1.
International Union for Conservation of Nature
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The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, lobbying. IUCNs mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of resources is equitable. Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to equality, poverty alleviation. Unlike other international NGOs, IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation and it tries to influence the actions of governments, business and other stakeholders by providing information and advice, and through lobbying and partnerships. The organization is best known to the public for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List. IUCN has a membership of over 1200 governmental and non-governmental organizations, some 11,000 scientists and experts participate in the work of IUCN commissions on a voluntary basis. It employs approximately 1000 full-time staff in more than 60 countries and its headquarters are in Gland, Switzerland. IUCN has observer and consultative status at the United Nations, and plays a role in the implementation of several conventions on nature conservation. It was involved in establishing the World Wide Fund for Nature, in the past, IUCN has been criticized for placing the interests of nature over those of indigenous peoples. In recent years, its relations with the business sector have caused controversy. It was previously called the International Union for Protection of Nature, establishment In 1947, the Swiss League for the Protection of Nature organised an international conference on the protection of nature in Brunnen. It is considered to be the first government-organized non-governmental organization, the initiative to set up the new organisation came from UNESCO and especially from its first Director General, the British biologist Julian Huxley. At the time of its founding IUPN was the international organisation focusing on the entire spectrum of nature conservation Early years. Its secretariat was located in Brussels and its first work program focused on saving species and habitats, increasing and applying knowledge, advancing education, promoting international agreements and promoting conservation. Providing a solid base for conservation action was the heart of all activities. IUPN and UNESCO were closely associated and they jointly organized the 1949 Conference on Protection of Nature. In preparation for this conference a list of endangered species was drawn up for the first time
2.
Florida
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Florida /ˈflɒrᵻdə/ is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U. S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States, the Miami metropolitan area is Floridas most populous urban area. The city of Tallahassee is the state capital, much of the state is at or near sea level and is characterized by sedimentary soil. The climate varies from subtropical in the north to tropical in the south, the American alligator, American crocodile, Florida panther, and manatee can be found in the Everglades National Park. It was a location of the Seminole Wars against the Native Americans. Today, Florida is distinctive for its large Cuban expatriate community and high population growth, the states economy relies mainly on tourism, agriculture, and transportation, which developed in the late 19th century. Florida is also renowned for amusement parks, orange crops, the Kennedy Space Center, Florida has attracted many writers such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, and continues to attract celebrities and athletes. It is internationally known for golf, tennis, auto racing, by the 16th century, the earliest time for which there is a historical record, major Native American groups included the Apalachee, the Timucua, the Ais, the Tocobaga, the Calusa and the Tequesta. Florida was the first part of the continental United States to be visited and settled by Europeans, the earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León. Ponce de León spotted and landed on the peninsula on April 2,1513 and he named the region La Florida. The story that he was searching for the Fountain of Youth is a myth, in May 1539, Conquistador Hernando de Soto skirted the coast of Florida, searching for a deep harbor to land. He described seeing a wall of red mangroves spread mile after mile, some reaching as high as 70 feet. Very soon, many smokes appeared along the whole coast, billowing against the sky, the Spanish introduced Christianity, cattle, horses, sheep, the Spanish language, and more to Florida. Both the Spanish and French established settlements in Florida, with varying degrees of success, in 1559, Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano established a settlement at present-day Pensacola, making it the first attempted settlement in Florida, but it was abandoned by 1561. Spain maintained tenuous control over the region by converting the tribes to Christianity. The area of Spanish Florida diminished with the establishment of English settlements to the north, the English attacked St. Augustine, burning the city and its cathedral to the ground several times. Florida attracted numerous Africans and African-Americans from adjacent British colonies who sought freedom from slavery, in 1738, Governor Manuel de Montiano established Fort Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose near St
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Gulf Coast of the United States
