View allAll Photos Tagged ECOSYSTEM
I didn’t know if the first picture of this place worked out, so I took it again on the way back.
Job 33:14 “For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.”
In this photo, the preparation of the ground for the installation of an almond tree, whose shapes resemble tombs, portrays the destruction of an entire natural ecosystem representative of a region.
Northchurch Common, Hertfordshire, England
Foggy morning walk
One mature Oak plays host to a myriad of other life forms.
Located in the high desert of the California Eastern Sierra, Mono Lake is among the oldest lakes in North America. It has no outlet, so water evaporation causes hig levels of salinity. Brine shrimp live in the water, making this a prime bird nesting habitat. We almost lost the lake as water was diverted from inflowing streams to Los Angeles. It took hard work by citizen activists to save and partially restore this productive ecosystem.
Info here:
Ogni volta che leggo di qualche disastro ambientale, come è accaduto in questi giorni, mi chiedo fino a che punto potremo arrivare.. Un giorno dovremo competere per le risorse e la sopravvivenza come la maggior parte delle speci viventi.. e in quel caso, si salvi chi può...
Foto di archivio, un angolo di barriera corallina, dall'acquario di Genova.
#reef #genova #acquario #acquarium #seaworld #echosystem #ecosistema #pesci #natura #corallo #coral #pollution #inquinamento
We came across a large herd of these dainty creatures and my next few pictures will be of these beautiful herbivores!
Explored 18th January, 2015
The Gannett Hills in SW Wyoming. Salt Hollow. The creek is covered with watercress. This is on the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
The north temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest are an amazingly rich and diverse ecosystem of large trees, ferns, mosses and other species. This image is from the Pacific Rim National Park, near Tofino, British Columbia, where access to this almost impenetrable environment is via a Rainforest Trail with a boardwalk. (best larger)
23/04/16 www.allenfotowild.com
A Clay-colored Thrush at Angela's Bakery in Monteverdi, Costa Rica on 3 April 2017. This is Costa Rica's National Bird and it does a great job -- being common just about everywhere.
Angela's is a great place for seeing lots of beautiful birds up close.
The US Army Corps of Engineers built this earthen dam, visible at center. The building at right is a USACE visitor center that features the river's history before European contact, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the dam's purpose and functions, and an overview of remaining ecosystems -- very much transformed by human-drive water flows and that big body of cold water in the reservoir. You can see a cluster of wayside signs about Lewis and Clark at far left.
The Corps is a partner of the National Park Service here. The NPS managed the Lewis and Clark National Historical Trail that passes here, as well as the Missouri National Recreational River that includes one stretch upstream of the reservoir and a second stretch along a semi-natural stretch downstream.
I'm in Nebraska, looking across the river to South Dakota.
Explored # 180 on June 13, 2021. Thank you, everyone, for the favorites and kind comments! I appreciate them all.
“Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” ~ Buddha
Love the first spring walk in this region along the banks of the Columbia River and the Erosion Channels carved by the Ice Age Floods. So much variety in the landscape, such small differences in local ecosystems and plants and flowers and snakes etc.
Le Parc National du Taranguire est un important parc de l'immense écosystème de la steppe masaï du nord de la Tanzanie. Il doit son nom à la rivière Tarangire qui le traverse. Les baobabs, arbre inhabituel dans le Nord de la Tanzanie, abondent dans la partie Nord du parc. Il abrite une très forte concentration d'animaux, en particulier des éléphants.
Things look peaceful and orderly at this Poplar tree settlement. Here's some interesting information about lichen:
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FROM WIKIPEDIA:
There are about 20,000 known species of lichens. Some lichens have lost the ability to reproduce sexually, yet continue to speciate.
Recent perspectives on lichens include that they are relatively self-contained miniature ecosystems in and of themselves, possibly with more microorganisms living with the fungi, algae, and/or cyanobacteria, performing other functions as partners in a system that evolves as an even more complex composite organism (holobiont).
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Telescope Peak, blue in the shadow of the earth, photobombs high elevation Mojave desert ecosystem shortly after sunset.
