#dry rainforest

[bumblebeeappletree]

Clarence explores a project in Western Sydney providing a crucial corridor for native plants and wildlife.

Clarence is in the Western Sydney Parkland, Australia’s largest urban park, which covers 5,000ha of facilities, attractions and bushland, all set aside for public use alongside some of Sydney’s biggest new developments.

It’s quite leafy now but in the 1950s the area was all bare paddocks.

Environment Manager David Kirkland explains how the open spaces are being planned.

In some areas, where a lot of superphosphates had been used and there were lots of weeds, the topsoil was stripped back to remove the chemicals and weed seeds, then it was reseed with native grasses and wildflowers.

The plan is to recreate the original ecology of the Cumberland Plains, much of which has been mostly lost as Sydney has expanded. They cover 1400ha now and are aiming for 2,000ha.

“The other year alone, I planted up well over 60,000 trees,” David says.

Beyond recreational activities, it's also the green lungs of the area, helping to cool the West in the heat of the summer months and reduce heat island effect.

There is even a patch of dry rainforest in a gully where it is protected from sun and wind. David aims to recreate this habitat in other gullies.

One of the biggest threats David and his team face is invasive species. African olive (Olea europea subsp. cuspidata) is a major problem, producing 20,000 seeds per plant per year, all perfect sized for birds to eat and drop, forming a dense monoculture that is hard to eradicate.

However some areas have been cleared, with a lot of effort, proving it can be done – eventually!

Bringing back cultural burns involving by local community is a goal for the team.

About 1500 ha of bushland has been restored, and biobanking local species for conservation is another key goal.

About 20ha is set aside to focus on diversity and habitat, and already some plant species are reappearing and local fauna returning.

Future plans include creating wildlife corridors under the adjacent freeway to link it to other corridors.

[cinnabargirl]

They should invent a someone that wants to fuck me

[captain-lessship]

“What is wrong with you?”

First animated crush was literally pollution that was voiced by Tim Curry.

[danidomain]

reading her girl letter with her girl stuffed animal

[ugf-viridis]

[…] ““For the most remote communities it really is a life-threatening situation,” said Antonio Marro, a Unicef manager. “Children are contracting dengue fever, malaria and other serious diseases and there is no way they can reach a health centre for treatment.”

Deforestation and a warming climate in tandem with weather phenomena such as El Niño have scorched the rainforest and left vast sandbanks where rivers once flowed.”

[pandelacreme]

as someone who never really played genshin beyond maybe 2-3 quests since the tutorial, finding out from players on twitter that sumeru is way more racist than just the whitewashing is like

[mosscrab]

there are so many adults where I can tell they believe the butterflies should put on a show for them no matter what and that they don't seem to think they're just. living creatures with their own will that we have to care for.

[solarpunkfool]

I am trying to choose to hope. 

I am choosing to imagine public transportation. 

Grocery stores with attached soup kitchens to decrease food waste. 

Neighborhood meal- and garden-sharing programs.

Green spaces connecting to other green spaces.

The rainforest ADVANCING, churning up dry soil and turning it dark and healthy. 

The sky filled with birds and the sea with fish, their populations increasing. 

The air and water clean. 

Emissions-free vehicles on roadways, with speeds governed, and safe streets for tricycles, bicycles, dogs, deer, and stray soccer balls.

Solar panels on every public building, over every parking lot. 

Beehives and wildflowers on the open berms between roadways. 

The total lack of gunshots around the world, and instead the sound of shovels, digging holes to plant fruit trees by public sidewalks. 

[samwisefamgee]

Just found out Multnomah Falls are the most visited national recreation site in the PNW and I might flip

[burning-brighter-than-the-sun]

it’s raining almost every day more or less where i live this month. so annoying. i know it’s better than extreme heat, but still... 

[azzayofchaos]

Since my other Nether worldbuilding post was received pretty well... I'm back on my bullshit!

This time featuring zoning and biomes of the Neath: Lore below cut

Nether (noun): the formidable hellscape straddling the boundery between the Fragments of the Overworld and Death's Realms.

Derived from Beneath -> Neath -> Neth -> Nether.

The Nether is most easily accessable through outer regions of the nether, regions that are comparatively closed-off, and lacking in biodiversity compared to the Deep Nether where most Neath civilizations are centered.

The Neth is divided into three primary zones, distinguished by altitude and general climates.

