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Possession Island (Namibia)
Possession Island is the largest of the Penguin Islands, a scattered group of islands to the south of Namibia. It is the largest among the country's coastal islands, with an area of , and is located away from the Diamond Coast and to the south of Lüderitz, on Lüderitz Bay. It features arid and rocky ground, with occasional shrubbery and low vegetation where some species of bird nest, the African penguin among them. In the 1950s, the island had the largest population of African penguins in Namibia, with around 46,000 adults; however by 2001, only 2,000 remained. In 2008, a report published by WWF South Africa estimated around 1,400 penguins remained, with a continued decline of around 8% a year being observed in their numbers. For several years, the island was a guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karas Region
{{disambiguation, ...
Karas may refer to: Places * Karas Region, Namibia * Karaš River, a river in Serbia and Romania (Romanian ''Caraş'') * Karas Island, an island in Sebakor Bay, West Papua, Indonesia * Karaś, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, a village in north-central Poland * Karaś, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, a village in north Poland * Karaś Lake, a lake in north-east Poland People * Karas (surname) * Saint Karas * Bishop Karas (1955–2002), bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United States Other uses * Karas language * ''Karas'' (anime) by Sato Keiichi * PZL.23 Karaś, a mid-1930s Polish light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft * Karas (food) See also * * Caras (other) *Karis (other) Karis is town and former municipality in Uusimaa, Finland. Karis may also refer to: *Mourvèdre, red wine grape variety *Torrontés, white grape variety *Karis, surname **Alar Karis, President of Estonia See also *Karas (other) *Caris ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin Islands
The Penguin Islands ( af, Pikkewyn-eilande, german: Pinguininseln) are a historical group of mostly scattered islands and rocks situated along a stretch of along the coastline of Namibia. Not forming a geographic whole, the Namibian government formally lists them as the ''Off-Shore islands''. Their name comes from the presence of African penguins which inhabit the coastal region surrounding Namibia and South Africa. Geography The islands are scattered over a long coastal region. Although a few of them form small clusters or groups, such as the islands in Lüderitz Bay, the Penguin Islands lack the mutual proximity of a natural archipelago or island chain. The largest island is Possession Island with in area. Hollam's Bird Island is the most northern and, at a distance of , the farthest from the coast. All islands together measure in area. Islands Listed from the most northern to the most southern, the islands include the Penguin Islands (in the historic, narrower sense ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. Although Kazungula, it does not border Zimbabwe, less than 200 metres (660 feet) of the Botswanan right bank of the Zambezi, Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the United Nations (UN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth of Nations. The driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia has been inhabited since pre-historic times by the San people, San, Damara people, Damara and Nama people. Around the 14th century, immigration, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived as part of the Bantu expansion. Since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diamond Coast
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, but diamond is metastable and converts to it at a negligible rate under those conditions. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are used in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth. Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions are boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange, or red. Diamond also has a ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lüderitz
Lüderitz is a town in the ǁKaras Region of southern Namibia. It lies on one of the least hospitable coasts in Africa. It is a port developed around Robert Harbour and Shark Island. The town is known for its colonial architecture, including some Art Nouveau work, and for wildlife including seals, penguins, flamingos and ostriches. It is also home to a museum, and lies at the end of a decommissioned railway line to Keetmanshoop. The town is named after Adolf Lüderitz, founder of the German South West Africa colony. Economy and infrastructure The centre of Lüderitz' economic activity is the port, until the incorporation of the exclave Walvis Bay in 1994 the only suitable harbour on Namibia's coast. However, the harbour at Lüderitz has a comparatively shallow rock bottom, making it unusable for many modern ships. The recent addition of a new quay has allowed larger fishing vessels to dock at Lüderitz. The town has also re-styled itself in an attempt to lure tourists t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lüderitz Bay
Lüderitz Bay or Lüderitzbaai (german: Lüderitzbucht), also known as Angra Pequena (, "small cove"), is a bay in the coast of Namibia, Africa. The city of Lüderitz is located at the edge of the bay. Geography The bay is indented and complex in structure. It opens to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Lüderitz town is located in the southern shore of the inner eastern bay, which is known as ''Angra Pequena'' in Portuguese and opens towards the north. Further west Griffith Bay, a deep inlet, stretches southwards in the southern part. The bay west of 'Angra Point' is known as Shearwater Bay, the location of a proposed port for the export of amongst other things, coal from Botswana. This requires the construction of the 1600 km Trans Kalahari Railway. There are two islands facing Agate Beach in the northeastern part of the bay, Penguin Island and Seal Island. In the southern part of the bay, a course has been created to hold the Lüderitz Speed Challenge, an annual spee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Penguin
The African penguin (''Spheniscus demersus''), also known as Cape penguin or South African penguin, is a species of penguin confined to southern African waters. Like all extant penguins, it is flightless, with a streamlined body and wings stiffened and flattened into flippers for a marine habitat. Adults weigh an average of and are tall. The species has distinctive pink patches of skin above the eyes and a black facial mask. The body's upper parts are black and sharply delineated from the white underparts, which are spotted and marked with a black band. The African penguin is a pursuit diver and feeds primarily on fish and squid. Once extremely numerous, the African penguin is declining rapidly due to a combination of several threats and is classified as endangered. It is a charismatic species and is popular with tourists. Other vernacular names of the species include black-footed penguin and jackass penguin, due to the species' loud, donkey-like noise, although several rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Wide Fund For Nature
The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States. WWF is the world's largest conservation organization, with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries and supporting around 3,000 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 65% of funding from individuals and bequests, 17% from government sources (such as the World Bank, DFID, and USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2020. WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." The Living Planet Report has been published every two ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guano
Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials. The 19th-century seabird guano trade played a pivotal role in the development of modern input-intensive farming. The demand for guano spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world. Unsustainable seabird guano mining processes can result in permanent habitat destruction and the loss of millions of seabirds. Bat guano is found in caves throughout the world. Many cave ecosystems are wholly dependent on bats to provide nutrients via their guano which supports bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, and vertebrates. The loss of bats from a cave can result in the extinction of species that rely on their guano. U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
