Chimpanzee
.... and the Gombe National Park.
In Jane Goodall's, May 1979 article in the National Geographic called "Life
and Death at Gombe" it reveals the first time that chimpanzees who were always
perceived to be playful, gentle monkeys, could suddenly become dangerous killers.
"I knew that some of our chimpanzees, so gentle for the most part, could on
occasion become savage killers, ruthless cannibals, and that they had their own
form of primitive warfare."(Goodall, 1979:594) To try and explain this ruthless
be .....
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Chinook Salmon
.... back to the same areas, just as their ancestors did, to lay their eggs.
The hydropower plant's turbines are also very dangerous to young salmon. Many
of them are killed by the giant turbines on their way back to the ocean.
Killing off many of the salmons new generation. Pollution is also a killer of
many Chinook salmon. Pollution caused by sewage, farming, grazing, logging and
mining find it's way into our waters. These harmful substances kill many
species of fish and other marine life. The Chinook s .....
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Preserving Our Earth
.... of skyscrapers and
condominiums wipe out our decreasing rainforests. This drudges wildlife from
its natural home and into the havoc that is ours. Millions of acres of
beautiful land are destroyed daily to satisfy the needs of mankind.
But has anyone contemplated the needs of our wildlife? When their homes
are incinerated, where do they run for shelter? Where will wildlife obtain its
food and oxygen if the sources are gone? Not much is done about our destructive
ways, we sit back and let money and gre .....
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Death Of A Planet
.... only pollutants released through car exhaust.
Two more pollutants released through car exhaust are carbon monoxide and
nitrogen oxide. The first reduces the flow of oxygen to the bloodstream, and
could harm people with heart disease. Nitrogen oxide is formed when a car
engine gets hot. It contains chemicals that aid in the formation of ground
level ozone as well as acid rain (2 factsheet, OMS-5). Acid rain destroys the
outsides of buildings, statues, etc. Acid rain can also contaminate drinking
water .....
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Deciduous Forests
.... more diverse than the same type of forests in Europe due to glacial history.
Glacial action dumped till as the ice edge retreated, and North America
inherited a fertile soil base. Soil type is an important factor for which
species of trees can thrive in an area. The general dominant tree species for
temperate deciduous forests are Beech, Ash, Oak, and in our region also Tulip,
Maple, Birch, and Hickory. Developed forests consist of four layers. The layers
are: canopy, sub canopy, shrub, and ground cover. T .....
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Deforestation
.... 3 400 million hectares of forests in the world,
nearly 25% of the world's land area. Close to 58% of the forests are found in
the temperate/boreal regions and 42% in the tropics. For about a millennium,
people have benefited from the forests. Forest products range from simple
fuelwood and building poles to sophisticated natural medicines, and from high-
tech wood based manufactures to paper products. Environmental benefits include
water flow control, soil conservation, and atmospheric influenc .....
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Deforestation Of The Pacific Northwest
.... the largest and
oldest trees, living or dead. In the case of the North Coast forests, this
includes some thousand-year-old stands with heights above three-hundred feet and
diameters of more than ten feet.
In 1990, the number of spotted owls dropped to 2000 breeding pairs. The
preservation of any species contributes to the biodiversity of an area. In an
ecosystem, the absence of one species creates unfavorable conditions for the
others. The absence of the spotted owl could have a significant eff .....
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Effects Of Deforestation
.... forests. The effects for the animals include greater
exposure to the elements (wind, rain etc…), other non-forest animals and humans
(Dunbar, 1993). This unnatural extinction of species endangers the world's food
supply, threatens many human resources and has profound implications for
biological diversity.
Another negative environmental impact of deforestation is that it causes
climate changes all over the world. As we learned in elementary school, plant
life is essential to life on earth as it .....
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El Nino
.... South American coastline, and cold waters of
the Pacific rise and push westward. However, during an El Nino year, upwelling
is suppressed and as a result, the thermocline is lower than normal. Finally,
thermocline rises in the west, making upwelling easier and water colder. Air
pressures at sea level in the South Pacific seesaw back and forth between two
distinct patterns. In the high index phase, also called "Southern Oscillation",
pressure is higher near and to the east of Tahiti than farther to the we .....
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Endangered Manatee
.... survive there, that tells scientists
that the problem was in their habitat. If the still die at their current rate,
that would tell the scientists that the manatees have a deadly unknown virus.
If it is a virus, the scientists can devise some sort of medicine to defeat this
virus.
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Energy Flow Systems
.... that it flows through. Over millions of years water rushed
through the Columbia Basin to form the Columbia River. Water carries soil, silt,
and debris downstream. The constant movement of material in the river cuts and
shapes the river basin into the land. This movement is a slow and inefficient
use of energy. According to White, only two percent of water's potential energy
results in the work of erosion. The other ninety-eight percent of water's energy
was lost as water molecules rub against the .....
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Environmental Pollution
.... does
not leave the Earth it all gets trapped up in the atmosphere. This doesn't
bother most people, and they think that it will not harm them. People burn down
forests and people burn fossil fuels, and CFCs from aerosols. Every bit of this
harms our atmosphere. Factories and transportation depend on huge amounts of
fuel billions of tons of coal and oil are consumed around the world every year.
When these fuels burn they introduce smoke and other, less visible, by-products
into the atmosphere. Although wind .....
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Estuaries
.... high tide, seawater changes estuaries, submerging the plants and
flooding creeks, marshes, panes, mudflats or mangroves, until what once was land
is now water. Throughout the tides, the days and the years, an estuary is
cradled between outreaching headlands and is buttressed on its vulnerable
seaward side by fingers of sand or mud.
Estuaries transform with the tides, the incoming waters seemingly
bringing back to life organisms that have sought shelter from their temporary
exposure to the non-aquatic wo .....
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Human Evolution
.... in this article. An
examination of the fossil record of the hominines reveals several biological and
behavioral trends characteristic of the hominine subfamily.
Bipedalism Two-legged walking, or bipedalism, seems to be one of the earliest of
the major hominine characteristics to have evolved. This form of locomotion led
to a number of skeletal modifications in the lower spinal column, pelvis, and
legs. Because these changes can be documented in fossil bone, bipedalism usually
is seen as the defining .....
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Faster Dissolved Oxygen Test Kit
.... in point-source pollution control
have yielded no statistically significant pattern of improvement in dissolved
oxygen levels in water in the last 15 years. It may be that we are only keeping
up with the amount of pollution we are producing. (Knopman, 1993)
The early biosphere was not pleasant for life because the atmosphere had
low levels of oxygen. Photosynthetic bacteria consumed carbon dioxide and
produced simple sugars and oxygen which created the oxygen abundant atmosphere
in which more adva .....
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