Bustard
Bustards, including floricans and korhaans, are large, terrestrial birds living in dry grassland areas and on the steppes of the Old World. They range in length from 40 to 150 cm, they make up the family Otididae. Bustards are omnivorous and opportunistic, eating leaves, seeds, small vertebrates, invertebrates. Bustards are all large with the two largest species, the kori bustard and the great bustard, being cited as the world's heaviest flying birds. In both the largest species, large males exceed a weight of 20 kg, weigh around 13.5 kg on average and can attain a total length of 150 cm. The smallest species is the little brown bustard, around 40 cm long and weighs around 600 g on average. In most bustards, males are larger than females about 30% longer and sometimes more than twice the weight, they are among the most sexually dimorphic groups of birds. In only the floricans is the sexual dimorphism reverse, with the adult female being larger and heavier than the male; the wings have 16 -- 24 secondary feathers.
There are 18–20 feathers in the tail. The plumage is predominantly cryptic. Bustards are omnivorous, feeding principally on invertebrates, they make their nests on the ground, making their eggs and offspring very vulnerable to predation. They walk on strong legs and big toes, pecking for food as they go. Most prefer to walk over flying, they have long broad wings with "fingered" wingtips, striking patterns in flight. Many have interesting mating displays, such as inflating throat sacs or elevating elaborate feathered crests; the female lays three to five dark, speckled eggs in a scrape in the ground, incubates them alone. The family Otididae was introduced by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. Extinct species from the Paleofile.com website. Family Otididae Genus †Gryzaja Zubareva 1939 †Gryzaja odessana Zubareva 1939 Genus †Ioriotis Burchak-Abramovich & Vekua 1981 †Ioriotis gabunii Burchak-Abramovich & Vekua 1981 Genus †Miootis Umanskaya 1979 †Miootis compactus Umanskaya 1979 Genus †Pleotis Hou 1982 †Pleotis liui Hou 1982 Subfamily Lissotinae Verheyen 1957 non Benesh 1955 Genus Lissotis Reichenbach 1848 Hartlaub's bustard, Lissotis hartlaubii Black-bellied bustard, Lissotis melanogaster L. m. notophila Oberholser 1905 L. m. melanogaster Subfamily Neotinae Verheyen 1957 Genus Neotis Sharpe 1893 Nubian bustard, Neotis nuba Ludwig's bustard, Neotis ludwigii Denham's bustard), Neotis denhami N. d. denhami N. d. jacksoni N. d. stanleyi Heuglin's bustard, Neotis heuglinii Genus Ardeotis Le Maout 1853 Arabian bustard, Ardeotis arabs A. a. lynesi A. a. stieberi A. a. arabs A. a. butleri Australian bustard, Ardeotis australis Great Indian bustard, Ardeotis nigriceps Kori bustard, Ardeotis kori A. k. struthiunculus A. k. kori Subfamily Otidinae Gray 1841 Genus Tetrax Forster 1817 †T. paratetrax Little bustard, Tetrax tetrax Forster 1817 Genus Otis Linnaeus 1758 †O. bessarabicus Kessler & Gal 1996 †O. hellenica Boev, Lazaridis & Tsoukala 2014 Great bustard, Otis tarda Linnaeus 1758 O. t. tarda Linnaeus 1758 O. t. dybowskii Taczanowski 1874 Genus Chlamydotis Lesson 1839 †C. affinis Brodkorb 1967 †C. mesetaria Sánchez Marco 1990 Macqueen's bustard, Chlamydotis macqueenii Houbara bustard, Chlamydotis undulata C. u. fuertaventurae C. u. undulata Genus Houbaropsis Sharpe 1893 Bengal florican, Houbaropsis bengalensis Sharpe 1893 H. b. bengalensis Sharpe 1893 H. b. blandini Delacour 1928 Genus Sypheotides Lesson 1839 Lesser florican, Sypheotides indicus Lesson 1839 Genus Lophotis Reichenbach 1848 Red-crested korhaan, Lophotis ruficrista Savile's bustard, Lophotis savilei Lynes 1920 Buff-crested bustard, Lophotis gindiana Genus Eupodotis Lesson 1839 Little brown bustard, Eupodotis humilis Karoo korhaan, Eupodotis vigorsii E. v. namaqua E. v. vigorsii Rüppell's korhaan, Eupodotis rueppellii E. r. fitzsimonsi E. r. rueppellii Blue korhaan, Eupodotis caerulescens White-bellied bustard, Eupodotis senegalensis E. s. barrowii E. s. canicollis E. s. erlangeri E. s. mackenziei White 1945 E. s. senegalensis Genus Afrotis Gray 1855 Southern black korhaan, Afrotis afra Northern black korhaan, Afrotis afraoides A. a. etoschae A. a. damarensis Roberts 1926 A. a. afraoides Bustards are gregarious outside the breeding season, but are wary and difficult to approach in the open habitats they prefer.