The Calfactory Zone: the largest and most icon of the three, the Calfactory zone is blisteringly hot and bone-dry, it's most prominent features are its abundant seas and lakes of magma, and the massive Supermagmas atriums that are common above the magma. In the largest of these atriums, the ceiling may be so high above as to be completely invisible from the ground, obscured by an ever present smog of toxic vapor and minerals formed in the self-generated micro-climates that are generated from the rising heat of the lava that begins to cool at a higher altitude.  

In the Basalt Deltas and other biomes around the edges of these lakes, massive pillars of rock and crystals bulwark the more-visible ceiling. 

The most common of this zone’s biomes is the Crimson woods, home to hearty thermal-philic fungi and plants that grow on the minerals and vapors of the lakes. Many are carnivorous in their lack of access to water or sunlight, and these forests contain many sub-biomes and ecosystems of flourishing life. 

The Wastes are perhaps the most desolate regions of the Neath, irradiated deserts of red-rock, brimstone, and sharp sand. Even the vast majority of nether-folk avoid these deserts due to the leftover radiation that rots and destroys anything that waits too long. The only forms of life are particularly robust lichens and bacteria that are happy to sit by the pools of boiling pools of sulfur and mud and toxic sludge that dot the landscape. Growing within the rocks themselves are colonies of amorphous fungus, called geocorpus molds that get their spores into cracks in the soft netherack and slowly feed on it, a delicacy in nether cuisine. 

The Temperate Zone: Cradled in the heights of the Neath’s atriums and sat bellow the roof is the temperate zones, the rising heat of the zone below begins to cool and forming distinct weather patterns in this zone and leaving it, while still sweltering, a cooler though much more humid climate.

The main biome are the luminescent warped-fungal rainforests that collect the high-rising minerals and odd moisture from the lakes. Liquid is actually precent here, though if it’s not safely filtered through the innards of the various plants and fungi, this water is usually aggressively corrosive, and it is best to shelter from the  acidic precipitation to avoid chemical burns. The nether folk and ender local to these rainforests are suited to deal with these conditions and the ender especially do not have trouble with the extreme pH of the water here like they would in the overworld. The zone is lit almost exclusively by the biolumincense of the organisms there and have often been described as false-stars.

In the Deep Nether, the ceiling may give way, allowing one to pass onto the plateaus of the Nether Roof and the yawning void above. The bedrock of the nether roof is jagged and layered in huge slabs, sometimes broken up my mazes of pillar-like structures and shallow, thermal pools of crystal-clear liquid. The kind you don't want to touch of course. fogs may hang low to the ground, but when its clear, or above the fog, the entire universe seems to spill out into the sky. The nether roof was culturally significant and a source of much knowledge and inspiration in the early days, but I'll get more into that in a later post 0.0

The Rime Zone: Plunge deep enough and one might find themselves bellow the lava beds. Here, where the heat can't quite penetrate, the temperatures will drop rapidly to sub-zero.

Namely, the Rime Zone is made up of the soul valleys, flat steppes of cinder and clotted sand, you can imagine it almost with the blindness effect, a fog that pools by your feet, and a heavier darkness hanging from the sky, it feels massive and endless and claustrophobic all at once. Frost collects as crystals on the irradiated, soul-soaked barrens, and the bones of the massive nether wyrms lie fossilized, breaking up the landscape. The sands are also split with patches of crazing on the ground and vents of blue fire that spills out and sets the sand ablaze.

These same wryms can be found sometimes, ancient things that dig through sand and soft rocks and the magma lakes, far and few between and treated with both fear and reverence.

And in the deepest pits of the Neath are the glowing frozen lakes that are colloquially and rightfully called the Gates to Death, glowing blue from beneath their surfaces. Indeed, any further down and you pass into limbo, the edge of Death's Realms.

Extra Notes??:

Soul sand/soil is tread on carefully or not at all, is one form of remnants from the apocolyspe. Like the general radiated rubble present through the Nether, it's a fault of nuclear fallout. Unlike other areas of radiation, its also been infused with the souls of those who didn't survive the joining of worlds.

This infused quality is also precent in Nether Debris, resulting in a material that takes magic particularly well.

Iron cannot be found in dense veins and crystals like gold or quartz in the nether, but it's a pretty rich mineral a lot of netherack, giving it its ruddy coloring.

Sorry for this massive rant that no one asked for. If you have questions please feel free to send an ask, I may not have an answer yet but I'll certainly come up with one if I can.

I'm also hoping to do a pass on my headcanons about history and culture in the Nether and then we might start talking about character headcanons since this is also an actual AU.

If you read this far, here's some notes on striders and ghast

[reasonsforhope]

— Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to its lowest level since March 2018, according to new data from the Brazilian government.

