According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Ephraim was one of the Tribes of Israel. The Tribe of Manasseh together with Ephraim formed the House of Joseph, it is one of the ten lost tribes. The etymology of the name is disputed. According to the Bible, the Tribe of Ephraim is descended from a man named Ephraim, recorded as the son of Joseph, the son of Jacob, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera; the descendants of Joseph formed two of the tribes of Israel, whereas the other sons of Jacob were the founders of one tribe each. The Bible records that the Tribe of Ephraim entered the land of Canaan during its conquest by Joshua, a descendant of Ephraim himself. However, many archeologists have abandoned the idea that Joshua carried out a conquest of Canaan similar to that described in the Book of Joshua, seeing Jews instead as indigenous Canaanites who developed a monotheistic religion over time. From Joshua to the formation of the first Kingdom of Israel, the Tribe of Ephraim was a part of a loose confederation of Israelite tribes.

No central government existed, in times of crisis the people were led by ad hoc leaders known as Judges. With the growth of the threat from Philistine incursions, the Israelite tribes decided to form a strong centralised monarchy to meet the challenge; the Tribe of Ephraim joined the new kingdom with Saul as the first king. The accepted date for Saul's reign is 1025–1005 BCE; some scholars dispute this date range and place Saul perhaps as late as "the second half of the tenth century B. C. E."After the death of Saul, the Bible records all the tribes other than Judah remained loyal to the House of Saul. After the death of Ishbosheth, Saul's son and successor to the throne of Israel, the Tribe of Ephraim joined the other northern Israelite tribes in making David, the king of Judah, the king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel. According to archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, there is doubt about whether the biblical ordering for the reigns of the early monarchs is reliable, that the sequence preserved in the Bible, in which David follows Saul as king of Israel, may not be accurate.

However, on the accession of Rehoboam, David's grandson, in c. 930 BCE the northern tribes split from the House of David to form the northern Kingdom of Israel. The first king of the northern kingdom was an Ephraimite, who ruled in 931–909 BCE; the accents of the tribes were distinctive enough at the time of the confederacy so that when the Israelites of Gilead, under the leadership of Jephthah, fought the Tribe of Ephraim, their pronunciation of shibboleth as sibboleth was considered sufficient evidence to single out individuals from Ephraim, so that they could be subjected to immediate death by the Israelites of Gilead. Ephraim was a member of the Northern Kingdom until the kingdom was conquered by Assyria in c. 723 BCE and the population deported. From that time, the Tribe of Ephraim has been counted as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Ephraim is seen as the tribe that embodies the entire Northern Kingdom and the royal house resided in the tribe's territory. In the biblical account, following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes.

Kenneth Kitchen, a well-known conservative biblical scholar, dates this event to after 1200 BC. However, the consensus view of modern scholars is that the conquest of Joshua as described in the Book of Joshua never occurred; as recorded in the Book of Joshua, the territory allocated to the Tribe of Ephraim was at the center of Canaan, west of the Jordan, south of the territory of Manasseh, north of the Tribe of Benjamin. The region named Samaria consisted of Ephraim's territory; the area was mountainous, giving it protection, highly fertile, giving prosperity, The territory of Ephraim contained the early centers of Israelite religion - Shechem and Shiloh. These factors contributed to making Ephraim the most dominant of the tribes in the Kingdom of Israel, led to Ephraim becoming a synonym for the entire kingdom. Joshua 16:1-4 outlines the borders of the lands allocated to the "children of Joseph", i.e. Ephraim and Manasseh combined, Joshua 16:5-8 defines the borders of the land allocated to the tribe of Ephraim in more detail.

Bethel was allocated by Joshua to the Tribe of Benjamin. However by the time of the prophetess Deborah, Bethel is described as being in the land of the Tribe of Ephraim; some twenty years after the breakup of the United Monarchy, the second king of Kingdom of Judah, defeated Jeroboam of Israel and took back the towns of Bethel and Ephron, with their surrounding villages. Ephron is believed to be the Ophrah, allocated to the Tribe of Benjamin by Joshua; the riverine gulch, naḥal Ḳanah, divided Ephraim's territory to the south, Manasseh's territory to the north. The modern Israeli town of Karnei Shomron is built near this gulch, which runs in an easterly-westerly direction; the border of Ephraim extended from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, incorporated within it the cities of Bethel, ʻAtarot, Beth-Ḥoron the Nether, extending as far as Gezer and the Mediterranean Sea. Gezer was said to have been inhabited by Canaanites long after Joshua had either killed or expelled the other Canaanites.

According to French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, who identified the site in 1871 and carried o

Organized and hosted by the Global Risk Forum The International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC is a global gathering of experts for risk reduction, disaster management, climate change adaptation. IDRCs are held as a biennial conference in Davos and complemented every other year with regional conferences hosted in different regions of the world and endorse the UNISDR Global Platform meetings; the IDRC conferences promote an integral risk management approach – across subject areas and sectors – encompassing scientific understanding with business, policy responses, the media and citizen participation. The IDRCs encourage stronger ties with adequate public–private partnership models and devising approaches for moving towards a more integrative way of thinking about disaster and risks. Additional conferences and workshops dealing with specific disaster and risk topics may be organized in Davos or elsewhere; the conferences and workshops aim to provide solutions for effective and efficient global disaster and risk management and climate change adaptation.

These issues need the involvement of all stakeholders of the private sector. Organized by the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, since 2007 IDRCs are organised by the Global Risk Forum GRF Davos. Patronage of IDRC include the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, UN organisations such as UNESCO, UN ISDR, UNDP, UNEP and ILO as well as the private sector like SWISS RE. IDRC conferences and workshops contribute to harmonizing risk reduction and disaster management with climate change adaptation measures; the IDRC Conferences provide an ideal platform for assessment and dissemination activities, as well as for networking activities. The next IDRC conference will be held from 28 August to 1 September 2014 in Switzerland; the International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC Davos 2010 with its motto “Risk, Disasters and Global Change – From Threats to Sustainable Opportunities” was a milestone toward the integration of the more complex and interwoven portfolio of risk and disaster related topics and trends as addressed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in his message to IDRC Davos 2010.

