...Chelonia mydas, more familiarly known as green sea turtles, are a notably endangered species of turtles that are native to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. They are one of the most sizable species of sea turtles, weighing approximately 150 to 400 pounds and measuring up to 47 inches in length. They are also the only primarily herbivorous species of sea turtle, consisting of seagrasses and algae in their diet, with the exception of juvenile green sea turtles eating jellyfish, crabs, and sponges. The unique species is named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells, despite many misconceptions. Instead of being named for the color of their shells, green sea turtles are named for the green color of their fat and...
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...Bio 324 12/01/12 Plastics in the ocean Imagine the massive breadth and spread of our great state of Texas. Now imagine every milli-inch of that piled high with trash: bottle caps, cigarettes, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, plastic nets, discarded flip flops, Frisbees, soda bottles, milk jugs, diapers, six-pack rings, busted tennis rackets, empty pens, shampoo bottles, empty squeeze bottles of jam, you name it. Now take that image, double it, and plunk into the water. That's what is floating around the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Nicknamed the "Eastern Garbage Patch," this buoyant stew of toxic pollution-most of which is plastic-is only one of five such garbage heaps caught in the swirling high-pressure currents characteristic of gyres. The others reside in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. And each year, perhaps unwittingly, each one of us adds to plastic to the heap. Plastic makes it into our oceans in a variety of ways. About twenty percent of it comes from goods lost from boats: i.e. accidental loss of fishing tackle and other recreational gear, massive shipping containers carrying millions of plastic items washed overboard during severe storms; litter from pleasure boats, or illegal dumping of unwanted goods. Beachgoer’s debris is also a contributor. The other eighty percent is swept in from land. Just as Nonpoint Source Pollution from fertilizers...
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...LIVING COASTAL RESOURCES OF THE ASEAN REGIONAND DATA REQUIREMENTS FOR THEIR MANAGEMENT SIGNIFICANCE OF LIVING COASTAL RESOURCES Living coastal resources are found within major coastal ecosystems consisting of coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, benthic systems, and estuaries or lagoons. Coastal ecosystems, particularly estuaries and inshore marine waters have the highest rate of primary production as compared to terrestrial and oceanic regions. Daily gross production rate in terms of grams of dry organic matter per square metre area for the narrow coastal band ranges from 10 to 25, with all other regions having substantially lower values (2). The coastal band conveniently thought of as the transition area between land and sea, holdsthis great diversity of ecosystems, each characterized by its own unique ecological feature. Conditions here may be harsh with wide fluctuations in temperature and salinity, but because of the abundance of food supply, these areas can and do support a high diversity of species which have become efficiently adapted to the widely fluctuating environmental conditions. These ecosystems remain productive because of tidal action which circulates food and nutrients rapidly and efficiently and at the same time washes away waste materials. They also serve as efficient nutrient traps of the continuous nutrient input washed down from land. Within these ecosystems, the autotrophic and heterotrophic layers are maintained in close contact so that energy transfer...
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...ECONOMICS WORLD TRADE AND ENVIORNMENT ISSUES AND POLICIES SEPTEMBER 2015 BY VIDUR KANODIA HR COLLEGE OF COMMERCE AND ECONOMICS MCOM – I DIVISION – M ROLL NUMBER – 28 Objective This paper provides an overview of trade, environmental, and related public issues and policies. It discusses the pollution problem, the recent global warming trend, the attempts of world’s various levels of institutions such as the UN, the WTO, regional, national, and other organizations to solve the global trade and environmental issues. It also discusses a number of basic theoretical issues and empirical findings such as the free-rider problem, tragedy of the commons, theory of second best, relative efficacy of price and quantity control, carbon leakage, border carbon adjustments, cap-and-trade system, pollution haven hypothesis, optimal social discount rate and the environmental Kuznets curve. Some computable general equilibrium models are reviewed and several notable WTO environmental and health-related trade dispute cases are analyzed, including the tuna-dolphin, shrimp-turtle, eco-labeling, beef- hormone, and GMOs cases. Introduction Trade liberalization can have substantial ramifications for the global environmental policy regime. Lowering trade barriers and opening new markets can boost economic growth and development, which may help or harm the environment. On the one hand, growth and development tend to increase resource and energy demands, degrade natural resources, and bring forth...
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...The Effects of Plastic Bags on Environmentt * | * The effects of plastic bags on the environment are really quite devastating. While there are many objections to the banning of plastic bags based solely on their convenience, the damage to the environment needs to be controlled. * There is no way to strictly limit the effects of plastic bags on the environment because there is no disposal method that will really help eliminate the problem. While reusing them is the first step, most people either don't or can't based on store policies. They are not durable enough to stand up to numerous trips to the store so often the best that citizens can do is reuse them when following pooper scooper laws. * The biggest problem with this is that once they have been soiled the end up in the trash, which then ends up in the landfill or burned. Either solution is very poor for the environment. Burning emits toxic gases that harm the atmosphere and increase the level of VOCs in the air while landfills hold them indefinitely as part of the plastic waste problem throughout the globe. * Plastic Bag Litter * Even when citizens try to manage their plastic bag disposal wind plays a role in carrying them away as litter. This litter is not biodegradable and thus where it lands it tends to stay for long period of time. A bag that is eventually ripped to shreds from high winds or other factors doesn't disappear but instead is spread in smaller amounts throughout the area. This can cause...
