The Amazon Rainforest Deforestation Impact
The Amazon rain forest is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Previously the forest covered 14% of earth’s surface and now it is only about 6%. By this speed the forest will disappear within 40 years.
The main reasons for deforestation are logging of tropical hardwoods for exportation (like teak and mahagony, timber, ply wood), cattle grazing, farming, road building, hydroelectric dams, mining.
Another problem is damage due to reduced rainfall caused by global warming.
The World Wildlife Fund states that the point of no return, from which recovery will be impossible, is only 15 to 25 years away.
Photo: Alberto Cesar/ Greenpeace/AP
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: amazon, deforestation, impact, Nature, rainforest
Relevant Articles
Unbelievable natural phenomenon
The most beautiful cactus flowers
A cactus is any member of the spine plant family Cactaceae, native to the Americas. They are often used as ornamental plants, but some are also crop plants. Cacti are part of the plant order Caryophyllales, which also includes members like beets, baby’s breath, spinach, amaranth, tumbleweeds, carnations, rhubarb, buckwheat, plumbago, bougainvillea, chickweed and knotgrass.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: cactus, desert, flower, mexico, Nature
Relevant Articles
The most beautiful cactus flowers
10 Most Scenic National Parks in the United States
From deep canyons and vast deserts to crystal exotic bays and dazzling glaciers, North America’s National Parks feature world’s most scenic natural beauties. The U.S. is home to almost 400 natural parks that preserve our planet’s most exceptional and diverse formations and sites. In this beauty contest of 10 most scenic national parks the winners do not differ much from the defeated.
10. Death Valley, California, Nevada.
Death Valley National Park is the hottest and the driest spot in the United States. It is a place where the record-breaking temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) hit on 10 July 1913. It was the hottest day ever reported in the country. Moreover, it is also the lowest place in North America – 282 feet (86 m) below sea level (at Badwater).
Rock formations, salt pans, desert and “skeletonized” ranges (mountains with very little soil on them) are the main features of the park’s dramatic landscape.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: animal, mountain, Nature, park, river, wild, wildlife
Relevant Articles
Beautiful landscapes of Canada
Visions of Earth by National Geographic
August 2009: Mexico—Thirteen feet and a thousand-plus pounds of great white shark bump a diver's cage and roil the waters off Guadalupe Island. The region, rich in seal and sea lion rookeries, is a hot spot for the powerful predators. Photograph by Brandon Cole
Cerro de Sorte, Venezuela—Surrounded by candles symbolizing regeneration, followers of a cult centered on the local goddess María Lionza wait for cleansing during an hour-long ritual. Photograph by Cristina Garcia Rodero
Read more
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: free photos, National Geographic, Nature, people, Places, world
Relevant Articles
Things you will see ONLY in….
Carved Tree of life in Florida Disney park
The Tree of Life is a massive 145-foot masterpiece sculpted by more than a dozen artists.
With 325 animal carvings on the outside, this 50-foot wide artificial tree is the centerpiece of Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
This tree looks normal from a distance…..well, kinda stubby! But,look at ‘this’ as you get closer…Yes i said “Wow” Whatever you can imagine….some artist can carve….. This is some true piece of art and certainly breath taking photos. Enjoy
Images via wdwinfo
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: animals, carve, Disney, florida, Nature, tree
Relevant Articles
Day and Night of Walt Disney World Castle
Amazing photos of Austria made by Rosita
About author:
My name is Rosita, I am 33 years old and I live in Belgium. I was always intriged by Photography, so I studied Digital Photography at the evening school for 3 years. When I started my course I decided to buy myself a Digital reflexcamera to be more creative and to have more options in the photography world.
Later I switched to Nikon material, which I find, has outstanding quality!
