Questions tagged [ecology]
The ecology tag has no usage guidance.
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Why is bush encroachement a bad thing?
From what I've read about bush encroachment, it is most often made to sound as a bad thing, potentially as a symptom of land degradation. This sounds counterintuitive to me because bush encroachment ...
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When did mosquitoes reach Australia?
When and how did mosquitoes reach Australia?
It's east of the Wallace line, so 'they got there from Asia' is not an obviously unproblematic conclusion.
In general, when and how mosquitoes reached ...
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What is the reason behind some of the biome anomalies in Africa?
For example :
The center of Africa lies in the Equatorial region and yet, does not have tropical rainforests all the way across.
The island of Madagascar has two different biomes
Since altitude and ...
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Should a primary consumer always be a herbivore?
BBC Bitesize defines primary consumers as the following, implying that (if I've interpreted this correctly) the term includes any animal that feeds on the primary producer — plants:
This refers to ...
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Are humans a plague? [closed]
We have:
Reached a population of 8 billion
Doubled greenhouse gases
Extincted numerous species
Filled the ocean floor with waste
Contaminated the soil with petroleum derivatives
Contaminated aquifers
...
user20559
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Can garbage be sent into the (near-)center of the world?
I've been thinking about how difficult it is to eliminate toxic chemical waste -- it usually needs high temperatures and pressures. So: would it be feasible (and maybe cheaper) to send it into the ...
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What exactly are singular biomes as units?
So let's take the tropical rainforests of Earth for an example. The Congo, Amazon, Indonesia, Malaysia, and wherever else it may grow. Are all these aforementioned places considered parts of one biome,...
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Can the frequent mowing without watering cause the total desertification in arid climate?
The law describes several modes of lawn care like
...
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Database of monthly climate data 2018 - 2019
Specifically I'm looking for climate data (average temperature, precipitation) for the summer months of 2018 in Belgium and of 2019 in Japan. Ideally of high spatial resolution, because my areas of ...
Bantha
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Ocean Acidification - The effect of CO2 concentration on the pH of the ocean [duplicate]
I'm confused about how increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere affects the pH of the ocean.
The increase in CO2 concentration means the pH of the ocean will decrease (by several chemical rxns). ...
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Is the ocean a carbon sink when considering only the biospheric component?
Most people knows that the ocean overall is a carbon sink, but a big part of the sink is due to chemical equilibrium (via dissolution) with the atmosphere (for ref: https://link.springer.com/article/...
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Why are there no snakes in New Zealand when ecosystem needs them [closed]
I was trying to understand why there are no snakes in New Zealand and at same time I see snakes are important for ecosystems.
So my question is how New Zealand's ecosystem is surviving without snakes?...
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Why is carbon dioxide a more important greenhouse gas than nitrous oxide?
I admit that this is not a genuinely earth sience question, but since there is no stack exchange site genuinely devoted to general ecology, I dare to ask it here:
From a table in the German Wikipedia ...
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Why did notosuchians and similar crocodylomorphs thrive in the Jurassic-Cretaceous but fail to compete with adequate mammalian competitors?
Notosuchia has a long and storied past. They seem to have gotten by just fine with dinosaurs dominating the makeup of mid and late Mesozoic megafauna. Despite dinosaurs having more developed and ...
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Quickly breeding oysters to combat oceanic pollution?
I've been doing some wikipedia binging and it's come to my realization that it may be in the Earth's best interest to raise the world oyster population as quickly as possible. The basis for this is ...
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If matter is constantly being cycled through an ecosystem, does that mean a given ecosystem has a fixed mass?
Due to the food chain and the cycle of life, matter is constantly moved between plants, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and so on, until the consumers die, giving matter they consumed back to ...
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How does planned cattle grazing compare with other methods (like carbon capture) of mitigating climate change?
I recently saw a great talk by Allan Savory, the pioneering ecologist about holistic management of cattle grazing to prevent desertification of grasslands. He claimed that it is the only viable way ...
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What is the technical term for the amount of water within the surrounding enviornment?
This may seem an obvious question but I am unable to understand what the technical term for the surrounding water of an environment is, specifically surrounding a person/animal within that environment....
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Do icebergs have any impact on ecology?
Are icebergs neutral actors in the environment, or do they have any impact on the local ecology. Do they have any environmental impacts that might influence any part of the biosphere?
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Aren't fresh water deposits renewed by the water cycle?
