Archive for September, 2009

What is an ecosystem might be where we start to describe a certain environment. An ecosystem encompasses the whole environment found within a certain area. When asking, what is an ecosystem, one must consider all the living organisms in the environment. The question, what is an ecosystem must include the relationship between the larger animals, mammals, insects, plants, and fungi right through to the smallest bacteria and moulds. The environment and non living aspect of types of ecosystem include the landscape, from the formation and types of rocks, soils, underlying water table, climate, elevation, exposure and location and are all part of the answer to the question, what is an ecosystem.

What is an ecosystem, would give us the information concerning the number and condition of the living organisms within an environment. The information would help in forming a classification for the type of ecosystem. The location of the landscape will also effect the ecosystem’s classification. What is an ecosystem for desert, arctic, mountain, river, ocean or estuary? The question focuses on the many types of ecosystem and the definition of the ecosystem will answer the question by describing each one. A desert landscape with its flora and fauna, the marine environment and the mountain landscape all are individual ecosystems. Human interaction will what is an ecosystem and it’s chances for survival. The human impact effects what is an ecosystem and what chances the ecosystem has for sustainable life.

As with any environmental factors effecting life on earth, studies of different types of ecosystem will include the life cycle of the trees, grasses, fungi and moulds. Each living species within the ecosystem must be taken into account. So the answer to what is an ecosystem relates to all types of ecosystems and needs to include climate, culture, environmental impact and symbiotic relationship between living and non living organisms. It is this relationship and the number and diversity of the life forms involved that give all types of ecosystem their unique value in our world.

What is an ecosystem named after? Each ecosystem is classified by their particular area. What is an ecosystem is determined by so many different aspects of the area. An ecosystem may vary from one side of a mountain to the other, from one part of a stream to another. Any change in soil type, drainage, salinity or even human encroachment can change the types of ecosystem. Types of ecosystem can be as varied as any type of terrain imaginable, from city landscape to arid Iceland. Therefore, what is an ecosystem is a question that will have a different answer in each situation.

Biodiversity is one of “those” terms. Everyone thinks they know what it means, but asked to define it, they often can only do so in the broadest, most general terms. If you don’t know what something is though, there is nothing you can do to protect it.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, biodiversity is defined as “the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems.” The term was coined as a contraction of “biological diversity”but has acquired its own meaning.

Since 1986 the term biodiversity and the concepts it covers have achieved widespread use among scientists and civilians alike, as a shorthand term for a very grave and complicated set of issues. Its current usage merges a concern for nature conservation and the natural environment with a concern over the increasing extinction of plant and animal species. Briefly, there are three main types of biodiversity:

Genetic Diversity: Differences of genes within a species. For example this is why you might have red hair and green eyes while your best friend has brown hair and blue eyes.

Species Diversity: Differences among both plant and animal species in an ecosystem.

Ecosystem Diversity: Differences at the ecosystem level. Some areas of the planet are deserts, and some are marshes. Each has its own particular characteristics and species of flora and fauna

Biodiversity is what keeps our air and water clean. It regulates our climate and weather, and provides us with sources of food, shelter, clothing, and is the basis of most modern medicine. It improves our quality of life by creating lovely natural spaces where we can refresh ourselves by relaxing, playing, and admiring nature’s great beauty and variety.

Over the years, the biodiversity of such regions as the African rain forests have provided science with the basis for much of the medicine we take for granted. Belladonna, horse chestnuts, pineapple, and many other plants, both exotic and domestic have all played a part in maintaining our health and well-being.

A diverse population of insects for pollination—which helps with the growing and development of much of our food—can be, and are, harmed by pesticides. And much of our industry (and financial well-being as a nation) is dependent on fibers, building materials, and other natural resources .

The decisions we make, both as individuals and as a nation affect the web of life all over the planet, therefore it is our responsibility to maintain and sustain biodiversity.
It is only by understanding these relationships that we can ensure our decisions will preserve Earth’s biodiversity for the generations that follow us.

Introduction

The range of categories and nature of industries has undergone a sea change over the last few years. Innovative and unconventional industries have emerged in huge numbers, owing to the changing demand of the commercial activities all over the world.

From technological support companies to the vast options available of a waste management company, the numbers of such industries are increasing by the day, enhancing the overall productivity of the industry on a whole.

The Aspects

The vast numbers of options available for choosing a waste management company are one of the best examples of the new direction taken on by the industrial activity.

A waste management company performs the critical and primary role of planning and executing the entire process of waste management. The complete stages of accumulation, analysis, segregation, transport and processing of waste products is effectively carried out by a waste management company, either on an independent basis, or in collaboration with such companies that might be involved in the generation of such waste products.

