- Branche: 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 ...
An estuary--a watery coastal conflux where tide meets river--plus the surrounding wetlands (intertidals, salt marshes, lagoons, bay mouths, etc. ) Thick with nutrients and organic matter, such zones are the highest producers in the ecosphere. Eliminating one removes the grasses needed by local fish, shrimps, snails, and other protein-rich organisms, deprives the are of a pollutant scrubber, and removes a key flood-control device. With strong-arm help from the Army Corps of Engineers, about half of the estuaries in the U. S. Have been destroyed by dredging and filling and other forms of “development. ” 95% are gone in California. See Wetland.
Industry:Biology
Philosophies, ecological practices, and politics built around the idea that a place’s natural features and edges suggest the basis for understanding it and inhabiting it. Scientifically, this means joining ecology to anthropology through geography: a seamless interdependency between ecosystem, culture, and region. Most versions of bioregionalism share the following areas of focus:
* Those who actually live in a bioregion know best how to manage it. Top-down solutions from far away are to be suspected. * Dwellers begin to understand a place by reinhabiting it, which means learning all about its ecosystems and animals, water sources, weather, soil types, waste management, ecological strengths and traumas, and resources for ecologically gentle living. The mood that matches this is learning to feel at home there. * Food is best grown and bought locally. * Local democracy is based on direct participation and small-group discussion. (As Leopold Kohr put it, "If something is wrong, then something is too big. ")
* Developments that would damage the local environment--shopping malls, tract housing, factories, etc. --should be firmly and consistently opposed. Locally made products are preferred over those shipped from a distance or made locally through mass production both of which transfer capital to outside sources. * Respect for the rights, needs, customs, privacy, and knowledge of indigenous people living in the area. * Living sustainably means ecologically sensible practices such as reuse and recycling, water and power conservation, and reduction of trash and other wastes.
Industry:Biology
Breeding plants. Methods include division (separating one plant into several), ground layering (bending a shoot from the parent plant into the soil so it will root there), budding (inserting a parent plant bud into a second plant's rootstock), and grafting (joining a stem from a parent plant onto a second plant's rootstock).
Industry:Biology
A wet land; a bog, fen, marsh, estuary. Wetlands are rich in nutrients, unique in ecosystems, and hospitable to many forms of life, including birds on long flyways. They also filter pollutants out of the water and ease the force of passing floods. The Florida Everglades performed these and other ecologically beneficial activities until 1905, when a governor with the remarkably apt name of Napoleon Bonaparte Broward led the push to dredge, fill, dig, and canal; the resulting floods, stagnation, salinization, fish kills, bird deaths, agricultural runoffs, drought, groundwater depletion, and fire potential have not yet been brought under control. In the United States, farmers were encouraged to allow acreage for wetlands until the Bush Administration not only ended the incentives, but eased regulations in filling in existing wetlands. See Estuarine Zone.
Industry:Biology
An ideological justification for nonsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Stating that "Progress is inevitable" without mentioning who profits from such an aggressive ideology is like stating that "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a part of Christmas" without mentioning that Rudolf was invented in 1939 by Montgomery Ward as part of a holiday advertising blitz. (Rudolf's original name was Rollo, but they canned it because it announced the conquest theme too openly. )
Industry:Biology
A perspective developed by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens and Michael Zimmerman to interfuse learnings from the various subfields of ecology with the integral teachings of Ken Wilber, those dealing with the All Quadrants/All Lines aspect in particular. According to integral theory, every phenomenon can be studied either individually or collectively, and from the inside or the outside. Integral ecology applies this by exploring the subjective, measurable, cultural, and developmental dimensions of a given ecological situation or problem rather than staying solely with one angle of attack.
Industry:Biology
A group of species that fill similar ecological niches (e.g., birds that eat bugs from tree bark), but separated by time or geography so they don't compete. Also: a permaculture term for harmonious plant assemblies gathered around a central element. Planted around an orange tree: rue and lavender to repel pests, nasturtiums to smother weeds and grasses, clover and vetch for nitrogen, and an albizia tree to attract ladybirds to eat aphids. The guild is a version of companion planting.
Industry:Biology
Given two species that might need to compete for a resource, the members least like each other in what they require tend to survive and reproduce long enough to evolve into species whose niches do not involve competition. So far, this principle has not worked its way up the food chain into the dealings of nation-states with each other.
Industry:Biology
A method of turning soil to enhance productivity and destroy soil structure. Late in the 7th century, northern peasants began using a new type of plow, equipped with a vertical knife to cut a furrow, a horizontal blade to slice under the surface, and a moldboard to turn it over: a cross brought down into the earth. (Rotating crosses called windmills pumped water from the sinking Netherlands, an effort first funded by the church. )
Industry:Biology
トウモロコシの茎、レタスが続く早期エンドウ豆の基部に極豆、ブッシュ豆とスイートコーンのように、互いに近接して別の作物を育てる。が正しくinterplantingが行わ自然やマルチグランドカバーを提供し、病害虫の蔓延を抑制する。
Industry:Biology