Most species are declining or endangered through habitat loss and hunting where they are nominally protected. The last bustard in Britain died in 1832, but the bird is being reintroduced through batches of chicks imported from Russia. In 2009, two great bustard chicks were ha
Mancomunidad
In present-day Spain a mancomunidad is a free association or commonwealth of municipalities. A mancomunidad is a legal personality, can exist either for a particular period to achieve a concrete goal or can exist indefinitely. A Spanish mancomunidad constitutes a local entity within the national legal framework, to which those municipalities delegate some of their functions and powers, it is similar to a comarca, with the difference that comarca has somewhat different meanings in the various autonomous communities of Spain and mancomunidad is defined identically throughout the country. The municipalities in a single mancomunidad need not be coterminous, they are required to set a clear goal, create management bodies distinct from those of the individual municipalities, provide the mancomunidad with its own budget. In Spain there are a number of natural or historical regions that, despite of the strong identity and common goals of their inhabitants, are divided by provincial or ancient kingdom borders.
Examples of such regions are Tierra de Campos and Ilercavonia. Such regions or comarcas have not been able to achieve the necessary legal recognition for their administrative development within the existing provincial or autonomous frameworks. Therefore, their municipalities have resorted to organizing themselves in a mancomunidad. Other groups of municipalities that don't face the problem of borders cutting across their natural region of comarca may form a mancomunidad for economical purposes, to improve local services or in order alleviate some form of historical administrative neglect owing to distance from and lack of communication with current administrative centers; the term mancomunidad and its cognates are used to translate the English word "commonwealth". Mancomunidades in Spain, interactive map. Mancomunidad Tierra de Caballeros Web Mancomunidad Terra de Celanova
Provinces of Spain
Spain and its autonomous communities are divided into fifty provinces. Spain's provincial system was recognized in its 1978 constitution but its origin dates back to 1833. Ceuta and the Plazas de soberanía are not part of any provinces; the layout of Spain's provinces follows the pattern of the territorial division of the country carried out in 1833. The only major change of provincial borders since that time has been the subdivision of the Canary Islands into two provinces rather than one; the provinces served as transmission belts for policies enacted in Madrid, as Spain was a centralised state for most of its modern history. The importance of the provinces has declined since the adoption of the system of autonomous communities in the period of the Spanish transition to democracy, they remain electoral districts for national elections and as geographical references: for instance in postal addresses and telephone codes. A small town would be identified as being in, Valladolid province rather than the autonomous community of Castile and León.
The provinces were the "building-blocks". No province is divided between more than one of these communities. Most of the provinces—with the exception of Álava, Biscay, Guipúzcoa, Balearic Islands, La Rioja, Navarra — are named after their principal town. Only two capitals of autonomous communities — Mérida in Extremadura and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia — are not the capitals of provinces. Seven of the autonomous communities comprise no more than one province each: Asturias, Balearic Islands, Cantabria, La Rioja, Madrid and Navarra; these are sometimes referred to as "uniprovincial" communities. The table below lists the provinces of Spain. For each, the capital city is given, together with an indication of the autonomous community to which it belongs and a link to a list of municipalities in the province; the names of the provinces and their capitals are ordered alphabetically according to the form in which they appear in the main Wikipedia articles describing them. Unless otherwise indicated, their Spanish language names are the same.
List of Spanish provinces by population List of Spanish provinces by area Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces Autonomous communities of Spain Comarcas of Spain ISO 3166-2:ESGeneral: Political divisions of Spain Maps of the provinces of Spain Maps of Spain's Provinces List of municipalities of Spain listed by province from the Spanish INE
Natural region
A natural region is a basic geographic unit. It is a region, distinguished by its common natural features of geography and climate. From the ecological point of view, the occurring flora and fauna of the region are to be influenced by its geographical and geological factors, such as soil and water availability, in a significant manner, thus most natural regions are homogeneous ecosystems. Human impact can be an important factor in the destiny of a particular natural region; the concept "natural region" may refer to a small, well defined area, or to a large basic geographical unit, like the vast boreal forest region. The term may be used generically, like in alpine tundra, or to refer to a particular place; the term is useful where there is no corresponding or coterminous official region. The Fens of eastern England, the Thai highlands, the Pays de Bray in Normandy, are examples of this. Others might include regions with particular geological characteristics, like badlands, such as the Bardenas Reales, an upland massif of acidic rock, or The Burren, in Ireland.
