View allAll Photos Tagged ECOSYSTEM
Solitude and beauty along Rucker Creek. This rare perennial stream provides a reliable water supply for a diverse range of flora and fauna, found only in Arizona's southeastern mountains and the adjacent Sierra Madre in Sonora, Mexico. - Chiricahua Wilderness, Coronado National Forest, Arizona
{ L } Lightbox view is best
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There were a lot of Scrub Rabbits out early in the morning which I'm told is a good sign of a healthy ecosystem. This one was near the mountian bike trails and was unperturbed by my presence.
This picture portrays a marshy landscape at dusk at the Parc Naturel Régional de Camargue, close to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, southern France. Lower resolution.
This is a frame from a side-mounted GoPro as I drove through an aspen forest on a back road near Monarch Pass, Colorado.
Simangaliso Wetland Park
(previously known as the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park)
is situated on the east coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, about 275 kilometres north of Durban.
It is South Africa's third-largest protected area, spanning 280 km of coastline,
from the Mozambican border in the north to Mapelane south of the Lake St. Lucia estuary, and made up of around 3,280 km2 of natural ecosystems,
@Wikipedia
I moved sideways into clouds and skies for this series. This could be a "hard hat" storm out east. Keep your "rock" umbrella as ready as I keep my rock skis ready for the early season. Finally, the fairgrounds really approached twilight's end for last summer's carny; I am ready for the rides to pop. This cloud was a feast of captures. Clouds do this as the atmosphere vastly expands after compressing, cooling and clearing the Rockies from the west. I liked this sky but there are degrees. I figured folks on the eastern plains, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, better go for the hard hats. Black is the new blue.
No global warming under here; no global warming under there! People won't continue to believe the TheRump's lies after FEMA is broke. This will soon be a thumper and those folks will need to flash the sign of the cross to the heavens. That fossil-fueled summer heated up our atmosphere and with 8% more atmospheric moisture trigger smack downs worl d wide! Insurance companies declare events as acts of god instead of global warming for obvious reasons. They don't have payouts if they can blame god. It's more important to stage a WWIII even before our regular scheduled mass extinction. Few southern conservatives are listening. "The extinction won't be televised," Gil Scott Heron. Well... scientists said the weather would be more violent as the climate warmed. The heating increased humidity in the atmosphere by 8%. Here we are, we have met the enemy and he is us.
An entire ecosystem in a hole in the rock shelf. Twice daily top ups of fresh seawater and the sea grass is flourishing!
Windang is an aboriginal word meaning "scene of a fight".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windang,_New_South_Wales
www.wollongong.nsw.gov.au/library/onlineresources/suburbp...
Aambyvalley rd., Upper Lonavala Maharashtra India.
endemic to Maharashtra and Tamilnadu regions of India.
One of three long-distance photos of large birds on nests. We saw all three at Oxbow Bend, which provided the students with an excellent introduction to wildlife viewing in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
The mountains, forests and wetlands of Eastern Hokkaido are located at the boundary of a cool-temperate zone and a subarctic zone, and they contain a mixture of northern and temperate plant species. The wetlands and the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of the area provide a diversity of habitats and a variety of wildlife including some endangered species such as the red crowned crane, the Blakiston's fish owl, and the Stellar's sea eagle and a small population of Hokkaido brown bears.
The Vaia Storm was an extreme meteorological event that affected the Italian northeast (in particular the mountain area of the Dolomites and the Venetian Prealps) from 26 to 30 October 2018. The event is mistakenly known as "storm", but the Scirocco wind has reached "hurricane" speeds, which generally happens only on tropical or subtropical areas of the planet.
The very strong hot sirocco wind, blowing between 100 and 200 km/h for several hours, caused the fall of millions of trees, with the consequent destruction of tens of thousands of hectares of alpine coniferous forests, a real natural disaster.
Scirocco is a warm wind coming from the southeast. This direction is symbolically indicated in the so-called wind rose. More exactly 'srocco' comes from the Arabic word sharqiyya (شرقية) which means 'eastern', since this wind blows from Syria.
The Scirocco wind has become one of the climatic symbols of Sicily and southern regions of Italy and it’s quite uncommon to have it blowing in northern regions of the Country.
The Vaia Storm, in addition to causing considerable direct damage, created the conditions for the spread of Ips thypographus, better known as bostrico typographer, a small beetle naturally present in the spruce woods of the Alps.
The presence of large quantities of damaged plants dispersed in the woods has allowed the populations of bostrico to move from an endemic presence to an epidemic presence.
The small beetle attacks mainly spruce, in which it develops under the bark by digging intricate tunnels, which interrupt the flow of the sap; in this way it inevitably leads to the death of the plants in a short time.
In the fading light of the savannah, silence stretches across the plains.
A cheetah waits — unseen but ever-present — the heartbeat of the wild slowed to a whisper.
She is shadow and wind, a breath between stillness and pursuit.
To witness her like this is to understand that even speed has its quiet moments.
This is grace before the storm.
