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Wooded Meadow
Wooded meadows (also named ''wood-meadows'', ''park meadows'', etc.) are ecosystems in temperate forest regions. They are sparse natural stands with a regularly mown herbaceous layer. While frequent throughout Europe during the Medieval period and before, wooded meadows have largely disappeared. Wooded meadows originated from the practices of hunter-gatherer communities. They were important in terms of social organization around a natural resource and determined much of the community's interactions with the natural world. In the early 20th century, wooded meadows were used for fruit cultivation in Sweden, however their prevalence has decreased substantially due to changes in land management and a movement toward more intensive types of agroecosystems. The more typical, calcicolous wooded meadows are common around the Baltic Sea. Wooded meadows have high species richness. In some of the current Estonian wooded meadows, world record species densities have been recorded (up to 76 s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species Richness
Species richness is the number of different species represented in an ecological community, landscape or region. Species richness is simply a count of species, and it does not take into account the abundances of the species or their relative abundance distributions. Species richness is sometimes considered synonymous with species diversity, but the formal metric species diversity takes into account both species richness and species evenness. Sampling considerations Depending on the purposes of quantifying species richness, the individuals can be selected in different ways. They can be, for example, trees found in an inventory plot, birds observed from a monitoring point, or beetles collected in a pitfall trap. Once the set of individuals has been defined, its species richness can be exactly quantified, provided the species-level taxonomy of the organisms of interest is well enough known. Applying different species delimitations will lead to different species richness value ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitats
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors will include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, with habitat generalist species able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species requiring a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the inter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grasslands
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses ( Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush ( Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur naturally on all continents except Antarctica and are found in most ecoregions of the Earth. Furthermore, grasslands are one of the largest biomes on earth and dominate the landscape worldwide. There are different types of grasslands: natural grasslands, semi-natural grasslands, and agricultural grasslands. They cover 31–69% of the Earth's land area. Definitions Included among the variety of definitions for grasslands are: * "...any plant community, including harvested forages, in which grasses and/or legumes make up the dominant vegetation." * "...terrestrial ecosystems dominated by herbaceous and shrub vegetation, and maintained by fire, grazing, drought and/or freezing temperatures." (Pilot Assessment of Global Ecosystems, 2000) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history. Ecology is a branch of biology, and it is not synonymous with environmentalism. Among other things, ecology is the study of: * The abundance, biomass, and distribution of organisms in the context of the environment * Life processes, antifragility, interactions, and adaptations * The movement of materials and energy through living communities * The successional development of ecosystems * Cooperation, competition, and predation within and between species * Patterns of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystem processes Ecology has practical applications in conservation biology, wetland management, natural res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleksei Lotman
Aleksei Lotman (also known as Alex Lotman and Aleks Lotman; born 6 May 1960 in Leningrad) is an Estonian biologist, environmentalist and politician. From 2010 to 2011 Lotman served as the leader of political party Estonian Greens. From 2007 to 2011, Lotman was a member of Estonian parliament Riigikogu, representing the Estonian Greens. He was also leader of the parliamentary group for Tibet. In the 2011 election, the Greens lost all their parliamentary representation. Since then he has worked for the Estonian Fund for Nature. He was awarded the Order of the National Coat of Arms, 5th Class, by the President of Estonia on 6 February 2006. Aleksei Lotman graduated from the Tartu Miina Härma Secondary School No 2 in 1978, and the Tartu State University as a biologist in 1985. 1991–2000, Lotman served as the vice director of the Matsalu National Park. Personal life Alex Lotman is the son of literary scholar, semiotician, and cultural historian Juri Lotman and literary scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms of species coexistence in species-rich communities and developed mathematical modelling in ecophysiology. Since 1975, he has been the main organiser of annual meetings of theoretical biology in Estonia. In 1992, he became a Professor of Ecophysiology in the University of Tartu. In 1997, he joined the Department of Semiotics, and became a Professor in Biosemiotics. From 2006 to 2018, he was the Head of the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, Estonia. His field of interests include biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, general semiotics, theoretical biology, theory of evolution, history and philosophy of semiotics and life science. He was the president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society in 1991–1994. He is the president of the Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toomas Kukk
Toomas Kukk (born 11 June 1971 in Tallinn) is an Estonian botanist. He has been associated with the Estonian Institute of Zoology and Botany in Estonia since 1991. He serves as the editor-in-chief of ''Eesti Loodus ''Eesti Loodus'' ('Nature of Estonia') is magazine published in Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Fin ...'' since 2001. In 2014 he was awarded with Fourth Class of Order of the White Star. Toomas Kukk has written books about Estonian flora. References External linksBiography 21st-century Estonian botanists 1971 births Living people People from Tallinn University of Tartu alumni Academic staff of the Estonian University of Life Sciences Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 4th Class Eesti Loodus editors {{Estonia-botanist-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vascular Plants
Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes () or collectively Tracheophyta (), form a large group of land plants ( accepted known species) that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified tissue (the phloem) to conduct products of photosynthesis. Vascular plants include the clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms (including conifers), and angiosperms (flowering plants). Scientific names for the group include Tracheophyta, Tracheobionta and Equisetopsida ''sensu lato''. Some early land plants (the rhyniophytes) had less developed vascular tissue; the term eutracheophyte has been used for all other vascular plants, including all living ones. Historically, vascular plants were known as "higher plants", as it was believed that they were further evolved than other plants due to being more complex organisms. However, this is an antiquated remnant of the obsolete scala naturae, and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,200 other islands and islets on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of . The capital city Tallinn and Tartu are the two largest urban areas of the country. The Estonian language is the autochthonous and the official language of Estonia; it is the first language of the majority of its population, as well as the world's second most spoken Finnic language. The land of what is now modern Estonia has been inhabited by '' Homo sapiens'' since at least 9,000 BC. The medieval indigenous population of Estonia was one of the last " pagan" civilisations in Europe to adopt Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 10°E to 30°E longitude. A marginal sea of the Atlantic, with limited water exchange between the two water bodies, the Baltic Sea drains through the Danish Straits into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, Great Belt and Little Belt. It includes the Gulf of Bothnia, the Bay of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Gdańsk. The " Baltic Proper" is bordered on its northern edge, at latitude 60°N, by Åland and the Gulf of Bothnia, on its northeastern edge by the Gulf of Finland, on its eastern edge by the Gulf of Riga, and in the west by the Swedish part of the southern Scandinavian Peninsula. The Baltic Sea is connected by artificial waterways to the White Sea via the White Sea–Baltic Canal and to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the system through photosynthesis and is incorporated into plant tissue. By feeding on plants and on one another, animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and microbes. Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal Environmental factor, factors. External factors such as climate, parent material which forms the soil and topography, control the overall structure of an ecosystem but are not themselves influe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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