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Gulf Plains Important Bird Area
The Gulf Plains Important Bird Area comprises 8868 km2 of the low-lying coastal plains bordering the south-eastern corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria in north-west Queensland, Australia. It was identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because of its importance to global populations of waders and other birds. Description Most of the region is crown land leased for cattle grazing. There are also permanent fishing camps on the major estuaries. The IBA contains saline mudflats, grasslands, freshwater wetlands and woodlands in an area stretching along the coast from west of Burketown to north of the mouth of the Mitchell River. It is where several river systems – including the Mitchell, Gilbert, Norman, Flinders, Leichhardt and Nicholson Rivers - meet the shallow Gulf of Carpentaria.BirdLife International (2011) Important Bird Areas factsheet: Gulf Plains. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 01/07/2011 During the wet season (Dec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Bustard
The Australian bustard (''Ardeotis australis'') is a large ground dwelling bird which is common in grassland, woodland and open agricultural country across northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It stands at about high, and its wingspan is around twice that length. The species is nomadic, flying to areas when food becomes plentiful, and capable of travelling long distances. They were once widespread and common to the open plains of Australia, but became rare in regions that were populated by Europeans during the colonisation of Australia. The bustard is omnivorous, mostly consuming the fruit or seed of plants, but also eating invertebrates such as crickets, grasshoppers, smaller mammals, birds and reptiles. The species is also commonly referred to as the plains turkey, and in Central Australia as the bush turkey, particularly by Aboriginal people, who hunt it, although the latter name may also be used for the Australian brushturkey, as well as the orange-footed scrubfowl. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitchell River (Queensland)
The Mitchell River is a river located in Far North Queensland, Australia. The river rises on the Atherton Tableland about northwest of Cairns and flows about northwest across Cape York Peninsula from Mareeba to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The river's watershed covers an area of . The Mitchell River has the state's largest discharge, at annually, but is intermittent and may be dry for part of the year. Lake Mitchell is the main water storage facility on the river. It was named by Ludwig Leichhardt on the 16 June 1845 after Sir Thomas Mitchell while he was on his overland expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. It may have been previously named the Vereenighde River in 1623 by a Dutch merchant and navigator, Jan Carstensz. Biophysical aspects The Mitchell River and its tributaries have for a long time carved their way westwards through the rugged, weathered highlands of the Great Dividing Range, carrying away sediments to be deposited in the broad floodplains and w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oryza
''Oryza'' is a genus of plants in the grass family. It includes the major food crop rice (species ''Oryza sativa'' and ''Oryza glaberrima''). Members of the genus grow as tall, wetland grasses, growing to tall; the genus includes both annual and perennial species. ''Oryza'' is situated in tribe Oryzeae, which is characterized morphologically by its single-flowered spikelets whose glumes are almost completely suppressed. In ''Oryza'', two sterile lemma simulate glumes. The tribe Oryzeae is in subfamily Ehrhartoideae, a group of Poaceae tribes with certain features of internal leaf anatomy in common. The most distinctive leaf characteristics of this subfamily are the arm cells and fusoid cells found in their leaves.Heywood, V.H. Flowering Plants of the World 1993 Oxford University Press One species, Asian rice ( ''O. sativa''), provides 20% of global grain and is a food crop of major global importance. The species are divided into two subgroups within the genus. Species Inside ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dichanthium
''Dichanthium'', known commonly as bluestem or bluegrass, is a genus of African, Asian, and Australian plants in the grass family. Some species have become naturalized in the Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ... and on various oceanic islands.Bhat, V., et alChapter 6: ''Dichanthium''.In: Kole, C., Ed. ''Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and Breeding Resources, Millets and Grasses''. Springer. 2011. Species Species include: Former species Several species formerly included are now regarded as better suited to other genera, including in: '' Andropogon, Bothriochloa, Capillipedium, Euclasta'', and '' Pseudodichanthium''. References External links * * Dichanthiumat Grassbase—The World Online Grass Flora USDA Plants Profile for ''Dichanthium'' Panicoi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eucalyptus Microtheca
''Eucalyptus microtheca'', commonly known as the coolibah, is a species of tree that is endemic to northern Australia. It has rough, flaky or fibrous bark on the trunk and branches, lance-shaped adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven, white flowers and spherical to conical fruit. It is widely distributed from the Kimberley region of Western Australia to Cape York in Queensland. Description ''Eucalyptus microtheca'' is a tree, sometimes a mallee, that typically grows to a height of and forms a lignotuber. It has a whitish grey to dark grey, box-type bark that is often deeply fissured, coarsely flaky or tessellated as it ages. Young plants and coppice regrowth have narrow lance-shaped leaves that are long, wide and petiolate. Adult plants have leaves that are the same shade of dull green to bluish on both sides, lance-shaped to curved, long and wide, tapering to a petiole long. The flower buds are arranged on a thin, branched peduncle in groups of seven, the pedunc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eucalypt
