water or in soil that is permanently saturated with water. They are therefore a component of wetlands. The principal factor controlling the distribution of plants is the depth. However, other factors may also control their distribution, abundance, and growth form, including nutrients, disturbance from waves, grazing, aquatic vascular plants have originated on multiple occasions in different plant families, they can be ferns or angiosperms. Seaweeds are not vascular plants, rather they are marine algae. A few aquatic plants are able to survive in brackish, saline, examples are found in genera such as Thalassia and Zostera. Although most aquatic plants can reproduce by flowering and setting seed, many also have extensive asexual reproduction by means of rhizomes, turions, one of the largest aquatic plants in the world is the Amazon water lily, one of the smallest is the minute duckweed. Many small aquatic animals use plants like duckweed for a home, or for protection from predators, some other familiar examples of aquatic plants might include floating heart, water lily, lotus, and water hyacinth. Some aquatic plants are used by humans as a food source, examples include wild rice, water caltrop, Chinese water chestnut, Indian lotus, water spinach, and watercress. The many possible classifications of plants are based upon morphology. org http
8.
Ecology
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Ecology is the scientific analysis and study of interactions among organisms and their environment. It is a field that includes biology, geography. Ecology includes the study of interactions that organisms have with other, other organisms. Ecosystems are composed of dynamically interacting parts including organisms, the communities make up. Ecosystem processes, such as production, pedogenesis, nutrient cycling. These processes are sustained by organisms with specific life history traits, biodiversity, which refers to the varieties of species, genes, and ecosystems, enhances certain ecosystem services. Ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, natural history and it is closely related to evolutionary biology, genetics, and ethology. An important focus for ecologists is to improve the understanding of how biodiversity affects ecological function, Ecology is a human science as well. For example, the Circles of Sustainability approach treats ecology as more than the environment out there and it is not treated as separate from humans. Organisms and resources compose ecosystems which, in turn, maintain biophysical feedback mechanisms that moderate processes acting on living and non-living components of the planet, the word ecology was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel. Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics, ancient Greek philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of ecology in their studies on natural history. Modern ecology became a more rigorous science in the late 19th century. Evolutionary concepts relating to adaptation and natural selection became the cornerstones of modern ecological theory, the scope of ecology contains a wide array of interacting levels of organization spanning micro-level to a planetary scale phenomena. Ecosystems, for example, contain abiotic resources and interacting life forms, an ecosystems area can vary greatly, from tiny to vast. A single tree is of consequence to the classification of a forest ecosystem. Several generations of a population can exist over the lifespan of a single leaf. Each of those aphids, in turn, support diverse bacterial communities, biodiversity describes the diversity of life from genes to ecosystems and spans every level of biological organization. The term has several interpretations, and there are ways to index, measure, characterize
9.
Environmental resource management
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Environmental resource management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself, Environmental resource management tries to identify factors affected by conflicts that rise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to protection, sustainability and integrated landscape management. The environment determines the nature of people, animals, plants, Environmental resource management can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. It involves the management of all components of the biophysical environment, the environment also involves the relationships of the human environment, such as the social, cultural and economic environment, with the biophysical environment. The essential aspects of resource management are ethical, economical, social. These underlie principles and help make decisions, the concept of environmental determinism, probabilism and possibilism are significant in the concept of environmental resource management. Environmental resource management covers many areas in science, including geography, biology, physics, chemistry, sociology, psychology, Environmental resource management strategies are intrinsically driven by conceptions of human-nature relationships. Ethical aspects involve the cultural and social issues relating to the environment and these styles perceive. different evidence, imperatives, and problems, and prescribe different solutions, strategies, technologies, roles for economic sectors, culture, governments, and ethics, etc. Anthropocentrism looks at nature as existing solely for the benefit of humans, ecocentrists believe in the intrinsic value of nature while maintaining that human beings must use and even exploit nature to survive and live. It is this fine line that ecocentrists navigate between fair use and abuse. At an extreme of the scale, ecocentrism includes philosophies such as ecofeminism and deep ecology. The economy functions within, and is dependent upon goods and services provided by natural ecosystems, economic models influence environmental resource management, in that management policies reflect beliefs about natural capital scarcity. For someone who believes natural capital is infinite and easily substituted and this approach has often been termed Command-and-control. Colby has identified trends in the development of economic paradigms, among them, scientific analysis of the environment deals with several dimensions of ecological uncertainty. Adaptive management is considered a framework for dealing with situations of high levels of uncertainty though it is not without its detractors. A common scientific concept and impetus behind environmental resource management is carrying capacity, simply put, carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of organisms a particular resource can sustain. The concept of carrying capacity, whilst understood by many cultures over history, has its roots in Malthusian theory, an example is visible in the EU Water Framework Directive
10.
Civil engineering
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Civil engineering is traditionally broken into a number of sub-disciplines. It is the second-oldest engineering discipline after military engineering, and it is defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering, Civil engineering takes place in the public sector from municipal through to national governments, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies. Engineering has been an aspect of life since the beginnings of human existence, during this time, transportation became increasingly important leading to the development of the wheel and sailing. The construction of pyramids in Egypt were some of the first instances of large structure constructions, the Romans developed civil structures throughout their empire, including especially aqueducts, insulae, harbors, bridges, dams and roads. In the 18th century, the civil engineering was coined to incorporate all things civilian as opposed to military engineering. The first self-proclaimed civil engineer was John Smeaton, who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse, in 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of the profession who met informally over dinner. Though there was evidence of some meetings, it was little more than a social society. In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London, the institution received a Royal Charter in 1828, formally recognising civil engineering as a profession. The first private college to teach engineering in the United States was Norwich University. The first degree in engineering in the United States was awarded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1835. The first such degree to be awarded to a woman was granted by Cornell University to Nora Stanton Blatch in 1905, throughout ancient and medieval history most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans, such as stonemasons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Knowledge was retained in guilds and seldom supplanted by advances, structures, roads and infrastructure that existed were repetitive, and increases in scale were incremental. Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, used arithmetic in the 7th century AD, based on Hindu-Arabic numerals, Civil engineers typically possess an academic degree in civil engineering. The length of study is three to five years, and the degree is designated as a bachelor of engineering. The curriculum generally includes classes in physics, mathematics, project management, design, after taking basic courses in most sub-disciplines of civil engineering, they move onto specialize in one or more sub-disciplines at advanced levels. In most countries, a degree in engineering represents the first step towards professional certification. After completing a degree program, the engineer must satisfy a range of requirements before being certified. Once certified, the engineer is designated as a engineer, a chartered engineer
11.
Soil conservation
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Soil conservation is the preventing of soil loss from erosion or reduced fertility caused by over usage, or other chemical soil contamination. Slash-and-burn and other methods of subsistence farming are practiced in some lesser developed areas. A sequel to the deforestation is typically large scale erosion, loss of soil nutrients, techniques for improved soil conservation include crop rotation, cover crops, conservation tillage and planted windbreaks and affect both erosion and fertility. When plants, especially trees, die, they decay and become part of the soil, code 330 defines standard methods recommended by the US Natural Resources Conservation Service. Farmers have practiced soil conservation for millennia, Conservation practices fall in multiple categories, Contour plowing orients crop furrows following the contour lines of the farmed area. Furrows move left and right to maintain a constant altitude, which reduces runoff, Contour plowing was practiced by the ancient Phoenicians, and is effective for slopes between two and ten percent. Contour plowing can increase crop yields from 10 to 50 percent, terracing is the practice of creating nearly level areas in a hillside area. The terraces form a series of steps, each at a higher level than the previous, terraces are protected from erosion by other soil barriers. Terraced farming is common on small farms and in underdeveloped countries. It protects the soil from its erosion and it is one of the way by which soil erosion can be stopped. Windbreaks are sufficiently dense rows of trees at the exposure of an agricultural field subject to wind erosion. Evergreen species provide protection, however, as long as foliage is present in the seasons of bare soil surfaces. Cover crops also help suppress weeds, soil-conservation farming involves no-till farming, “green manures” and other soil-enhancing practices. Such farming methods attempt to mimic the biology of virgin land, the result is less labor and lower costs that increase farmers’ profits. No-till farming and cover crops act as sinks for nitrogen and other nutrients and this increases the amount of soil organic matter. Repeated plowing/tilling degrades soil, killing its beneficial fungi and earthworms, once damaged, soil may take multiple seasons to fully recover, even in optimal circumstances. Critics argue that no-till and related methods are impractical and too expensive for many growers and they cite advantages for conventional tilling depending on the geography, crops and soil conditions. Some farmers claimed that no-till complicates weed control, delays planting, salinity in soil is caused by irrigating with salty water
12.