My Gear <<;:
- NIKON D300
- MB-D10 Batterypack
- Nikon AF-S 18-200 VR F3.5-5.6
- Nikon 50 mm F1.8D
- Sigma 10-20 mm F4-5.6 EX HSM
- Sigma 105mm F2.8 Macro (NEW)
- Nikon 3G Lensbaby
- Nikon SB 800 speedlight
- Nikon SB 28
- Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 XR DI
- Lowepro Nova 3 AW
- Lowepro micro trekker 200 AW
- Bilora tripod
- HQ tripod 21 (645gr)
- I use a serie of Cokin filters
- Hähnel HRN280 Remote release
- California Sunbounce 60×90
- Strobist color corrections gels
- Strobist Cactus V4 triggers
- 1 White and 1 black umbrella
- Linkstar Trolly 102
For more information about this very talented artist please visit her home page here.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: austria, mountains, Nature, nikon, waterwalls
Relevant Articles
Cool underwater colours
Unbelievable natural phenomenon
Some of amazing natural events you probably haven’t heard before…
1.Denmark’s Black Sun
During spring in Denmark, at approximately one half an starling swarm in Unbelievable natural phenomenonhour before sunset, flocks of more than a million European starlings gather from all corners to join in the incredible formations shown above. 
This phenomenon is called Black Sun (in Denmark), and can be witnessed in early spring throughout the marshlands of western Denmark, from March through to the middle of April. The starlings migrate from the south and spend the day in the meadows gathering food, sleeping in the reeds during the night. There are sometimes enough birds in the sky that they end up blocking out the sun, hence the term “Black Sun Phenomenon”
2.Venezuela’s Permanent Storm
The mysterious “Relámpago del Catatumbo” (Catatumbo lightning) is a unique natural phenomenon in the world. Located on the mouth of the Catatumbo river at Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an hour. This almost permanent storm occurs over the marshlands where the Catatumbo River feeds into Lake Maracaibo and it is considered the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet, judging from the intensity of the cloud-to-cloud discharge and great frequency. The area sees an estimated 1,176,000 electrical discharges per year, with an intensity of up to 400,000 amperes, and visible up to 400 km away. This is the reason why the storm is also known as the Maracaibo Beacon as light has been used for navigation by ships for ages.The collision with the winds coming from the Andes Mountains causes the storms and associated lightning, a result of electrical discharges through ionised gases, specifically the methane created by the decomposition of organic matter in the marshes. Being lighter than air, the gas rises up to the clouds, feeding the storms. Some local environmentalists hope to put the area under the protection of UNESCO, as it is an exceptional phenomenon, the greatest source of its type for regenerating the planet’s ozone layer.
3.Morocco’s Climbing Goats
Goats on trees are found mostly only in Morocco. The goats climb them because they like to eat the fruit of the argan tree, which is similar to an olive. Farmers actually follow the herds of goats as they move from tree to tree. Not because it is so strange to see goats in trees and the farmers like to point and stare, but because the fruit of the tree has a nut inside, which the goats can’t digest, so they spit it up or excrete it which the farmers collect. The nut contains 1-3 kernels, which can be ground to make argan oil used in cooking and cosmetics. This oil has been collected by the people of the region for hundreds of years, but like many wild and useful things these days, the argan tree is slowly disappearing due to over-harvesting for the tree’s wood and overgrazing by goats.As a result a group of people and organizations have banded together to try to save the tree. To do so one of the primary locations where the trees grow has been declared a biosphere preserve. It was also decided that by making the world aware of the oil, it’s great taste and supposed anti-aging properties, would create a demand for it. However, the people who planned to market the oil could not envision people wanting to put an oil on their food or their face that was collected from goat excrement. As a result, a campaign is being led to ban grazing on the trees by goats during certain parts of the year to allow the fruit to ripen and fall off on its own. The fruit is then collected and turned into oil by oil cooperatives. So far, this arrangement seems to be working.
4.Honduras’ Rain of Fishes
Falling fish in Unbelievable natural phenomenonThe Rain of Fish is common in Honduran Folklore. It occurs in the Departamento de Yoro, between the months of May and July. Witnesses of this phenomenon state that it begins with a dark cloud in the sky followed by lightning, thunder, strong winds and heavy rain for 2 to 3 hours. Once the rain has stopped, hundreds of living fish are found on the ground. People take the fish home to cook and eat them. Since 1998 a festival known as “Festival de la Lluvia de Peces” (Rain of Fish Festival) is celebrated every year in the city of Yoro, Departamento de Yoro, Honduras.