Ecoregion Natural regions of Chile Natural regions of Colombia Natural regions of Germany Natural regions of Venezuela Physiographic regions of the world Natural regions of Texas Alberta's Natural Regions Natural regions in Valencia
Clay
Clay is a finely-grained natural rock or soil material that combines one or more clay minerals with possible traces of quartz, metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure. Clays are plastic due to particle size and geometry as well as water content, become hard and non–plastic upon drying or firing. Depending on the soil's content in which it is found, clay can appear in various colours from white to dull grey or brown to deep orange-red. Although many occurring deposits include both silts and clay, clays are distinguished from other fine-grained soils by differences in size and mineralogy. Silts, which are fine-grained soils that do not include clay minerals, tend to have larger particle sizes than clays. There is, some overlap in particle size and other physical properties; the distinction between silt and clay varies by discipline. Geologists and soil scientists consider the separation to occur at a particle size of 2 µm, sedimentologists use 4–5 μm, colloid chemists use 1 μm.
Geotechnical engineers distinguish between silts and clays based on the plasticity properties of the soil, as measured by the soils' Atterberg limits. ISO 14688 grades clay particles as being smaller than 2 silt particles as being larger. Mixtures of sand and less than 40% clay are called loam. Loam is used as a building material. Clay minerals form over long periods of time as a result of the gradual chemical weathering of rocks silicate-bearing, by low concentrations of carbonic acid and other diluted solvents; these solvents acidic, migrate through the weathering rock after leaching through upper weathered layers. In addition to the weathering process, some clay minerals are formed through hydrothermal activity. There are two types of clay deposits: secondary. Primary clays remain at the site of formation. Secondary clays are clays that have been transported from their original location by water erosion and deposited in a new sedimentary deposit. Clay deposits are associated with low energy depositional environments such as large lakes and marine basins.
Depending on the academic source, there are three or four main groups of clays: kaolinite, montmorillonite-smectite and chlorite. Chlorites are not always considered to be a clay, sometimes being classified as a separate group within the phyllosilicates. There are 30 different types of "pure" clays in these categories, but most "natural" clay deposits are mixtures of these different types, along with other weathered minerals. Varve is clay with visible annual layers, which are formed by seasonal deposition of those layers and are marked by differences in erosion and organic content; this type of deposit is common in former glacial lakes. When fine sediments are delivered into the calm waters of these glacial lake basins away from the shoreline, they settle to the lake bed; the resulting seasonal layering is preserved in an distribution of clay sediment banding. Quick clay is a unique type of marine clay indigenous to the glaciated terrains of Norway, Northern Ireland, Sweden, it is a sensitive clay, prone to liquefaction, involved in several deadly landslides.
Powder X-ray diffraction can be used to identify clays. The physical and reactive chemical properties can be used to help elucidate the composition of clays. Clays exhibit plasticity. However, when dry, clay becomes firm and when fired in a kiln, permanent physical and chemical changes occur; these changes convert the clay into a ceramic material. Because of these properties, clay is used for making pottery, both utilitarian and decorative, construction products, such as bricks and floor tiles. Different types of clay, when used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce earthenware and porcelain. Prehistoric humans discovered the useful properties of clay; some of the earliest pottery shards recovered are from Japan. They are associated with the Jōmon culture and deposits they were recovered from have been dated to around 14,000 BC. Clay tablets were the first known writing medium. Scribes wrote by inscribing them with cuneiform script using a blunt reed called a stylus. Purpose-made clay balls were used as sling ammunition.
Clays sintered in fire were the first form of ceramic. Bricks, cooking pots, art objects, smoking pipes, musical instruments such as the ocarina can all be shaped from clay before being fired. Clay is used in many industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, chemical filtering; until the late 20th century, bentonite clay was used as a mold binder in the manufacture of sand castings. Clay, being impermeable to water, is used where natural seals are needed, such as in the cores of dams, or as a barrier in landfills against toxic seepage. Studies in the early 21st century have investigated clay's absorption capacities in various applications, such as the removal of heavy metals from waste water and air purification. Traditional uses of clay as medicine goes back to prehistoric times. An example is Armenian bole, used to soothe an upset stomach; some animals such as parrots and pigs ingest clay for similar reasons. Kaolin clay and attapulgite have been used as anti-diarrheal medicines.
