Riparian zones and Benefits of Riparian Zones

Riparian zones

Benefits of Riparian Zones

The biologically distinctive area that borders the waterfront is called the “riparian zone.”

Ecosystem conservation

Riparian zones are an extremely important component of most ecosystems. Riparian zones provide a variety of ecosystem services including sediment filtering, bank stabilization, water storage and release, and aquifer recharge. In addition, riparian zones provide important habitat for wildlife. The riparian zone acts as a natural sponge, soaking up water as it runs off the land, and slowly releasing that water back into the stream. Riparian vegetation and litter reduces erosion and regulates the overland flow of water to the stream (uplands vegetation serves this function, too).

Fish habitat

Streams flowing through healthy riparian zones are superior habitat for fish because  the riparian trees provide shade and buffer temperatures,  inputs of woody debris creates fish habitat, inputs of organic matter via leaf fall provides food sources for invertebrates and fish, and invertebrates that fall into the stream from the surrounding riparian vegetation provides food for other organisms. In addition, the riparian zone can improve the water quality of the stream by filtering out nutrients that would otherwise enter the stream. Riparian vegetation contributes shade, food and shelter for aquatic organisms. The riparian zone is also home to many animals that move between land and water, such as insects, amphibians and waterfowl.

Wildlife habitat

The abundance and diversity of wildlife in an area is influenced by the availability of water, the productivity (amount of carbon fixed by photosynthesis) and habitat diversity. Riparian zones provide reliable sources of water for wildlife and the greater productivity allowed by the high moisture content of the soil allows for more potential food for wildlife. In addition, the habitat diversity of riparian vegetation provides many potential niches for wildlife to fill. Not surprisingly, the diversity and abundance of wildlife in riparian zones is higher than in adjacent communities, particularly in arid regions.

Threats to riparian zones:

• Road building may cause accelerated erosion, introduce oil and other pollutants to the stream, cut off subsurface water flow to the stream and threaten wildlife.

• Farming can increase erosion of stream banks if the riparian zones are cleared for more farmland. Farmland is lost where the erosion occurs and sedimentation increases downstream. More farmers now maintain the health of their riparian areas to ensure long-term sustainability of their land. Worldwide, more than 99.7% of human food (calories) comes from the land. Serious environmental impacts, such as soil erosion, water pollution from surface runoff, and pesticide pollution, result from fossil fuel-intensive agriculture. A critical need exists to assess fossil energy limits, the sustainability of agriculture, and the food needs of a rapidly growing world population.
• Grazing or overgrazing of the riparian zone can cause changes in the types of vegetation and the amount of cover and forage, increase erosion, and introduce increased amounts of nutrients and fecal coliform bacteria to the stream through manure. However, if cattle are managed correctly (herded or fenced out after a short time) they can be a part of a healthy riparian zone. Manifestations of overgrazing in landscapes composed largely of native species include reduction of species richness, loss of biodiversity, desertification, loss of native topsoil and increases in surface runoff. In fact, overgrazing can be considered the major cause of desertification in arid drylands, tropical grasslands and savannas, worldwide. Overgrazing of historic human-created pastureland, especially irrigated or non-native grasslands, may lead to soil compaction, reduction in long-term grazing productivity and loss of topsoil.
• Development of riparian zones for housing or commercial development often causes removal of vegetation and alters the stream banks. These changes can increase the intensity of floods, increase the direct input of pollutants to water, and decrease wildlife.
• Logging operations today realize the importance of healthy riparian zones and rarely log them. However, logging roads continue to be built through these zones, creating the same problems that all roads do. When upland vegetation is stripped away, too much water is allowed to flow down into the stream at one time, which can lead to bank erosion, deep and narrow channels, shrunken riparian zones, and often increased loads of sediments.
• Dams reduce downstream flooding. while this serves the people who live downstream in the floodplain, it degrades riparian zones. Natural flood cycles are critical to healthy riparian zones. Floods bring essential supplies of water, nutrients and sediment. They also help to create backwater that serve as critical fish nurseries.

