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Maritime Coast Range Ponderosa Pine Forests
The maritime coast range ponderosa pine forests are rare temperate forest assemblages associated with a limited range portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains of northern California. There are only three known small forests of this type, all situated in Santa Cruz County, California. The dominant tree species is the ponderosa pine. Description This sparse forest type thrives on very sandy Zayante soils that are isolated pockets of decomposing sandstone from the Miocene terraces of the coastal range. These forests are deemed to be relicts of once larger expanses found when this region was geologically even younger, and hence had more evidence of the sandstone erosion of the ancient uplifted ocean floor. One of these three forests is located atop a ridge that straddles the Carbonera Creek and Zayante Creek watershedsUSGS Quadrangle Map, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980). of Santa Cruz County, California within the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States. They form a ridge down the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco. They separate the Pacific Ocean from the San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley, and continue south to the Central Coast, bordering Monterey Bay and ending at the Salinas Valley. The range passes through the counties of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey, with the Pajaro River forming the southern boundary. Geography The northernmost portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains, north of Half Moon Bay Road ( SR 92), is known as Montara Mountain; the middle portion is the Sierra Morena, which includes a summit called Sierra Morena, and extends south to a gap at Lexington Reservoir; south of the gap, the mountain range is known as the Sierra Azul. The highest point in the range is Loma Prieta Peak, west of Morgan Hill, with a height of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drainage Basin
A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the '' drainage divide'', made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills. A basin may consist of smaller basins that merge at river confluences, forming a hierarchical pattern. Other terms for a drainage basin are catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water basin, and impluvium. In North America, they are commonly called a watershed, though in other English-speaking places, "watershed" is used only in its original sense, that of a drainage divide. In a closed drainage basin, or endorheic basin, the water converges to a single point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake, a dry lake, or a point where surface water is lost underground. Drainage basins are simi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forests Of California
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds ''in situ''. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, '' Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020'' (FRA 2020) found that forests covered , or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020. Forests are the predominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are found around the globe. More than half of the world's forests are found in only five countries (Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States). The largest share of forests (45 percent) are in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geography Of Santa Cruz County, California
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as a title of a book by Greek scholar Eratosthenes (276–194 BC). Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. One such concept, the first law of geography, proposed by Waldo Tobler, is "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History Of The California Coast Ranges
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word '' physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Communities Of California
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants") which is sister of the Glaucophyta, and consists of the green algae and Embryophyta (land plants). The latter includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. Most plants are multicellular organisms. Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ability ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endangered Arthropod
As of July 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 616 endangered arthropod species. 6.5% of all evaluated arthropod species are listed as endangered. The IUCN also lists 27 arthropod subspecies as endangered. No subpopulations of arthropods have been evaluated by the IUCN. For a species to be considered endangered by the IUCN it must meet certain quantitative criteria which are designed to classify taxa facing "a very high risk of extinction". An even higher risk is faced by ''critically endangered'' species, which meet the quantitative criteria for endangered species. Critically endangered arthropods are listed separately. There are 1010 arthropod species which are endangered or critically endangered. Additionally 2875 arthropod species (30% of those evaluated) are listed as ''data deficient'', meaning there is insufficient information for a full assessment of conservation status. As these species typically have small distributions and/or popu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
High Conservation Value Forest
High conservation value forest (HCVF) is a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest management designation used to describe those forests who meet criteria defined by the FSC Principles and Criteria of Forest Stewardship. Specifically, high conservation value forests are those that possess one or more of the following attributes: # forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant: concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g. endemism, endangered species, refugia); and/or large landscape-level forests, contained within, or containing the management unit, where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance # forest areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems # forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control) # forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g. subsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ponderosa Shrub Forest
Ponderosa pine forest is a plant association and plant community dominated by ponderosa pine and found in western North America. It is found from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast Ranges in the Western United States and Western Canada. In the south and east, ponderosa pine forest is the climax forest, while in the more northern part of its range, it can transition to Douglas-fir or grand fir, or white fir forests. Understory species depends on location. Fire suppression has led to insect outbreaks in ponderosa pine forests. Physiography Since ponderosa pine has a rather wide range of adaptability and can dominate some of the less mesic true forest sites, it occupies low mountains and foothills in many places; yet in mixtures with other species, it is found at moderate elevations. Ponderosa pine forest is the largest western forest type in the United States. Ponderosa pine is the principal species on over and is present on an additional . Within the western United State ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insect
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; In: potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within. Nearly all insects hatch from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endemism
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example '' Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. '' Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which appli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zayante Creek
Zayante Creek (Ohlone: ''Sayant'') is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 stream within the San Lorenzo River watershed in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The U.S. government has designated Zayante Creek as impaired with respect to sediment. Lompico Creek, a tributary of Zayante Creek, is listed for impairment by pathogens. In the period 1998 to 2000 a restoration project was conducted for this stream to improve anadromous fish passage, rearing and spawning. There has been a permanent U.S. Geological Survey gauging station on Zayante Creek which has operated since the year 1959; the mean altitude of the Zayante Basin, carved within the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains, is . Significant tributaries to Zayante Creek are Lompico Creek and Bean Creek. Soils formations along the mainstem of Zayante Creek by ascending altitude are: Monterey Formation, Zayante Forma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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