- Industry: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
- Number of blossaries: 0
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
A north-south measurement of position on the Earth, from the equator at 0° to the North Pole or South Pole at 90°. An east-west line connecting places of the same latitude is a parallel. Latitude is measured in degrees, minutes, and seconds. See Longitude.
Industry:Biology
Extremely complex molecules of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other elements joined in chains of amino acids (peptides). Protein constitutes the bulk of living matter, gives it structure, and has something to do in almost every aspect of cell operation.
Industry:Biology
A microorganism that makes its host sick. Certain viruses, bacteria, and authoritarian flag-waving fanatics are common examples of pathogens. They tend to be parasites that weaken the organisms they feed upon until self-protective systems get rid of them.
Industry:Biology
A bioregional summation of a place. It usually includes a map, information about notable plants and animals, a historical outline, facts about early dwellers, photographs, a brief environmental assessment, and in some cases journal entries and artwork.
Industry:Biology
The formation of laterite, an infertile red clay soil used for durable bricks in the tropic and subtropics, where rains and hot sunlight combine to wash minerals out of the soil before baking it dry. Triggers huge landslides in recently deforested areas.
Industry:Biology
Using natural means like predators to control pests, like growing ginger to repel snails and slugs and nasturtiums to ward off aphids, which are also food for ladybugs and lacewing moths. Goldfish placed in water storage containers eat incoming mosquitos.
Industry:Biology
The strengthening of a harmful and usually toxic substance as it moves up the food chain, as with DDT growing 400 times deadlier in seagulls and other carnivores than when first ingested by marsh animals.
Industry:Biology
Soil nutrients (not including carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen) needed in relatively large amounts by plants: nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sulfur. Soils lacking one or more of them are sometimes given amendments to add what's needed.
Industry:Biology
The conversion of sunlight and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose (used for energy, starch, cellulose, etc. ). Plants do it with a light-sensitive organelles called chloroplasts. Photosynthesis gives us not only food, but the atmosphere we breathe.
Industry:Biology
Plant species that bears and seeds more than once. Perennials tend to take longer to produce a food yield than the quick-growing annuals so heavily exploited by traditional agriculture, but they last longer and do better in marginal soils. See Annual.
Industry:Biology