Sources:

http://www.eoearth.org/

Tennessee Valley Authority

http://www.tva.gov/river/landandshore/stabilization/benefits.htm

Malheur Experimental Station. Oregon State University

North American Native Fishes Association.

http://www.bcwatersheds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Riparian_Areas

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDkQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eng.buffalo.edu%2Fglp%2Fevents%2Fsummer2008%2Fweek2%2Ffull%2FSMALL%25203-EverythingOutsideActiveChannel-RiparainWatershedProcesses-Updated5-13-2008.pdf&ei=Nw5UVO9YjKLIBOvbgOgO&usg=AFQjCNGp4lsCreD_fxf9UAI7PSLhrGItFA&sig2=9pT1KvBzXHA89IbvlVdCgg

Benefits of Insects to ecosystem

Benefits of Insects to ecosystem

Using pesticide and insecticides cause negative environmental change and disturbance of natural balance.

The balance of nature depends on the activities of parasites and predators, the majority of which are species of insects. The insect ecology is the scientific study of how insects, individually or as a community, interact with the surrounding environment or ecosystem.

Insects play significant roles in the ecology of the world due to their vast diversity of form, function and life-style; their considerable biomass; and their interaction with plant life, other organisms and the environment. Since they are the major contributor to biodiversity in the majority of habitats, except in the sea, they accordingly play a variety of extremely important ecological roles in the many functions of an eco-system. Insects play crucial roles in ecosystem functioning as pollinators and insects are often the first decomposers of dead plants and animals, and introduce microorganisms that continue this process and release nutrients for new plant growth.

Insects form an important part of the food chain, especially for entomophagous vertebrates such as many mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Insects play an important role in maintaining community structure and composition; in the case of animals by transmission of diseases, predation and parasitism, and in the case of plants, through phytophagy and by plant propagation through pollination and seed dispersal. From an anthropocentric point of view, insects compete with humans; they consume as much as 10% of the food produced by man and infect one in six humans with a pathogen.

None of the terrestrial ecosystems could exist in their current form without insects. Insects often have very specialized requirements, so each species is typically found within a particular microsite, such as in the soil, under bark, or along the underside leaf veins of a particular tree species. Each also has a specific rhythm as to time of year and day when they are most active. Much of the diversity of insects and plants in terrestrial ecosystems can be attributed to the extensive interactions between these two groups, both through herbivory and pollination. Insects are the major herbivores in most terrestrial ecosystems, accounting for up to 80% of the total plant consumption in the system.

Sources:

The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions    By Victor Rico-Gray, Paulo S. Oliveira

http://lakeshorepreserve.wisc.edu/index.htm

http://nerrs.noaa.gov/doc/siteprofile/acebasin/html/resource/protland/lupltext.htm

What is in our drinking water?

What is in our drinking water?

Our chemical dump is our water supply.

For millions of years, intimate knowledge about the source of water was among the most important pieces of information our ancestors carried. Today is little different, today beneath the city streets our drinking water races through pipes to fill tens of billions of glasses and bottles each day. But do you ever think what is also getting in to your water? Did you know that tap water that most people drink can damage your brain, blind or even kill you? Most of us have little awareness of source or quality of our drinking water. Today we assume it will be there, we assume it will be safe. The road to disaster is paved with assumptions.

Safe drinking water is everybody’s business.

The best way to make sure drinking water supplies are kept clean, safe and reliable is to take a preventive risk management approach This means understanding each water supply from its beginning in nature to where it reaches you. We should be relying on a safe local supply of drinking water, but there is the problem of chemical pollution of our water. Modern industry produces and releases tens of thousands of different chemicals into our water supplies.

What we ca do

• We should all use water filters in our homes. Properly installed and maintained, they provide an extra measure of protection and give water that is often safer than bottled water, with far less environmental impact.
• We also need to be more demanding of our water companies. There is better technology available than we are using at the moment, including filter systems that squeeze water through tiny hollow fibres and out through holes 200 times smaller than cryptosporidium.
• Get involved in drinking water management program to make sure that is working, drinking water authorities need to have benchmarks for water quality. These benchmarks come in the form of drinking water guidelines.
• Look for general information about substances that could be found in tap water and how these may affect your health.

Getting involved is not just our moral duty but is critical for our survival.

