Each year, millions of people travel to the Stanislaus Forest to recreate and to enjoy the scenic vistas of the mountains and river canyons. Many visitors don’t realize that national forests are not parks, but are instead lands that have a legal mandate to provide a wide range of "multiple uses". CSERC engages at every opportunity to advocate for a better balance of those uses and to promote higher protections for water, wildlife and wild places. National Forest environmental issues arise from the many uses that occur on public lands, from logging to recreation. For many decades, the national forests of America have been hotbeds of controversy as Congress, industrial groups, anti- environmental organizations, and local control groups have pressed for high levels of logging, grazing, mining, road-building, and other uses on public forest lands.
0 Comments
The environment is everything around us, the air we breathe, the water we drink and use, and the food we consume. It is also the chemicals, radiation, microbes, and the physical forces with which we come into contact. Environmental health programs at the local, state, and federal level work to prevent illness, disability, and death that arise from interactions between people and the environment. There are various team that work in different fields to prevent health issues due to the environment. For example, there is the food protection team, the land use team, residential services and technical services. The land use team samples drinking water and submits it for bacterial analysis, reviews plans, soil analysis, and conducts site investigations, issues permits and evaluates new or repaired sewage management systems on spetic tanks. Also, evaluates data and property, issues permits for installation of sewage management systems on Commercial Sewage Systems. The food protection teams go to restaurants and reviews and approves plans, issues permits, and conducts ongoing inspections throughout the year. They also investigate food borne illness complaints. In Tourist accommodations they routine evaluation and inspection of hotels. Also at Temporary Event Permits they evaluates and permits food services for festivals Coral Reefs Coral reefs cover an area of over 280,000 km2 and support thousands of species in what many describe as the rainforests of the seas. Coral reefs benefit the environment and people in numerous ways. For example, they protect shores from the impact of waves and from storms, provide benefits to humans in the form of food and medicine, provide economic benefits to local communities from tourism. In the past few years, concerns about coral reefs have been raisen. Twenty percent of the world’s coral reefs have been effectively destroyed and show no immediate prospects of recovery, approximately 40% of the 16% of the world’s reefs that were seriously damaged in 1998 are either recovering well or have recovered, the report predicts that 24% of the world’s reefs are under imminent risk of collapse through human pressures; and a further 26% are under a longer term threat of collapse. Ecologically speaking the value of coral reefs is even greater because they are integral to the well being of the oceans as we know them. Picture reefs as the undersea equivalent of rainforest trees. Tropical waters are naturally low in nutrients because the warm water limits nutrients essential for life from welling up from the deep, which is why they are sometimes called a marine desert. Through the photosynthesis carried out by their algae, coral serve as a vital input of food into the tropical/sub-tropical marine food-chain, and assist in recycling the nutrients too. The reefs provide home and shelter to over 25% of fish in the ocean and up to two million marine species. They are also a nursery for the juvenile forms of many marine creatures. Russia The Russian Federation is the largest country on Earth. As such, its environmental problems and policies have global consequences. Yet assessing Russia’s environmental quality and environmental policies is challenging. Russia’s biomes range from polar desert to temperate rain forest. The size and diversity of biome types, as well as the uneven distribution of human settlement and natural resource use,make it difficult to generalize about overall environmental quality. In addition, Russia has experienced immense political, economic, and social changes since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.In the post-Soviet period, Russia is developing new patterns of resource use and new strategies of environmental management with changing implications for environmental quality. Public activism on environmental issues has varied with changing political and economic conditions as well. This article contextualizes scientific findings on Russian environmental quality in five issue areas water quality, the state of forests ,air quality, within a review of the social scientific literature on the political, economic, and social factors that underpin environmental protection and activism, from the Soviet period to the present. As is the case with many natural resources in Russia, the state of water quality largely depends upon local conditions. In zones of heavy human impact, particular causes of poor water quality vary but are generally the result of overuse of water resources, inadequate water distribution and water treatment in frastructure, and proximity of polluting industry. Secondly, Owing to a combination of reduced industrial production and some improvements in cleaning methods at the point of origin, emissions of SO2 and heavy metals appear to be on the decline regionally. However, it is difficult to make confident generalizations about air quality in Russia as a whole because coverage by monitoring stations is poor, independently generated data and peer-reviewed studies are limited, and scientists must rely heavily on government reports with the inherent limitations. Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago situated in the north Atlantic Ocean. Months back Madeira experienced a forest fire that spread widely and ended up reaching the main city, Funchal. The fire started due to high temperatures, dehydration of woodland and powerful winds. Wildfire is a part of nature. It plays a key role in shaping ecosystems by serving as an agent of renewal and change. But fire can be deadly, destroying homes, wildlife habitat and timber, and polluting the air with emissions harmful to human health. Fire also releases carbon dioxide- a key greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Fire’s effect on the landscape may be long-lasting. Fire effects are influenced by forest conditions before the fire and management action taken or not taken after the fire. Fires may contribute to temporary changes in air quality. Air quality on a regional scale is affected only when many acres are burned on the same day. Local problems are more frequent and occasionally acute due to the large quantities of smoke that can be produced in a given area during a short period of time. Smoke consists of small particles of ash, partly consumed fuel, and liquid droplets. Other combustion products include invisible gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, and small quantities of nitrogen oxides. Oxides of nitrogen are usually produced at temperatures only reached in piled or windrowed slash or in very intense wildfires. In general, fires produce inconsequential amounts of these gases that we should not be taking into our systems. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2018
Categories |