— Deforestation for the year to date is down 40% compared to 2023, with expectations for a significant annual decline when the “deforestation year” concludes on July 31.

— Despite declining deforestation in the Amazon, the region is experiencing a rise in forest fires due to a severe drought...

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continued to plummet in May [2024], reaching the lowest level since March 2018, according to new data from the alert system run by Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE.

According to INPE’s DETER system, deforestation in May 2024 amounted to 501 square kilometers (193 square miles), an area 147 times the size of New York City’s Central Park. This tally brings the accumulated deforestation detected by DETER over the past year to 4,350 square kilometers, down 54% from the same time last year.

For the year to date, DETER has detected 1,182 square kilometers of forest clearance, down 40% from the 1,986 square kilometers recorded at this point in 2023.

[Note: January 2023 is when Lula da Silva was elected in Brazil. As you can see, after that, deforestation immediately plummeted. He is doing SO MUCH for the environment, we are SO lucky he beat Bolsonaro (the big pro-deforestation guy) for president of Brazil.

Also, in case the above chart makes you think we're doing worse than ever, that chart actually starts on a major low point for deforestation, toward the end of Lula da Silva's first term. Here's another chart that gives a longer-term picture, from 2002 to 2023. If we are lucky, Lula da Silva will bring the kind of drop in deforestation to us now that he did during his first term: an almost 80% drop in deforestation.]

Pictured: Annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since 2002 under each presidential administration, according to INPE’s PRODES system. Note: Temer took office on 31 Aug 2016 replacing Rousseff, while other presidents started their terms Jan 1. Also 2023 data is preliminary.

The decline in deforestation registered by DETER mirrors the trend recorded by an independent system maintained by Imazon, a Brazilian NGO. Imazon’s system is seen as a check against official data.

The alert data suggests observers should expect a sharp drop in deforestation for the 12 months ending July 31, the period Brazil uses for measuring annual deforestation. July 31 corresponds with the peak of the dry season across much of the Brazilian Amazon, when cloud cover is at a minimum, facilitating efforts to measure changes in forest cover.

For the annual assessment, Brazil uses higher resolution satellite imagery, which requires more time for analysis. In contrast, the shorter timeframe of DETER enables authorities to take action against illegal deforestation if there is interest in doing so. Data from DETER and PRODES, the annual system, have a strong correlation.

-via GoodGoodGood, July 2, 2024

[backmuscles21]

Curls

Tonowari x Reader x Ronal

Summary: A short little fic about your mates finding out about your curly hair and Ronal braiding it in traditional Metkayina fashion. Thought of this while oiling my own hair.

You want to get your hair redone; you wanted a new style and you had some regrowth. Neytiri had just taken your braids out, she intended to rebraid it later. You wanted to wash your hair first, however, the kids wanted to go swimming and you thought it might be fun to join them.

You went into the fresh waters of the Metkayina reef, you swam around with the kids for hours. You swam with your mates’ kids and your brother’s kids; you had a good water fight and you saw so many pretty water creatures.

After some time, you got out with the kids, you were hungry and tired. You had washed your hair while out swimming, and Tsireya showed you an amazing flower to scrub your scalp with. You walked up to the mauris with Tsireya and Ao’nung, Tonowari was walking around with your new baby in his arms. Ronal had given birth a few months ago and was busy healing others in the tribe, Tonowari was on baby duty. When you saw him, you kissed him and took the baby from him, to give his arms a little break. You knew when Ronal got back, she’d want to hold her baby which you understood.

You rocked your body back and forth as you cooed at the baby, Tonowari smiled down at you as he kissed your head. Tsireya and Ao’nung went into the mauri as you and Tonowari stood outside. Tonowari thought you were an amazing mother, he loved watching you hold the baby, and he couldn’t wait till he got you pregnant. The difference in your body made him nervous but both Tonowari and Ronal wanted to see you pregnant although you were Omaticaya and they were Metkayina.

Ronal was walking back to her home and saw both of you standing there, she smiled to herself. At this point, your hair started to dry, your hair had started to curl slightly. Ronal walked over to you and saw the baby in your arms, she kissed both you and Tonowari and then the baby before she grabbed a lock of your hair. “You didn’t tell us your hair was curly,” she sounded aghast.

You looked down at your hair, “oh yeah, it’s from my human DNA. My hair was curly when I was human, it transferred over.”

“Normally Omaticaya don’t usually have any curl pattern in their hair. I am surprised. Why did you not tell me?”

“I didn’t think of it. My hair is usually always braided.”

