...The Arctic Tundra Introduction The Arctic Tundra is a really cold and harsh environment, which supports very little life including Arctic Foxes, Polar Bears, Grey Wolves, Caribou, Snow Geese and Musk Oxen. These are very harsh conditions and these animals are hanging on to life. The rainfall in The Arctic Tundra is also very low. Location The Arctic Tundra extends between the edge of the Arctic Ocean and the coniferous forest of the Taiga How they formed Tundras form at high angular distances (Latitude). Tundras form if an area takes more carbon dioxide than it produces. Tundras are one of the three biggest takers in of carbon dioxide. The soils of the tundra are called gelisols, which means that permafrost needs to be 100cm under the soil...
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...Alpine and Arctic environments. Both are very cold and treeless, can share the same environments and yet by dictionary definition both are quite distinct from each other. Alpine environments are defined as “of or relating to high mountains.” Arctic environments are defined as “of or relating to the regions around the North Pole.” Both, according to Barry and Ives (1974), are often described as tundra. This can cause communication problems when discussing similar environments, particularly the mountainous regions of subalpine areas and the hilly regions of subarctic regions. It will be easiest to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between subarctic, arctic, subalpine, and alpine environments, and where these environments can...
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...which a large variety of plants including deciduous tees grow. Species within heathland, forest and lake biomes make up the ecosystem of the country. In the British Isles, physical and human factors are changing vegetation in these ecosystems. Physical factors can be things such as succession, changes in climate, natural disasters and diseases. Human factors include cultivation, development, exploitation, tourism and deforestation. In the past, Britain was largely covered in deciduous forest. About 5000 years ago, humans started to cut many of the trees down so they could build their homes and use the wood as fuel for cooking and the cleared areas for growing crops. The cleared land in the early Middle Ages would have been used for agriculture such as sheep grazing, which would have damaged the soil and allowed heather to grow and dominate any surviving plants. Many moorland areas, such as the Pennines, were originally thickly forested. Mesolothic hunting caps that existed many years ago could have resided on the moors, but there is little evidence for this. If these camps existed, they may have wished to use the nearby vegetation resources for firewood, which is also what the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings who came to the area did. These activities are significant because about 75% of Britain’s land is used for agricultural purposes. This is a type of human activity that has influenced the future of plants that grow in the area, through the introduction of species and prevention...
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...from his village in the night and freezes to death alone on the tundra. A Bush pilot lands to deliver supplies at a remote cabin and the paranoid cabin-dweller shoots him with a 30-06 hunting rifle as the pilot steps out of the plane. A young mother wraps her newborn baby against her chest beneath her parka and heads out on a snowmobile to visit a neighbour, but when she arrives she discovers that the infant has been smothered to death, a tiny trail of blood dribbling from its nose. On Kodiak Island a teenage boy shoots his first deer, but the bullet passes through the animal and hits and kills his father, who is standing in the brush on the other side. Two girls drown while trying to canoe the Matanuska River. Piper’s father falls out of the sky. Her entire life she had been waiting for this news, though she didn’t know what form it would take. She had long since fled Alaska, but continued to watch from afar – television broadcasts, the Anchorage newspaper, emails from old friends. She marvelled at the spinning, diving, spectacular deaths. She watched and waited and wondered: how long could a daredevil like her father survive when there were so many ways to die? “Take a look at that.” The Bush pilot’s voice fills her earphones, distant and muffled as if coming from another world. The left wing dips and the small, shuttering plane leans to the side. The pilot nods downward. Far below on the Alaska tundra several bull caribou run along a thin, twisting game trail. The...
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...carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases in the atmosphere and is radiated back to Earth’s surface; these gases are known as greenhouse gases due to their heat-trapping capacity. This re-absorption process is naturally good; the Earth’s average surface temperature would be very cold if not for the greenhouse gases. Causes of Global Warming Global Warming is caused by many things. The causes are split up into two groups, man-made or anthropogenic causes, and natural causes. Natural Causes Natural causes are causes created by nature. One natural cause is a release of methane gas from arctic tundra and wetlands. Methane is a greenhouse gas. A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere. Another natural cause is that the earth goes through a cycle of climate change. This climate change usually lasts about 40,000 years. Man-made Causes Man-made causes probably do the most damage. There are many man-made causes. Pollution is one of the biggest man-made problems. Pollution comes in many shapes and sizes. Burning fossil fuels is one thing that causes...