THE SIXTH EXTINCTION
Exerpts by Niles Eldredge
There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year — which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.
Extinction in the past
The major global biotic turnovers were all caused by physical events that lay outside the normal climatic and other physical disturbances which species, and entire ecosystems, experience and survive. What caused them?
The previous mass extinctions were due to natural causes.
First major extinction (c. 440 mya): Climate change (relatively severe and sudden global cooling) seems to have been at work at the first of these-the end-Ordovician mass extinction that caused such pronounced change in marine life (little or no life existed on land at that time). 25% of families lost (a family may consist of a few to thousands of species).
Second major extinction (c. 370 mya): The next such event, near the end of the Devonian Period, may or may not have been the result of global climate change. 19% of families lost.
Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya): Scenarios explaining what happened at the greatest mass extinction event of them all (so far, at least!) at the end of the Permian Period have been complex amalgams of climate change perhaps rooted in plate tectonics movements. Very recently, however, evidence suggests that a bolide impact similar to the end-Cretaceous event may have been the cause. 54% of families lost.
Fourth major extinction (c. 210 mya): The event at the end of the Triassic Period, shortly after dinosaurs and mammals had first evolved, also remains difficult to pin down in terms of precise causes. 23% of families lost.
Fifth major extinction (c. 65 mya): Most famous, perhaps, was the most recent of these events at the end-Cretaceous. It wiped out the remaining terrestrial dinosaurs and marine ammonites, as well as many other species across the phylogenetic spectrum, in all habitats sampled from the fossil record. Consensus has emerged in the past decade that this event was caused by one (possibly multiple) collisions between Earth and an extraterrestrial bolide (probably cometary). Some geologists, however, point to the great volcanic event that produced the Deccan traps of India as part of the chain of physical events that disrupted ecosystems so severely that many species on land and sea rapidly succumbed to extinction. 17% of families lost.
How is The Sixth Extinction different from previous events?
The current mass extinction is caused by humans.
At first glance, the physically caused extinction events of the past might seem to have little or nothing to tell us about the current Sixth Extinction, which is a patently human-caused event. For there is little doubt that humans are the direct cause of ecosystem stress and species destruction in the modern world through such activities as:
-transformation of the landscape
-overexploitation of species
-pollution
-the introduction of alien species
And, because Homo sapiens is clearly a species of animal (however behaviorally and ecologically peculiar an animal), the Sixth Extinction would seem to be the first recorded global extinction event that has a biotic, rather than a physical, cause.
We are bringing about massive changes in the environment.
Yet, upon further reflection, human impact on the planet is a direct analogue of the Cretaceous cometary collision. Sixty-five million years ago that extraterrestrial impact — through its sheer explosive power, followed immediately by its injections of so much debris into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that global temperatures plummeted and, most critically, photosynthesis was severely inhibited — wreaked havoc on the living systems of Earth. That is precisely what human beings are doing to the planet right now: humans are causing vast physical changes on the planet.
What is the Sixth Extinction?
We can divide the Sixth Extinction into two discrete phases:
-Phase One began when the first modern humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago.
-Phase Two began about 10,000 years ago when humans turned to agriculture.
Humans began disrupting the environment as soon as they appeared on Earth.
The first phase began shortly after Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and the anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa and spreading throughout the world. Humans reached the middle east 90,000 years ago. They were in Europe starting around 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals, who had long lived in Europe, survived our arrival for less than 10,000 years, but then abruptly disappeared — victims, according to many paleoanthropologists, of our arrival through outright warfare or the more subtle, though potentially no less devastating effects, of being on the losing side of ecological competition.
Everywhere, shortly after modern humans arrived, many (especially, though by no means exclusively, the larger) native species typically became extinct. Humans were like bulls in a China shop:
-They disrupted ecosystems by overhunting game species, which never experienced contact with humans before.
-And perhaps they spread microbial disease-causing organisms as well.
The fossil record attests to human destruction of ecosystems:
-Wherever early humans migrated, other species became extinct.
