Ecology and the Environment

Is the cloud - earth system the equivalent of a giant capacitor? At lightning discharge do we have a dielectric breakdown? Please provide some insight into this issue. Thanks in advance.

Hi Everyone I am not a biologist or anything like it myself (maybe just a person with biophilia), so does anyone have the expertise to help me specify the species of 1) the sound from grasshoppers? cicadas? (from a coal heap in Walbrzych, Poland) and 2) the fry fish (from a remeandered river called Suså in Sea Land, Denmark) in the first and second part of the video Anthromes (see youtube link below)? Thanks a lot in advance! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmE8ScpIFD4

I was recently watching an episode of Animal Face-off involving a saltwater crocodile vs a great white shark; now I'm not a PhD zoologist, but can someone tell me whether or not this fight is at all realistic? I mean I know that great whites are very skilled hunters, as are saltwater crocodiles, but would these two animals even dare go after each other in the wild? I always thought that unless they are defending their young, predators usually avoid attacking other predators that are the same size as they are. And if they did, is there anyway that the shark would even survive that final bite from the crocodile (the two go straight at each other and the croc bi…

I know 1 mature tree can store 48 lbs CO2 per year and give 260 lbs O2 per tree per year . So exactly how much CO2 1 tree use per year for photosynthesis and storing process or just only 48 lbs ? I know grassland absorb 2400 – 3600 lbs CO2 per acre per year and create half kilogram O2 per 1 square foot per day . So exactly how much CO2 grassland use per year for photosynthesis and storing process ?

People, Gotta know the scoop on this, and this forum is trusted as a good source of opinions/feedback. One idea- organic foods may be impossible to produce economically in some climates, with their inherant problems with pests, fungi, etc. Also, of course, is the concept that organics contain no pesticide residue. This residue which may be on non organics, of course, is deemed "safe" by the FDA. Anyone know off hand what the ppb/ppt allowable limits are for these residues? Are these limits truly safe, as far as we know? I heard that the average person contains about 5000 different metals/toxins/organics in their body/blood. This comes from everyday interacti…

Much of the greenhouse gases released through the combustion of fossil fuels is in the production of electricity at power plants. Carbon Capure and Storage (CCS) is a known method to capturing CO2. Through the implementation of CCS, approximately 90% of CO2 emissions from coal power stations can be reduced and the cost of electricity increased by no more than 20%. http://www.canadiancleanpowercoalition.com/pdf/CAS3%20-%20Ammoniakk%2520CO2%2520capture%2520NETL%2520febr.%25202005.pdf The initial cost are high and this could be seen as not cost-effective, but what if the stored CO2 is used to produce fuels or recycled into useful commodities/substances? 1.) Natural…

In a closed environment dependent on plants for Oxygen regeneration, it is necessary to balance CO2 supply for a needed level of O2. How does one calculate the O2 output in terms of the CO2 needed by the plants? Is there a range of efficiencies involved?

For years the U.N. has been begging the world to embrace insects as a form of protein. The problem? Aside from the gross-out factor, they can be hard to catch, and when people do find a colony they rarely think to only take as much as the insects can produce, ensuring even those trying to take advantage of the protein we are literally surrounded by, can’t. The solution? An easy and sustainable insect farm! Now, having scoured the insect farm and algae markets, many designs either are too costly to see widespread use in third world countries(algae), or simply don’t produce enough food for the space they take up(flies). An overlooked source of protein, carbs and amin…

Hello everyone! For a dissertation for biology, I've decided to perform a water quality test (apart from the usual biotic life; micro-invertebrats etc.). I'd like to know if there's a way to indicate (and the amount of; just indicating the presence won't give us information on the quality of the water...): Phosphate Ammonium Nitrate Nitrite Concentration of dissolved oxygen Thanks!

Is this all true? http://www.globalresearch.ca/28-signs-that-the-west-coast-is-being-absolutely-fried-with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima

We see a color (eg. green) because it reflects green frequencies and absorbs all else. Did Matter resolved into color coding from inception or is there some subtle process of frequency selection (preferential) that happens intelligently (harmonious selection)? Was chlorophyll synthesized at the time life appeared on earth? Is xanthophyll as efficient a bio-color as chlorophyll? What if we change the color of chlorophyll? What would be the response in terms of insect pollination, fruit formation, ATP synthesis etc.? Would the 38 ATP released as a by-product of photosynthesis change, if the color of chlorophyll changed? Can we seek to tamper with na…