Eucalypt is a descriptive name for woody plants with capsule fruiting bodies belonging to seven closely related genera (of the tribe Eucalypteae) found across Australasia: ''Eucalyptus'', '' Corymbia'', '' Angophora'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum''. Taxonomy For an example of changing historical perspectives, in 1991, largely genetic evidence indicated that some prominent ''Eucalyptus'' species were actually more closely related to ''Angophora'' than to other eucalypts; they were accordingly split off into the new genus ''Corymbia''. Although separate, all of these genera and their species are allied and it remains the standard to refer to the members of all seven genera ''Angophora'', ''Corymbia'', ''Eucalyptus'', ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum'' as "eucalypts" or as the eucalypt group. The extant genera ''Stockwellia'', ''Allosyncarpia'', ''Eucalyptopsis'' and ''Arillastrum'' comprise six k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grass
Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns and pasture. The latter are commonly referred to collectively as grass. With around 780 genera and around 12,000 species, the Poaceae is the fifth-largest plant family, following the Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, Fabaceae and Rubiaceae. The Poaceae are the most economically important plant family, providing staple foods from domesticated cereal crops such as maize, wheat, rice, barley, and millet as well as feed for meat-producing animals. They provide, through direct human consumption, just over one-half (51%) of all dietary energy; rice provides 20%, wheat supplies 20%, maize (corn) 5.5%, and other grains 6%. Some members of the Poaceae are used as building materials (bamboo, thatch, and straw); others can provide a source of biofuel, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because the regular flooding of floodplains can deposit nutrients and water, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility; some important agricultural regions, such as the Mississippi river basin and the Nile, rely heavily on the flood plains. Agricultural regions as well as urban areas have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and fresh water. However, the risk of flooding has led to increasing efforts to control flooding. Formation Most floodplains are formed by deposition on the inside of river meanders and by overbank flow. Whereve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melaleuca
''Melaleuca'' () is a genus of nearly 300 species of plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, commonly known as paperbarks, honey-myrtles or tea-trees (although the last name is also applied to species of '' Leptospermum''). They range in size from small shrubs that rarely grow to more than high, to trees up to . Their flowers generally occur in groups, forming a "head" or "spike" resembling a brush used for cleaning bottles, containing up to 80 individual flowers. Melaleucas are an important food source for nectarivorous insects, birds, and mammals. Many are popular garden plants, either for their attractive flowers or as dense screens and a few have economic value for producing fencing and oils such as "tea tree" oil. Most melaleucas are endemic to Australia, with a few also occurring in Malesia. Seven are endemic to New Caledonia, and one is found only on (Australia's) Lord Howe Island. Melaleucas are found in a wide variety of habitats. Many are adapted for life in swamp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wet Season
The wet season (sometimes called the Rainy season) is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs. It is the time of year where the majority of a country's or region's annual precipitation occurs. Generally, the season lasts at least a month. The term ''green season'' is also sometimes used as a euphemism by tourist authorities. Areas with wet seasons are dispersed across portions of the tropics and subtropics. Under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a wet season month is defined as a month where average precipitation is or more. In contrast to areas with savanna climates and monsoon regimes, Mediterranean climates have wet winters and dry summers. Dry and rainy months are characteristic of tropical seasonal forests: in contrast to tropical rainforests, which do not have dry or wet seasons, since their rainfall is equally distributed throughout the year.Elisabeth M. Benders-Hyde (2003)World Climates.Blue Planet Biomes. Retr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholson River (Queensland)
The Nicholson River is a river located in the Northern Territory and the state of Queensland, Australia. The location of the Aboriginal mission at Doomadgee was also historically referred to as Nicholson River in some sources. Course and features The headwaters of the river rise at the western end of China Wall on the Barkly Tableland, in the Northern Territory and head in a south easterly direction. The river then heads due east and crosses the border into the northwest region of Queensland near Nudjabarra across mostly uninhabited plains. It continues east across the Shadforth Plain and past the Aboriginal community of Doomadgee. The river then veers north near the Tiranna Roadhouse across Hann Crossing and past Escott, just west of Burketown where it is joined by its main tributary the Gregory River. The river continues north and later discharges into Pasco Inlet and the Gulf of Carpentaria. The ephemeral Nicholson has a length of approximately . The drainage basin of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leichhardt River
The Leichhardt River is a river in north west Queensland, Australia. Course The source of the river is in the Selwyn Range under Rifle Creek Hill and fed by Rifle Creek approximately south of the mining town Mount Isa. It runs in a generally northerly direction almost parallel with the Diamantina Developmental Road until it reaches Mount Isa and crosses the Barkly Highway. It continues in a north easterly direction across the Gulf Country passing through Lake Moondarra past Glenroy Station then through Lake Julius. It then bears east then north again almost parallel with the Burke Developmental Road until crossing it near Nardoo. Continuing north past Augustus Downs Station to its mouth at the Gulf of Carpentaria. The river is named after the early explorer of Australia, Ludwig Leichhardt. Catchment Leichhardt River has a catchment area of . Primary activities undertaken in the watershed include mining and grazing. The river is ephemeral and in the dry season the upstream rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