I have recently watched the documentary "How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?" with David Attenborough. In it, the main factors that will limit total human population Earth can support ...
user14513
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Does anyone know a book/article/research that talks about forest fire prevention?
In my college we have to start our thesis in the third semester, so I'm going to do a research about forest fire and its prevention. However, I'm struggling to find a article that talks about that ...
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How can half a degree of average temperature result in such devastating impact on coral reefs?
Yesterday I read a number of news stories about the new IPCC's (International Panel on Climate Change) report regarding the current state of global warming. It reported that we are on track for ...
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Would the Gaia hypothesis have any practical use?
I recently stumbled upon the Gaia hypothesis, which briefly states that the Earth itself is a living organism.
I am wondering: Would this hypothesis have any practical use? Does it make any ...
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Prevailing winds between 30 to 60 degrees latitude [duplicate]
Prevailing winds are generated by Coriolis effects.
I think I understand why NE winds are the prevailing winds in 0 to 30 degrees and 60 to 90 degrees latitude in the northern hemisphere (e.g., ...
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In search of California ecosystem vegetation field guide
I am searching for an illustrated naturalist handbook to coastal California vegetation (trees, shrubs, wildflowers) organized by ecosystem.
For example, there might be sections for coastal dunes (...
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Is the impact of carbon emision dependent on the location on the earth?
While I was reading how the EU taxes aviation companies based on carbon emissions it occurred to me that the effect of carbon emissions on global temperature etc. may depend on where the carbon is ...
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Do volcanos really create fertile soil?
I'm developing an ecology for a portion of my world that's geologically active and I remembered hearing that volcanic ash in soil makes it more fertile to agriculture.
After extensive googling I've ...
Nascence
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Timeline of Himalayas/Tibetan plateau formation
Note: edited based on helpful comments.
In Walking with Cavemen, Robert Winston claims an African rainforest existed 8 mya, but by 4 mya it was gone. He attributes this to newly Himalayas-triggered ...
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Result of deterioration of vegetation
I had this question in my previous exam, it says:
Deterioration of vegetation resulted by overgrazing results in......
1.desert encroachment.
2.change in climate.
I had to choose 1 or 2 and I chose ...
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How does the Coriolis effect affect rivers and estuaries
I'm quite confused about this since it is said to influence major currents in the sea the winds to the formation of gyres in the ocean and as well as influencing the weather at times due to the planet'...
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Methods in researching loss of natural habitat
What methods are there to research loss of natural habitat?
I know of supervised image classification in GIS but what other methods are commonly used in research?
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Categories for supervised classification, wildlife analysis
I am using GIS to undertake a small research on the loss of natural habitat in north England. I will be using Supervised Classification where I train the system on a few examples, e.g.
shallow water
...
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Connections between marine and terrestrial ecosystems [closed]
First I would like to note that I have only very basic understanding of ecology, biology and paleontology so I can easily miss something very simple.
I can envision certain ways marine and ...
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Lack of annual slash-and-burn in North America?
In many areas of South America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia, "slash-and-burn" agriculture is employed whereby every year the stubble from the previous year is burned along with other live ...
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Making Sense of Coldwater Ocean Currents
The basic understanding of ocean currents is that warm currents carry moisture whereas cold currents carry nutrients. This is why some scientists believe in the connection between the Arctic ice caps ...
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Why haven't weeds overtaken the entire planet?
Given how rapidly weed plants spread and grow, choking out all other plant life, how come after millions of years we haven't ended with forests full of thistle or pokeweed, as opposed to pines or oak ...
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What would happen if the same soil received waste water contaminants for a long time?
I know that soil is used to filter septic systems within our treatment system, however what happens to this soil that is used in filtration, I know it would be changed every once in a while but what ...
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High Discharge Value in SWAT modelling
At first run I’ve encountered the problem since the values of modeled and observed discharge are significantly different.
The correlation between them is nearly 0,2...
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How do I estimate the mass of a deciduous tree's leaves?
Regarding the amount of biomass in a tree, what would be the approximate total mass of leaves on a large deciduous tree (e.g. maple, oak) while green in spring? Or, how many leaves could be on such a ...
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How significant is organic cotton agriculture to the USA's total global ecological footprint?
The ecological footprint of a human activity can be measured in global hectares (gha). Cotton's ecological footprint to produce one ton of product ranges from 2.17 gha for organic cotton to 3.57 gha ...
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