A Mile of Little Checks in the Margins Should Equal a Kilowatt of Clean Energy?

Due to the extensive nature of my note taking (I write down literally everything.), I have begin making obsessively compulsive neat little checks in the margins of my notes when there are things I want to research more, google for kicks, don't understand, want to come back to, etc. Therefore, I am going to start making the lists of them here for each class looking them up and link documenting them. For far too long have there been little checks that never got looked up, but solely existed to look cute.

This particular list of links come from my Science of Sustainability notes taken on my Week 2 readings... That tells you where they are from, but they really are just general things that should be clarified and add to a more well-rounded knowledge base. Also, due to my recent memory concerns, I should do these sooner than later as the longer I wait, the less likely I am to really know or care why I put the cute little check mark there.

"phylogenetically distinct" ~ I think that I checked this because I love the phrase. I know what it is in concept, but this definition and explanation from wikipedia is so much better than anything I could string together:

In biology, phylogenetics (Greek: phyle/phylon (φυλή/φῦλον) "tribe, race" and genetikos (γενετικός) "relative to birth" from genesis (γένεσις ) "birth") is the study of evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms (e.g., species, populations). Taxonomy, the classification of organisms according to similarity, has been richly informed by phylogenetics but remains methodologically and logically distinct.^[1] The fields overlap however in the science of phylogenetic systematics or cladism, where only phylogenetic trees are used to delimit taxa, each representing a group of lineage-connected individuals^[2].

Evolution is regarded as a branching process, whereby populations are altered over time and may speciate into separate branches, hybridize together, or terminate by extinction. This may be visualized as a multidimensional character-space that a population moves through over time. The problem posed by phylogenetics is that genetic data are only available for the present, and fossil records (osteometric data) are sporadic and less reliable. Our knowledge of how evolution operates is used to reconstruct the full tree.^[3]

There are some terms that describe the nature of a grouping in such trees. For instance, all birds and reptiles are believed to have descended from a single common ancestor, so this taxonomic grouping (yellow in the diagram) is called monophyletic. "Modern reptile" (cyan in the diagram) is a grouping that contains a common ancestor, but does not contain all descendents of that ancestor (birds are excluded). This is an example of a paraphyletic group. A grouping such as warm-blooded animals would include only mammals and birds (red/orange in the diagram) and is called polyphyletic because the members of this grouping do not include the most recent common ancestor.

Cladistics is today the method of choice to infer phylogenetic trees. The most commonly used methods to infer phylogenies include parsimony, maximum likelihood, and MCMC-based Bayesian inference. Phenetics, popular in the mid-20th century but nowadays largely obsolete, uses distance matrix-based methods to construct trees based on overall similarity which is often assumed to approximate phylogenetic relationships. All methods depend upon an implicit or explicit mathematical model describing the evolution of characters observed in the species included, and are usually used for molecular phylogeny where the characters are aligned nucleotide or amino acid sequences.

Hugh Possingham (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia) ~ Director of the Ecology Centre ~

Hugh completed Applied Mathematics Honours at The University of Adelaide in 1984. After attaining a Rhodes Scholarship in 1984 Hugh completed his D.Phil at Oxford University in 1987. Postdoctoral research periods followed at Stanford University and at the Australian National University (as a QEIII Fellow). In 1991 he took a Lectureship, later Senior Lectureship, in Applied Mathematics at The University of Adelaide. In 1995 he was appointed Foundation Chair and Professor of the Department of Environmental Science at the Roseworthy campus of The University of Adelaide. In July 2000 Hugh took up a joint Professorship between the Departments of Zoology & Entomology, and Mathematics at The University of Queensland. In February 2001 The Ecology Centre was established with Hugh as Director. From 2003-2007 Hugh was an ARC Professorial Research Fellow. Professor Possingham is currently an ARC Federation fellow (2007 – 2011) and Director of a Commonwealth Environment Research Facility – Applied Environmental Decision Analysis.

The Possingham lab includes nine postdoctoral researchers and twenty-five PhD students working on empirical and theoretical aspects of the applied population ecology of plants and animals. Particular areas of recent research include marine reserve design, optimal landscape reconstruction for birds, metapopulation dynamics of plants and animals, population viability analysis, kangaroo and koala management, and optimal weed control (as part of the Weeds CRC). The lab has a unifying interest in environmental applications of decision theory. Hugh has published over 100 refereed articles and book chapters.

Hugh has a variety of broader public roles including Chair of the federal government Biological Diversity Advisory Committee, member of the NHT Advisory Committee, member of the state Ministerial Advisory Committee on Vegetation Management, member of the Research and Conservation Committee of Birds Australia and member of the Board of Greening Australia, Queensland.

Hugh has recently been awarded: the POL Eureka Prize for Environmental Research (for collaborative work with Dr David Lindenmayer) - 1999, the inaugural Fenner medal for plant and animal biology from the Australian Academy of Sciences - 2000, and the Australian Mathematical Society Medal - 2001.

He suffers from obsessive bird watching.

I wish I could make my brain throttle down long enough to suffer from anything other than an internet or solitaire addiction, let alone an addiction to something so purposefully relaxing. Damn.

Mount Lofty Woodlands (Australia) ~ God love National Geographic, I should really get that subscription renewed ASAP. Mount Lofty Woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion. Having traveled to Australia previously, and loving it, I want to know more....