Create a bee-friendly garden

Create a bee-friendly garden

Some people think nature is “out there”, in a national park or other designated wilderness area. But bees, our most important pollinators, love to live in urban settings where there are short flight paths, and a variety of different plants and flowers to sample. In fact, bees are more likely to thrive in your backyard, community or patio garden, and on mixed farms than on acres devoted to single crops.

We’ve all heard about the mysterious global disappearance of honeybees. Other bee species are also declining, mainly because of habitat loss. You can make a big difference just by creating a bee-friendly space in your garden. (And it’s not hard — bees are easy to please!)

Create a welcome place for bees

All creatures that eat plants (including humans!) depend on pollinators.

¾ of the foods we eat — fruits, nuts, vegetables, and herbs — need pollinators to reproduce.

Creating hospitable homes for beneficial insects in your garden means they are less likely to move into your house.

You’ll triple the yield of fruit and veggies in your garden — no more lumpy strawberries or shrunken squash!

Even what seems like a small contribution — just a tiny flower pot or patch — can provide valuable pollinator habitat.

Attract bees to your backyard or garden

Build a bee house

Canada is home to hundreds of bee species of all sizes. The smallest is the size of the head of a pin! Some live below ground, some above. Every single species is beneficial to plants.

About the size of houseflies, Blue Orchard bees (Osmia lignaria aka “mason bees”) are so named because they create rows of cells in their nests divided with walls of clay. A single female will visit as many as 17 flowers per minute.

House walls: an empty milk carton (waterproof) with the spout cut off — leave the bottom intact — or a box about that size made of wood scraps (not cedar).

Paint a wooden house a bright colour with exterior zero- or low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint. At first, the bees will fly around taking mental “snapshots” of their potential new home, but they’ll soon learn to make a bee-line to their new abode. If you plan to make more than one bee house, be sure they’re different colours.

Fill the box with layered stacks of brown paper nest tubes, which you can buy at a garden store. Cut the tubes to six inches (15.75 cm) long, closing the end with tape or a staple, or fold them in half. Commercial nest tubes are 5/16 of an inch (.79 cm) in diameter, the exact size of an HB pencil. Make your own by rolling a piece of brown paper around a pencil, then pinch off the end and seal it with tape.

Hang the house somewhere out of the rain, facing south or east, at eye level, once the temperature outside has warmed to 12-14º C (54-57º F).

Dig down below your garden soil adjacent to your bee house until you expose the clay layer, or keep a bowl of moist clay near your bee house for the masons to use as construction material.

It may take a full season for the bees to find your house. If you don’t have any luck attracting locals, you can also purchase mason bees from a garden store or local bee keeper.

Provide nutritious bee food

Bees eat two things: nectar (loaded with sugar, it’s a bee’s main source of energy) and pollen (which provides proteins and fats).

Choose a variety of plants that flower at different times so there’s always a snack available for when bees are out and about. (Rule: native plants attract native bees and exotic plants attract honeybees.)

Flowers bred to please the human eye (for things like size and complexity) are sometimes sterile and of little use to pollinators. Native plants or heirloom varieties are best.

Bees have good colour vision — that’s why flowers are so showy! They especially like blue, purple, violet, white and yellow. Plant flowers of a single species in clumps about four feet in diameter instead of in scatterings so bees are more likely to find them.

Bee species all have different tongue lengths — adaptations to different flowers, so a variety of flower shapes will benefit a diversity of bees.

These plants, organized by when they bloom, are just a few of the species that attract bees:

Early      Mid-season        Late

Blueberry            Blackberry           Aster (perennial)

Cotoneaster       Cat mint               Beggar’s tricks

Crabapple           Catnip   Borage

Cranberry            Chives   Coneflower

Crocus  Dahlia    Cornflower

Foxglove              Hyssop Cosmos

Heliotrope          Lavender             Goldenrod

Hazelnut              Raspberry           Pumpkin

Heather               Sunflower           Sedum

Primrose              Yarrow  Squash

Willow

Make a bee bath

Bees and other beneficial insects — ladybugs, butterflies, and predatory wasps — all need fresh water to drink but most can’t land in a conventional bird bath without crashing. “They’re like tanks with wings,” says bee master Brian Campbell. “They need islands in the water to touch down on.”