Biodiversity
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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
13.
Fauna
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Fauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora, flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a collection of animals found in a specific time or place. Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. Fauna comes from the Greek names Fauna, a Roman goddess of earth and fertility, the Roman god Faunus, all three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and panis is the Greek equivalent of fauna. Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner, the term was first used by Carl Linnaeus from Sweden in the title of his 1745 work Fauna Suecica. Cryofauna are animals that live in, or very close to, cryptofauna are the fauna that exist in protected or concealed microhabitats. Infauna are benthic organisms that live within the substratum of a body of water, especially within the bottom-most oceanic sediments. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments, epifauna, also called epibenthos, are aquatic animals that live on the bottom substratum as opposed to within it, that is, the benthic fauna that live on top of the sediment surface at the seafloor. Macrofauna are benthic or soil organisms which are retained on a 0.5 mm sieve, studies in the deep sea define macrofauna as animals retained on a 0.3 mm sieve to account for the small size of many of the taxa. Megafauna are large animals of any region or time. Meiofauna are small invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term Meiofauna loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, one environment for meiofauna is between grains of damp sand. In practice these are metazoan animals that can pass unharmed through a 0.5 –1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 30–45 μm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism passes through a 1 mm mesh also depends upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting, mesofauna are macroscopic soil invertebrates such as arthropods or nematodes. Mesofauna are extremely diverse, considering just the springtails, as of 1998, microfauna are microscopic or very small animals. Other terms include avifauna, which means bird fauna and piscifauna, which means fish fauna
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Aquatic ecosystem
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An aquatic ecosystem is an ecosystem in a body of water. Communities of organisms that are dependent on other and on their environment live in aquatic ecosystems. The two main types of ecosystems are marine ecosystems and freshwater ecosystems. Marine ecosystems cover approximately 71% of the Earths surface and contain approximately 97% of the planets water and they generate 32% of the worlds net primary production. They are distinguished from freshwater ecosystems by the presence of dissolved compounds, especially salts, approximately 85% of the dissolved materials in seawater are sodium and chlorine. Seawater has a salinity of 35 parts per thousand of water. Actual salinity varies among different marine ecosystems, marine ecosystems can be divided into many zones depending upon water depth and shoreline features. The oceanic zone is the vast open part of the ocean where animals such as whales, sharks, the benthic zone consists of substrates below water where many invertebrates live. The intertidal zone is the area between high and low tides, in this figure it is termed the littoral zone, other near-shore zones can include estuaries, salt marshes, coral reefs, lagoons and mangrove swamps. In the deep water, hydrothermal vents may occur where chemosynthetic sulfur bacteria form the base of the food web, classes of organisms found in marine ecosystems include brown algae, dinoflagellates, corals, cephalopods, echinoderms, and sharks. Fishes caught in marine ecosystems are the biggest source of commercial foods obtained from wild populations, environmental problems concerning marine ecosystems include unsustainable exploitation of marine resources, marine pollution, climate change, and building on coastal areas. Freshwater ecosystems cover 0. 78% of the Earths surface and inhabit 0. 009% of its total water and they generate nearly 3% of its net primary production. Freshwater ecosystems contain 41% of the known fish species. There are three types of freshwater ecosystems, Lentic, slow moving water, including pools, ponds. Lotic, faster moving water, for example streams and rivers, wetlands, areas where the soil is saturated or inundated for at least part of the time. Lake ecosystems can be divided into zones, one common system divides lakes into three zones. The first, the zone, is the shallow zone near the shore. This is where rooted wetland plants occur, the offshore is divided into two further zones, an open water zone and a deep water zone
15.
Grassland
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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
16.
Woodland
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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
17.
Wetland
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A wetland is a land area that is saturated with water, either permanently or seasonally, such that it takes on the characteristics of a distinct ecosystem. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from other forms or water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants. Wetlands play a number of roles in the environment, principally water purification, flood control, carbon sink, Wetlands are also considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal life. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent except Antarctica, the largest including the Amazon River basin, the West Siberian Plain, the water found in wetlands can be freshwater, brackish, or saltwater. The main wetland types include swamps, marshes, bogs, and fens, and sub-types include mangrove, carr, pocosin, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment determined that environmental degradation is more prominent within wetland systems than any other ecosystem on Earth. International conservation efforts are being used in conjunction with the development of rapid assessment tools to people about wetland issues. Constructed wetlands can be used to treat municipal and industrial wastewater as well as stormwater runoff and they may also play a role in water-sensitive urban design. A patch of land that develops pools of water after a storm would not be considered a wetland. Wetlands have unique characteristics, they are distinguished from other water bodies or landforms based on their water level. Specifically, wetlands are characterized as having a table that stands at or near the land surface for a long enough period each year to support aquatic plants. A more concise definition is a community composed of hydric soil, Wetlands have also been described as ecotones, providing a transition between dry land and water bodies. In environmental decision-making, there are subsets of definitions that are agreed upon to make regulatory and policy decisions. A wetland is an ecosystem that arises when inundation by water produces soils dominated by anaerobic processes, There are four main kinds of wetlands – marsh, swamp, bog and fen. Some experts also recognize wet meadows and aquatic ecosystems as additional wetland types, the largest wetlands in the world include the swamp forests of the Amazon and the peatlands of Siberia. Under the Ramsar international wetland conservation treaty, wetlands are defined as follows, Article 2.1, may incorporate riparian and coastal zones adjacent to the wetlands, and islands or bodies of marine water deeper than six metres at low tide lying within the wetlands. Although the general definition given above applies around the world, each county, Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas. This definition has been used in the enforcement of the Clean Water Act, some US states, such as Massachusetts and New York, have separate definitions that may differ from the federal governments. It is not uncommon for a wetland to be dry for long portions of the growing season, the most important factor producing wetlands is flooding
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Riparian forest
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A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal, sink or reservoir. The term riparian comes from the Latin word ripa, river bank, thus, technically it refers to areas adjacent to flowing bodies of water such as rivers, streams, sloughs. The terms riparian forest and riparian zone have come to include areas adjacent to those non-flowing water bodies such as ponds, lakes, playas, Riparian forests are subject to frequent inundation. Riparian forests help control sediment, reduce the effects of flooding. Riparian zones are transition zones between a terrestrial environment and an aquatic environment. Organisms found in this zone are adapted to periodic flooding, many not only tolerate it, but require it in order to maintain health and complete their lifestyles. Gallery forest Riparian zone Bosque Tugay Management of Pacific Northwest riparian forests Assessing the Need for a Riparian Management System, - Iowa State University Extension Bulletin
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Riparian buffer
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A riparian buffer is a vegetated area near a stream, usually forested, which helps shade and partially protect a stream from the impact of adjacent land uses. It plays a key role in increasing water quality in associated streams, rivers, with the decline of many aquatic ecosystems due to agricultural, riparian buffers have become a very common conservation practice aimed at increasing water quality and reducing pollution. Riparian buffers act to intercept sediment, nutrients, pesticides, and other materials in surface runoff and reduce nutrients and they also serve to provide habitat and wildlife corridors in primarily agricultural areas. They can also be key in reducing erosion by providing stream bank stabilization, intercepting pesticides - Riparian buffers keep chemicals that can be harmful to aquatic life out of the water. Some pesticides can be harmful if they bioaccumulate in the organism. Bank stabilization - This is important because erosion can be a problem in agricultural regions when cut banks can take land out of production. Erosion can also lead to sedimentation and siltation of downstream lakes, ponds, siltation can greatly reduce the life span of reservoirs and the dams that create the reservoirs. Provide habitat - Riparian buffers can act as crucial habitat for a number of species. Increase biodiversity - By adding this vegetated area of land near a water source it becomes a location for species that may have left the area due to non-conservation land use to re-establish. With this re-establishment the number of species and biodiversity in general can be increased. Buffers acting as corridors - Buffers also serve a role in wildlife habitat. The habitat provided by the buffers also double as corridors for species that have had their habitat fragmented by various land uses. Shading water - The large trees in the first zone of the riparian buffer provide shade and therefore cooling for the water, increasing productivity, large woody debris - When branches and stumps fall into the stream from the riparian zone, more stream habitat features are created. Carbon is added as a source for biota in the stream. Increase land value - Often people who purchase land for use are willing to pay more if there is more wooded area located on the land. Produce profitable alternative crops - Vegetation such as Black Walnut and Hazelnut, increase lease fees for hunting - The increased habitat means that the land will be more sought-after for hunting purposes. A riparian buffer is usually split into three different zones, each having its own specific purpose for filtering runoff and interacting with the adjacent aquatic system, Buffer design is a key element in the effectiveness of the buffer. It is generally recommended that native species be chosen to plant in three zones, with the general width of the buffer being 50 feet on each side of the stream