To begin with, a waste management company is first involved with analyzing the category of waste in question and then deciding the further course of action accordingly. The first step in deciding the waste management strategy is to decide for the particular disposal method to be chosen for the process. Landfills and incineration are some of the most popular disposal methods that be chosen for the purpose. By concept, in the disposal method, the waste is disposed in a landfill that involves burying waste, though the practice has been under some severe criticism for quite some time now.

Moving on, the next major function performed by a waste management company is to plan an appropriate processing and recycling strategy for the waste material in question. Processing can be done by various methods including the physical reprocessing or biological methods.

On the other hand, the process of recycling is another important role performed by a waste management company. It is primarily the practice of extracting resources or value from waste. As with various other concepts of waste management, this step of recycling can also be carried out using various methods including the likes of physical reprocessing, biological reprocessing, and energy recovery along with avoidance and reduction methods.
Overall, a waste management company is responsible for performing the important role of waste management for an industrial house. The way or quality in which these roles are played by a waste company indeed go a long way in ensuring how well the resources of a particular company are utilized and their potential is capitalized on.

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If you’ve heard of Vunisinu, a tiny fishing village in Fiji, you’ve probably heard of it in passing. For most, the village is nothing more than a dot in the southeastern coastal mangrove swamps while flying in to SUV-Nausori International Airport. But for anyone interested in global environmental problems–pollution in all its forms being chief among these–Vunisinu is nothing less than a ray of light in a darkening, smog-encrusted world.

Like life on earth, it all began with the fish. Vunisinu’s thirty-six families entirely depend on fishing to ensure their survival. We’re not talking about a simple catch of three or four dinner-quality salmon every day: we’re talking about a steady diet of prawns, mud crabs, and other delicacies that could cost $50 in a New York restaurant for a single diner, yet all of it plucked out of the ocean for free by the villages of Vunisinu. Vunisinu is located next to a massive coral reef, one of the classic sources of life on earth–and a subject familiar to any steady student of global environmental problems, pollution, and other grim topics. The coral reefs are slowly dying, victims of global environmental problems, pollution, and other causes–as the villages of Vunisinu learned.

When the fish yields began to decline–so much so that villagers began to import canned seafood from larger towns nearby–the families of Vunisinu initially blamed poachers. Poachers in the mangrove swamps of Fiji are fairly aggressive, actually going so far as to blow up parts of the reef with dynamite and to directly poison the water so as to kill large numbers of fish and massive swaths of coral at a single blow. This alone might count for global environmental problems/pollution in some interpretations.

But the real global environmental problems and pollution were from another source: the villagers themselves. Modern plumbing in Vunisinu sent “gray water” (wastewater) directly into the swamps and the coral. Trash and runoff from local pig farms was also routinely thrown away in the swamps and the sea with no thought of the consequences. After all, Vunisinu is a rural community, far away from the obvious effects of pollution in urban environments. Who knew that throwing one’s trash in the ocean could cause such global environmental problems and pollution? Who knew that a coral reef would be so easy to kill?

Today, Vunisinu has cleaned up its act. Compost toilets maintained by the “Enviroclean” company prevent the flushing of wastewater into the ocean, and trash is now collected and composted rather than simply discarded in the swamp. For nearly ten years now Vunisinu has worked to maintain its coral and its environmental purity. And the results–thousands of mud crabs, swimming in the fishing nets–are not only wonderful to think about, but delicious on a family dinner plate.

In June of 2008 it was reported that the top 5 cities with the best air quality in the world were as follows: number one is Zurich in Switzerland then the second through fifth were the four following cities: Vienna in Austria and Geneva in Switzerland both registered 107.9 points to come in at second and third. The fourth of the top five cities with the best air quality is Vancouver Canada. Finally, the fifth of the five cities with the best air quality is Auckland, New Zeeland. The rating system that these five cities were ranked by was Mercer Consulting. After the fifth city of Auckland, there were three consecutive German cities with the best air quality. The three German cities are Dusseldorf, Munich and Frankfurt. Baghdad is the lowest rated city on the list of cities with best air quality.

In the UK, while London ranked at 38 both Birmingham and Glasgow were together at 56. In the United States of America Honolulu ranked at 28.

Mercer Consulting based the scale on a point-by-point scoring index. This point by point scoring had Zurich with 108.0 points while Baghdad only scored 13.5 points. The cities were all based on a comparison with New York with an index score of 100 points. This quality of living scale ranks 215 cities around the world. The scale is used by various companies to place employees in cities for international assignments.

On the North American continent, the list was dominated by Canadian cities including Montréal ranked at 22 up to Vancouver ranked at 4. After Honolulu, ranked 28 in the United States of America the U.S. cities fall down to New York ranked at 49.

In Central and Southern Latin America San Juan, Puerto Rico is the highest ranked at 72 only to fall down as far as Port au Prince in Haiti ranked 202.