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...Alaska Brand Audit Brand Inventory History Alaska has been a unique brand for many years. Originally known as Russian America because it was owned by Russia, the origin of the name Alaska is a misconception from the first Russian explorers to venture into Alaskan waters (the original Aleut word "alaxsxaq" literally meaning "object toward which the action of the sea is directed"[Alaska]). When the United States bought Alaska, even though the price was only two cents an acre, it was known for many years as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox”, after William Seward, the Secretary of State who was primarily responsible for pushing the purchase from Russia through Congress. In the early days Alaska’s brand image was mostly negative. It was known as the “Frozen North”, the “land of ice and snow”, the “land without summer”. Many of these images are from the stories and poetry of Robert Service, Jack London and their contemporaries. A good example of this writing is the poem “Cremation of Sam McGee”— see appendix II, (Service). All these extreme brand images dominated perceptions of Alaska prior to the discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late 1800s. After gold was discovered these negative perceptions were softened somewhat, though they remained rather negative—in large part due to the difficulty of living in the far north. Our Brand Survey We did a brand audit of Alaska to see how well Alaska has worked past these harsh criticisms. To accomplish this we surveyed...
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...AS GEOGRAPHY UNIT 1 WORLD AT RISK WORLD AT RISK GLOBAL HAZARDS Hazard – Potential threat to human life or property Natural Hazards – Caused by natural processes e.g. lava flow from volcanic eruption Hydro-meteorological Hazards – Caused by climatic processes (droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and storms Geophysical Hazards – Caused by land processes (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes) Disaster – When a hazard seriously affects humans Risk – Likelihood that humans will be seriously affected by a hazard Vulnerability – How susceptible a population is to the damage caused by a hazard. Disaster Risk Equation Risk (R) – Hazards (H) * Vulnerability (V) / Capacity to Cope (C) Risk increases if: * Frequency or severity of hazards increase * People vulnerability increase * Capacity to cope decreases (Capacity to cope is the ability to deal with the consequences of a hazard) e.g. people in remote areas are further from help in central areas, so have lower capacity to cope) * Global Warming – greatest global hazard * Recent increase in average global temp – climate change * Causes other types of climate change * Context hazard – global in scale (affects all parts of environment) – potential to trigger other hazards or make them worse * Chronic Hazard (Long term) * People who aren’t causing the problem are mostly affected * Difficult to find solutions * Hydro-meteorological hazards becoming more frequent ...
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...Biology 2F03: Lecture 1 Chapter 2: Life on Land • • • • • • • • Labs start on the Sept 17 Why horses and cattle help restore Guanacaste forest of Costa Rica? o This forest was in decline for thousands of years, when Indians colonized central America, it caused its decline. o Its regenerated when the Europeans came with the cattle o The trees only produce a new plant after processes: the fallen fruit has to be eaten by a larger animal (mule, or horse or cow) à it has to pass through the body and ends up in a pile of fertilizer only then it can regenerate and produce a tree o Why did it evolve to be depended to this process? § There must be animals there in the past, in the past it was a camel (llama, alpaca). When the Indians came from asia (50000 years ago) these animals went extinct and the tree lost its major dispersal system What is the most obvious foundation of life on land? o Is landà soil Climate defines biomes, the ‘shapes’ of vegetation o Defines the major types of land on earth o Temperature and precipitation to be specific Soils in turn greatly affect the aspects (roots, water, nutrient) à rentention, root attachment, etc. Soil typically form layers (horizontal) retaining a range of physical and chemical layers: o Classification of soil: O= organic, A, B, C Soil horizons: description o O: organic, litter on top, fine litter deeper (gets broken down, hence fine), pollen, dead organisms o A: mineral soil, some organic matter...
