Biomes HW #1

Freshwater


How are lakes remnants of the Pleistocene glaciation?


"Though the last glaciation ended about 12,500 years ago, remnants of this climatic episode are common around the world today. For example, increased precipitation in North America's Great Basin area created enormous lakes (map of lakes) in a normally dry area. Lake Bonneville was one and once covered most of what is today Utah. Great Salt Lake is today's largest remaining portion of Lake Bonneville but the old shorelines of the lake can be seen on the mountains around Salt Lake City. "Various landforms also exist around the world because of the enormous power of moving glaciers and ice sheets. In Canada's Manitoba for instance, numerous small lakes dot the landscape. These were formed as the moving ice sheet gouged out the land beneath it. Over time, the depressions formed filled with water creating "kettle lakes.""


Briney, Amanda. "The Last Glaciation - An Overview of Global Glaciation." Geography Home Page - Geography at About.com. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. <http://geography.about.com/od/climate/a/glaciation.htm>.


Marine


"Chemosynthetic bacteria thrive near these vents because of the large amounts of hydrogen sulfide and other minerals they emit. These bacteria are thus the start of the food web as they are eaten by invertebrates and fishes."


What makes bacteria such good eating? If they sit there and feed off the vents which contain hydrogen sulfide and other minerals how come the bacteria don't get poisonous?


" On the one hand, they take toxic hydrogen sulfide out of the environment and basically turn it into food. The bacteria also grow on some of the creatures, creating a bacto-blanket that protects them from heat."

Francis, Joe. "Deep-Sea Vents: Life's Toxic Sanctuary." Answers in Genesis - Creation, Evolution, Christian Apologetics. 3 June 2010. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v5/n3/toxic-sanctuary>.

"The bacteria, in turn, benefit from the relationship because the worms deliver blood-containing hemoglobin, which helps the bacteria to break down the sulfides."

"Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents." Extreme Science. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/life-in-the-deep-ocean/42-deep-sea-hydrothermal-vents>.

Desert


"The animals include small nocturnal (active at night) carnivores. The dominant animals are burrowers and kangaroo rats. There are also insects, arachnids, reptiles and birds. The animals stay inactive in protected hideaways during the hot day and come out to forage at dusk, dawn or at night, when the desert is cooler."


Why do animals live in the desert if they don't like the heat? Why wait to come out at night when you can come out even in the day if you lived somewhere else?


"It is a specialist environment but not really any harder to live in if you are adapted for it. Desert biomes have to rely more on predation because of lack of vegetation so there is a lot of rungs on the predator ladder and some unique defenses."

"Why Do Animals Live in the Desert? - Yahoo! Answers." Yahoo! Answers - Home. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080219164148AA2SadR>.

Forest


 Is there a difference in gymnosperm plants and angiosperm plants in terms of plant biology?  How would dinosaurs have digested them or are all plants the same? 


"In the beginning of the Triassic Period, the landmasses were all together in what is known as Pangaea. The climate was very warm and dry. Eventually, because of Plate Tectonics and diverging plates, Pangaea started to spread apart. Water flowed into the middle of the supercontinent, which cooled down the climate (The same thing happened between South America and Africa; if the were put together, they would fit). Anyway, by the end of the Cretaceous Period, it was much colder then the Triassic. Many people think that dinosaurs, being reptiles, were coldblooded. This may have killed many large dinosaurs. Also, the new climate may have produced new plant life. Maybe plant eating dinosaurs could not digest the new flowering plants, and it poisoned them. "

"Answers.com - Why Did the Dinosaurs Die." WikiAnswers - The Q&A Wiki. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_dinosaurs_die>.

Grassland

Why do elephants eat trees? What is the benefit of eating bark and wood?

"Animals gnawing the bark and wood of trees and shrubs is not a malicious act or evidence of a neurotic condition. Instead, it is the normal means by which some animals acquire a nutritious food source. The ability to consume this seemingly unpalatable food supply and derive nourishment from it requires specialized feeding habits and digestive systems."

"Even mammals ranging in size from mice to elephants consume bark and woody branches. They all have specialized digestive systems that allow them to extract nourishment from this material, something humans cannot do. "

"Although cellulose is a pure carbohydrate, it is not a source of food for humans or most other organisms because they lack the enzymes necessary to digest it. Starch, which many animals including humans can metabolize because they produce amylase enzymes, is similar to cellulose except the long chains of glucose are linked in an alpha configuration. Cellulose has as much food value as starch, but only animals that maintain colonies of microorganisms in their gut that produce the enzyme cellulase are capable of digesting it."

Chaney, William R. "Why Do Animals Eat the Bark and Wood of Trees and Shrubs?" Purdue University Forestry and Natural Resources. Aug. 2003. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR_203.pdf>.