European cities pretty much dominated the scale with Zurich in Switzerland ranked number 1 overall ending at Minsk in Belarus at 183. Switzerland and Germany are both represented in the top ten overall rankings with three cities from each country. Switzerland had Zurich ranked number 1 and Geneva ranked along with Vienna in Austria both scoring 107.9 points. You can say that Switzerland has the top two ranked cities with best air quality.

In the middle east and Africa Cape Town ranked at 80 and the cities in the Middle East and Africa with best air quality dropped all the way to the bottom with Baghdad, which was ranked as the worse at 215.

The Asia Pacific region of the world started with Auckland in New Zeeland that was ranked at five and went as far down as Jakarta which was ranked 146.

Biodiversity conservation is one of the most important issues we face today. If we do not take steps to prevent further losses of our natural resources, we will not be able to sustain life as we know it.

Given the importance of biodiversity conservation, it would seem that every government on the planet would have it on their list of top issues. Many do, but biodiversity conservation does not come cheap. In addition to conserving resources going forward, which involves things like reengineering projects so as to minimize negative impacts on the biodiversity of a region, there is the astronomically expensive prospect of repairing damage done to regions over centuries; damage done by both humans and nature itself.

Further, people often think you cannot have biodiversity conservation and development at the same time. They are not aware that the two can go hand in hand, and create a better environment for all.

For example, industrial development, agriculture, and urban development threaten the biodiversity of the Florida Everglades by changing not only the distribution, quantity, and timing of the water flow, but by changing its nutrient levels, specifically the levels of phosphorus. This caused an influx of algae, led to a loss of marshland to sustain varying flora and fauna, and the species of plants and animals that had been living on that marshland. It also led to an influx of non-native (exotic) plants, like Melaleucca and Brazilian pepper. Part of the solution to this particular biodiversity issue is to acquire land to recreate flood plains and to reclaim land being used by agribusiness and return it to as close to its original state as possible. Neither of these actions are cheap.

It takes participation at all levels of society to enact and continue biodiversity conservation, and this is often problematic because each group of people has its own agenda.

Another problem is that, given the scale of the problem in each biodiversity hotspot, technical knowledge may be the easiest thing to acquire. The greater challenge to those wanting to fix the problems may very well be acquiring and continuing support and funding from both individuals and agencies, and creating the political will to address these situations. Areas involving private land and resources will further require consultation and negotiation to create and sustain shared resource management goals, and ways of implementing and monitoring them, or necessitate land land acquisitions by the overarching management institution by federal and state governments. This makes the task of biodiversity conservation even more cumbersome.

If, however, individuals, corporations, and governments do not begin to act together to implement biodiversity conservation, the planet as a whole will lose.

The Texas emissions reduction plan or TERP is a highly focused government based programs designed to lower the amount of harmful emissions and carbon produced by poorly functioning or older heavy vehicles on the road. The Texas emissions reduction plan is administered by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and is one of the many environmental protection programs offered throughout the state to help improve the quality of the environment.

The premise of the Texas emissions reduction plan is that older heavy vehicles or those heavy vehicles and engines that are in poor repair or maintenance are more likely to inefficiently burn fuel, resulting in higher carbon and other harmful emissions. The Texas emissions reduction plan is also available for stationary motors and specific types of off road equipment, although recreational or competition type vehicles are not eligible for the program. The program itself is actually a series of grants that are offered at different types throughout the year as funds become available.

Anyone that owns, operates or leases the equipment that meets the criteria for the specific open grants through the Texas emissions reduction plan is eligible to submit an application for the various grants. Each county participating in the project is then allocated a specific amount of funding based on a pre-determined schedule. Typically the counties involved in the Texas emissions reduction plan are around the major centers in the state including Dallas Ft. Worth in central Texas, Tyler and Longview in east Texas, as well as Austin, Houston and San Antonio which are more southern in location within the state.

Examples of heavy equipment eligible for the grants include all types of buses, delivery trucks, fuel trucks and general hauling trucks. The other types of motors and equipment eligible include tractors, loaders, pavers, cranes, backhoes, forklifts, locomotive, drilling rig engines and stationary generators and compressors. Equipment may be owned by companies, government agencies, businesses or by private individuals, all are equally eligible for the grant program.

The application forms for the Texas emissions reduction plan are all available online, as are the calculators to allow applicants to accurately measure how large the reduction in emissions would be with the upgrade to their equipment. Various types of engines will have greater amounts of emission reduction per upgrade, so the evaluators look at which applications will result in the greatest amount of environmental impact. Grant recipients are then notified of the status of their application and the funds are dispersed to allow the necessary upgrades to make the equipment more environmentally friendly and reduce emissions.

