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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Physical geography > General
A Kind of Magic is a three-volume novel of eco-magical realism.
It's a book about transition: from childhood to adolescence; from
isolation to community; from passivity to action. From fantasy to
the real world. It is deliberately aimed at 4th - 6th graders, and
can be read as a whole or as three short school library books. A
Trick of the Light/Turtle Crossing/ThunderHawk: A Trilogy of short
books for middle-grade readers; following a boy's awakening to the
beauties and needs of the natural world around him, with the help
of his friends, his family, his community and the mysterious spirit
of the forest.
This document describes a protocol to monitor five terrestrial
plant communities in seven national parks within the Pacific Island
Network (PACN).
Clay Pond has a rich history that is shared by other residents of
the pond. Ask anyone there about the friendly turtle, and the other
wonderful friends, like Lacy the Dragonfly, who have made this
place a home over the past several years. Each creature has their
own unique tale to tell. Everyone in this place looks out for the
well being of all the others. If it were possible to claim each
other as family, they would do it in a heartbeat. It is, in a word,
a safe haven for anyone living in or around the pond. Many of my
stories in this whole collection are based on true incidents in my
writer life. As the reader, I hope you fall in love with this
nature world as I have drawn it. The purpose of compiling these
tales is to entertain, stir, or bring to remembrance some of the
readers' own experiences as they step out into their own nature
world around them.
The purpose of the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory &
Monitoring (I&M) Program is to develop and provide
scientifically credible information on the current status and
long-term trends of the composition, structure, and function of
park ecosystems, and to determine how well current management
practices are sustaining those ecosystems. As part of the NPS's
effort to improve park management through greater reliance on
scientific knowledge, a primary role of the I&M Program is to
collect, organize, and make available natural resource data and to
contribute to the NPS institutional knowledge by transforming data
into information through analysis, synthesis, and modeling of
specific key vital signs. The I&M Program defines vital signs
as a subset of physical, chemical, and biological elements and
processes of park ecosystems that is selected to represent the
overall health or condition of park resources, known or
hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important
human values.
Vegetation classification and mapping was conducted at Weir Farm
National Historic Site during the fall of 2003 and the summers of
2004 and 2005, creating a current digital geospatial vegetation
database for the park. There are nine natural vegetation types that
occur in the park; four upland forest types, one upland
non-vascular type, two forested wetland types, and two wetland
shrub thicket types that reflected the soil moisture conditions of
the site. In addition, four anthropogenic vegetation types
occurred; one successional forest and three non-forested types (two
in mowed upland fields, and one herbaceous wetland seep). Each of
these is described in detail in this report.
Since the late 1970s, the NPS Air Resources Division (ARD) has
managed a comprehensive air quality program, emphasizing the
collection of credible air quality information to support
scientifically sound resource management decisions in parks. In
general, air quality monitoring in parks, including monitoring of
atmospheric deposition, ozone, and visibility, is done in
conjunction with national networks. The authors describe the
atmospheric deposition monitoring protocol.
This study measured wetland trends in the conterminous United
States between 1998 and 2004. The estimates of estuarine emergent
area were made prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita during the
summer of 2005. The Cowardin et al. (1979) wetland definition was
used to describe wetland types. By design, intertidal wetlands of
the Pacific coast, reefs and submerged aquatic vegetation were
excluded from this study.
This study was requested by the park in recognition of the need for
soils information to assist in understanding the forest ecosystem,
potential fire effects, management of trails and buildings, and for
interpreting the Monument's cultural landscape. Existing soils
information for Cook County provided only a very broad overview,
with little or no field investigation to verify soil types or
provide information at a level of detail pertinent to or useful for
park needs.
A review of NPS species, the national database registering plant
occurrence in parks, indicated that 465 plant species occurred in
Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. Of these, 148 (32%) are
non-native, meaning that these plants were recently introduced
through human agency. The authors detail the status of invasive
plants and the resource management issue(s) for the park.
Market squid (Loligo opalescens) plays a vital role in the
California ecosystem and serves as a major link in the food chain
as both a predator and prey species.
The purpose of this publication is to report the findings of the
Service's wetlands inventory of Rhode Island.
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