Clay as the defining ingredient of loam is one of the oldest building materials on Earth, among other
Castile and León
Castile and León (UK:, US:. It was constituted in 1983, although it existed for the first time during the First Spanish Republic in the 19th century. León first appeared as a Kingdom in 910, whilst the Kingdom of Castile gained an independent identity in 1065 and was intermittently held in personal union with León before merging with it in 1230. Though the kings of Castile and León continued to take the title King of León as the superior title, to use a lion as part of their standard, power in fact became centralized in Castile, as exemplified by the Leonese language's replacement by Spanish; the Kingdom of León and the Kingdom of Castile kept different parliaments, different flags, different coin and different laws until the Modern Era, when Spain, like other European states, centralized governmental power in 1833. The autonomous community of Castile and León is the result of the union in 1983 of nine provinces: the three that, after the territorial division of 1833, were part of the Region of León and six attached to the Old Castile, except in the latter case the provinces of Santander and Logroño.
It is the largest autonomous community in Spain and the third largest region of the European Union, covering an area of 94,223 square kilometres with an official population of around 2.5 million. From the beginning of the federalist debate in Spain in the 19th century during the First Spanish Republic there were projects of autonomy for a Castile and León region, as the project of Castilian Mancomunity, Bases de Segovia, Castilian Provincial League or Castilian Federal Pact, but including current Cantabria and La Rioja. Same project that continued to exist during the Second Spanish Republic and, carried out after the Constitution of 1978, but without Cantabria and La Rioja that, although it was considered to include them formed uniprovincial autonomies, its Statute of Autonomy declares in its preamble: The Autonomous Community of Castile and León arises from the modern union of the historical territories that composed and gave name to the old crowns of León and Castile. Eleven hundred years ago, the Kingdom of León was constituted, from which that of Castile and Galicia were dislodged as kingdoms throughout the 9th century, and, in 1143, that of Portugal.
During these two centuries the monarchs who held the government of these lands attained the dignity of emperors, as attested by the terms of Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII. In Castile and León, more than 60% of all of Spain's heritage sites are found. All of which translate into: 8 World Heritage sites 1800 classified cultural heritage assets, 112 historic sites, 400 museums, more than 500 castles, of which 16 are considered of high historical value, 12 cathedrals, 1 concathedral, the largest concentration of Romanesque art in the world. With 8 World Heritage sites, Castile and León is the region of the world with more cultural assets distinguished by the highest protection figure granted by UNESCO, ahead of the Italian regions of Tuscany and Lombardy, both with 6 sites; the Montes de Valsaín mountains and the Béjar and Francia mountain ranges, in the Sistema Central, the valleys of Laciana, Omaña y Luna and the Picos de Europa and Los Ancares, in the Cantabrian Mountains, the Iberian Plateau, in the border area with Portugal, have been declared biosphere reserve by UNESCO, which recognizes the geopark of La Lora with this figure of protection.
In addition, Castile and León is related to two of the records of the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO which are the Decreta of the Cortes of León of 1188, curia regia considered the birthplace of worldwide parliamentarism by the institution itself, the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Index of development of social services reflects that the community has one of the best social services in the country, positioning itself as the third autonomy that offers the best benefits to its citizens, after the Basque Country and Navarre, its education, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment report of 2015, leads the scores in reading and sciences with a score comparable to that of the ten best countries in the study.23 April is designated Castile and León Day, commemorating the defeat of the comuneros at the Battle of Villalar during the Revolt of the Comuneros, in 1521. The Statute of Autonomy of Castile and León, reformed for the last time in 2007, establishes in the sixth article of its preliminary title the symbols of the community's exclusive identity.
These are: the coat of the flag, the banner and the anthem. Its legal protection is the same as that corresponding to the symbols of the State -whose outrages are classified as crime in article 543 of the Penal Code-. In the articulated statuary, the coat of arms is defined as follows: The coat of arms of Castile and León is a stamped shield by open royal crown, barracked in cross; the first and fourth quartering: in the field of gules, a merloned golden castle of three merlons, drafted of sable and rinse of azure. The second and third quartering: in a silver field, a rampant lion of purple, lingued and armed with gules, crowned with gold; the flag is described as follows: The flag of Castile and León is quartered and contains the symbols of Castile and León, as described in the previous section. The flag will fly in all the centres and official acts of the Community, to the right of the Spanish flag. Following the same wording, the banner is constituted by the shield quartered on a traditional crimson background.
The Statute expresses: "The anthem and the other sym
Pisuerga
The Pisuerga is a river in northern Spain, the Duero's second largest tributary. It rises in the Cantabrian Mountains in the province of Palencia, autonomous region of Castile and León, 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, its length is 270 kilometres. Since the 1950s the water level of the river has been regular throughout the year due to the huge Aguilar de Campoo dam which collects all the water from the river's rainy upper valleys; this regulation has allowed the creation of vast extensions of irrigated farmland along the Pisuerga's course across the northern Castilian plain. The Spanish phrase "aprovechando que el Pisuerga pasa por Valladolid" is a popular 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.
List of rivers of Spain
Spain
Castile and León
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