Tundra

If there is a permanent layer of permafrost all year round how much soil does the tundra lose to erosion every year?

"Erosion is especially evident and worrisome in coastal areas, may of which are also being ravaged by winter storm surge as the protective barrier of sea ice appears later and later (if at all) during the year. Intact permafrost is extremely resilient. However, when it becomes compromised, it and the ground above and below it become much more vulnerable to the erosive forces of wind and water."

"Permafrost : Weather Underground." Welcome to Weather Underground : Weather Underground. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.wunderground.com/climate/permafrost.asp>.

Schedule

Friday: What I hope to accomplish tomorrow is starting on the plant list in 3D so that I have actual plants in 3D instead of just circles. I hope that with my greater understanding of sketchup I can successfully make a relatively good looking plant. Small, simple animals I hope to put in as well.


Weekend Plan:
Friday: Start on 3D plant list. Start on some little animals as well. -> Sea Anemone
Saturday: Finish up plant list. Add small animals and textures to plants.
Sunday: Create more hardscaping. Put that in.
Monday: Finishing up all the details.

My Four Goals

1. I need to make models of my plants and place them in my model.
2. Create more hardscaping on the outside of the tide pool for other people.
3. Scale my model. (It's mostly to scale already just needs a little adjusting.)
4. Put a house in my model so that its actually a backyard instead of just pools of water.

Annotated Bibliography

Ron Stoecklein "Pacific Tidepools: A Threatened Ecosystem? - Brief Article". E: The Environmental Magazine. FindArticles.com. 03 Oct, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is_5_12/ai_77749299/

• This brief article is about Pacific tide pools and the effect of pollution and climate change killing off intertidal life. As the most vulnerable of all marine life they are usually the first to go and intertidal species are disappearing slowly. Human encroachment on all fronts is adding toxic pollutants to the ocean and into these mini-ecosystems. And to top it off disease, collectors and a brand new threat, an incredibly invasive aquarium algae could find its way into the open ocean where it could decimate native plant and animal communities creating effective dead zones of just algae.

• This is a somewhat useful source detailing the many problems associated with the tide pools and recent times. Its a little bit different from my other sources as it is about an ocean ecosystem which we find abundantly in California but not on land. I find this information reliable as I have seen nothing to possibly give me doubt. I find this source slightly biased because it takes a more radical view on pollution. I think that the goal of this source is to draw attention to this well loved but easily forgotten ecosystem.

• This source was helpful to me as it was about an ecosystem and the human effects on this ecosystems.

B. Limm, T. E. Dawson. Polystichum munitum (Dryopteridaceae) varies geographically in its capacity to absorb fog water by foliar uptake within the redwood forest ecosystem. American Journal of Botany, 2010; 97 (7): 1121 DOI: 10.3732/ajb.1000081

This article is about how Redwood Forest Ecosystems use fog to stay hydrated in the summer when it doesn’t rain. Fog itself is an important water source as it can condense and drop to the forest floor or be absorbed through the plants. Researchers did an examination of the forest floor and they found that drought conditions are greater in the southern end of the forest ecosystem. They found that the ferns in the southern area were smaller and couldn’t absorb as much moisture as the northern ferns. This type of shrinkage can spell important implications for the structure of communities. If these ferns keep shrinking it will change the distribution of water on the forest floor and may lead to changes in how the redwood understory story functions.

University of California - Davis. "California's Ancient Kelp Forest." ScienceDaily 26 November 2009. 4 October 2010 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/11/091111092049.htm>.

This article is about the decline in natural biodiversity in a kelp forest. Scientists had originally used kelp as an impronmptu measuring stick, measuring the depth of the sea. Kelp forests are also used as a was to view changes in incea. Kelp forests around offshore islands peaked around 13,500 years ago as rising sea levels created new habitat and then declined to present day levels. The kelp along the mainland coast peaked around 5,000 years. This transition from an extensive island-based kelp system to a mainland-dominated system coincided with conspicuous events in the archaeological record of the maritime people in the region, suggesting that climate-driven shifts in kelp ecosystems impacted human populations that used those resources.

Vocab. Flashcard - Hereditary

Herb Garden

White, Sarah E. "What Is an Herb Garden?" WiseGEEK: Clear Answers for Common Questions. 9 Sept. 2010. Web. 03 Oct. 2010. <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-herb-garden.htm>.

Burrell, C. Colston. "HowStuffWorks "How to Grow an Herb Garden: Tips and Guidelines"" HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works! Web. 03 Oct. 2010. <http://www.howstuffworks.com/how-to-grow-an-herb-garden.htm>.