5. Kerala’s Red Rain
From 25 July to 23 September 2001, red rain sporadically fell on the southern Indian state of Kerala. Heavy downpours occurred in which the rain was coloured red, staining clothes with an appearance similar to that of blood. Yellow, green, and black rain was also reported.It was initially suspected that the rains were coloured by fallout from a hypothetical meteor burst, but a study commissioned by the Government of India found that the rains had been coloured by airborne spores from a locally prolific terrestrial alga. Then in early 2006, the coloured rains of Kerala suddenly rose to worldwide attention after media reports of a conjecture that the coloured particles were extraterrestrial cells, proposed by Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam. The terrestrial origins of the solid material in the red rain were supported by an investigation into the isotopic ratios of nitrogen and carbon.
6.Brazilian’s longest wave on the Earth
Twice a year, between the months of February and March, the Atlantic Ocean waters roll up the Amazon river, in , generating the longest wave on the Earth. The phenomenon, known as the Pororoca, is caused by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean wich meet the mouth of the river. This tidal bore generates waves up to 12 feet high which can last for over half an hour.The name “Pororoca” comes from the indigenous Tupi language, where it translates into “great destructive noise”. The wave can be heard about 30 minutes before its arrival, and it’s so powerful that it can destroy anything, including trees, local houses and all kind of animals.The wave has become popular with surfers. Since 1999, an annual championship has been held in São Domingos do Capim. However, surfing the Pororoca is especially dangerous, as the water contains a significant amount of debris from the margins of the river (often, entire trees). The record that we could find for surfing the longest distance on the Pororoca was set by Picuruta Salazar, a brazilian surfer who, in 2003, managed to ride the wave for 37 minutes and travel 12.5 kilometers. A surfer’s dream: riding an almost never-ending wave.
7.Idaho’s Fire Rainbow
The atmospheric phenomenon known as a circumhorizon(tal) arc, or “Fire rainbow”, appears when the sun is high in the sky (i.e., higher than 58° above the horizon), and its light passes through diaphanous, high-altitude cirrus clouds made up of hexagonal plate crystals. Sunlight entering the crystals’ vertical side faces and leaving through their bottom faces is refracted (as through a prism) and separated into an array of visible colors. When the plate crystals in cirrus clouds are aligned optimally (i.e., with their faces parallel to the ground), the resulting display is a brilliant spectrum of colors reminiscent of a rainbow. The example shown above was captured on camera as it hung for about an hour across a several-hundred square mile area of sky above northern Idaho (near the Washington border) on 3 June 2006.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Relevant Articles
Amazing Potato Art
Nature in all shapes
Collection of beautiful pictures of Mother Nature,Enjoy..“SAVE MOTHER NATURE!!!” She is beautiful.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: cool, lake, landscape, Nature, photos
Relevant Articles
Hi-Def Pics – Gorgeous Winter Trees
The faces of nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe. “Nature” refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. Manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature unless qualified in ways such as “human nature” or “the whole of nature”. Nature is generally distinguished from the supernatural. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the galactic.
The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or “the course of things, natural character.” Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. This is shown in the first written use of the word, in connection with a plant. 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 ????? by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.
Within the various uses of the word today, “nature” may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects, the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed. It is often taken to mean the “natural environment” or wilderness, wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the latter being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind.
Etymology
The word nature means the universe, with all its phenomena. Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The word ????? occurs very early in Greek philosophy, generally in similar senses to those of the modern English word nature. This is shown in the first written use of the word ?????, in connection with a plant by Homer. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method. The etymology of the word “physical” shows its use as a synonym for “natural” in about the mid-15th century.
Atmosphere, climate and weather
The atmosphere of the Earth serves as a key factor in sustaining the planetary ecosystem. The thin layer of gases that envelops the Earth is held in place by the planet’s gravity. Dry air consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and other inert gases, carbon dioxide, etc.; but air also contains a variable amount of water vapor. The atmospheric pressure declines steadily with altitude, and has a scale height of about 8 kilometers at the Earth’s surface: the height at which the atmospheric pressure has declined by a factor of e. The ozone layer of the Earth’s atmosphere plays an important role in depleting the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that reaches the surface. As DNA is readily damaged by UV light, this serves to protect life at the surface. The atmosphere also retains heat during the night, thereby reducing the daily temperature extremes.
