- Industria: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
- Number of blossaries: 0
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
A long, serpentine air current just below the tropopause (about 12 km up) and blowing westerly, generated by temperature differentials between air masses, and often exceeding a speed of 250 miles (402 kilometers) per hour. The two polar jet streams are the strongest.
Industry:Biology
Annual or seasonal shedding of foliage from trees and shrubs. Conserves water by cutting down on transpiration and nutrients by reducing what the leaves required. Deciduous trees are useful in gardens because they give shade in summer, let in light in winter, and drop leaves that enrich the soil when decomposed. They are best transplanted when dormant (late autumn to early spring).
Industry:Biology
A form of small-scale agriculture that produces yields without introducing artificial fertilizers or pesticides. The basic aim is to grow things naturally with a minimum of mechanical interference. Organic farming grew in popularity from Sir Albert Howard's published observations of Indian farming techniques (1940).
Industry:Biology
Gardening; growing fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plans. Indigenous societies once believed on the brink of starvation until "civilized" by monoculturalists (e.g., the California Indians and the Spanish Mission System) are now known to have supported themselves with food grown horticulturally in mixed crops similar to those now studied by permaculture.
Industry:Biology
Transition zone between air masses. Types include cold fronts (cold air pushing back warm air--often bringing stormy weather), warm fronts, stationary fronts, dry lines (air barriers separating moist from dry air--very common in the American Midwest), and occluded fronts (when a cold front catches up with a warm one; the resulting rotations of air can generate cyclones).
Industry:Biology
Hydrocarbon liquid commonly drilled from sedimentary layers packed with marine matter left over from the Carboniferous days. Its dark, spellbinding, "oildorado" properties include convincing large groups of people to vote against cheap public transportation and elevating pirates and robber barons into heads of nation-states. See Peak Oil.
Industry:Biology
The evolution of a new species. This usually happens through either geographical separation over long periods of time, or through reinforcement, in which subtle differences in characteristics like calls or wing markings are more favored in mates. When Agrodiaetus butterflies live together, for example, the males tend to develop markings that distinguish them by species. Females of the same species prefer them. This provides the kind of breeding barrier an ocean or mountain range might.
Industry:Biology
For food and resources. Types: interference (by direct attack), exploitation (forced to share a resource), scramble (everyone gets something), contest (one competitor gets it all), and restrictive (preventing someone else from getting it); also, inter- and intraspecific modes (between or within species). Competition tends to characterize less mature ecosystems. Note: there is some debate about how much of the "competition" and "dominance" we see in the natural world is projected there by observers who take such behaviors in overmanaged human societies for granted.
Industry:Biology
Cycling of nitrogen from the air and soil to plants, animals, and then back to the environment. Bacteria, legumes, and algae convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates that enter plant roots before turning into protoplasm that decomposers eventually break down again.
Industry:Biology
Developed in 1979 by Tom Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori to measure the total energy of an earthquake by considering the amount of fault slippage (the moment magnitude) rather than just the seismic graphing. The measurements are more physically precise than the Richter Scale it replaced. See Richter Scale.
Industry:Biology