-Humans arrived in large numbers in North America roughly 12,500 years ago-and sites revealing the butchering of mammoths, mastodons and extinct buffalo are well documented throughout the continent. The demise of the bulk of the La Brea tar pit Pleistocene fauna coincided with our arrival.
-The Caribbean lost several of its larger species when humans arrived some 8000 years ago.
-Extinction struck elements of the Australian megafauna much earlier-when humans arrived some 40,000 years ago. Madagascar-something of an anomaly, as humans only arrived there two thousand years ago-also fits the pattern well: the larger species (elephant birds, a species of hippo, plus larger lemurs) rapidly disappeared soon after humans arrived.
Indeed, only in places where earlier hominid species had lived (Africa, of course, but also most of Europe and Asia) did the fauna, already adapted to hominid presence, survive the first wave of the Sixth Extinction pretty much intact. The rest of the world’s species, which had never before encountered hominids in their local ecosystems, were as naively unwary as all but the most recently arrived species (such as Vermilion Flycatchers) of the Galapagos Islands remain to this day.
Why does the Sixth Extinction continue?
The invention of agriculture accelerated the pace of the Sixth Extinction.
Phase two of the Sixth Extinction began around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture-perhaps first in the Natufian culture of the Middle East. Agriculture appears to have been invented several different times in various different places, and has, in the intervening years, spread around the entire globe.
Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life. With its invention:
-Humans did not have to interact with other species for survival, and so could manipulate other species for their own use
-Humans did not have to adhere to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, and so could overpopulate
-Humans do not live with nature but outside it.
Homo sapiens became the first species to stop living inside local ecosystems. All other species, including our ancestral hominid ancestors, all pre-agricultural humans, and remnant hunter-gatherer societies still extant exist as semi-isolated populations playing specific roles (i.e., have “niches”) in local ecosystems. This is not so with post-agricultural revolution humans, who in effect have stepped outside local ecosystems. Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems - converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted “weeds” — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.
The total number of organisms within a species is limited by many factors-most crucial of which is the “carrying capacity” of the local ecosystem: given the energetic needs and energy-procuring adaptations of a given species, there are only so many squirrels, oak trees and hawks that can inhabit a given stretch of habitat. Agriculture had the effect of removing the natural local-ecosystem upper limit of the size of human populations. Though crops still fail regularly, and famine and disease still stalk the land, there is no doubt that agriculture in the main has had an enormous impact on human population size:
-Earth can’t sustain the trend in human population growth. It is reaching its limit in carrying capacity.
-Estimates vary, but range between 1 and 10 million people on earth 10,000 years ago.
-There are now over 6 billion people.
-The numbers continue to increase logarithmically — so that there will be 8 billion by 2020.
-There is presumably an upper limit to the carrying capacity of humans on earth — of the numbers that agriculture can support — and that number is usually estimated at between 13-15 billion, though some people think the ultimate numbers might be much higher.
This explosion of human population, especially in the post-Industrial Revolution years of the past two centuries, coupled with the unequal distribution and consumption of wealth on the planet, is the underlying cause of the Sixth Extinction. There is a vicious cycle:
-Overpopulation, invasive species, and overexploitation are fueling the extinction.
-More lands are cleared and more efficient production techniques (most recently engendered largely through genetic engineering) to feed the growing number of humans — and in response, the human population continues to expand.
-Higher fossil energy use is helping agriculture spread, further modifying the environment.
-Humans continue to fish (12 of the 13 major fisheries on the planet are now considered severely depleted) and harvest timber for building materials and just plain fuel, pollution, and soil erosion from agriculture creates dead zones in fisheries (as in the Gulf of Mexico)
-While the human Diaspora has meant the spread, as well, of alien species that more often than not thrive at the detriment of native species. For example, invasive species have contributed to 42% of all threatened and endangered species in the U.S.
Can conservation measures stop the Sixth Extinction?
Only 10% of the world’s species survived the third mass extinction. Will any survive this one?