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Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
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Land rehabilitation
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Land rehabilitation is the process of returning the land in a given area to some degree of its former state, after some process has resulted in its damage. Many projects and developments will result in the land becoming degraded, for mining, farming. Modern mine rehabilitation aims to minimize and mitigate the effects of modern mining. Rehabilitation management is a process, often resulting in open pit mines being backfilled. After mining finishes, the area must undergo rehabilitation. Waste dumps are contoured to flatten out, to further stabilize them against erosion. If the ore contains sulfides it is covered with a layer of clay to prevent access of rain and oxygen from the air. Landfills are covered with topsoil, and vegetation is planted to help consolidate the material, dumps are usually fenced off to prevent livestock denuding them of vegetation. The open pit is surrounded with a fence, to prevent access. Tailings dams are left to evaporate, then covered with rock, clay if need be, and soil. For underground mines, rehabilitation is not always a significant problem or cost and this is because of the higher grade of the ore and lower volumes of waste rock and tailings. In some situations, stopes are backfilled with concrete slurry using waste, the removal of plant and infrastructure is not always part of a rehabilitation programme, as many old mine plants have cultural heritage and cultural value. Often in gold mines, rehabilitation is performed by scavenger operations which treat the soil within the plant area for spilled gold using modified placer mining gravity collection plants. Also possible is that the section of the mine that is ground, is kept and used to provide heating. Heat extraction can be done using heat exchangers, that convey the heat to a nearby city (hence making it be used for heating purposes. Water can be harvested from the mine as well, methane is also often present in the mine shafts, in small quantities. This can still be recovered though with specialised systems, an added advantage of recovering the methane finally is that the methane does not come into the atmosphere, and so does not contribute to global warming. Bio Recycle Sydney Water BioSolids EEMP - a non-profit 5013 organization dedicated to communicate the lessons of rehabilitation and restoration through media around the world
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Biofilter
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Biofiltration is a pollution control technique using a bioreactor containing living material to capture and biologically degrade pollutants. Common uses include processing waste water, capturing harmful chemicals or silt from surface runoff, the air flows through a packed bed and the pollutant transfers into a thin biofilm on the surface of the packing material. Microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi are immobilized in the biofilm, trickling filters and bioscrubbers rely on a biofilm and the bacterial action in their recirculating waters. The technology finds greatest application in treating malodorous compounds and water-soluble volatile organic compounds, compounds treated are typically mixed VOCs and various sulfur compounds, including hydrogen sulfide. Engineered biofilters, designed and built since the early 1990s, have provided significant footprint reductions over the conventional flat-bed, one of the main challenges to optimum biofilter operation is maintaining proper moisture throughout the system. The air is normally humidified before it enters the bed with a system, humidification chamber, bioscrubber. A number of companies offer these types or proprietary packing materials and multi-year guarantees, for large volumes of air, a biofilter may be the only cost-effective solution. There is no pollution and degradation products form additional biomass, carbon dioxide. Media irrigation water, although many systems recycle part of it to operating costs, has a moderately high biochemical oxygen demand. However, this water, necessary for proper maintenance of any bio-oxidation system, is generally accepted by municipal publicly owned treatment works without any pretreatment. Biofilters are being utilized in Columbia Falls, Montana at Plum Creek Timber Companys fiberboard plant, the biofilters decrease the pollution emitted by the manufacturing process and the exhaust emitted is 98% clean. The biofilters use trillions of microscopic bacteria that cleanse the air being released from the plant, biofiltration was first introduced in England in 1893 as a trickling filter for wastewater treatment and has since been successfully used for the treatment of different types of water. Biological treatment has been used in Europe to filter water for drinking purposes since the early 1900s and is now receiving more interest worldwide. Biofiltration is also common in wastewater treatment, aquaculture and greywater recycling, a biofilter is a bed of media on which microorganisms attach and grow to form a biological layer called biofilm. Biofiltration is thus referred to as a fixed–film process. Generally, the biofilm is formed by a community of different microorganisms, macro-organisms, the aspect of the biofilm is usually slimy and muddy. Water to be treated can be applied intermittently or continuously over the media, via upflow or downflow, typically, a biofilter has two or three phases, depending on the feeding strategy, a solid phase, a liquid phase, a gaseous phase. Organic matter and other water components diffuse into the biofilm where the treatment occurs, biofiltration processes are usually aerobic, which means that microorganisms require oxygen for their metabolism
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Sediment
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For sediment in beverages, see dregs. For example, sand and silt can be carried in suspension in water and on reaching the sea be deposited by sedimentation. Sediments are most often transported by water, but also wind, beach sands and river channel deposits are examples of fluvial transport and deposition, though sediment also often settles out of slow-moving or standing water in lakes and oceans. Desert sand dunes and loess are examples of transport and deposition. Glacial moraine deposits and till are ice-transported sediments, sediment can be classified based on its grain size and/or its composition. Sediment size is measured on a log base 2 scale, called the Phi scale, composition of sediment can be measured in terms of, parent rock lithology mineral composition chemical make-up. This leads to an ambiguity in which clay can be used as both a size-range and a composition, sediment is transported based on the strength of the flow that carries it and its own size, volume, density, and shape. Stronger flows will increase the lift and drag on the particle, causing it to rise, rivers and streams carry sediment in their flows. This sediment can be in a variety of locations within the flow and these relationships are shown in the following table for the Rouse number, which is a ratio of sediment fall velocity to upwards velocity. If the upwards velocity is less than the settling velocity, but still high enough for the sediment to move, it will move along the bed as bed load by rolling, sliding. If the upwards velocity is higher than the velocity, the sediment will be transported high in the flow as wash load. As there are generally a range of different particle sizes in the flow, sediment motion can create self-organized structures such as ripples, dunes, antidunes on the river or stream bed. These bedforms are often preserved in rocks and can be used to estimate the direction. Overland flow can erode soil particles and transport them downslope, the erosion associated with overland flow may occur through different methods depending on meteorological and flow conditions. If the initial impact of rain droplets dislodges soil, the phenomenon is called rainsplash erosion, if overland flow is directly responsible for sediment entrainment but does not form gullies, it is called sheet erosion. If the flow and the substrate permit channelization, gullies may form, glaciers carry a wide range of sediment sizes, and deposit it in moraines. The overall balance between sediment in transport and sediment being deposited on the bed is given by the Exner equation and this expression states that the rate of increase in bed elevation due to deposition is proportional to the amount of sediment that falls out of the flow. This can be localized, and simply due to obstacles, examples are scour holes behind boulders, where flow accelerates
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Surface runoff
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Surface runoff is the flow of water that occurs when excess stormwater, meltwater, or other sources flows over the Earths surface. Surface runoff is a component of the water cycle. It is the agent in soil erosion by water. Runoff that occurs on the surface before reaching a channel is also called a nonpoint source. If a nonpoint source contains man-made contaminants, or natural forms of pollution the runoff is called nonpoint source pollution, a land area which produces runoff that drains to a common point is called a drainage basin. When runoff flows along the ground, it can pick up soil contaminants including petroleum, pesticides, surface runoff can be generated either by rainfall, snowfall or by the melting of snow, or glaciers. Snow and glacier melt occur only in areas cold enough for these to form permanently, typically snowmelt will peak in the spring and glacier melt in the summer, leading to pronounced flow maxima in rivers affected by them. The determining factor of the rate of melting of snow or glaciers is both air temperature and the duration of sunlight, in high mountain regions, streams frequently rise on sunny days and fall on cloudy ones for this reason. In areas where there is no snow, runoff will come from rainfall, however, not all rainfall will produce runoff because storage from soils can absorb light showers. This occurs when the rate of rainfall on a surface exceeds the rate at which water can infiltrate the ground and this is called flooding excess overland flow, Hortonian overland flow, or unsaturated overland flow. This more commonly occurs in arid and semi-arid regions, where rainfall intensities are high and this occurs largely in city areas where pavements prevent water from flooding. When the soil is saturated and the depression storage filled, and rain continues to fall, the level of antecedent soil moisture is one factor affecting the time until soil becomes saturated. This runoff is called saturation excess overland flow or saturated overland flow, soil retains a degree of moisture after a rainfall. This residual water moisture affects the soils infiltration capacity, during the next rainfall event, the infiltration capacity will cause the soil to be saturated at a different rate. The higher the level of antecedent soil moisture, the more quickly the soil becomes saturated, once the soil is saturated, runoff occurs. After water infiltrates the soil on a portion of a hill, the water may flow laterally through the soil. This is called subsurface return flow or throughflow, any remaining surface water eventually flows into a receiving water body such as a river, lake, estuary or ocean. Urbanization increases surface runoff by creating more impervious surfaces such as pavement and it is instead forced directly into streams or storm water runoff drains, where erosion and siltation can be major problems, even when flooding is not