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The Gulf Coast of the United States is the coastline along which the Southern United States meets the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, the economy of the Gulf Coast area is dominated by industries related to energy, petrochemicals, fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, the coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was and these landforms protect numerous bays and inlets providing as a barrier to oncoming waves. The central part of the Gulf Coast, from eastern Texas through Louisiana, the eastern part of the Gulf Coast, predominantly Florida, is dotted with many bays and inlets. The Gulf Coast climate is humid subtropical for the most part, although the tip of Florida. Much of the year is warm to hot along the Gulf Coast, while the 3 winters months bring periods of cool, the area is vulnerable to hurricanes as well as floods and severe thunderstorms. Tornadoes are infrequent at the coast but do occur, however the frequency at which they occur in inland portions of Gulf Coast states is much greater. Earthquakes are extremely rare to the area, but a surprising 6.0 earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico on September 10,2006, the Gulf Coast is a major center of economic activity. The marshlands along the Louisiana and Texas coasts provide breeding grounds, the Port of South Louisiana and the Port of Houston are two of the ten busiest ports in the world by cargo volume. As of 2004, seven of the top ten busiest ports in the U. S. are on the Gulf Coast. The discovery of oil and gas deposits along the coast and offshore, the coast contains nearly 4,000 oil platforms. S. Before Europeans arrived in the region, the region was home to several kingdoms that had extensive trade networks with empires such as the Aztecs. Shark and alligator teeth and shells from the Gulf have been found as far north as Ohio, the first Europeans to settle the Gulf Coast were primarily the French and the Spanish. The Louisiana Purchase and the Texas Revolution made the Gulf Coast a part of the United States during the first half of the 19th century. As the U. S. population continued to expand its frontiers westward, the development of sugar and cotton production allowed the South to prosper. Two major events were turning points in the history of the Gulf Coast region. The first was the American Civil War, which caused damage to some economic sectors in the South
5.
Everglades
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The Everglades is a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U. S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin and part of the neotropic ecozone. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles wide, the Everglades experience a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Human habitation in the portion of the Florida peninsula dates to 15,000 years ago. Before European colonization, the region was dominated by the native Calusa, with Spanish colonization, both tribes declined gradually during the following two centuries. The Seminole formed from mostly Creek people who had been warring to the North, they assimilated other peoples and created a new culture. After being forced from northern Florida into the Everglades during the Seminole Wars of the early 19th century, migrants to the region who wanted to develop plantations first proposed draining the Everglades in 1848, but no work of this type was attempted until 1882. Canals were constructed throughout the first half of the 20th century, in 1947, Congress formed the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project, which built 1,400 miles of canals, levees, and water control devices. The Miami metropolitan area grew substantially at this time and Everglades water was diverted to cities, portions of the Everglades were transformed into farmland, where the primary crop was sugarcane. Approximately 50 percent of the original Everglades has been developed as agricultural or urban areas, following this period of rapid development and environmental degradation, the ecosystem began to receive notable attention from conservation groups in the 1970s. Internationally, UNESCO and the Ramsar Convention designated the Everglades a Wetland Area of Global Importance, the construction of a large airport 6 miles north of Everglades National Park was blocked when an environmental study found that it would severely damage the South Florida ecosystem. With heightened awareness and appreciation of the region, restoration began in the 1980s with the removal of a canal that had straightened the Kissimmee River, however, development and sustainability concerns have remained pertinent in the region. The deterioration of the Everglades, including water quality in Lake Okeechobee, was linked to the diminishing quality of life in South Floridas urban areas. In 2000 the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was approved by Congress to combat these problems, to date, it is the most expensive and comprehensive environmental restoration attempt in history, but its implementation has faced political complications. The first written record of the Everglades was on Spanish maps made by cartographers who had not seen the land and they named the unknown area between the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida Laguna del Espíritu Santo. The area was featured on maps for decades without having been explored, British surveyor John Gerard de Brahm, who mapped the coast of Florida in 1773, called the area River Glades. Both Marjory Stoneman Douglas and linguist Wallace McMullen suggest that cartographers substituted Ever for River, the name Everglades first appeared on a map in 1823, although it was also spelled as Ever Glades as late as 1851. The Seminole call it Pa-hay-okee, meaning Grassy Water, the region was labeled Pa-hai-okee on an American military map from 1839, although it had earlier been called Ever Glades throughout the Second Seminole War
6.