The world’s ecosystems have been plunged into chaos, with some conservation biologists thinking that no system, not even the vast oceans, remains untouched by human presence. Conservation measures, sustainable development, and, ultimately, stabilization of human population numbers and consumption patterns seem to offer some hope that the Sixth Extinction will not develop to the extent of the third global extinction, some 245 mya, when 90% of the world’s species were lost.
Though it is true that life, so incredibly resilient, has always recovered (though after long lags) after major extinction spasms, it is only after whatever has caused the extinction event has dissipated. That cause, in the case of the Sixth Extinction, is ourselves — Homo sapiens. This means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part. The latter must happen before the Sixth Extinction can be declared over, and life can once again rebound.
© 2005, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please contact editor@actionbioscience.org for reprint permission. See reprint policy.
Paleontologist Dr. Niles Eldredge is the Curator-in-Chief of the permanent exhibition “Hall of Biodiversity” at the American Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at the City University of New York. He has devoted his career to examining evolutionary theory through the fossil record, publishing his views in more than 160 scientific articles, reviews, and books. Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisisis his most recent book.
www.gc.cuny.edu/directories/faculty/E.htm
Articles and Resources on The Sixth Extinction
Consequences of the Sixth Extinction
The article “How Will Sixth Extinction Affect Evolution of Species?,” on our site, describes how the current loss of biodiversity will affect evolution in the long run.
www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/myers_knoll.html
BioScience Article
“Global Conservation of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.”
Habitat destruction has driven much of the current biodiversity extinction crisis, and it compromises the essential benefits, or ecosystem services that humans derive from functioning ecosystems. Securing both species and ecosystem services might be accomplished with common solutions. Yet it is unknown whether these two major conservation objectives coincide broadly enough worldwide to enable global strategies for both goals to gain synergy. In this November 2007, BioScience article, Will Turner and his colleagues assess the concordance between these two objectives, explore how the concordance varies across different regions, and examine the global potential for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services simultaneously. Read the abstract, or log in to purchase the full article.
caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1641/B571009
Biodiversity in the next millennium
American Museum of Natural History’s nationwide survey (undated) “reveals biodiversity crisis — the fastest mass extinction in Earth’s history.”
cbc.amnh.org/crisis/mncntnt.html
National Geographic
A 2/99 article about the Sixth Extinction, with views from several leading scientists.
www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/9902/fngm/index.html
Extinction through time
Find out about cycles of life and death and extinction patterns through time.
www.carleton.ca/Museum/extinction/tablecont.html
Is Humanity Suicidal?
Edward O. Wilson asks us why we stay on the course to our own self-destruction.
www.well.com/user/davidu/suicidal.html
A Field Guide to the Sixth Extinction
Niles Eldredge writes in 1999 about a few of the millions of plants and animals that won’t make it to the next millennium. The second link takes you to the site’s main page, entitled “Mass Extinction Underway — The World Wide Web’s most comprehensive source of information on the current mass extinction,” which provides links to numerous other resources.
www.well.com/user/davidu/fieldguide.html
www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html
Global Environment Outlook 3
The United Nations Environment Programme released this major report in May 2002. The report collated the thoughts of more than 1,000 contributors to assess the environmental impact of the last 30 years and outline policy ideas for the next three decades. It concluded that without action, the world may experience severe environmental problems within 30 years. The entire report can be read online or purchased online.
www.unep.org/geo/geo3/index.htm
Test your environmental knowledge
A 1999 survey showed that only one in three adult Americans had a passing understanding of the most pressing environmental issues. How do you measure up? Explanatory answers provided.
www.youthactionnet.org/quizzes/global_environment.cfm
World Atlas of Biodiversity — interactive map
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the firstWorld Atlas of Biodiversityin August 2002. This link takes you to their online interactive map that helps you search for data about species/land/water loss, extinction over time, and human global development. Click on the “?” for a help page that explains how to interact with this map.
stort.unep-wcmc.org/imaps/gb2002/book/viewer.htm
The Sixth Great Extinction: A Status Report
Earth Policy Institute’s 2004 update on the status of loss of biodiversity.