The pond ecosystem is a fresh water environment that can reveal the health of a local area. Fresh water environments such as the pond ecosystem have specific life forms that show its overall health. Toxins or pollution can effect the pond ecosystem adversely. The importance of understanding the pond ecosystem involves the life forms and plant cultures that are part of the healthy environment.

The pond ecosystem begins with what lives in the water. From the smallest microbes, single cell creatures to the guppies, leeches and midges, only clean water can sustain life. The plants that convert oxygen for these creatures are as important as the fauna. The healthy pond ecosystem will have a balance of both plant and animal living with in its parameters. Studying the balance between plant and animal and soil, sedges and underlying strata can give an overall view of the quality of the water table and land. With human activity impacting on the pond environment, toxins can effect the quality of the pond ecosystem. If toxins effect the water, plants can die. Without plants to add oxygen to the water, the creatures might perish. Without the smallest life forms in the food chain, the ripple effect can lead to other species dying out or leaving the pond environment.

Leeches have long been an indicator of the pond ecosystem’s health status. Leeches are found where water quality is good. If the pond ecosystem is not balanced, or there are impurities in the water that the life forms cannot deal with , then one of the first to suffer or leave the environs, is the humble leech.

Birds, spiders, lizards, rodents, rabbits and larger mammals are all reliant on a healthy pond ecosystem. Without clear clean water, filtered by ample plant life or good drainable soil, the larger animals will need to find other sources of water.

Agriculture and the impact of human activity on the pond ecosystem can effect the quality and purity of soil and water. Fertilizer, oil, introduced species, pollution, fishing can all upset the delicate balance that exists in a healthy pond ecosystem.

Maintaining the balance, keeping every species alive and in good numbers will ensure a healthy, vital pond ecosystem. Fresh water, climate, drought, humidity, rising salinity are all important factors that can effect the pond ecosystem beyond the initial impact of human activity.

The food chain, from tiny water borne creatures that feed midges and insects that feed birds, to the rabbits that feed foxes and the grasses that feed cattle and sheep, all depend on the pond ecosystem to sustain their lives. Water is essential to life on this planet. Fresh water and the quality of fresh water in the pond ecosystem is actually of global importance.

It may seem counter-intuitive that aluminum could be such an environmentally friendly substance, but when recycled, as much as 95% of the energy spent on “virgin ore” is saved. This is significant. Not only is less energy used to get it, but less polluting substances are expelled while processing the ore. Less energy is required to melt recycled aluminum chips.

A significant portion of the aluminum cans are recycled, but even with these benefits, it remains cheaper for aluminum manufacturers in some areas to use new ore due to the high cost of sorting and treating the cans prior to the actual processing operations.

For the post-consumer aluminum that is recycled, it’s shredded into little bits and treated to remove inks that make recycling difficult. About 15% of the weight of the aluminum is lost in the process as ash, but the remaining portion can be processed like that indefinitely without degradation in any of its properties.
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There is no question as toe of biodiversity the importance of biodiversity. Without it, we would be much poorer in many ways.

While overwhelming, the question of the importance of can be brought into focus by looking at how we value people. Supposed a beloved relative or friend moves or dies. We look at the hole left in our lives by their passing, and reflect on the ways they enriched our lives. We look at what they valued, and possibly decide to adopt some of their values, but primarily, we reflect on how much we have lost by their not being there any more. In short, to quote an old Joni Mitchell song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Don’t it always seem to go/You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone./They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”

There are very few people who don’t believe in the importance of biodiversity, but most of them are not conscious of what they can do on an individual level to help preserve it. While governments and societies dither about what to sane, what to fix, and what to allocate money, time and effort to, the devastation continues at an alarming rate. Entire species are becoming extinct at rates never seen before. Rivers, lakes, and even oceans are becoming more shallow, or drying up entirely, changing the entire ecosphere and endangering the lives we are accustomed to leading.

In fact, as a society, we are ignoring the importance of biodiversity. We destroy animal and plant species before discovering new ones. We deforest acres of land, without studying them first to see what, other than “trees” is there. Other than crop rotation, we take no note of how removing diverse plant life from an area depletes the soil and water of a region. And we do all of this faster than nature can remedy the damage. Further, we don’t worry about what we have done until it is too late, the resources are gone, and replacing them would carry an astronomical cost.

Plants that provide medicines and animals that provide foods are vanishing, only to be replaced by scrub and vermin, creating devastating epidemics. Ingestion or absorption of contaminants make these vermin resistant to medical intervention, thereby making it even more difficult to cure or control the diseases being spread. Further, these more resistant germs are crossing from species to species, and, like bird flu, making the jump to humans.

This is just one example of how the importance of biodiversity (and the preservation thereof) is relevant to human survival. The internet is full of organizations dedicated to educating people, businesses and governments about the importance of biodiversity, and it behooves us to do so before we have lost much of what makes life precious to us.