Weather can have both beneficial and harmful effects. Extremes in weather, such as tornadoes or hurricanes and cyclones, can expend large amounts of energy along their paths, and produce devastation. Surface vegetation has evolved a dependence on the seasonal variation of the weather, and sudden changes lasting only a few years can have a dramatic effect, both on the vegetation and on the animals dependent on its growth for their food.
The planetary climate is a measure of the long term trends in the weather. Various factors are known to influence the climate, including ocean currents, surface albedo, greenhouse gases, variations in the solar luminosity, and changes to the planet’s orbit. Based on historical records, the Earth is known to have undergone drastic climate changes in the past, including ice ages.
The climate of a region depends on a number of factors, especially latitude. A latitudinal band of the surface with similar climatic attributes forms a climate region. There are a number of such regions, ranging from the
tropical climate at the equator to the polar climate in the northern and southern extremes. Weather is also influenced by the seasons, which result from the Earth’s axis being tilted relative to its orbital plane. Thus, at any given time during the summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the sun. This exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. At any given time, regardless of season, the northern and southern hemispheres experience opposite seasons.
Plants and animals
The distinction between plant and animal life is not sharply drawn, with some categories of life that stand between or across the two. Originally Aristotle divided all living things between plants, which generally do not mo
ve, and animals. In Linnaeus’ system, these became the kingdoms Vegetabilia and Animalia. Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these are still often considered plants in many contexts. Bacterial life is sometimes included in flora, and some classifications use the term bacterial flora separately from plant flora.
Among the many ways of classifying plants are by regional floras, which, depending on the purpose of study, can also include fossil flora, remnants of plant life from a previous era. People in many regions and countries take
great pride in their individual arrays of characteristic flora, which can vary widely across the globe due to differences in climate and terrain.
Regional floras commonly are divided into categories such as native flora and agricultural and garden flora, the latter of which are intentionally grown and cultivated. Some types of “native flora” actually have been introduced centuries ago by people migrating from one region or continent to another, and become an integral part of the native, or natural flora of the place to which they were introduced. This is an example of how human interaction with nature can blur the boundary of what is considered nature.
Human interrelationship
Although humans currently comprise only about one-half of one percent of the total living biomass on Earth, the human effect on nature is disproportionately large. Because of the extent of human influence, the boundaries between what we regard as nature and “made environments” is not clear cut except at the extremes. Even at the extremes, the amount of natural environment that is free of discernible human influence is presently diminishing at an increasingly rapid pace, or, according to some, has already disappeared. The development of technology by the human race has allowed the greater exploitation of natural resources and has helped to alleviate some of the risk from natural hazards. In spite of this progress, however, the fate of human civilization remains closely linked to changes in the environment. There exists a highly complex feedback-loop between the use of advanced technology and changes to the environment that are only slowly becoming understood. Man made threats to the Earth’s natural environment include pollution, deforestation, and disasters such as oil spills. Humans have contributed to the extinction of many plants and animals. Humans employ nature for both leisure and economic activities. The acquisition of natural resources for industrial use remains the primary component of the world’s economic system. Some activities, such as hunting and fishing, are used for both sustenance and leisure, often by different people. Agriculture was first adopted around the 9th millennium BCE. Ranging from food production to energy, nature influences economic wealth.
Although early humans gathered uncultivated plant materials for food and employed the medicinal properties of vegetation for healing, most modern human use of plants is through agriculture. The clearance of large tracts of land for crop growth has led to a significant reduction in the amount available of forestation and wetlands, resulting in the loss of habitat for many plant and animal species as well as increased erosion.
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: cactus, flowers, Nature, photos, sundown, sunset
Relevant Articles
Amazing nature
Spectacular views of coast
This post contain 28 photos of some amazing views of coast and nature that you ever seen. Take a few moments end enjoy in them….
Formation of Coasts
The main agents responsible for deposition and erosion along coastlines are waves, tides and rivers. The formation of coasts is also heavily influenced by their lithology. The harder the material the less likely it is to erode. Variants in the rock create different-shaped coastlines.
Whitefish Point
You MUST see these cool photo galleries!
Tags: coast, Nature, Types, view