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Erosion
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In earth science, erosion is the action of surface processes that remove soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earths crust, then transport it away to another location. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, the rates at which such processes act control how fast a surface is eroded. Feedbacks are also possible between rates of erosion and the amount of eroded material that is carried by, for example. Processes of erosion that produce sediment or solutes from a place contrast with those of deposition, while erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which erosion is occurring globally. At well-known agriculture sites such as the Appalachian Mountains, intensive farming practices have caused erosion up to 100x the speed of the rate of erosion in the region. Excessive erosion causes both on-site and off-site problems, on-site impacts include decreases in agricultural productivity and ecological collapse, both because of loss of the nutrient-rich upper soil layers. In some cases, the end result is desertification. Off-site effects include sedimentation of waterways and eutrophication of bodies, as well as sediment-related damage to roads. Intensive agriculture, deforestation, roads, anthropogenic climate change and urban sprawl are amongst the most significant human activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion, however, there are many prevention and remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of vulnerable soils. Rainfall, and the surface runoff which may result from rainfall, produces four types of soil erosion, splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion. Splash erosion is generally seen as the first and least severe stage in the erosion process. In splash erosion, the impact of a falling raindrop creates a crater in the soil. The distance these soil particles travel can be as much as 0.6 m vertically and 1.5 m horizontally on level ground. If the soil is saturated, or if the rate is greater than the rate at which water can infiltrate into the soil. If the runoff has sufficient flow energy, it will transport loosened soil particles down the slope, sheet erosion is the transport of loosened soil particles by overland flow. Rill erosion refers to the development of small, ephemeral concentrated flow paths which function as both sediment source and sediment delivery systems for erosion on hillslopes, generally, where water erosion rates on disturbed upland areas are greatest, rills are active. Flow depths in rills are typically of the order of a few centimetres or less and this means that rills exhibit hydraulic physics very different from water flowing through the deeper, wider channels of streams and rivers. Gully erosion occurs when water accumulates and rapidly flows in narrow channels during or immediately after heavy rains or melting snow
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Aquatic animal
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An aquatic animal is an animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or all of its life. It may breathe air or extract its oxygen from that dissolved in water through specialised organs called gills, natural environments and the animals that live in them can be categorized as aquatic or terrestrial. The term aquatic can in theory be applied to animals that live in fresh water or salt water. However, the marine is most commonly used for animals that live in saltwater, i. e. in oceans, seas. Aquatic animals are often of concern to conservationists because of the fragility of their environments. Aquatic animals are subject to pressure from overfishing, destructive fishing, marine pollution, the term aquatic mammal is also applied to four-footed mammals like the river otter and beavers, although these are technically amphibious. Amphibians, like frogs, while requiring water, are separated into their own environmental classification, the majority of amphibians have an aquatic larval stage, like a tadpole, but then live as terrestrial adults, and may return to the water to mate. Certain fish also evolved to breathe air to survive oxygen-deprived water, such as arapaima, Aquatic mammal Aquatic plant Freshwater snail List of semiaquatic tetrapods Marine biology Marine invertebrates Marine mammal Annelids
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Construction
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Construction is the process of constructing a building or infrastructure. Construction as an industry comprises six to nine percent of the domestic product of developed countries. Construction starts with planning, design, and financing, and continues until the project is built, large-scale construction requires collaboration across multiple disciplines. An architect normally manages the job, and a manager, design engineer. For the successful execution of a project, effective planning is essential, the largest construction projects are referred to as megaprojects. Construction is a term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations. Construction is used as a verb, the act of building, and a noun, how a building was built, in general, there are three sectors of construction, buildings, infrastructure and industrial. Building construction is further divided into residential and non-residential. Infrastructure is often called heavy/highway, heavy civil or heavy engineering and it includes large public works, dams, bridges, highways, water/wastewater and utility distribution. Industrial includes refineries, process chemical, power generation, mills, there are other ways to break the industry into sectors or markets. Engineering News-Record is a magazine for the construction industry. Each year, ENR compiles and reports on data about the size of design and they publish a list of the largest companies in the United States and also a list the largest global firms. In 2014, ENR compiled the data in nine market segments and it was divided as transportation, petroleum, buildings, power, industrial, water, manufacturing, sewer/waste, telecom, hazardous waste plus a tenth category for other projects. In their reporting on the Top 400, they used data on transportation, sewer, hazardous waste, the Standard Industrial Classification and the newer North American Industry Classification System have a classification system for companies that perform or otherwise engage in construction. To recognize the differences of companies in this sector, it is divided into three subsectors, building construction, heavy and civil engineering construction, and specialty trade contractors, there are also categories for construction service firms and construction managers. Building construction is the process of adding structure to real property or construction of buildings, the majority of building construction jobs are small renovations, such as addition of a room, or renovation of a bathroom. Often, the owner of the property acts as laborer, paymaster, for this reason, those with experience in the field make detailed plans and maintain careful oversight during the project to ensure a positive outcome. Residential construction practices, technologies, and resources must conform to local building authority regulations, materials readily available in the area generally dictate the construction materials used
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Agriculture
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Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of human civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science, the history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology, genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts, the major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats, fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo, other useful materials are also produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, biofuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, field, Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use resources to produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops. This definition includes arable farming or agronomy, and horticulture, all terms for the growing of plants, even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry, Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 15,000 years ago, rice was domesticated in China between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia at an unknown time
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Silviculture
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Silviculture is the practice of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of forests to meet diverse needs and values. The name comes from the Latin silvi- + culture, the study of forests and woods is termed silvology. Silviculture also focuses on making sure that the treatment of forest stands are used to preserve, more particularly, silviculture is the theory and practice of controlling the establishment, composition, constitution, and growth of forests. Suggestions for how best to go about the job, presented by Jeglum et al. though aimed primarily at the boreal forest in Ontario, the 110-page publication describes Best Management Practices, first by general principles, then by sensitive sites. Illustrations are plentiful and are chosen to complement this excellent text. To some the distinction between forestry and silviculture is that silviculture is applied at the level and forestry is broader. For example, John D. Matthews says complete regimes for regenerating, tending, adaptive management is common in silviculture, whereas forestry can include natural, conserved land without a stand level management and treatment being applied. A common taxonomy divides silviculture into regenerating, tending and harvesting techniques, and Dauerwald - Continuous cover forestry, in which are found, un-even aged forestry - Plenterwald - Selection forest - Zielstärkennutzung - Target diameter harvesting. This misunderstanding has meant that many older English textbooks did not capture the complexity of silviculture as practiced where it originated in Mitteleuropa. This silviculture was culturally predicated on wood production in temperate and boreal climates, the misapplication of this philosophy to those tropical forests has been problematic. There is also an alternative silvicultural tradition which developed in Japan, after harvesting comes regeneration, which may be split into Natural and Artificial. And tending which includes release treatments, pruning, thinning and intermediate treatments, as it can be imagined it maybe that any of these 3 phases may happen at the same time, within a stand, depending on the goal for that particular stand. Regeneration is basic to the continuation of forested, as well as to the afforestation of treeless land, regeneration can take place through self-sown seed, by artificially sown seed, or by planted seedlings. In whichever case, the performance of regeneration depends on its growth potential, seed, of course, is needed for all regeneration modes, both for natural or artificial sowing and for raising planting stock in a nursery. The process of natural regeneration involves the renewal of forests by means of self-sown seeds, root suckers, in natural forests, conifers rely almost entirely on regeneration through seed. Most of the broadleaves, however, are able to regenerate by the means of emergence of shoots from stumps, any seed, self-sown or artificially applied, requires a seedbed suitable for securing germination. In order to germinate, a seed requires suitable conditions of temperature, moisture, white spruce seed germinated at 35 °F and 40 °F after continuous stratification for one year or longer and developed radicles <6 cm long in the cold room. When exposed to light, those germinants developed chlorophyll and were normally phototropic with continued elongation, shade is very important to the survival of young seedlings