Mangrove
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A mangrove is a shrub or small tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are salt tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to life in coastal conditions. They contain a complex filtration system and complex root system to cope with salt water immersion. They are adapted to the low oxygen conditions of waterlogged mud, the saline conditions tolerated by various mangrove species range from brackish water, through pure seawater, to water concentrated by evaporation to over twice the salinity of ocean seawater. The term mangrove comes to English from Spanish, and is likely to originate from Guarani and it was earlier mangrow, but this word was corrupted via folk etymology influence of the word grove. Mangrove swamps are found in tropical and subtropical tidal areas, areas where mangal occurs include estuaries and marine shorelines. The intertidal existence to which trees are adapted represents the major limitation to the number of species able to thrive in their habitat. High tide brings in water, and when the tide recedes. The return of tide can flush out these soils, bringing back to salinity levels comparable to that of seawater. At low tide, organisms are exposed to increases in temperature and desiccation. About 110 species are considered mangroves, in the sense of being a tree grows in such a saline swamp, though only a few are from the mangrove plant genus. However, a mangrove swamp typically features only a small number of tree species. It is not uncommon for a mangrove forest in the Caribbean to feature three or four tree species. For comparison, the tropical rainforest biome contains thousands of tree species, though the trees themselves are few in species, the ecosystem that these trees create provides a home for a great variety of other organisms. Mangrove plants require a number of adaptations to overcome the problems of anoxia, high salinity. Each species has its own solutions to problems, this may be the primary reason why, on some shorelines. Small environmental variations within a mangal may lead to greatly differing methods for coping with the environment, once established, mangrove roots provide an oyster habitat and slow water flow, thereby enhancing sediment deposition in areas where it is already occurring
7.
Islet
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An islet is a very small island. As suggested by its origin as islette, an Old French diminutive of isle, use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability. Cay or Key – an islet formed by the accumulation of sand deposits atop a reef Motu – A reef islet formed by broken coral and sand. River island – A small islet within the current of a river, rock – A rock, in the sense of a type of islet, is an uninhabited landform composed of rock, lying offshore, and having at most minimal vegetation. Sandbar – An exposed sandbar is another type of islet, Sea stack – A thin, vertical landform jutting out of a body of water. Skerry – A small rocky island, usually defined to be too small for habitation, subsidiary islets – A more technical application is to small land features, isolated by water, lying off the shore of a larger island. Likewise, any emergent land in an atoll is called an islet. Tidal island – Often small islands lie off the mainland of an area, being connected to it in low tide. In the Caribbean and West Atlantic, islets are often called cays or keys, rum Cay in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys off Florida are examples of islets. In the Channel Islands, they are identified by the suffix -hou from the Norse -holm. In Scotland and Ireland, they are often called inches, from the Gaelic innis, which originally meant island, in Ireland they are often termed skerries. In and around Polynesia, islets are widely known by the term motu, in and around the River Thames in England, small islands are known as aits or eyots. One long-term dispute over the status of such an islet was that of Snake Island, there are thousands of islets on Earth, approximately 24,000 islands and islets in the Stockholm archipelago alone. The following is a list of example islets from around the world, Islands or Rocks, Is that the Real Question. The Treatment of Islands in the Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries, in Myron H. Nordquist, John Norton Moore, Alfred H. A. The Law of the Sea Convention, US Accession and Globalization
8.
