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Weeks Bay
The Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve is a field laboratory and research facility along Weeks Bay estuary, about in size. It receives freshwater from the Magnolia and Fish Rivers, and drains a watershed into the portion of Mobile Bay via a narrow opening. This sub-estuary of Mobile Bay averages just 4.8 ft (1.5 meters) deep and is fringed with marsh (Spartina, Juncus) and swamp (pine, oak, magnolia, maple, cypress, bayberry, tupelo and others). The reserve lands also include upland and bottomland hardwood forests, freshwater marsh ( Typha, Cladium), submerged aquatic vegetation (Ruppia, Vallisneria) and unique bog habitats (Sarracenia, Drosera). Weeks Bay is a critical nursery for shrimp, bay anchovy, blue crab and multitudes of other fish, crustaceans and shellfish that support robust commercial fisheries providing $450 million/year for Alabama. The Weeks Bay Reserve includes over of coastal wetlands and water bottoms that provide rich and diverse hab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estuary
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environments and are an example of an ecotone. Estuaries are subject both to marine influences such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water, and to fluvial influences such as flows of freshwater and sediment. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water column and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. Most existing estuaries formed during the Holocene epoch with the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea level began to rise about 10,000–12,000 years ago. Estuaries are typically classified according to their geomorphological features or to water-circulation patterns. They can have many different names, such as bays, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cladium
''Cladium'' (fen-sedge, sawgrass or twig-sedge) is a genus of large sedges, with a nearly worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate regions. These are plants characterized by long, narrow (grass-like) leaves having sharp, often serrated (sawtooth-like) margins, and flowering stems 1–3 m tall bearing a much-branched inflorescence. Like many plants found in wet habitats, it has deeply buried rhizomes that can produce tall shoots with dense canopies. ''Cladium mariscus ''subsp.'' jamaicense'', or saw-grass, is common in marshes and savannas throughout the tropical Americas. One typical and well-known area of extensive saw-grass growth is the Florida Everglades; sawgrass is the plant referred to by the descriptor, "River of Grass". Like many species of the Everglades, ''C. jamaicense'' grows in extremely infertile conditions, particularly wet sites that are low in phosphorus. Dense sawgrass beds are intermingled with other vegetation types. Together they produce a rich arr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Trust Alliance
Land Trust Alliance is a nature conservation organization, based in Washington, D.C. The Alliance represents many land trusts across the United States. History Originally formed as the Land Trust Exchange in Boston on February 22, 1982, Allan Spader was named its inaugural director. In 1990, the name of the organization was changed to the Land Trust Alliance and was moved to Washington, D.C. The Land Trust Alliance has sponsored "Rally," a yearly conference of conservation professionals, since 1985. In 2012, the Land Trust Alliance set up an insurance company to assist regional land trusts with the legal defense of conservation easements In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenant, conservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a "land trust") or gove .... In 2021, the Land Trust Alliance expressed support for the 117th United States Congress' pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wetland
A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The primary factor that distinguishes wetlands from terrestrial land forms or Body of water, water bodies is the characteristic vegetation of aquatic plants, adapted to the unique anoxic hydric soils. Wetlands are considered among the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems, serving as home to a wide range of plant and animal species. Methods for assessing wetland functions, wetland ecological health, and general wetland condition have been developed for many regions of the world. These methods have contributed to wetland conservation partly by raising public awareness of the functions some wetlands provide. Wetlands occur naturally on every continent. The water in wetlands is either freshwater, brackish or seawater, saltwater. The main w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weeks Bay Interpretive Trail
A week is a unit of time equal to seven days. It is the standard time period used for short cycles of days in most parts of the world. The days are often used to indicate common work days and rest days, as well as days of worship. Weeks are often mapped against yearly calendars, but are typically not the basis for them, as weeks are not based on astronomy. The modern seven-day week can be traced back to the Babylonians, who used it within their calendar. Other ancient cultures had different week lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans. The Etruscan week was adopted by the Ancient Romans, but they later moved to a seven-day week, which had spread across Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 321 AD, Emperor Constantine officially decreed a seven-day week in the Roman Empire, including making Sunday a public holiday. This later spread across Europe, then the rest of the world. In English, the names of the days of the week are Monday, Tuesday, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Alabama, Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Birmingham metropolitan area, Alabama, Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,765 , area_total_sq_mi = 52,419 , area_land_km2 = 131,426 , area_land_sq_mi = 50,744 , area_water_km2 = 4,338 , area_water_sq_mi = 1,675 , area_water_percent = 3.2 , area_rank = 30th , length_km = 531 , length_mi = 330 , width_km = 305 , width_mi = 190 , Latitude = 30°11' N to 35° N , Longitude = 84°53' W to 88°28' W , elevation_m = 150 , elevation_ft = 500 , elevation_max_m = 735.5 , elevation_max_ft = 2,413 , elevation_max_point = Mount Cheaha , elevation_min_m = 0 , elevation_min_ft = 0 , elevation_min_point = Gulf of Mexico , OfficialLang = English language, English , Languages = * English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shellfish
Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environments, some are found in freshwater. In addition, a few species of land crabs are eaten, for example ''Cardisoma guanhumi'' in the Caribbean. Shellfish are among the most common food allergens. Despite the name, ''shellfish'' are not fish. Most shellfish are low on the food chain and eat a diet composed primarily of phytoplankton and zooplankton. Many varieties of shellfish, and crustaceans in particular, are actually closely related to insects and arachnids; crustaceans make up one of the main subphyla of the phylum Arthropoda. Molluscs include cephalopods (squids, octopuses, cuttlefish) and bivalves (clams, oysters), as well as gastropods (aquatic species such as whelks and winkles; land species such as snails and slugs). M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. Some crustaceans (Remipedia, Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda) are more closely related to insects and the other hexapods than they are to certain other crustaceans. The 67,000 described species range in size from '' Stygotantulus stocki'' at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span of up to and a mass of . Like other arthropods, crustaceans have an exoskeleton, which they moult to grow. They are distinguished from other groups of arthropods, such as insects, myriapods and chelicerates, by the possession of biramous (two-parted) limbs, and by th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Callinectes Sapidus
''Callinectes sapidus'' (from the Ancient Greek ,"beautiful" + , "swimmer", and Latin , "savory"), the blue crab, Atlantic blue crab, or regionally as the Chesapeake blue crab, is a species of crab native to the waters of the western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and introduced internationally. ''C. sapidus'' is of considerable culinary and economic importance in the United States, particularly in Louisiana, the Carolinas, the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware, and New Jersey. It is the Maryland state crustacean and the state's largest commercial fishery. Due to overfishing and environmental pressures some of the fisheries have seen declining yields, especially in the Chesapeake Bay fishery. Unlike other fisheries affected by climate change, blue crab is expected to do well; warming causes better breeding conditions, more survivable winters, and a greater range of habitable areas in the Atlantic coast. Whether this will have negative effects on the surrounding ecosystems ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anchovy
An anchovy is a small, common forage fish of the family Engraulidae. Most species are found in marine waters, but several will enter brackish water, and some in South America are restricted to fresh water. More than 140 species are placed in 17 genera; they are found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, and in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Anchovies are usually classified as oily fish. Genera Characteristics Anchovies are small, green fish with blue reflections due to a silver-colored longitudinal stripe that runs from the base of the caudal (tail) fin. They range from in adult length, and their body shapes are variable with more slender fish in northern populations. The snout is blunt with tiny, sharp teeth in both jaws. The snout contains a unique rostral organ, believed to be electro-sensory in nature, although its exact function is unknown. The mouth is larger than that of herrings and silversides, two fish which anchovies closely resemble in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrimp
Shrimp are crustaceans (a form of shellfish) with elongated bodies and a primarily swimming mode of locomotion – most commonly Caridea and Dendrobranchiata of the decapod order, although some crustaceans outside of this order are referred to as "shrimp". More narrow definitions may be restricted to Caridea, to smaller species of either group or to only the marine species. Under a broader definition, ''shrimp'' may be synonymous with prawn, covering stalk-eyed swimming crustaceans with long, narrow muscular tails (abdomens), long whiskers ( antennae), and slender legs. Any small crustacean which resembles a shrimp tends to be called one. They swim forward by paddling with swimmerets on the underside of their abdomens, although their escape response is typically repeated flicks with the tail driving them backwards very quickly. Crabs and lobsters have strong walking legs, whereas shrimp have thin, fragile legs which they use primarily for perching.Rudloe & Rudloe (2009 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drosera
''Drosera'', which is commonly known as the sundews, is one of the largest genus, genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species. 2 volumes. These members of the family Droseraceae lure, capture, and digest insects using stalked mucilage, mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surfaces. The insects are used to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the soil in which the plants grow. Various species, which vary greatly in size and form, are native to every continent except Antarctica.McPherson, S.R. 2008. ''Glistening Carnivores''. Redfern NaturalHistory Productions Ltd., Poole. Charles Darwin performed much of the early research into ''Drosera'', engaging in a long series of experiments with Drosera rotundifolia which were the first to confirm carnivory in plants. In an 1860 letter, Darwin wrote, “…at the present moment, I care more about ''Drosera'' than the origin of all the species in the world.” Both the botanical name (from the Ancient Greek, Greek δρ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