Diversity in the Eucalyptus Woodlands

In this ecoregion, eucalyptus woodlands slope down the hills from Mount Lofty into the South Australia capital of Adelaide. Hidden in these sloping woodlands is a broad array of marsupials and birds, as well as unique mammals that lay eggs.

Special Features

Rainfall is moderate in this ecoregion, which is characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, mild winters. Endemic orchids abound in the Mount Lofty Ranges. Many of these delicate flowers are endangered as a result of habitat loss. Another prominent species is mallee box, a small eucalyptus tree with rough, fibrous bark. On the plains and slopes below Mount Lofty, these trees mix with southern cypress pine and golden wattle, an acacia tree. Low shrubs and flowering plants line the forest floor. Many of the same species are found offshore on Kangaroo Island, but they tend to be smaller.

	Although Kangaroo Island may have been spared the introduction of European animals such as rabbits and foxes, a number of Australian animals not naturally found here have been introduced from the mainland. Koalas, for example, have become a serious problem on the island, extensively damaging the eucalyptus vegetation they eat.

Wild Side

Western gray kangaroos bound through woodlands in small social groups, searching for coarse grasses. Tammar wallabies, which resemble small kangaroos, shelter in low, dense scrub, coming out at night to feed in open, grassy areas. The echidna, or spiny anteater, searches for ants at dawn and dusk. Echidnas are monotremes, unusual mammals that lay eggs, have small, pronounced snouts, and are covered in spines. Kangaroo Island’s only endemic mammal is the rare Kangaroo Island dunnart, a mouse-like marsupial. Glossy black cockatoos, which actually have a brown head and black wings, feed quietly in open forests, while galahs--another kind of cockatoo--fly noisily overhead. The small and shy Mount Lofty Ranges southern emu-wren survives only in patches of wet and coastal heath vegetation on the Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide. This bird is such a poor flier that it is unable to cross cleared areas. With its habitat fragmented, only small, unviable populations are created. The emu-wren is named for its long tail, made of six individual feathers that resemble those of an emu.

Cause for Concern

This area has largely been cleared for agriculture and development, replacing native woodlands with fruit orchards. Loss of vegetation leads to a decline in native birds, which in turn leads to less pollination of remaining vegetation. Timber has been harvested from the top of the Mount Lofty Ranges, but fortunately major reforestation programs are being planned. Kangaroo Island is a significant wildlife refuge because non-native species such as rabbits and foxes are absent.

Source.

fynbos ~ (South Africa) Wikipedia covers this area....

Fynbos (pronounced [ˈfəinbɒs], or anglicised as /ˈfeɪnbɒs/, meaning "fine bush" in Afrikaans) is the natural shrubland or heathland vegetation occurring in a small belt of the Western Cape of South Africa, mainly in winter rainfall coastal and mountainous areas with a Mediterranean climate.

Fynbos grows in a 100-200km wide coastal belt stretching from Clanwilliam on the West coast to Port Elizabeth on the Southeast coast. It forms part of the Cape floral kingdom, where it accounts for half of the surface area and 80% of the plant varieties. The fynbos in the western regions is more rich and varied than in the eastern regions of South Africa.

Of the world's six floral kingdoms, this is the smallest and richest per area unit. Contrast it in size with the Holarctic kingdom, which incorporates the whole of the northern hemisphere apart from the tropical regions. The diversity of fynbos plants is greater than that of the tropical rainforests, with over 9000 species of plants occurring in the area, around 6200 of which are endemic, i.e. do not occur anywhere else in the world. Of the Ericas, 600 occur in the fynbos kingdom, while only 26 are found in the rest of the world. This is in an area of 46,000 km² - by comparison, the Netherlands, with an area of 33,000 km², has 1400 species, none of them endemic. Table Mountain in Cape Town supports 2200 species, more than the entire United Kingdom. Thus although the Fynbos comprises only 6% of the area of southern Africa it has half the species on the subcontinent, and in fact has almost 1 in 5 of all plant species in Africa.

Source.

Global Environmental Facility ~ About the GEF....

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a global partnership among 178 countries, international institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives.

The GEF is the designated financial mechanism for a number of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) or conventions;

as such the GEF assists countries in meeting their obligations under the conventions that they have signed and ratified. These conventions and MEAs provide guidance to the two governing bodies of the GEF: the GEF Council and the GEF Assembly.

• Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
• Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
• UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)

The GEF is also associated with many global and regional MEAs that deal with international waters or transboundary water systems. The GEF is not a financial mechanism for the Montreal Protocol on Ozone-Depleting Substances; however, its activities complement and enhance the work of the Montreal Protocol.

Today the GEF is the largest funder of projects to improve the global environment. Since 1991, GEF has achieved a strong track record with developing countries and countries with economies in transition, providing $7.6 billion in grants and leveraging $30.6 billion in co-financing for over 2,000 projects in over 165 countries. Search the GEF database for project information and documents.

GEF provides grants for projects related to the following six focal areas: biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.

And most importantly, I can tell when something is truly important by whether there is a little box around it (separating it an elevating it's importance), but I can really tell when something is important if I turned it into an equation. Despite my lack of pursuance of math, I like it best of all subjects in school (I see colors as numbers and vice versa in my head.), just a teensy tinesy bit more than chemistry (accounts for all the arrows all over my notes...), which has just edged out biology. Therefore, equations trump all other notes.

"sustainability ≠ self-sustaining"