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Interdunal Wetland
An interdunal wetland, interdunal pond or dune slack is a water-filled depression between coastal sand dunes. It may be formed either by wind erosion or by dunal encroachment on an existing wetland. The wind erosion process involves wind scooping out sufficient sand to reach the water table, and typically occurs behind the first line of foredunes. The Indiana Dunes contain interdunal wetlands.Smith, S. & Mark, S. (2009). The Historical Roots of the Nature Conservancy in the Northwest Indiana/Chicagoland Region: From Science to Preservation. The South Shore Journal, 3. Many conservation efforts have been made to preserve parts of the Indiana Dunes.Smith, S. & Mark, S. (2007). The cultural impact of a museum in a small community: The Hour Glass of Ogden Dunes. The South Shore Journal, 2. Because they are typically very shallow, interdunal wetlands warm quickly, and provide an abundant source of invertebrates eaten by many species of shorebirds. Many interdunal wetlands are eph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sand Dune
A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat regions covered with wind-swept sand or dunes, with little or no vegetation, are called '' ergs'' or ''sand seas''. Dunes occur in different shapes and sizes, but most kinds of dunes are longer on the stoss (upflow) side, where the sand is pushed up the dune, and have a shorter ''slip face'' in the lee side. The valley or trough between dunes is called a ''dune slack''. Dunes are most common in desert environments, where the lack of moisture hinders the growth of vegetation that would otherwise interfere with the development of dunes. However, sand deposits are not restricted to deserts, and dunes are also found along sea shores, along streams in semiarid climates, in areas of glacial outwash, and in other areas where poorly cemented san ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Table
The water table is the upper surface of the phreatic zone or zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with groundwater, which may be fresh, saline, or brackish, depending on the locality. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. The portion above the water table is the vadose zone. It may be visualized as the "surface" of the subsurface materials that are saturated with groundwater in a given vicinity. In coarse soils, the water table settles at the surface where the water Hydraulic head, pressure head is equal to the atmospheric pressure (where gauge pressure = 0). In soils where capillary action is strong, the water table is pulled upward, forming a capillary fringe. The groundwater may be from precipitation or from more distant groundwater flowing into the aquifer. In areas with sufficient precipitation, water infiltrates through pore spaces in the soil, passing through t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foredune
A foredune is a dune ridge that runs parallel to the shore of an ocean, lake, bay, or estuary. Foredunes consist of sand deposited by wind on a vegetated part of the shore. Foredunes can be classified generally as ''incipient'' or ''established''. Formation Foredunes may begin as ''shadow dunes'' that form in the wind shadows of clumps of vegetation. Several shadow dunes may eventually join to form an incipient foredune. When an incipient foredune reaches a height of about , it has a significant wind shadow of its own. Wind-blown sand will tend to fall on this incipient dune rather than traveling further inland. When a foredune becomes high, it may trap all of the wind-blown sand from the beach. In active dune systems, the foredunes appear closest to the sea or other body of water. However, some dune systems, such as those on eroding coasts, do not have foredunes. In those systems, other kinds of dunes may be closest to the water. A foredune ecosystem begins with the first du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invertebrate
Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate subphylum Vertebrata, i.e. vertebrates. Well-known Phylum, phyla of invertebrates include arthropods, molluscs, annelids, echinoderms, flatworms, cnidarians, and sponges. The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%. Many invertebrate taxon, taxa have a greater number and diversity of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 10 Micrometre, μm (0.0004 in) myxozoans to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid. Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are actually sister chordate subphyla to Vertebrata, being more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the "invertebrates" para ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shorebird
245px, A flock of Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflats in order to foraging, forage for food crawling or burrowing in the mud and sand, usually small arthropods such as aquatic insects or crustaceans. The term "wader" is used in Europe, while "shorebird" is used in North America, where "wader" may be used instead to refer to long-legged wading birds such as storks and herons. There are about 210 species of wader, most of which live in wetland or coastal environments. Many species of Arctic and temperate regions are strongly migratory, but tropical birds are often resident, or move only in response to rainfall patterns. Some of the Arctic species, such as the little stint, are amongst the longest distance migrants, spending the non- breeding season in the southern hemisphere. Many of the smaller species found in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, Huron, Lake Erie, Erie, and Lake Ontario, Ontario (though hydrologically, Lake Michigan–Huron, Michigan and Huron are a single body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac). The Great Lakes Waterway enables modern travel and shipping by water among the lakes. The lakes connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River, and to the Mississippi River basin through the Illinois Waterway. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area and the second-largest by total volume. They contain 21% of the world's surface fresh water by volume. The total surface is , and the total volume (measured at the low water datum) is , slightly less than the volume of Lake Baikal (, 22–23% of the world's surface f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. The region includes Middle America (Americas), Middle America (comprising the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico) and Northern America. North America covers an area of about , representing approximately 16.5% of Earth's land area and 4.8% of its total surface area. It is the third-largest continent by size after Asia and Africa, and the list of continents and continental subregions by population, fourth-largest continent by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. , North America's population was estimated as over 592 million people in list of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America, 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's popula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calcareous
Calcareous () is an adjective meaning "mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate", in other words, containing lime (mineral), lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of Science, scientific disciplines. In zoology ''Calcareous'' is used as an adjectival term applied to anatomical structures which are made primarily of calcium carbonate, in animals such as gastropods, i.e., snails, specifically in relation to such structures as the operculum (gastropod), operculum, the clausilium, and the love dart. The term also applies to the calcium carbonate Test (biology), tests of, often, more-or-less microscopic Foraminifera. Not all tests are calcareous; diatoms and radiolaria have siliceous tests. The molluscs are calcareous organisms, as are the Calcarea, calcareous sponges (Calcarea), that have spicules which are made of calcium carbonate. Additionally, reef-building corals, or Scleractinia, are calcareous organisms that form their rigid skeletal structure th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juncus
''Juncus'' is a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants, commonly known as rushes. It is the largest genus in the family Juncaceae, containing around 300 species. Description Rushes of the genus ''Juncus'' are herbaceous plants that superficially resemble grasses or sedges. They have historically received little attention from botanists; in his 1819 monograph, James Ebenezer Bicheno described the genus as "obscure and uninviting". The form of the flower differentiates rushes from grasses or sedges. The flowers of ''Juncus'' comprise five whorls of floral parts: three sepals, three petals (or, taken together, six tepals), two to six stamens (in two whorls) and a stigma with three lobes. The stems are round in cross-section, unlike those of sedges, which are typically somewhat triangular in cross-section. In ''Juncus'' section ''Juncotypus'' (formerly called ''Juncus'' subg. ''Genuini''), which contains some of the most widespread and familiar species, the leaves are reduced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyperaceae
The Cyperaceae () are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as wikt:sedge, sedges. The family (biology), family is large; botanists have species description, described some 5,500 known species in about 90 genus, generathe largest being the "true wikt:sedge, sedges" (genus ''Carex''), with over 2,000 species. Distribution Cyperaceae species are widely distributed with the centers of diversity for the group occurring in tropical Asia and tropical South America. While sedges grow in almost all environments, many thrive in wetlands or in poor soils. Community (ecology), Ecological communities dominated by sedges are known as s or as sedge meadows. Classification Some species superficially resemble the closely related Juncaceae , rushes and the more distantly related grasses. Features distinguishing members of the sedge family from grasses or rushes are stems with triangular cross-sections (with occasional exceptions, a notable example be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NatureServe
NatureServe, Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Arlington County, Virginia, United States, US, that provides proprietary wildlife conservation-related data, tools, and services to private and government clients, partner organizations, and the public. NatureServe reports being "headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with regional offices in four U.S. locations and in Canada." In calendar year 2011 they reported having 86 employees, 6 volunteers, and 15 independent officers. History The Nature Conservancy reports that in 2000 it spun off its 85-center Natural Heritage Network "into a new independent organization, the Association for Biodiversity Information (later renamed NatureServe)." NatureServe reports that it was established in 1994 as the Association for Biodiversity Information. In 2001 the IRS approved a name change to NatureServe that was requested in 1999, while maintaining the organization's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status granted in July 1995. NatureServe's website dec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