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Erosion control
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Erosion control is the practice of preventing or controlling wind or water erosion in agriculture, land development, coastal areas, river banks and construction. Effective erosion controls handle surface runoff and are important techniques in preventing water pollution, soil loss, wildlife habitat loss, erosion controls are used in natural areas, agricultural settings or urban environments. In urban areas erosion controls are part of stormwater runoff management programs required by local governments. The controls often involve the creation of a barrier, such as vegetation or rock. They also involve building and maintaining storm drains, on construction sites they are often implemented in conjunction with sediment controls such as sediment basins and silt fences. Bank erosion is a process, without it, rivers would not meander. However, land management patterns that change the hydrograph and/or vegetation cover can act to increase or decrease channel migration rates, in many places, whether or not the banks are unstable due to human activities, people try to keep a river in a single place. This can be done for environmental reclamation or to prevent a river from changing course into land that is being used by people, one way that this is done is by placing riprap or gabions along the bank. These models have addressed both gully and sheet erosion, earliest models were a simple set of linked equations which could be employed by manual calculation. By the 1970s the models had expanded to complex computer models addressing nonpoint source pollution with thousands of lines of computer code, the more complex models were able to address nuances in micrometerology, soil particle size distributions and micro-terrain variation
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Biodiversity action plan
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A biodiversity action plan is an internationally recognized program addressing threatened species and habitats and is designed to protect and restore biological systems. The original impetus for these plans derives from the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, as of 2009,191 countries have ratified the CBD, but only a fraction of these have developed substantive BAP documents. A fundamental method of engagement to a BAP is thorough documentation regarding individual species and it is also useful to compile time trends of population estimates in order to understand the dynamics of population variability and vulnerability. A species plan component of a country’s BAP should ideally entail a thorough description of the range, habitat, behaviour, breeding, once a determination has been made of conservation status, a plan can then be created to conserve and restore the species population to target levels. The plan should also articulate which public and private agencies should implement the protection strategy, where a number of threatened species depend upon a specific habitat, it may be appropriate to prepare a habitat protection element of the Biodiversity Action Plan. Examples of such habitats are, raised acidic bogs of Scotland, Waterberg Biosphere bushveld in South Africa, California’s coastal wetlands. In this case also, careful inventories of species and also the geographic extent, then, as with species plans, a program can be created to protect, enhance and/or restore habitat using similar strategies as discussed above under the species plans. Some examples of countries which have produced substantive Biodiversity Action Plans follow. Preparation of a country BAP may cost up to 100 million pounds sterling, if plans took into account neglected groups, the cost would be higher. Obviously costs for countries with small geographical area or simplified ecosystems have a lesser cost. For example, the St. Lucia BAP has been costed in the area of several million pounds sterling, australia has developed a detailed and rigorous Biodiversity Action Plan. This document estimates that the number of indigenous species may be 560,000. There is, however, serious ongoing concerns, particularly in regards to the negative impact on water quality from land use practices. Also, climate change impact is feared to be significant, considerable analysis has been conducted on the sustainable yield of firewood production, a major threat to deforestation in most tropical countries. Biological inventory work, assessment of harvesting practices, and computer modeling of the dynamics of treefall, rot, New Zealand has ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity and as part of The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy and Biodiversity Action Plans are implemented on ten separate themes. Local government and some also have their own Biodiversity Action Plan. The St. Lucia BAP recognizes impacts of large numbers of tourists to the marine, the BAP specifically acknowledges that the carrying capacity for human use and water pollution discharge of sensitive reef areas was exceeded by the year 1990. The plan also addresses conservation of the historic island fishing industry, in 1992, several institutions in conjunction with native fishermen to produce a sustainable management plan for fishery resources, embodied in the Soufrière Marine Management Area
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Water quality
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Water quality refers to the chemical, physical, biological, and radiological characteristics of water. It is a measure of the condition of water relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and it is most frequently used by reference to a set of standards against which compliance can be assessed. The most common used to assess water quality relate to health of ecosystems, safety of human contact. In the setting of standards, agencies make political and technical/scientific decisions about how the water will be used, in the case of natural water bodies, they also make some reasonable estimate of pristine conditions. Natural water bodies will vary in response to environmental conditions, Environmental scientists work to understand how these systems function, which in turn helps to identify the sources and fates of contaminants. Environmental lawyers and policymakers work to define legislation with the intention that water is maintained at a quality for its identified use. The vast majority of water on the Earth is neither potable nor toxic. This remains true when seawater in the oceans is not counted, another general perception of water quality is that of a simple property that tells whether water is polluted or not. In fact, water quality is a subject, in part because water is a complex medium intrinsically tied to the ecology of the Earth. Industrial and commercial activities are a cause of water pollution as are runoff from agricultural areas, urban runoff. The parameters for water quality are determined by the intended use, work in the area of water quality tends to be focused on water that is treated for human consumption, industrial use, or in the environment. Water quality depends on the geology and ecosystem, as well as human uses such as sewage dispersion, industrial pollution, use of water bodies as a heat sink. The United States Environmental Protection Agency limits the amounts of contaminants in tap water provided by US public water systems. The U. S. Food and Drug Administration regulations establish limits for contaminants in bottled water that must provide the protection for public health. Drinking water, including bottled water, may reasonably be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants, the presence of these contaminants does not necessarily indicate that the water poses a health risk. Water drawn directly from a stream, lake, or aquifer, dissolved minerals may affect suitability of water for a range of industrial and domestic purposes. Hard water may be softened to remove these ions, the softening process often substitutes sodium cations. Hard water may be preferable to soft water for consumption, since health problems have been associated with excess sodium
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Groundwater
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Groundwater is the water present beneath Earths surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or a deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table. Groundwater is recharged from, and eventually flows to, the naturally, natural discharge often occurs at springs and seeps. Groundwater is also withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, Groundwater is hypothesized to provide lubrication that can possibly influence the movement of faults. It is likely that much of Earths subsurface contains some water, Groundwater may not be confined only to Earth. The formation of some of the landforms observed on Mars may have influenced by groundwater. There is also evidence that water may also exist in the subsurface of Jupiters moon Europa. Groundwater is often cheaper, more convenient and less vulnerable to pollution than surface water, therefore, it is commonly used for public water supplies. For example, groundwater provides the largest source of water storage in the United States. Underground reservoirs contain far more water than the capacity of all surface reservoirs and lakes in the US, many municipal water supplies are derived solely from groundwater. Polluted groundwater is less visible, but more difficult to clean up, than pollution in rivers, Groundwater pollution most often results from improper disposal of wastes on land. An aquifer is a layer of substrate that contains and transmits groundwater. When water can flow directly between the surface and the zone of an aquifer, the aquifer is unconfined. The deeper parts of unconfined aquifers are more saturated since gravity causes water to flow downward. The upper level of this layer of an unconfined aquifer is called the water table or phreatic surface. Below the water table, where in general all pore spaces are saturated with water, is the phreatic zone, substrate with low porosity that permits limited transmission of groundwater is known as an aquitard
34.