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...The biggest landfill on the earth: Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can you imagine the amount of trash approximately fourteen times bigger than whole Slovakia? No? Then it is about time to make you familiar with Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This large floating landfill is the biggest one in the world. According to Charles Moore, discoverer of Great Pacific Garbage Patch (in 1977), "The ocean is downhill from everything" (as cited in Blomberg, 2011). Considering the fact that high percentage of all trash is produced on the land, it is very surprising then the biggest junk yard is actually in the water and not on the land. Even though, recently many people and companies started to care more about amount of trash in oceans, there is a lack of information about Great Pacific Garbage Patch and related issues among large number of population. First of all, Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of two parts, Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch as mentioned in article written by Jacob Silverman (n.d.). Some sources refer to Eastern one as Great Pacific Garbage Patch and do not talk about the other one (Boudreau et al., n.d.), even though they do not deny the existence of Western Pacific Garbage Patch it can cause some misunderstanding with names. In this essay, there will be used distinction of Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patch as well as collective name Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Eastern one is situated between Hawaii and California, the Western...
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...of the situation. There is also little to no awareness as to the way we humans either intentionally or unintentionally contribute to the worsening situation in our water bodies. This study used the DPSIR model in analyzing the problem of the pacific gyre from a systems perspective. It focused on the impacts of the pacific gyre on the environment, plants, animals as well as the ecosystem. The study also looked at societies responds to this problem of plastic debris and those the author suggest as alternatives. The study found that the total world figure of garbage in the Pacific Ocean is about 10,239,538 pounds and out of this figure plastics contribute the largest share of about 90%. The study also found that about 100,000 sea animals and 1 million sea birds die annually from...
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...SAMPLE --- STUDENT WRITING Research Paper When Pets Become Predators What is an owner to do with a pet that has become too aggressive to handle, too expensive to feed or too large to house? This is a question many uneducated exotic pet owner’s face soon after purchasing a juvenile exotic reptile. Unfortunately, for many pet owner’s, the answer is to release the pet into our neighborhoods and parks creating a multitude of problems for homeowner’s, State officials and the environment. Probably the best known pet to become a predator is the Burmese python, also known as the Indian python. Burmese pythons average approximately 13 feet in length, but can grow to over 20 feet. (Indian Python) Their weight may exceed 200 pounds. Most owners begin feeding their juvenile pythons mice, but a snake grows quickly and graduates to rabbits, chickens and eventually pigs. A full grown python requires a cage of at least 8 feet in length. Because a Burmese python has a life expectancy of over 20 years, the potential buyer must carefully evaluate the long term commitment required with this purchase. Another well know pet to predator is the Nile monitor lizard. These lizards average 4 to 6 feet in length, but can soon grow to 7 feet. They are a carnivorous lizard that as a juvenile begins eating crickets, then graduates to gold fish and later to rats and other small animals. When full grown, monitor lizards like the Burmese python, need an enclosure of at least 8 feet, however...
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...(Reuters) - With the failure this weekend of BP's "top kill" attempt to plug its leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well, fears are growing that the economic and environmental impact of the nearly six-week-old spill can only spread. Here are some facts about effects of the worst ever U.S. oil spill, triggered by the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig: THE SCALE OF THE CATASTROPHE "This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country," top White House energy adviser Carol Browner said on Sunday. "There could be oil coming up 'til August." Browner told CBS's "Face The Nation," "We are prepared for the worst." Louisiana, the nearest state to BP's gushing undersea well that is 42 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, has been the most impacted by the spill so far. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said this week that more than 100 miles of Louisiana's 400-mile coast had so far been impacted by the spilled oil. State officials have reported sheets of oil soiling wetlands and seeping into marine and bird nurseries, leaving a stain of sticky crude on cane that binds the marshes together. Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, saw dying cane and "no life" in parts of Pass-a-Loutre wildlife refuge. "Oil debris", in the form of tar balls and surface "sheen", has also been reported coming ashore since the April 20 accident in outlying parts of coastal Mississippi and Alabama. In the week of May 17, Coast Guard officials found tar balls...
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... Deborah Gale & Nadine Elizabeth White a a b a Regional Futures Institute, School of Commerce and Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia b School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia Available online: 23 Apr 2010 To cite this article: Jeremy Buultjens, Deborah Gale & Nadine Elizabeth White (2010): Synergies between Australian indigenous tourism and ecotourism: possibilities and problems for future development, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 18:4, 497-513 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669581003653518 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or...