Hi everyone, Since this is my first post, I'll just quickly introduce myself; I have a Bachelor's in Biology and a Master's in Earth Science with a professional background including serving as an environmental health inspector focusing on water supplies and am currently serving as a Safety and Health inspector as well as instructing Environmental Science courses at a local community college in the evenings. So, here's my situation and question: After I finished my M.S. in 2011, I celebrated in relief that I had finally finished all the schooling that I wanted to complete (pursing a PhD for the next 5-8 years was completely out of the question due to both th…

I am using BWTT on matlab to track the whiskers of dormice but it is taking forever at the moment because I am having to change the parameters for every single clip, and I have no idea what I am doing with them (things like Histogram Equalisation Max T, Razor size, MinD etc), so it's basically pure luck from fiddling when it highlights the right number of whiskers and not anything else. I've looked online for instructions, and there is help with the program generally but no explanation of what the specific values down the right hand side mean (that I can find anyway). If anyone has used this before I would be grateful for any tips or help at all. I have quite a few cl…

Global warming is a natural cycle of this planet. The real problem is how can we expect to survive in the future with an expanding population of humans. We cannot solve any other problem without dealing with this one first.

Very well dressed, or is it just sort of a T-shirt ? Seems a 2014 model, never seen before. It is 1 inch long... Do those colors match any team ? 8 pictures here ----> http://s588.photobucket.com/user/Innernet/library/?sort=6&page=1 -Know what species may be ?-

When ever I look for my Jack Russel. Its curled up sleeping! somewhere . . Oh Who mentioned Food ! Mike

man, a good book, on subject. Not a scientific journal article, of course, but readable book for general public. Everyone should read this, at least, anyone that is a consumer of plastic products, which means all of us. So sad, what plastic has done to the earth's surface, and even beneath the surface (beneath the ocean surface).

Beavers have to take down trees to make their homes, and a dam for more than 1 beaver would need quite a few trees to put together. Are beavers bad for forests?

Hello, I am currently trying to start a series of trials using Oscillatoria tenuis, Anabaena circinalis and Planktothrix aghardiulture the. I have obtained my cutures from CCAP in Cambridge, and am starting to try to culture them. However, I can find very little information on-line on culture techniques, advice, etc. Three weeks ago, I inoculated the cultures at a ratio of 1:10 with UTEX medium as advised by CCAP. I was not sure on light levels so I put them in a slightly shaded window with very gentle aeration. After two weeks I placed them on a light bench with around 5000 lux of standard white fluorescent light (this as the only value I could find on-line)…

Actually planting trees is the best way to solve lots of problems regarding the environment, everyone knows that. That's way I have created a website where everyone can help in this mission without spending a dime. On the blog I am trying to gather all the free projects around the web that can help us planting trees. Most of them are sponsored by companies that put ads in programs such as games or search engines while giving trees in return. the website is www.ecolair.org, you can also check the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Ecolair I hope you like them and i wish to know what you think about it, since i think that take action is as important as reasoning a…

The information on which this question is based might not be totally correct... I'm looking for the name of a tropic fungus (or plant?) that lives high up in trees (as I remember correctly) and as a result doesn't get enough chlorine (or phosphorus, or fluorine), so it makes a noose to trap tiny worms and feeds on them. Anyone?

Hello everyone, I am Mustafa Vohra, working on a project involving CO2 sequestration and methane production from coal. My works includes understanding microbial syntrophy in my consortia and production of methane from coal. I am microbiologist by nature and have some calculations of free energy for my reactions. After going through literature, I have finally calculated the free energy for my reactions but I need to validate it. So I am requesting you to go through my calculations and check for its correctness. Please don’t mind for some naïve questions since I am not an expert in it. Any help, suggestion, reference, guidance appreciated. The…

From what I've seen so far, Canada has the lowest biodiversity of most countries in the world. Does it really? If so, why do we have such low biodiversity?

I was planning on doing a dissertation on the effect of elephants on vegetation and seeing how this is impacted by distance to water sources. However I’ve been told this is not really an experiment. I have data from previous years on type of vegetation, weather data, damage to vegetation, etcetera. However my question is can anyone think of the title of an experiment using this data, any other information you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hello, For the revision of a monograph on grammatical change (to appear with Oxford UP), I was invited to add a chapter on parallels between natural evolution and linguistic change. One of my most essential claims as far as grammatical constructions go, is that the decline and eventual loss of a construction may depend primarily on global changes in the grammatical system, rather than on the outcome of its competition with a functionally overlapping construction (as e.g. I'll do it vs. I'm gonna do it). Overall, I argue that competition as a mechanism of change is overrated in linguistics and that it is often only part of a linguistic item's uses that compete with par…