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...TRIED AND TRUE Earth’s reflection: Albedo by Brandon Gillette and Cheri Hamilton H ave you ever walked outside on a sunny winter morning to look at the freshly fallen snow? If so, I hope you had your sunglasses on! When viewing objects of different colors, you might notice that some appear brighter than others. This is because light is reflected differently from various surfaces, depending on their physical properties. Different surfaces of Earth also reflect light in different ways. The word albedo is used to describe how reflective a surface is. An ideal white body has an albedo of 100%, total reflection, and an ideal black body has 0% albedo, or total absorption. The Earth-atmosphere system has a combined albedo of about 30%, a number that is highly dependent on local surface makeup, ground cover, angle of incidence, and cloud distribution (Budikova and Hogan 2010). Figure 1 shows the range in albedo of a variety of common surfaces, ranging from about 5% for dark objects such as forests and asphalt, to as much as 90% for light objects, such as fresh snow. Because Earth’s albedo affects the amount of sunlight the planet absorbs, it has a direct effect on Earth’s energy budget and, therefore, global temperatures. Over the next few decades, effects of climate change, including decreasing areas of highly reflective snow and ice, will decrease Earth’s albedo. This will accelerate the rate of global temperature rise, creating what is known as...
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...Losing Your Place Sue Clifford and Angela King The main players fall silent, the filming is over, the recording is finished, but the sound technician has hushed everyone to get some 'atmos'. Coughs, car noise echoing off the warehouses, birdsong, boards creaking, trees breathing in the wind, these are the sounds of the everyday, so particular to this place, that to cut the film and add studio voiceovers needs an underlay of this local atmosphere in order to ensure continuity and authenticity. That elusive particularity, so often undervalued as 'background noise', is as important as the stars. It is the richness we take for granted. How do we know where we are in time and space? How do we understand ourselves in the world? Common Ground has been exploring and developing a new concept, that of local distinctiveness. It is characterised by elusiveness, it is instantly recognizable yet difficult to describe; It is simple yet may have profound meaning to us. It demands a poetic quest and points up the shortcomings in all those attempts to understand the things around us by compartmentalising them, fragmenting, quantifying, reducing. Local distinctiveness is essentially about places and our relationship with them. It is as much about the commonplace as about the rare, about the everyday as much as the endangered, and about the ordinary as much as the spectacular. In other cultures it might be about people's deep relationship with the land. Here discontinuities have...
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...1. Moose are large herbivorous animals. (a) In a study of one population of moose, 72 animals were trapped and marked with ear tags. They were then released. One month later, fieldworkers examined 120 moose and found that 14 of these had ear tags. Use these figures to calculate the size of the moose population. Show your working. Answer:............................ (2) (b) Isle Royale is a large island in Lake Superior. Moose first colonised this island in 1900. At the time they had no predators on the island. Wolves, which are predators of moose, were introduced to the island in 1950. The graph shows the moose population from 1900. (i) Suggest an explanation for the changes in the moose population before the introduction of the wolves. ........................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................... ........................................................................................................................... (2) ...
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...Module 3 Waves and the Electromagnetic Spectrum Topic: Waves 1. What is a wave? A wave is vibration that travels and all waves are created by something vibrating. Waves transport energy but do not transport mass. 2. Describe the following terms associated with waves: a. amplitude height of wave b. wavelength length of a wave c. frequency number of waves per second (Hz) d. period how long a wave lasts when it arrives at a fixed point (measured in seconds) 3. What are radio waves? An electromagnetic wave of a frequency used for long distant communication. 4. Explain the difference between a transverse wave and a longitudinal wave, and give examples of each. In a longitudinal wave, the vibration travels in the same direction that wave travels. Examples of longitudinal waves include: Sound, p-waves (earthquakes) In a transverse wave, the vibration direction is perpendicular to direction that wave travels. Examples include: Light/electromagnetic, (radio, microwave, xray, etc.), water waves, swaves (earthquakes). The major difference between longitudinal and transverse waves is their direction. Longitudinal waves move left to right while transverse waves move up and down. 5. Compare and contrast: light waves vs. sound waves Light waves are transverse and sound waves are longitudinal. Light waves can travel through a vacuum but sound waves cannot. Speed of light is nearly 300 million m/s while sound has a speed of about 340 m/s...