Line a shallow bowl or plate with rocks.

Add water, but leave the rocks as dry islands to serve as landing pads.

Place the bath at the ground level in your garden. (Put it near “problem plants” — those that get aphids, for example — and the beneficial insects that come to drink will look after them.)

Refresh the water daily, adding just enough to evaporate by day’s end.

– David Suzuki Foundation

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.davidsuzuki.org%2Fwhat-you-can-do%2Ffood-and-our-planet%2Fcreate-a-bee-friendly-garden%2F&ei=H2JDVLPCJtWcygS3tIGgBQ&usg=AFQjCNFC2Ut3VDTVwfz8Y-Sd83sNvK1Kwg&sig2=0Z0ClDv0ntpu3a0Fj8kqNQ

Maintaining the Earth’s Ability to Support Life

When dealing with the first of these priorities we can consider 3 main areas; agricultural systems, forests and coastal and freshwater systems.

The Homey Bee

The honey bee, responsible for 80 % of pollination worldwide, is disappearing globally.

Biologists have found more than 150 different chemical residues in bee pollen, a deadly “pesticide cocktail” according to University of California apiculturist Eric Mussen. The chemical companies Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, DuPont, and Monsanto shrug their shoulders at the systemic complexity, as if the mystery were too complicated. They advocate no change in pesticide policy. After all, selling poisons to the world’s farmers is profitable.

Furthermore, wild bee habitat shrinks every year as industrial agri-business converts grasslands and forest into mono-culture farms, which are then contaminated with pesticides. To reverse the world bees decline, we need to fix our dysfunctional and destructive agricultural system.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/

Protect Ecosystems

What can we do to help protect our ecosystems?

Ecosystems are essential to our well-being and prosperity as they provide us with food, clean air and fresh water. There are thousands of ecosystems of varying sizes on Earth. Due to global warming and pollution, many ecosystems are suffering. With changes to your everyday lifestyle, you can help protect the planet and its ecosystems.

First we need to realize that we are destroying our ecosystem. Get people see the truth and get the involved. Global warming, deforestation, usage of fossils fuel are some of the examples, in ways we destroy our ecosystem.

*You can purchase “green” cleaning products.

– cut back on how much you pollute.

*Recycle as much waste as you can and reduce the amount of waste you produce.

– Rather than using disposable paper towels, use reusable towels that can be washed rather than thrown away.

-Use reusable bags at the grocery store rather than using disposable plastic or paper bags.

* The transportation methods transporting food pollute the environment.

– Support your local farmer.

-Choose foods that are locally grown and grown sustainably.

– Your local farmer’s market is a way to find locally grown food and organically grown food.

*Reduce your carbon footprint.

-Choose transportation that pollutes less.

– Use energy efficient light bulbs and electronics.

Ecological Footprint

Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet’s ecological capacity to regenerate.

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet’s ecological capacity to regenerate.  It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody followed a given lifestyle. For 2007, humanity’s total ecological footprint was estimated at 1.5 planet Earths; that is, humanity uses ecological services 1.5 times as quickly as Earth can renew them. Every year, this number is recalculated to incorporate the three-year lag due to the time it takes for the UN to collect and publish statistics and relevant research.

Although the term ecological footprint is widely used and well known, it goes beyond the metaphor. It represents an accounting system for biocapacity that tracks how much biocapacity there is, and how much biocapacity people use. Calculation methods have converged thanks to standards released in 2006 and updated in 2009.

Water pollution facts

Water pollution facts

As technology improves, scientists are able to detect more pollutants, and at smaller concentrations, in Earth’s freshwater bodies. Containing traces of contaminants ranging from birth control pills and sunscreen to pesticides and petroleum, our planet’s lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater are often a chemical cocktail.

Chemicals, sewage, pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff .

Oil and chemical pollutants from industry.

Thermal pollution can happen when a factory or power plant that is using water to cool its operations ends up discharging hot water. This makes the water hold less oxygen, which can kill fish and wildlife.

Underwater noise pollution coming from ships has been shown to upset whales’ navigation systems and kill other species that depend on the natural underwater world.

Pollution