Fertilizer
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A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soils or to plant tissues to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. Fertilizers enhance the growth of plants and this goal is met in two ways, the traditional one being additives that provide nutrients. The second mode by which some fertilizers act is to enhance the effectiveness of the soil by modifying its water retention and aeration and this article, like many on fertilizers, emphasises the nutritional aspect. The nutrients required for plant life are classified according to the elements. Instead compounds containing these elements are the basis of fertilizers, the macronutrients are consumed in larger quantities and are present in plant tissue in quantities from 0. 15% to 6. 0% on a dry matter basis. Plants are made up of four elements, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are widely available as water and carbon dioxide, although nitrogen makes up most of the atmosphere, it is in a form that is unavailable to plants. Nitrogen is the most important fertilizer since nitrogen is present in proteins, DNA, to be nutritious to plants, nitrogen must be made available in a fixed form. Only some bacteria and their host plants can fix atmospheric nitrogen by converting it to ammonia, phosphate is required for the production of DNA and ATP, the main energy carrier in cells, as well as certain lipids. Micronutrients are consumed in quantities and are present in plant tissue on the order of parts-per-million, ranging from 0.15 to 400 ppm DM. These elements are present at the active sites of enzymes that carry out the plants metabolism. Because these elements enable catalysts their impact far exceeds their weight percentage, Fertilizers are classified in several ways. They are classified according to whether they provide a single nutrient, multinutrient fertilizers provide two or more nutrients, for example N and P. Fertilizers are also sometimes classified as inorganic versus organic. Inorganic fertilizers exclude carbon-containing materials except ureas, organic fertilizers are usually plant- or animal-derived matter. Inorganic are sometimes called synthetic fertilizers since various chemical treatments are required for their manufacture, the main nitrogen-based straight fertilizer is ammonia or its solutions. Ammonium nitrate is widely used. Urea is another source of nitrogen, having the advantage that it is solid and non-explosive, unlike ammonia and ammonium nitrate. A few percent of the fertilizer market has been met by calcium ammonium nitrate
35.
Ecosystem
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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
36.
Nitrate
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Nitrate is a polyatomic ion with the molecular formula NO−3 and a molecular mass of 62.0049 g/mol. Nitrates also describe the functional group RONO2. These nitrate esters are a class of explosives. The anion is the base of nitric acid, consisting of one central nitrogen atom surrounded by three identically bonded oxygen atoms in a trigonal planar arrangement. The nitrate ion carries a charge of −1. This arrangement is used as an example of resonance. Like the isoelectronic carbonate ion, the ion can be represented by resonance structures. A common example of a nitrate salt is potassium nitrate. A rich source of nitrate in the human body comes from diets rich in leafy green foods, such as spinach. NO3- is the active component within beetroot juice and other vegetables. Nitrite and water are converted in the body to nitric oxide, nitrate salts are found naturally on earth as large deposits, particularly of nitratine, a major source of sodium nitrate. Nitrates are found in man-made fertilizers, as a byproduct of lightning strikes in earths nitrogen-oxygen rich atmosphere, nitric acid is produced when nitrogen dioxide reacts with water vapor. Nitrates are mainly produced for use as fertilizers in agriculture because of their solubility and biodegradability. The main nitrate fertilizers are ammonium, sodium, potassium, several million kilograms are produced annually for this purpose. The second major application of nitrates is as oxidizing agents, most notably in explosives where the oxidation of carbon compounds liberates large volumes of gases. Sodium nitrate is used to air bubbles from molten glass. Mixtures of the salt are used to harden some metals. Explosives and table tennis balls are made from celluloid, although nitrites are the nitrogen compound chiefly used in meat curing, nitrates are used in certain specialty curing processes where a long release of nitrite from parent nitrate stores is needed
37.
Denitrification
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Denitrification is a microbially facilitated process where nitrate is reduced and ultimately produces molecular nitrogen through a series of intermediate gaseous nitrogen oxide products. Facultative anaerobic bacteria perform denitrification as a type of respiration that reduces oxidized forms of nitrogen in response to the oxidation of an electron donor such as organic matter, denitrifying microbes require a very low oxygen concentration of less than 10%, as well as organic C for energy. Since denitrification can remove NO3−, reducing its leaching to groundwater, denitrification can leak N2O, which is an ozone-depleting substance and a greenhouse gas that can have a considerable influence on global warming. The process is performed primarily by bacteria, although autotrophic denitrifiers have also been identified. Denitrifiers are represented in all main phylogenetic groups, generally several species of bacteria are involved in the complete reduction of nitrate to N2, and more than one enzymatic pathway has been identified in the reduction process. Direct reduction from nitrate to ammonium, a known as dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium or DNRA, is also possible for organisms that have the nrf-gene. This is less common than denitrification in most ecosystems as a means of nitrate reduction, denitrification takes place under special conditions in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. In general, it occurs where oxygen, a more energetically favourable electron acceptor, is depleted and these environments may include certain soils and groundwater, wetlands, oil reservoirs, poorly ventilated corners of the ocean, and in seafloor sediments. Lighter isotopes of nitrogen are preferred in the reaction, leaving the heavier isotopes in the residual matter. The process can cause delta-values of up to −40, where delta is a representation of the difference in isotopic composition and this can be used to identify denitrification processes in nature. Denitrification is commonly used to remove nitrogen from sewage and municipal wastewater, wood chip bioreactors have been studied since the 2000s and are effective in removing nitrate from agricultural run off and even manure. Denitrification processes are used in the treatment of industrial wastewater. Aerobic denitrification Anaerobic respiration Bioremediation Climate change Hypoxia Nitrogen fixation Simultaneous nitrification-denitrification Atlas, barthas, R. Microbial Ecology, Fundamentals and Applications. ISBN 0-8053-0653-6 Cell biology and molecular basis of denitrification
38.
Pisuerga
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The Pisuerga is a river in northern Spain, the Dueros second largest tributary. It rises in the Cantabrian Mountains in the province of Palencia, autonomous region of Castile and its traditional source is called Fuente Cobre, but it has been discovered that the real source is a glacier higher in the mountains. The river flows south into the Douro river shortly after passing through the city of Valladolid and its length is approximately 270 kilometres. Since the 1950s the water level of the river has very regular throughout the year due to the huge Aguilar de Campoo dam which collects all the water from the rivers rainy upper valleys. This regulation has allowed the creation of vast extensions of irrigated farmland along the Pisuergas course across the northern Castilian plain. The Spanish phrase aprovechando que el Pisuerga pasa por Valladolid is a way to point or acknowledge a non sequitur since the river has no bearing with the following consequence. Johnny Juerga y los que remontan el Pisuerga is a Spanish rock group known by their unusual band name
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Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
40.