Oyster
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Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape, many, but not all, oysters are in the superfamily Ostreoidea. Some kinds of oysters are consumed by humans, cooked or raw. Some kinds of oysters are harvested for the pearl produced within the mantle. Windowpane oysters are harvested for their translucent shells, which are used to various kinds of decorative objects. True oysters are members of the family Ostreidae and this family includes the edible oysters, which mainly belong to the genera Ostrea, Crassostrea, Ostreola, and Saccostrea. Examples include the Belon oyster, eastern oyster, Olympia oyster, Pacific oyster, almost all shell-bearing mollusks can secrete pearls, yet most are not very valuable. Pearl oysters are not closely related to oysters, being members of a distinct family. Both cultured pearls and natural pearls can be extracted from pearl oysters, though other molluscs, such as the freshwater mussels, the largest pearl-bearing oyster is the marine Pinctada maxima, which is roughly the size of a dinner plate. Not all individual oysters produce pearls naturally, in fact, in a harvest of two and a half tons of oysters, only three to four oysters produce what commercial buyers consider to be absolute perfect pearls. In nature, pearl oysters produce pearls by covering a minute invasive object with nacre, over the years, the irritating object is covered with enough layers of nacre to become a pearl. The many different types, colours and shapes of pearls depend on the pigment of the nacre. Pearl farmers can culture a pearl by placing a nucleus, usually a piece of polished mussel shell, in three to seven years, the oyster can produce a perfect pearl. These pearls are not as valuable as natural pearls, but look exactly the same, in fact, since the beginning of the 20th century, when several researchers discovered how to produce artificial pearls, the cultured pearl market has far outgrown the natural pearl market. A number of molluscs also have common names that include the word oyster, usually because they either taste like or look somewhat like true oysters. Examples include, Thorny oysters in the genus Spondylus Pilgrim oyster, another term for a scallop, because of its good flavor, it commands high prices. Oysters are filter feeders, drawing water in over their gills through the beating of cilia. Suspended plankton and particles are trapped in the mucus of a gill, and from there are transported to the mouth, where they are eaten, digested, Oysters feed most actively at temperatures above 10 °C
9.
Shoal
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Often it refers to those submerged ridges, banks, or bars that rise near enough to the surface of a body of water as to constitute a danger to navigation. Shoals are also known as sandbanks, sandbars, or gravelbars, two or more shoals that are either separated by shared troughs or interconnected by past and or present sedimentary and hydrographic processes are referred to as a shoal complex. The term shoal is also used in a number of ways that can be similar or quite different from how it is used in the geologic, geomorphic. Shoals are characteristically long and narrow ridges and they can develop where a stream, river, or ocean current promotes deposition of sediment and granular material, resulting in localized shallowing of the water. Marine shoals also develop either by the in place drowning of barrier islands as the result of sea level rise or by the erosion. Shoals can appear as a coastal landform in the sea, where they are classified as a type of bank, or as fluvial landforms in rivers, streams. A shoal–sandbar may seasonally separate a smaller body of water from the sea, such as, Marine lagoons Brackish water estuaries Freshwater seasonal stream and river mouths and deltas. They are typically composed of sand, although they could be of any matter that the moving water has access to and is capable of shifting around. Wave shoaling is the process when surface waves move towards shallow water, such as a beach, they slow down, their wave height increases and this behavior is called shoaling, and the waves are said to shoal. The waves may or may not build to the point where they break, depending on how large they were to begin with, in particular, waves shoal as they pass over submerged sandbanks or reefs. This can be treacherous for boats and ships, shoaling can also diffract waves, so the waves change direction. For example, if waves pass over a bank which is shallower at one end than the other. Thus the wave fronts will refract, changing direction like light passing through a prism, refraction also occurs as waves move towards a beach if the waves come in at an angle to the beach, or if the beach slopes more gradually at one end than the other. Sandbars, also known as a trough bars, form where the waves are breaking, sometimes this occurs seaward of a trough. Sand carried by the moving bottom current is deposited where the current reaches the wave break. Other longshore bars may lie further offshore, representing the point of even larger waves. A harbor or river bar is a sedimentary deposit formed at an entrance or river mouth by. Where beaches are suitably mobile, or the river’s suspended and/or bed loads are large enough, deposition can build up a sandbar that completely blocks a river mouth and damming the river
10.
Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge
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The Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge is located in Southwest Florida in Collier County, between Marco Island and Everglades City, Florida. The refuge was first established in 1996 and covers 35,000 acres of the Ten Thousand Islands, the refuge includes both fresh and saltwater, and protects a large area of mangrove forest. Activities include fishing, hunting, bird watching, kayaking and camping, the refuge is home to a wide variety of plants and animals. There are approximately 200 species of fish,189 species of birds and innumerable plant species
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