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update35.htm
Books
» The Biodiversity Crisis: Losing What Countsby The American Museum of Natural History (New Press, 2001).
» The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of of Life and the Future of Humankindby Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (Doubleday and Company, 1996).
Get Involved
The Biodiversity Project
You can choose a way to get involved in protecting biodiversity — from educational resources to community outreach.
www.biodiversityproject.org/html/resources/introduction.htm
The Nature Conservancy
Select a state from the menu and find out how you can become an environmental volunteer in that state.
Information for Action
“This website explains the environmental problems & offers solutions to fix them. There are many valuable resources available” including lobbying info, contacts database, & news updates.
Harmony
“Harmony Foundation is all about education for the environment. We offer publications and programs… ‘Building Sustainable Societies’ offers innovative training for educators and community group leaders to support local action on important environmental issues.”
Earth Talk: Environmental advocacy for professionals
This discussion community and learning network seeks to contribute to global ecological sustainability by enabling communication connections between those working on behalf of forests, water, and climate.
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Tiger Illustration by Dorothy Lathrop from
"Fierce-Face: The story of a tiger" by Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1936)
Rhine-Main-Danube Canal
Rhine-Main-Danube Canal (German, Rhein-Main-Donau-Kanal), artificial waterway with stretches of canalized river, Germany. The canal section joining the Main and Danube rivers stretches 171 km (106 mi) from Bamberg via Nuremberg to Kelheim, and the whole system from the Main at its confluence with the Rhine to the Danube at Passau near the Austrian border is 677 km (420 mi) long. This forms part of a waterway traversing Europe, connecting the North Sea with the Black Sea and passing through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.
From where the Main joins the central canal, to around Nuremberg, the countryside is largely hop fields and pasture, the canal reaching a high point of 406 m (1,332 ft) above sea level. Around Kelheim, the low, wooded hills become more densely forested and more dramatic as the canal reaches the Danube.
A cross-Europe canal like this has been a recurring dream of European politicians; as early as 793, Charlemagne made an aborted attempt to drain land for that purpose. In 1846, Ludwig I of Bavaria—using the labour of Italian Gastarbeiteren—laid the foundations by joining the Main and the Danube. Plans for a Rhine-Neckar-Danube canal were halted by World War I, and Ludwig's Canal was abandoned in 1950. Damage to Nuremberg meant that work only started on the Main above Bamberg in 1959, and did not reach Nuremberg until 1972. Completion dates for the canal were repeatedly revised until its opening on September 25, 1992.
Construction of the canal—costing an estimated total of DM six billion—is partly to be paid for by electricity generation at hydroelectric stations along its course. Eastern European business has been much greater than expected, though fears of damagingly cheap trading have been soothed by tariffs and restrictions that roughly equalize the flow of traffic east and west.
The completed waterway transports goods much more cheaply than by road, and some canal-side land has been bought by big oil companies. It is also popular with pleasure boats. Serious doubts though have been raised by the Bund Naturschutz, a German ecological movement—unique species of wildlife along the canal's course may be threatened and sections of canalized river choked by loss of tidal current. After a campaign working since 1965 and a petition in the 1980s, planners—backed by the pro-canal premier Helmut Kohl and defence minister Strauss—responded by high spending on ecological research and by providing, for example, alcoves cut into the canal's banks, meant to act as miniature ecosystems.
Taken from:
uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_781529615/rhine-main-danu...
From Wikipedia:
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is an American national park that conserves an area of large sand dunes up to 750 feet (229 m) tall on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley, and an adjacent national preserve in the Sangre de Cristo Range, in south-central Colorado, United States.
The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America. The dunes cover an area of about 30 sq mi (78 km2) and are estimated to contain over 1.2 cubic miles (5 billion cubic metres) of sand. Sediments from the surrounding mountains filled the valley over geologic time periods. After lakes within the valley receded, exposed sand was blown by the predominant southwest winds toward the Sangre de Cristos, eventually forming the dunefield over an estimated tens of thousands of years. The four primary components of the Great Sand Dunes system are the mountain watershed, the dunefield, the sand sheet, and the sabkha. Ecosystems within the mountain watershed include alpine tundra, subalpine forests, montane woodlands, and riparian zones.