“We have not been oiling it properly. It needs hydration. Come with me, we will oil it and rebraid it.”

Ronal took you into your shared mauri and sat you down, you still held the baby in your lap and Ronal picked up a leaf and lightly cracked it open. Inside was a thick gel-like substance that was known to be very hydrating. She took some in her hands and massaged your scalp then she took some more for your ends.

“This is amazing, I needed to get my hair hydrated. It’s been so frizzy. In the rainforest I used this tree sap, it wasn’t sticky it was like an oil and it did a good job.”

“Your hair is quite nice and soft and long too.”

Ronal started to brush your hair, ensuring it was all saturated before she started to braid the hair at the top of your head. She went tight to the scalp and back halfway and finished the braids off, she was doing a half up and half down style. She tied your braids up and the hair that stayed down was curling nicely, Ronal grabbed a different plant to put in the hair that stayed loose. She put that into your hair and it helped solidify your curls as they dried.

When she finished, Tonowari came back into the mauri and saw your finished hair. You stood up and Ronal took the baby from you as Tonowari had you spin around so he could see your hair. It was the classic Metkayina style and he loved you in his style, he loved you wearing Metkayina clothes and cooking Metkayina style and now even your hair was Metkayina style. It’s like he was staking his claim all over you without needing to actually mark you as his.

“You are very gorgeous yawne. If I had known I would’ve done your hair myself.”

“You couldn’t take that from Ronal.”

“Tsireya will want to put some pearls in your hair later. She will put more braids in it and make your hair so much better,” Ronal said to you as she played with some of your ringlets.

[awkwardbirdsdreaming]

Bird #34 - the violet-backed starling (LC)

Also called the plum-coloured starling, you can find them in sub-Saharan Africa wherever it isn't too dry or dense rainforest. The females unfortunately are streaky brown, as is the way with birds.

These starlings feed in the canopy away from ground, which is pretty peculiar for a starling! They also use dung, along with fresh leaves, as nesting material. Interesting choice of things to put your children in.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Habitats

Coniferous forest - Vast areas of Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, and Canada are the site of coniferous forests—home to moose, beavers, and wolves.

Mountain - High mountain ranges have arctic climates near the peaks, where few plants grow. Animals must cope in dangerous terrain.

Savanna - These tropical grasslands with wet and dry seasons support huge herds of grazing animals and powerful predators.

Polar ice - The ice that forms on cold oceans is a refuge for animals that hunt in the water. The continental ice sheets are almost lifeless.

Tropical rainforest - The evergreen forests that grow near the equator are the richest of all biomes, with a huge diversity of plant and animal life.

Desert - Some deserts are barren rock and sand, but many support a range of plants and animals adapted to survive the dry conditions.

Tundra - These regions on the fringes of polar ice sheets thaw out in summer and attract animals such as reindeer and nesting birds.

Mediterranean - Dry scrub regions, such as around the Mediterranean, are home to a rich insect life and drought-resistant shrubs and plants.

Temperate grassland - The dry, grassy prairies with hot summers and cold winters, support grazing herds such as antelope and bison.

Deciduous forest - In cool, moist regions, many trees grow fast in summer but lose their leaves in winter. The wildlife here changes with the seasons.

Animals, plants, and all living things are adapted to life in their natural surroundings. These environments are called habitats.

Every living species on Earth has its own favored habitat, which it shares with others. These different species interact with each other and with their natural environment—be it hot or cold, wet or dry—to create a web of life called an ecosystem.

Some ecosystems are very small, but others such as rainforests or deserts cover huge areas. These are called biomes.

Life on Land

Different climates create different types of habitats for life on land. Warm, wet places grow lush forests, for example, while hot, dry regions develop deserts. Each biome consists of many smaller habitats and, in many areas, human activity such as farming has completely changed their character.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References ⚜ Worldbuilding

[mybeingthere]

Minna Leunig  is a Geelong based artist living and working on the traditional lands of the Wathaurong people. Painting with acrylic on canvas, Minna creates playful images inspired by the unique beauty and feeling across a vast array of native Australian landscapes - all the way from the dry sclerophyll forests of the Strathbogie ranges, to the tangled mangroves and thick rainforests of Cape York. 

Minna is interested in the visual language of symbols - the simplifying and stripping back of shape to essential forms. Her work features bold silhouettes, organic lines and demonstrates a careful consideration for how shapes fit together to create harmonious and balanced patterns - symbolic of finely balanced ecosystems and the way in which specific plants and animals fit together to create an interactive stability.

  http://www.minnaleunig.com/

https://www.instagram.com/minnaleunig/