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...Acclaim for Yann Martel's Life of Pi "Life of Pi is not just a readable and engaging novel, it's a finely twisted length of yarn— yarn implying a far-fetched story you can't quite swallow whole, but can't dismiss outright. Life of Pi is in this tradition—a story of uncertain veracity, made credible by the art of the yarn-spinner. Like its noteworthy ancestors, among which I take to be Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, the Ancient Mariner, Moby Dick and Pincher Martin, it's a tale of disaster at sea coupled with miraculous survival—a boys' adventure for grownups." —Margaret Atwood, The Sunday Times (London) "A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement. . . . Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master." —Publisher's Weekly (starred review) "[Life of Pi] has a buoyant, exotic, insistence reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's most Gothic fiction. . . . Oddities abound and the storytelling is first-rate. Yann Martel has written a novel full of grisly reality, outlandish plot, inventive setting and thought-provoking questions about the value and purpose of fiction." —The Edmonton journal "Martel's ceaselessly clever writing . . . [and] artful, occasionally hilarious, internal dialogue . . . make a fine argument for the divinity of good art." —The Gazette "Astounding and beautiful. . . . The book is a pleasure not only for the subtleties of its philosophy...
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...www.uncsd2012.org RIO+20 Issues Briefs Produced by the UNCSD Secretariat and UNCTAD March 2011 No. 1 Trade and Green Economy 1. Introduction The potential trade risks of a transition to a green economy — protectionism, conditionality, subsidies — are issues of long standing and not unique to the green economy. The urgency of the global challenges which a green economy transformation is intended to address, and the scale of the actions being taken by many countries to build green economies, does however bring renewed focus to these risks. At the same time, the new greening of markets associated with a green economy may provide opportunities for many developing countries to find global markets for goods and services with low environmental impacts. This will, however, test the supply capacities of developing countries as reflected, for example, in domestic trade infrastructure. The green economy offers an opportunity to improve both global trade governance and the domestic trade environment to ensure that trade contributes positively to a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication. 4) Unilateral policy measures: Many countries seem committed to the use of trade measures to persuade other countries to change their domestic environmental practices, despite the fact that many measures may be contrary to GATT-WTO rules (see Table 1 and discussion). 5) International environmental, climate change agreements/conventions: The outcome of negotiations...
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...Alicia Oriol Marketing Plan Marketing MKTG522 Group travel for Young Adults Prof: Heather Teague February 24th 2013 Table of contents Executive Summary Situation Analysis Market Summary SWOT Analysis Competition Product Offering Keys to Success Critical Issues Marketing Strategy Mission Marketing Objectives Financial Objectives Target Markets Positioning Strategies Marketing Mix Marketing Research Controls Implementation Marketing Organization Contingency Planning Conclusion Executive Summary Travel and tourism are critical to the American economy. This growing industry offers significant Potential for job creation across all regions of the country. Federal policies on matters ranging from national security to transportation and from trade to natural resources management affect travel and tourism, and its potential for growth. In a global economy, a range of businesses depend on travel and tourism policies to enable clients, customers, and colleagues to conduct business in the United States. In addition, ensuring that international visitors have a positive experience in America is an essential component of our public diplomacy and U.S. foreign policy. There are people who never left the US, there are some beautiful places that young people should visit and would enjoy visiting, being in the travel industry, I travel all over the world with my children, it is be both educational and entertaining. When you travel to the outside world, your...
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...Yann Martel: Life of Pi life of pi A NOVEL author's note This book was born as I was hungry. Let me explain. In the spring of 1996, my second book, a novel, came out in Canada. It didn't fare well. Reviewers were puzzled, or damned it with faint praise. Then readers ignored it. Despite my best efforts at playing the clown or the trapeze artist, the media circus made no difference. The book did not move. Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team. It vanished quickly and quietly. The fiasco did not affect me too much. I had already moved on to another story, a novel set in Portugal in 1939. Only I was feeling restless. And I had a little money. So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939. I had been to India before, in the north, for five months. On that first trip I had come to the subcontinent completely unprepared. Actually, I had a preparation of one word. When I told a friend who knew the country well of my travel plans, he said casually, "They speak a funny English in India. They like words like bamboozle." I remembered his words as my plane started its descent towards Delhi, so the word bamboozle ...
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...Practice Test #1 Sentence Correction 1. To meet the rapidly rising market demand for fish and seafood, suppliers are growing fish twice as fast as they grow naturally, cutting their feed allotment by nearly half and raising them on special diets. 2. Organized in 1966 by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Breeding Bird Survey uses annual roadside counts along established routes to monitor changes in the populations of more than 250 bird species, including 180 songbirds. 3. Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, their descendants, popularly known as killer bees, had migrated as far north as southern Texas. 4. Excited about the prospects of harnessing Niagara Falls to produce electric power, Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, predicted in the mid-1890's that electricity generated at Niagara would one day power the streetcars of London and the streetlights of Paris. 5. The airline company, following through on recent warnings that it might start reducing service, announced that it was eliminating jet service to nine cities, closing some unneeded operations, and grounding twenty-two planes. 6. The list of animals that exhibit a preference for using either the right or the left hand (i.e., claw, paw, or foot) has been expanded to include the lower vertebrates. 7. Obtaining an investment-grade rating will keep the county's future borrowing costs low, protect its already-tattered...
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