Usually I don't post photos that are this poor in quality, but they document a nice encounter. I was diving alone and started out at around 80' where the water was crystal clear, However, as I worked my way up to the level reef, visibility dropped to around 15' horizontal. The change was due to coral spawning that had begun during my dive. I sort of cursed my luck as getting decent photos was not going to happen under such conditions. Suddenly a huge shape appeared directly beside me, giving me quite a start. A huge manta, swimming along the same course, had overtaken me. It sailed through the misty water and eventually we both came out the other side. She didn't pose for photos, but she gave me a really nice experience.
An entire ecosystem, a strange land, living on a wall in Hedon, East Yorkshire! This is my WEEK THREE submission for the Dogwood2017 52 Week Photo Challenge.
"Artistic: Land. Your inspiration this week is land. This could be a landscape, or an image inspired by the land in some way."
Oregon - Auf dem Weg zum Cascade Head
Cascade Head is a headland and 102,110-acre (41,320 ha) United States Forest Service Experimental Forest and part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves. It is situated 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Portland, Oregon on the Oregon Coast between Lincoln City and Neskowin. Cascade Head Preserve is a Nature Conservancy Selected Site.
UNESCO - Man and the Biosphere Programme
Originally established in 1976, through UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme, the Cascade Head Biosphere Region (formerly known as the Cascade Head Biosphere Reserve) was expanded during the 2016 reauthorization to its current footprint. Within its boundaries are the Cascade Head Scenic Research Area, Cascade Head Experimental Forest, the Cascade Head Preserve, and the Cascade Head Marine Reserve and Marine Protected Areas. The diverse ecosystem includes the Salmon River and its estuary, a sandy littoral spit, densely forested coastal rainforest, a two-mile basalt headland covered in native coastal prairie and marine reserve stretching west into the waters of the Pacific. As with modern biosphere regions, there are core protected areas, areas of managed use, and areas of cooperation within the boundary.
The Nature Conservancy
In the early 1960s, volunteers organized an effort to protect Cascade Head from development. By 1966 they had raised funds and purchased the property, and then turned it over to The Nature Conservancy. Because of its ecological significance, Cascade Head Preserve and surrounding national forest and other lands won recognition in 1980 as a National Scenic Research Area and a United Nations Biosphere Reserve.
Conservancy researchers are testing methods of maintaining and restoring grassland habitat for the Oregon silverspot butterfly, including prescribed fire. Conservancy ecologists also monitor the populations of rare plants throughout the year. In spring and summer, teams of volunteers remove invasive species (such as Himalayan blackberry), help maintain trails, assist with research projects, and teach visitors about the Preserve.
Experimental Forest
The 11,890-acre (4,810 ha) Cascade Head Experimental Forest was established in 1934 for scientific study of typical coastal Sitka spruce-western hemlock forests found along the Oregon Coast. The forest stands at Cascade Head have been used for long-term studies, experimentation, and ecosystem research since then. In 1974 an act of Congress established the 9,670-acre (3,910 ha) Cascade Head Scenic Research Area that includes the western half of the experimental forest, several prairie headlands, the Salmon River estuary to the south, and contiguous private lands.
Before the establishment of the experimental forest in 1934 and for sometime after, an intense forest inventory was done to determine distribution, age classes, and volumes of major tree species. Early research at Cascade Head includes studies that determined life history and characteristics of native tree species; growth and yield of Sitka spruce-western hemlock, Douglas-fir, and red alder stands; and basic relations between vegetation and climate. A climate station established in 1936 is still operating and is an official United States Weather Bureau site. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, experimental, commercial sized harvests were done to evaluate the silvicultural and economic results of various tree-cutting methods. Current research is being done on forest ecosystem productivity, wind disturbance, nutrient cycling, and global carbon cycling.
Research on the Salmon River estuary has been ongoing since the first dike breaching in 1979. Reestablishment of the salt marsh ecosystems continues to be studied and more recently use of these restored ecosystems by anadromous fish is being studied.
Flora and fauna
Cascade Head is home to many native plant species, including red fescue, wild rye, Pacific reedgrass, coastal paintbrush, goldenrod, blue violet and streambank lupine. The hairy checkermallow (Sidalcea hirtipes) is a rare flower found here.
Ninety-nine percent of the world's population of the Cascade Head catchfly is found here. The Oregon silverspot butterfly, federally listed as a threatened species, is known from only five other locations in the world. The butterfly depends on a single plant species, the early blue violet (or hookedspur violet, Viola adunca, which grows coastal grassland openings), to serve as food for its larvae. Elk, deer, coyote, cougar, black bear, snowshoe hare and the Pacific giant salamander are also found in the preserve, as well as osprey, bald eagle, great horned owl, northern harrier, red-tail hawk and the occasional peregrine falcon.
Geology
Cascade Head is an extinct, uplifted volcano that was once under the Pacific Ocean.
(Wikipedia)
Canon T90, 50mm 1.2L, AgfaCT100 pro-lab developed, scanned with Nikon LS5000 + vuescan (linux) + darktable (linux). Straight from the scanner, no post processing except for the frame...
[a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment]
When I get down and crawl around the forest floor, it's a whole new world. :-)
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Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed (CREW) Wildlife and Environmental Area.
myfwc.com/recreation/cooperative/crew/
ABC's and 123's F is for Flowers