Meander
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A meander, in general, is a bend in a sinuous watercourse or river. A meander forms when moving water in a stream erodes the outer banks and widens its valley, a stream of any volume may assume a meandering course, alternately eroding sediments from the outside of a bend and depositing them on the inside. The result is a pattern as the stream meanders back. When a meander gets cut off from the stream, an oxbow lake forms. Over time meanders migrate downstream, sometimes in such a time as to create civil engineering problems for local municipalities attempting to maintain stable roads. There is not yet full consistency or standardization of scientific terminology used to describe watercourses, a variety of symbols and schemes exist. Parameters based on mathematical formulae or numerical data vary as well, unless otherwise defined in a specific scheme meandering and sinuosity here are synonymous and mean any repetitious pattern of bends, or waveforms. In some schemes, meandering applies only to rivers with exaggerated circular loops or secondary meanders, sinuosity is one of the channel types that a stream may assume over all or part of its course. All streams are sinuous at some time in their history over some part of their length. The term derives from the Meander River located in present-day Turkey and known to the Ancient Greeks as Μαίανδρος Maiandros and its course is so exceedingly winding that everything winding is called meandering. The Meander River is located south of Izmir, east of the ancient Greek town of Miletus, now, Milet and it flows through a graben in the Menderes Massif, but has a flood plain much wider than the meander zone in its lower reach. Its modern Turkish name is the Büyük Menderes River, when a fluid is introduced to an initially straight channel which then bends, the sidewalls induce a pressure gradient that causes the fluid to alter course and follow the bend. From here, two opposing processes occur, irrotational flow and secondary flow, for a river to meander, secondary flow must dominate. Irrotational flow, From Bernoullis equations, high pressure results in low velocity, therefore, in the absence of secondary flow we would expect low fluid velocity at the outside bend and high fluid velocity at the inside bend. This classic fluid mechanics result is irrotational vortex flow, in the context of meandering rivers, its effects are dominated by those of secondary flow. Secondary flow, A force balance exists between pressure forces pointing to the bend of the river and centrifugal forces pointing to the outside bend of the river. In the context of meandering rivers, a boundary layer exists within the layer of fluid that interacts with the river bed. Inside that layer and following standard boundary-layer theory, the velocity of the fluid is effectively zero, centrifugal force, which depends on velocity, is also therefore effectively zero
41.
Turbidity
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Turbidity is the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid caused by large numbers of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in air. The measurement of turbidity is a key test of water quality, fluids can contain suspended solid matter consisting of particles of many different sizes. These small solid particles cause the liquid to appear turbid, Turbidity is also applied to transparent solids such as glass or plastic. In plastic production haze is defined as the percentage of light that is deflected more than 2. 5° from the light direction. Turbidity in open water may be caused by growth of phytoplankton, human activities that disturb land, such as construction, mining and agriculture, can lead to high sediment levels entering water bodies during rain storms due to storm water runoff. Certain industries such as quarrying, mining and coal recovery can generate high levels of turbidity from colloidal rock particles. In drinking water, the higher the turbidity level, the higher the risk that people may develop gastrointestinal diseases and this is especially problematic for immunocompromised people, because contaminants like viruses or bacteria can become attached to the suspended solids. The suspended solids interfere with water disinfection with chlorine because the act as shields for the virus. Similarly, suspended solids can protect bacteria from ultraviolet sterilization of water, high turbidity levels can also affect the ability of fish gills to absorb dissolved oxygen. This phenomenon has been observed throughout the Chesapeake Bay in the eastern United States. For many mangrove areas, high turbidity is needed to support certain species, for most mangroves along the eastern coast of Australia, in particular Moreton Bay, turbidity levels as high as 600 Nephelometric Turbidity Units are needed for proper ecosystem health. The most widely used measurement unit for turbidity is the Formazin Turbidity Unit, ISO refers to its units as FNU. ISO7027 provides the method in water quality for the determination of turbidity and it is used to determine the concentration of suspended particles in a sample of water by measuring the incident light scattered at right angles from the sample. The scattered light is captured by a photodiode, which produces a signal that is converted to a turbidity. Open source hardware has been developed following the ISO7027 method to measure turbidity reliably using an Arduino microcontroller, there are several practical ways of checking water quality, the most direct being some measure of attenuation of light as it passes through a sample column of water. The alternatively used Jackson Candle method is essentially the inverse measure of the length of a column of water needed to completely obscure a candle flame viewed through it, the more water needed, the clearer the water. Of course water alone produces some attenuation, and any substances dissolved in the water that produce color can attenuate some wavelengths, modern instruments do not use candles, but this approach of attenuation of a light beam through a column of water should be calibrated and reported in JTUs. The propensity of particles to scatter a light focused on them is now considered a more meaningful measure of turbidity in water
42.
Wildlife
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Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all plants, fungi, and other organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems, humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. Some animals, however, have adapted to suburban environments and this includes such animals as domesticated cats, dogs, mice, and gerbils. The global wildlife population has decreased by 52 percent between 1970 and 2014, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, anthropologists believe that the Stone Age people and hunter-gatherers relied on wildlife, both plants and animals, for their food. In fact, some species may have been hunted to extinction by human hunters. Today, hunting, fishing, and gathering wildlife is still a significant food source in parts of the world. In other areas, hunting and non-commercial fishing are seen as a sport or recreation. Meat sourced from wildlife that is not traditionally regarded as game is known as bush meat, in November 2008, almost 900 plucked and oven-ready owls and other protected wildlife species were confiscated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Malaysia, according to TRAFFIC. The animals were believed to be bound for China, to be sold in wild meat restaurants, most are listed in CITES which prohibits or restricts such trade.60. Many Amazon species, including peccaries, agoutis, turtles, turtle eggs, anacondas, armadillos, others in these informal markets, such as monkeys and parrots, are destined for the pet trade, often smuggled into the United States. Still other Amazon species are popular ingredients in traditional medicines sold in local markets, the medicinal value of animal parts is based largely on superstition. Many animal species have spiritual significance in different cultures around the world, for example, eagles, hawks and their feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to Native Americans as religious objects. In Hinduism the cow is regarded sacred, muslims conduct sacrifices on Eid-ul-Adha to commemorate the sacrificial spirit of Ibrahim in love of God. Camels, sheep, goats, and cows may be offered as sacrifice during the three days of Eid, many nations have established their tourism sector around their natural wildlife. South Africa has, for example, many opportunities for tourists to see the wildlife in its national parks. In South India the Periar Wildlife Sanctuary, Bandipur National Park and Mudamalai Wildlife Sanctuary are situated around, India is home to many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries showing the diversity of its wildlife, much of its unique fauna, and excels in the range. This subsection focuses on forms of wildlife destruction. Exploitation of wild populations has been a characteristic of man since our exodus from Africa 130,000 –70,000 years ago
43.
