Located in the

Southeast United States The Southeastern United States, also known as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States located in the eastern portion of the Southern United States and the southern portion of the Eastern Uni ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

is a state as diverse as its landscapes. Politically, Tennessee is broken up into three Grand Divisions:

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

Middle Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek ...

, and

West Tennessee West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists ...

. Physically, Tennessee is also separated into three main types of landforms: river valley plain, highlands and basins, and

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

Nature centers

The environment of

includes the nature centers of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, Lichterman Nature Center and Owl's Hill Nature Center. In addition to these nature centers, there are many more options throughout the state like those in the capital of Nashville. These include Beaman Park Nature Center, Bells Bend Outdoor Center, Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, and Warner Park Natural Center.

Flora

* Astragalus bibullatus * Eriogonum longifolium var. harperi *

Isoetes lacustris ''Isoetes lacustris'', the lake quillwort or Merlin's grass, is a boreal quillwort native on both sides of the northern Atlantic Ocean. In Europe, it is distributed from Poland west to northeastern France, throughout Scandinavia, the west and nor ...

* Rock gnome lichen *

Sarracenia oreophila ''Sarracenia oreophila'', also known as the green pitcherplant, is a carnivorous plant in the genus ''Sarracenia''. It has highly modified leaves in the form of pitchers that act as pitfall traps for prey. The narrow pitcher leaves are tapered ...

Utricularia inflata ''Utricularia inflata'', commonly known as the swollen bladderwort, inflated bladderwort, or large floating bladderwort, is a large suspended aquatic carnivorous plant that belongs to the genus ''Utricularia''. It is a perennial that is native to ...

* Utricularia radiata

Trees

Abies fraseri The Fraser fir (''Abies fraseri''), sometimes spelled Frasier fir, is an endangered species of fir native to the Appalachian Mountains of the southeastern United States. They are endemic to only seven montane regions in the Appalachian Mountain ...

Ulmus serotina ''Ulmus serotina'', the September elm, is an autumn-flowering North American species of tree. It is uncommon beyond Tennessee; it is only very locally distributed through Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Georgia, ...

Climate change in Tennessee

Global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

in the United States has been a salient topic since the

Kyoto Protocol The was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is oc ...

, as part of the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change. It is an international treaty among countries to combat "dangerous human interference with th ...

, that was established in 1992. The

effects of global warming Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an overall warming trend, changes to precipitation patterns, and more extreme weather. As ...

have been widely debated; however, there is evidence that suggests a slight increase in the core temperature of most states. In addition there seems to be a number of effects on ecological systems throughout the United States. In the state of Tennessee, one of the key effects of global warming seems to be the radical changes to the geological composition as well as wildlife health of the Ohio-Tennessee Basin. Some of the changes to the Ohio-Tennessee Basin include: * The over enrichment of nutrients in the basin * A decrease in the size of the basin as measured by the surface area of the watershed * An increase in the

pollutant concentration Measures of pollutant concentration are used to determine risk assessment in public health. Industry is continually synthesizing new chemicals, the regulation of which requires evaluation of the potential danger for human health and the environm ...

of the water Some key legislation that works to address global warming in Tennessee is as follows:

Executive Order In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of the ...

54 establishes the Energy Policy Task Force with the goal of creating a new state energy plan by December 1 of 2008. Another order establishes the Interagency Alternative Fuels Working Group with the goal of making Tennessee a leader in the

biofuels Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricultural, domestic ...

industry. The Working Group came up with an Alternative Fuels Strategic Plan which lays out goals for increasing biofuel and feedstock production and displacing petroleum use. Public Chapter 489 (2007) requires all agencies and state educational institutions to create plans by January 1, 2008 to reduce or displace petroleum use in government fleet vehicles by 20%.Tennessee - State Best Practices , Clean Energy , US EPA
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References

External links