I went out for a walk without all the heavy camera gear for a change and captured this with the Blackberry Q10. Sometimes, using a very small device allows one to see differently.
Encompassing 38,000 acres (150 square kilometers), Lake Lanier is a popular spot with boaters and jet skiers. After sunset, the reservoir in the Northern portion of Georgia, USA, is a magnificent and tranquil place.
If you like my work, please feel free to check out my website at Imagine Your World and galleries on Fine Art America and Redbubble. Thank you for visiting me on Flickr!
This slide (shared by CIFOR) shows acacia plantations and oil palm plantations were responsible for 24% and 29% of deforestation in Riau Province between 1982 and 2007. Some of the plantations have moved into peatland, a carbon rich ecosystem, contributing to Indonesia's high greenhouse gas emissions.
Went out for a walk in the rocky shore of Vuosaari, Helsinki.
I found a nice location and started to wander around.
Found this composition after getting my shoes and socks wet, because I wasn't paying attention to the waves. Lesson learned.
I proceeded to set the tripod, grabbed the camera from the backpack as well as the Sigma 18-35mm lens.
After taking a couple of test shots, it became obviously clear that the image needed a polarising filter to expose more detail underwater, and a graduated filter to calm down the bright sky.
I took three shots, first focusing on the rocks in the foreground, then the partially submerged rocks just a few meters away and then all the way to the island with the trees.
After finishing the trip I sat down in front of the computer monitor and started working on the images. I processed the images the way I liked them and proceeded to focus stacking them in Photoshop.
So here's the result of a lovely mid-day walk with wet shoes, hope you enjoy the image.
... a hot day at Knepp Wildland Project ...
Knepp is a 3,500 acre estate just south of Horsham, West Sussex. Since 2001, the land – once intensively farmed - has been devoted to a pioneering rewilding project. Using grazing animals as the drivers of habitat creation, and with the restoration of dynamic, natural water courses, the project has seen extraordinary increases in wildlife. Extremely rare species like turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding here; and populations of more common species are rocketing.
The vision of the Knepp Wildland Project is radically different to conventional nature conservation in that it is not driven by specific goals or target species. Instead, its driving principle is to establish a functioning ecosystem where nature is given as much freedom as possible. The aim is to show how a ‘process-led’ approach can be a highly effective, low-cost method of ecological restoration - suitable for failing or abandoned farmland - that can work to support established nature reserves and wildlife sites, helping to provide the webbing that will one day connect them together on a landscape scale.
Amidst the dynamic ecosystem of Lagos Yaguacaca, the Great Egret (Ardea alba) stands as a beacon of tranquility. This photograph captures the bird in its poised vigilance, a sentinel in the marshes. The egret's stark white plumage, set against the dense greenery of Leticia, Colombia, illustrates the bird's adaptation to its wetland habitat. The striking yellow beak, a sliver of color, punctuates the scene, drawing the viewer's eye to the bird's elegant profile.
In this frame, my focus was on isolating the egret's form to emphasize its role within the ecosystem. It's a moment that speaks to the egret's solitary nature and its prowess as a hunter. The composition is a deliberate balance of color and space, inviting contemplation on the simplicity and complexity of nature. As a conservation photographer, these are the instances I seek to share, hoping to bridge the distance between our human experience and the natural world.
©2023 Adam Rainoff
Olympus E510 + Zuiko 50mm f1.8 / Macro Auto 7
Ce splendide morceau de dame nature s'est offert à ma vue alors que je marchais sur entre quelques vieux pieds de vigne...
Quelles couleurs ! Quelle richesse !
Oh mais approchez-vous ! C'est incroyable ! C'est doux, chaleureux, coloré, agréable au toucher, ... (Mais sûrement indigeste, n'allons pas trop loin).