At IDRC Davos 2010 some 850 conference participants from 100 countries all over the world have gathered in a unique setting and atmosphere. High-ranking delegations from The Gambia, Republic of the Congo, from the I. R. Iran, from India, P. R. China, Indonesia participated. Thirteen plenary sessions, around 50 special and parallel sessions, side events, poster sessions, workshops, training courses and cultural events provided the frame for this worthwhile undertaking, it is remarkable to realize how far the fragmented, global risk and disaster community has grown into one distinctive body of excellence. To increase the interaction and exchange knowledge and ideas, GRF transformed the concentrated collection of ideas and knowledge presented at IDRC Davos 2010 into an interactive portfolio of presentations, video recorded plenary sessions and video statements. Over 700 participants from more than 80 countries attended the conference, including participants, from the United Nations and international organizations.

With 9 keynote presentations, 15 special panels, 85 sessions, 5 workshops, 78 posters, 23 panellists and 311 presenters. The outcomes of the IDRC Davos 2014 shall serve as the science & technology input for the post-2015 framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and provide recommendations towards the UN World Conference WCDRR in Sendai, Japan. An outcomes report will be published in due time. Risk management ISO 31000 International Disaster and Risk Conference GRF Global Risk Forum Davos

Limnology, is the study of inland aquatic ecosystems. The study of limnology includes aspects of the biological, chemical and geological characteristics and functions of inland waters; this includes the study of lakes, ponds, springs, streams and groundwater. A more recent sub-discipline of limnology, termed landscape limnology, studies and seeks to conserve these ecosystems using a landscape perspective, by explicitly examining connections between an aquatic ecosystem and its watershed; the need to understand global inland waters as part of the Earth System created a sub-discipline called global limnology. This approach considers processes in inland waters on a global scale, like the role of inland aquatic ecosystems in global biogeochemical cycles. Limnology is related to aquatic ecology and hydrobiology, which study aquatic organisms and their interactions with the abiotic environment. While limnology has substantial overlap with freshwater-focused disciplines, it includes the study of inland salt lakes.

The term limnology was coined by François-Alphonse Forel who established the field with his studies of Lake Geneva. Interest in the discipline expanded, in 1922 August Thienemann and Einar Naumann co-founded the International Society of Limnology. Forel's original definition of limnology, "the oceanography of lakes", was expanded to encompass the study of all inland waters, influenced Benedykt Dybowski's work on Lake Baikal. Prominent early American limnologists included Ed Deevey. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Edward A. Birge, Chancey Juday, Arthur D. Hasler contributed to the development of the Center for Limnology. Physical properties of aquatic ecosystems are determined by a combination of heat, currents and other seasonal distributions of environmental conditions; the morphometry of a body of water depends on the type of feature and the structure of the earth surrounding the body of water. Lakes, for instance, are classified by their formation, zones of lakes are defined by water depth.

River and stream system morphometry is driven by underlying geology of the area as well as the general velocity of the water. Another type of aquatic system which falls within the study of limnology are estuaries. Estuaries are bodies of water classified by the interaction of the ocean or sea. Wetlands vary in size and pattern however the most common types, marshes and swamps fluctuate between containing shallow and being dry depending on the time of year. Light zonation is the concept of how the amount of sunlight penetration into water influences the structure of a body of water; these zones define various levels of productivity within an aquatic ecosystems such as a lake. For instance, the depth of the water column which sunlight is able to penetrate and where most plant life is able to grow is known as the photic or euphotic zone; the rest of the water column, deeper and does not receive sufficient amounts of sunlight for plant growth is known as the aphotic zone. Similar to light zonation, thermal stratification or thermal zonation is a way of grouping parts of the water body within an aquatic system based on the temperature of different lake layers.

The less turbid the water, the more light is able to penetrate, thus heat is conveyed deeper in the water. Heating declines exponentially with depth in the water column, so the water will be warmest near the surface but progressively cooler as moving downwards. There are three main sections; the epilimnion is closest to the water surface and absorbs long- and shortwave radiation to warm the water surface. During cooler months, wind shear can contribute to cooling of the water surface; the thermocline is an area within the water column where water temperatures decrease. The bottom layer is the hypolimnion, which tends to have the coldest water because its depth restricts sunlight from reaching it. In temperate lakes, fall-season cooling of surface water results in turnover of the water column, where the thermocline is disrupted, the lake temperature profile becomes more uniform; the chemical composition of water in aquatic ecosystems is influenced by natural characteristics and processes including precipitation, underlying soil and bedrock in the watershed, erosion and sedimentation.

All bodies of water have a certain composition of both inorganic elements and compounds. Biological reactions affect the chemical properties of water. In addition to natural processes, human activities influence the chemical composition of aquatic systems and their water quality. Dissolved oxygen and dissolved carbon dioxide are discussed together due their coupled role in respiration and photosynthesis. Dissolved oxygen concentrations can be altered by physical and biological processes and reaction. Physical processes including wind mixing can increase dissolved oxygen concentrations in surface waters of aquatic ecosystems; because dissolved oxygen solubility is linked to water temperatures, changes in temperature affect dissolved oxygen concentrations as warmer water has a lower capacity to "hold" oxygen as colder water. Biologically, both photosynthesis and aerobic respiration affect dissolved oxygen concentrations. Photosynthesis by autotrophic organisms, such as phytoplankton and aquatic algae, incre