Habitat
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A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant, or other type of organism. The term typically refers to the zone in which the organism lives and it is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds a species population. Every organism has certain habitat needs for the conditions in which it will thrive, habitat types include polar, temperate, subtropical and tropical. The terrestrial vegetation type may be forest, steppe, grassland, the word habitat has been in use since about 1755 and derives from the Latin third-person singular present indicative of habitāre, to inhabit, from habēre, to have or to hold. Habitat can be defined as the environment of an organism. It is similar in meaning to a biotope, an area of environmental conditions associated with a particular community of plants. Generally speaking, animal communities are reliant on specific types of plant communities, some plants and animals are generalists, and their habitat requirements are met in a wide range of locations. The small white butterfly for example is found on all the continents of the world apart from Antarctica and its larvae feed on a wide range of Brassicas and various other plant species, and it thrives in any open location with diverse plant associations. Disturbance is important in the creation of biodiverse habitats, in the absence of disturbance, a climax vegetation cover develops that prevents the establishment of other species. Lightning strikes and toppled trees in tropical forests allow species richness to be maintained as pioneering species move in to fill the gaps created. Similarly coastal habitats can become dominated by kelp until the seabed is disturbed by a storm, another cause of disturbance is when an area may be overwhelmed by an invasive introduced species which is not kept under control by natural enemies in its new habitat. Terrestrial habitat types include forests, grasslands, wetlands and deserts, within these broad biomes are more specific habitats with varying climate types, temperature regimes, soils, altitudes and vegetation types. Many of these habitats grade into each other and each one has its own communities of plants. A habitat may suit a particular species well, but its presence or absence at any particular location depends to some extent on chance, on its dispersal abilities, freshwater habitats include rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, marshes and bogs. Although some organisms are found across most of these habitats, the majority have more specific requirements, similarly, aquatic plants can be floating, semi-submerged, submerged or grow in permanently or temporarily saturated soils besides bodies of water. Marine habitats include brackish water, estuaries, bays, the sea, the intertidal zone. Further variations include rock pools, sand banks, mudflats, brackish lagoons, sandy and pebbly beaches, the benthic zone or seabed provides a home for both static organisms, anchored to the substrate, and for a large range of organisms crawling on or burrowing into the surface. A desert is not the kind of habitat that favours the presence of amphibians, with their requirement for water to keep their skins moist, nevertheless, some frogs live in deserts, creating moist habitats underground and hibernating while conditions are adverse
44.
Wildlife corridor
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A wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures. This allows an exchange of individuals between populations, which may prevent the negative effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity that often occur within isolated populations. Corridors may also facilitate the re-establishment of populations that have been reduced or eliminated due to random events. Habitat fragmentation due to development is an ever-increasing threat to biodiversity. The main goal of implementing habitat corridors is to increase biodiversity, when areas of land are broken up by human interference, population numbers become unstable and many animal and plant species become endangered. By re-connecting the fragments, the fluctuations can decrease dramatically. Migration—species that relocate seasonally can do so safely and effectively when it does not interfere with human development barriers. Interbreeding—animals can find new mates in neighboring regions so that genetic diversity can increase, although corridors have been implemented with the assumption that they will increase biodiversity, not enough research has been done to come to a solid conclusion. The case for corridors has been more on intuition and much less on empirical evidence. Another factor that needs to be taken into account is what species the corridor is intended for, some species have reacted more positively to corridors than others. A habitat corridor could be considered as a solution in an area where destruction of a natural area has greatly affected its native species. Development such as roads, buildings, and farms can interrupt plants, furthermore, natural disasters such as wildfires and floods can leave animals with no choice but to evacuate. If the habitat is not connected to a one, it will ultimately lead to death. A remaining portion of natural habitat is called a remnant, and such portions need to be connected, because when migration decreases, Corridors can be made in two distinct areas—either water or land. Water corridors are called riparian ribbons and usually come in the form of rivers, land corridors come on a scale as large as wooded strips connecting larger woodland areas. However, they can also be as simple as a line of shrubs along a sidewalk, such areas can facilitate the movement of small animals, especially birds, from tree to tree, until they find a safe habitat to nest in. Not only do minimal corridors aid in the movement of animals, they are aesthetically pleasing. Species can be categorized in one of two groups, passage users and corridor dwellers, passage users occupy corridors for brief periods of time
45.
Fodder
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A crop is any cultivated plant, fungus, or alga that is harvested for food, clothing, livestock, fodder, biofuel, medicine, or other uses. In contrast, animals that are raised by humans are called livestock, microbes, such as bacteria or viruses, are referred to as cultures. Microbes are not typically grown for food, but are used to alter food. For example, bacteria are used to ferment milk to produce yogurt, major crops include sugarcane, pumpkin, maize, wheat, rice, cassava, soybeans, hay, potatoes, and cotton. Sleper, David A. Poehlman, John M. Breeding Field Crops
46.
Landscape
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A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms and how they integrate with natural or man-made features. The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and it is the dynamic backdrop to people’s lives. Landscape can be as varied as farmland, a landscape park, the activity of modifying the visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping. There are several definitions of what constitutes a landscape, depending on context, the term landscape emerged around the turn of the sixteenth century to denote a painting whose primary subject matter was natural scenery. Land may be taken in its sense of something to people belong. The suffix ‑scape is equivalent to the more common English suffix ‑ship, the roots of ‑ship are etymologically akin to Old English sceppan or scyppan, meaning to shape. The suffix ‑schaft is related to the verb schaffen, so that ‑ship, the word landscape, first recorded in 1598, was borrowed from a Dutch painters term. An example of this usage can be found as early as 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer, Could we but climb where Moses stood. Setting, In works of narrative, it includes the moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place. Picturesque, The word literally means in the manner of a picture, fit to be made into a picture, and used as early as 1703, gilpin’s Essay on Prints defined picturesque as a term expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture. A view, A sight or prospect of some landscape or extended scene, wilderness, An uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region. Cityscape, The urban equivalent of a landscape, in the visual arts a cityscape is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. Seascape, A photograph, painting, or other work of art depicts the sea. Geomorphology is the study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical or chemical processes operating at or near Earths surface. Geomorphology is practiced within physical geography, geology, geodesy, engineering geology, archaeology and this broad base of interests contributes to many research styles and interests within the field. The surface of Earth is modified by a combination of processes that sculpt landscapes, and geologic processes that cause tectonic uplift and subsidence. Many of these factors are strongly mediated by climate, the Earth surface and its topography therefore are an intersection of climatic, hydrologic, and biologic action with geologic processes. Desert, Plain, Taiga, Tundra, Wetland, Mountain, Mountain range, Cliff, Coast, Littoral zone, Glacier, Polar regions of Earth, Shrubland, Forest, Rainforest, Woodland, Jungle, Moors
47.
Plant litter
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Litterfall, plant litter, leaf litter, tree litter, soil litter, or duff, is dead plant material, such as leaves, bark, needles, and twigs, that have fallen to the ground. This detritus or dead organic material and its constituent nutrients are added to the top layer of soil, litterfall is characterized as fresh, undecomposed, and easily recognizable plant debris. This can be anything from leaves, cones, needles, twigs, bark, seeds/nuts, logs, items larger than 2 cm diameter are referred to as coarse litter, while anything smaller is referred to as fine litter or litter. The type of litterfall is most directly affected by ecosystem type, for example, leaf tissues account for about 70 percent of litterfall in forests, but woody litter tends to increase with forest age. In grasslands, there is very little aboveground perennial tissue so the annual litterfall is very low, in soil science, soil litter is classified in three layers, which form on the surface of the O Horizon. In tropical environments, the largest amount of falls in the latter part of dry seasons. As a result of variability due to seasons, the decomposition rate for any given area will also be variable. Latitude also has an effect on litterfall rates and thickness. Specifically, litterfall declines with increasing latitude, net primary production works inversely to this trend, suggesting that the accumulation of organic matter is mainly a result of decomposition rate. Surface detritus facilitates the capture and infiltration of rainwater into lower soil layers, Soil litter protects soil aggregates from raindrop impact, preventing the release of clay and silt particles from plugging soil pores. Releasing clay and silt particles reduces the capacity for soil to water and increases cross surface flow. In addition soil litter reduces wind erosion by preventing soil from losing moisture, organic matter accumulation also helps protect soils from wildfire damage. Soil litter can be completely removed depending on intensity and severity of wildfires, regions with high frequency wildfires have reduced vegetation density and reduced soil litter accumulation. Climate also influences the depth of plant litter, typically humid tropical and sub-tropical climates have reduced organic matter layers and horizons due to year round decomposition and high vegetation density and growth. In temperate and cold climates, litter tends to accuculate and decompose slower due to a growing season. Net primary production and litterfall are intimately connected, in every terrestrial ecosystem, the largest fraction of all net primary production is lost to herbivores and litterfall. Due to their interconnectedness, global patterns of litterfall are similar to patterns of net primary productivity. Litter provides habitat for a variety of organisms, certain plants are specially adapted for germinating and thriving in the litter layers