Alors je sors mon appareil photo, et...
Et si l'on regarde d'encore plus près, on voit qu'un écosystème tout entier vit la dedans !
Décidément, la mousse méritait bien une petite place dans mon humble galerie !
Excerpt from youractionsmatter.ca/one-drop/:
One Drop:
• Coral ecosystems make up less than 1% of the ocean floor yet are home to over 25% of all marine wildlife.
• While you may think of coral as exclusively tropical reefs, more than half of all known coral species are deep and cold-water corals.
• Canada has several cold-water coral habitats, with sites off the coasts of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, and British Columbia.
• Cold-water coral reefs serve as a home for thousands of known sea animals and possibly millions of undiscovered species, making them one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems.
• Far from sunlight and hundreds to thousands of meters deep in the ocean, these cold-water corals have lifespans that can span centuries.
• Climate change, oil and gas exploration, and overfishing severely threaten Canada’s cold-water corals.
• As humans pump more carbon into the atmosphere, our oceans become more acidic, hampering corals’ ability to grow.
• The effects of oil and gas exploration, from contaminated drill bits to oil leaks, can also significantly contaminate cold-water corals.
• Most disturbingly, unsustainable fishing practices like bottom trawling can decimate coral habitats. When disturbed by bottom trawling, up to 90% of a coral colony perishes.
• Fortunately, cold-water corals have the ability to recover. However due to their slow growth rates, some as little as 3 mm per year, they need decades to start regenerating.
• This is why the establishment of permanent marine protected areas that explicitly prohibit unsustainable fishing practices and oil and gas exploration are so crucial.
Coral reefs are home to a quarter of all marine life and contain millions of undiscovered species. They are biodiversity hotspots, unmatched in species per area. More than just ecological treasures, coral reefs underpin the livelihood of more than 500 million people globally. However, despite their profound importance, 70% of the world’s reefs are currently threatened. The world has already lost half of its coral reefs since 1950, and scientific estimates suggest that we may lose them all by 2050 if urgent action is not taken.
The degradation of reefs doesn’t just mean losing biodiversity; it could directly affect human health. Various drugs are derived from animals and plants found in coral reef ecosystems as possible cures for cancer, arthritis, and other diseases. With the current rate of degradation, such potential discoveries could be lost forever.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) play an invaluable role in safeguarding the health and longevity of coral ecosystems and habitats. The vibrant, intricate biodiversity found within these areas is highly susceptible to threats such as climate change, overfishing, pollution, and habitat destruction. MPAs effectively mitigate these pressures by regulating human activities in these regions. They serve as sanctuaries where coral ecosystems can regenerate and thrive.
Given the vital role that coral reefs play in our ecosystems, and the urgent threat they face, it is critical to take action to protect them before it's too late. MPAs are integral in safeguarding coral ecosystems and habitats, ensuring their survival for future generations.
Huckleberry Rock has been well known locally for over 100 years as a scenic lookout. Today, tree growth limits the sight but the view is still magnificent.
These rocks are some of the oldest rock in the world, well over a billion years old. The trail surrounds a bowl-shaped area that holds water and has allowed a bog to develop that supports a black spruce ecosystem.
Recently, donations of land from adjacent landowners have now created a 120 acre township park that allows public access to enjoy the views from the Lookout.
Photo taken 60 years ago today,
Lake Audy (50.7552, -100.2481), located in Southern Division, Manitoba, Canada spans 477.7 hectares (approximately 1180 acres or 4.8 square kilometers).
Riding Mountain National Park is a national park in Manitoba, Canada. The park is located within Treaty 2 Territory and sits atop the Manitoba Escarpment. Consisting of a protected area of 2,969 km2 (1,146 sq mi), the forested parkland stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding prairie farmland. It was designated a national park because it protects three different ecosystems that converge in the area; grasslands, upland boreal and eastern deciduous forests. It is most easily reached by Highway 10 which passes through the park. The south entrance is at the townsite of Wasagaming, which is the only commercial centre within the park boundaries