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Ecology & environment

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15 Jan 2009
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Environment and international trade

Essay - 5 pages - Ecology & environment

The warming of the planet and global climatic change has been the centre of heated debate for the last few years. The environmental problems, by the force of nature, somehow set themselves to the political agenda of the planet. In this paper I'd like to see if the concepts of trade and...

15 Jan 2009
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Coal: energy of the future or energy of the past?

Essay - 4 pages - Ecology & environment

In 2006, Doctor Heinz Scholtholt, member of a German firm of the energy industry (STEAG), pretended that Germany could become the worldwide leader of the coal industry by developing new clean coal technologies. Less than a year later, the German coalition's government has decided to stop its coal...

15 Jan 2009
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Institutional Failures of the Global Environmental Governance

Essay - 42 pages - Ecology & environment

Despite a great awareness of environmental questions from developed and developing countries, there is a degradation of environmental issues and an appearance of new environmental problems. This aggravation of environmental matters is due to the inefficient state of the global environmental...

13 Jan 2009
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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) : PET-bottles

Essay - 10 pages - Ecology & environment

A life cycle assessment is the investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts of a given product or service caused or necessitated by its existence. It is a variant of input-output analysis focusing on physical rather than monetary flows. The procedures of life cycle assessment (LCA)...

13 Jan 2009
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Air transportation and climate change

Essay - 4 pages - Ecology & environment

A sophisticated transport system has evolved in Europe to move people and frets. The air transport industry is growing at rate above the average growth of the economy of the EU: multiplication of short distance flies, the arrival of the “low cost” market, and increasing of aerial fret...

09 Jan 2009
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Carbon footprinting

Essay - 9 pages - Ecology & environment

The nature of the carbon footprint is to examine human use of carbon and to try to apply it to how much greenhouse gas (converted to a scale based on CO2) is used. By discussing this, and viewing how "Climate change and infectious diseases in North America: the road ahead" discusses climate, it...

09 Jan 2009
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Lacustrine carbonate sedimentation

Essay - 6 pages - Ecology & environment

Lakes act as outdoor laboratories for the observation and understanding of natural processes. Every process has its own signature. If science looks at processes occurring today and their respective characteristics, then the door opens for understanding past processes that have similar...

09 Jan 2009
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Corn Ethanol: How realistic is this source?

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

While the price of gasoline has dropped precipitously since the summer, the memory of $3.80 - $4.00/gallon of gasoline is still fresh in the minds of most Americans. In fact, gasoline is at its lowest price in almost 10 years; however, the American population is still looking to President-elect...

05 Dec 2008
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The concept of landscape ecology

Essay - 9 pages - Ecology & environment

Landscape ecology is an emerging discipline that aims to understand the environmental processes and patterns in?uencing habitats and species beyond the site level. It arose independently in the latter part of the twentieth century in central and Eastern Europe and in North America as geographers,...

04 Dec 2008
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Perceptions of nature by indigenous communities and their relation to the ecological contexts

Essay - 11 pages - Ecology & environment

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of how indigenous communities perceive and relate to the bio-ecological contexts of which they are part and on which they depend. The main message is that there is much more to learn from them than information about plant resources or methods...

04 Dec 2008
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Perceptions, object and observer of forest landscape and planning

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

For many centuries people have been concerned with perceptions of the natural world. Philosophers have written about it, psychologists have studied it, and, more recently, foresters have become concerned with it. However, when we speak of ‘perceptions of forest landscapes' in relationship to...

04 Dec 2008
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The role of visualization in forest planning

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

Modern techniques of computer visualization, involving three-dimensional (3D) modeling, computer animation, and virtual reality (VR), are taking their place among decision-support tools for forestry. This article focuses on the emerging role of visualization techniques that simulate the...

04 Dec 2008
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Landscape ecology, use and application in forestry

Essay - 6 pages - Ecology & environment

Many ecological processes result in or are affected by spatial patterns. However, the relative importance of different processes is very sensitive to the scale of analysis. For example, at a very local scale, species diversity is often strongly affected by competition and trophic interactions...

04 Dec 2008
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Visual analysis of forest landscape

Essay - 11 pages - Ecology & environment

This article examines the broad concepts and methods underpinning the management of visual resources in forestry, and describes some of the key scienti?c methods of addressing the often dif?cult issue of aesthetics and public perceptions of forested landscapes. It draws on accumulated research...

28 Nov 2008
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Impact of forest management on the quality of water

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

In forested catchments the hydrologic cycle, involving precipitation, interception, evapo-transpiration, overland ?ow, subsurface ?ow, groundwater ?ow, and stream ?ow is closely linked to water quality in that water movement through the forest ecosystem also transports sediment, and dissolved...