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...GLOBAL WARMING Introduction Global warming begins when sunlight reaches Earth. The clouds, atmospheric particles, reflective ground surfaces and ocean surface then reflected about 30 percent of it back into space, while the remaining is absorbed by oceans, lands and air. This in turn heats the planet’s surface and atmosphere, making life possible. As Earth warmed up, this solar energy is radiated by thermal radiation or infrared heat, traveling directly out to space, thus cooling the Earth. However, some of the outgoing radiation is re-absorbed by carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases in the atmosphere and is radiated back to Earth’s surface; these gases are known as greenhouse gases due to their heat-trapping capacity. This re-absorption process is naturally good; the Earth’s average surface temperature would be very cold if not for the greenhouse gases. The problem begins when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were artificially raised by humankind at an ever-increasing rate since the past 250 years. As of 2004, over 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide was pumped out per year; natural carbon sinks such as forests and the ocean absorbed some of this, while the rest accumulated in the atmosphere. Millions of pounds of methane are produced in landfills and agricultural decomposition of biomass and animal manure. Nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere by nitrogen-based fertilizers and other soil management practices. Once released, these greenhouse...
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...1 ESSAYS ON SUSTAINABILITY Thirteen Challenging Essays for Earthlings By Peter E. Black, 2008 Wheels and Water .......................................................page 1 Water and Humans on Planet Earth ................................... 2 Climate, Weather, and Global Warming ............................. 3 A Catastrophic Loss of Species ......................................... 4 The Naked Truth................................................................... 5 Asymmetrical Resource Distribution ................................. 6 Stormwater and Groundwater Runoff ................................ 7 Economy, Energy, Environment ......................................... 8 Drill in the ANWR? No Way! ............................................... 9 The Wonder of Water ......................................................... 10 Buffering Sands of Time.................................................... 11 Ecology and Civilization .................................................... 12 With a Bang, not a Whimper.............................................. 13 © 2008 Peter E. Black, PhD (US Copyright Registration TXu 1-580-484, July 13, 2008 as “Conservation is the Cornerstone of Sustainability”) Distinguished Teaching Professor of Water and Related Land Resources, Emeritus, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210 peblack@esf.edu and www.watershedhydrology.com Essays on Sustainability Thirteen Challenging...
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...Table of content: Abstract 3 I. INTRODUCTION 4 II. Theory 1: GLOBAL WARMING IN THE PAST 5 • Article 1: Volcanism • Article 2: Orbital variation • Article 3: Solar output • Article 4: Plate tectonic • Article 5: Solar radiation III. Theory2: THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT 7 • Article1: Carbon Dioxide • Article2: Methane • Article Ni trous Oxide • Article Ozone • Article4: Synthetic Chemicals • Article 5: Aerosols IV. Theory3: EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING 13 • Article 1: Weather • Article 2: Ice Sheets and Glaciers • Article 3: Sea Level • Article 4: Agriculture • Article 5: Plants and Animals V. Theory4: The impact of global warming on humanity 22 • Article 1: Extreme storm affects health and infrastructure • Article 2: Heat wave increase death and illness • Article 3: Water and food supplies threatened • Article 4: Drinkable water become increasingly contaminated • Article 5: Large numbers of environmental refugee VI. Theory5: EFFORTS TO CONTROL GLOBAL WARMING 23 • Article 1: Carbone Capture • Article 2: Energie Sources • Article 3: koyoto • Article 4: Programs in the United States • Article 5: Montreal protocol CONCLUSION 27 Bibliography 28 Abstract: Throughout its long history, earth has warmed and cooled time, and again. Climate has changed...
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