28 Nov 2008
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Forest fires (prediction, prevention and suppression)

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

The problems and negative impacts associated with large-scale uncontrolled forest ?res have increased worldwide over the past two decades. Globally an estimated 300-400 million hectares of forests and woodlands burn annually, emitting an estimated 9.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases; however,...

28 Nov 2008
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Soil erosion control

Essay - 6 pages - Ecology & environment

Soil erosion control in managed forests is undertaken, and best achieved, for two main reasons. The ?rst relates to soil protection for the sustainable productivity of the forest resource. The second relates to the protection of valuable water resources located in forested catchments. The...

28 Nov 2008
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Propagation technology for forest trees

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

There are six major kinds of propagules now available for the reproduction of forest trees: seeds, sprouts, grafts, cuttings, tissue-culture plantlets, and somatic embryos. Each has two or more subclasses, and each has increasingly understood advantages, disadvantages, and uses. For several of...

25 Nov 2008
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Genetic aspects of air pollution and climate change

Essay - 6 pages - Ecology & environment

The ?rst incidences of air pollution impacts on the genetic constitution of forest tree populations were those documented near point sources of sulfur dioxide (SO2), particulates, and heavy metals. Localized extinction of forests around these point sources was documented by ecologists in the past...

25 Nov 2008
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Genecology and the adaptations of forest trees

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

Genecology is the study of intraspeci?c genetic variation in relation to environmental conditions. It reveals patterns of adaptation of populations to their environments that result from differences in natural selection among locations. Genecological studies are conducted for the practical...

25 Nov 2008
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Cytogenetics of forest tree species

Essay - 9 pages - Ecology & environment

The discipline of cytogenetics was ?rst de?ned by Sutton in 1903, as a ?eld of investigation which developed from the separate sciences of genetics and cytology. It is concerned with studies on the correlation of genetic and cytological (especially chromosomal) features characterizing a...

25 Nov 2008
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The global and forest environment carbon cycle

Essay - 5 pages - Ecology & environment

The forest environment carbon cycle can be viewed at a number of scales. Measurements can be made at the scale of an individual leaf or tree, stand-scale measurements can be made, and models can be developed that examine forest-level, regional, and global carbon cycles. The role of the forest in...

25 Nov 2008
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Diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation of forest health and protection

Essay - 9 pages - Ecology & environment

Over the last 30 years forest health became a popular issue together with the concern about acid rain, air pollution, and climate change. Terms like forest decline, and the German ‘Waldsterben' (forest death) and ‘Neuartigen Waldscha ¨den' (new type of forest damage) became frequent in...

21 Nov 2008
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Environmental impacts on forests

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

There is considerable debate over de?nitions for the word ‘forest' and even for ‘tree.' Most vegetation types fall clearly into the categories of forest or nonforest, but there is dispute at the margins. A similar debate rages over the classi?cation of forests into natural and arti?cial...

21 Nov 2008
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Impacts of air pollution on forest ecosystems

Essay - 10 pages - Ecology & environment

Air pollution problems are international in scale. All forests worldwide experience some degree of air pollution exposure above preindustrial levels. Atmospheric transport processes do not recognize geographic borders, but sources of pollutants, the pollutants of concern, and the speci?c effects...

21 Nov 2008
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Natural disturbances in forest environments

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

Disturbance in plant communities has been de?ned as consisting of ‘the mechanisms which limit the plant biomass by causing its partial or total destruction.' In forests, disturbance arises from the agencies of tree damage or death. At small spatial scales, individual trees die standing or...

21 Nov 2008
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Plant-animal interactions in forest ecosystems

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

Flowering plants, being sedentary, have co-opted animal partners for purposes of gene exchange and propagule dispersal, through pollination and seed dispersal. To secure these services plants provide a variety of flower or fruit rewards creating some of the most common and obvious mutualistic...

21 Nov 2008
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Human influences on the tropical forest wildlife

Essay - 7 pages - Ecology & environment

Different patterns of anthropogenic forest disturbance can affect forest wildlife in both tropical and temperate regions in many ways. The overall impact of different sources of structural and nonstructural disturbance may depend on: (1) the groups of organisms considered; (2) the evolutionary...

21 Nov 2008
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Aquatic habitats in forest ecosystems

Essay - 8 pages - Ecology & environment

There is a wide variety of aquatic habitats found in forested areas ranging from water-?lled tree holes through to large rivers, lakes, and inundated forests. This article initially reviews the classi?cation of aquatic habitats and some of their important geomorphological, physicochemical, and...

19 Nov 2008
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Ground preparation in afforestation

Essay - 9 pages - Ecology & environment

Ground preparation is de?ned as the set of preliminary operations on soil that are required for effective establishment of tree seedlings. The main objective of ground preparation is to assure access to nutrients, air, and water for the seedlings to be planted. Ground preparation is more focused...