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Tag: environment

Char char char (#15 in Namibia single-image series)

Published December 18, 2022 by Pelidoug

Char char char (#15 in Namibia single-image series)

 

 

A Wikipedia list of 182 counties, ranked by average annual precipitation, has Colombia allegedly wettest and Egypt driest – respectively, 3,240 mm and 18 mm.

155 nations are allegedly “wetter” than Namibia; its reported annual average of 285 mm is a little more than half of the figure given for nation #141 – Australia.

Yet Namibian-harvested hardwood is the basis for an industry which currently yields more than 70 million Australian dollars worth of annual export income…and that figure is set to soar.

It has nothing to do with construction timbers or wooden furniture.

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Word power: “soundscape enrichment” entices oysters…

Published October 29, 2022 by Pelidoug

Word power: “soundscape enrichment” entices oysters…

 

 

From a research article published this week in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology:

Our results suggest that the enrichment of natural soundscapes using underwater speakers may provide an efficient solution for boosting early recruitment and habitat building by oysters.

However, caution the researchers, restoration practitioners must consider the potential for negative impacts from speaker enrichment.

A question for you, dear reader:

before you read the quoted words, had you ever contemplated oysters’ “hearing”, much less their response to sounds played through underwater speakers?

 

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)

Published August 17, 2022 by Pelidoug

McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #9 in series (third of three “strangers in Paradise”)

 

This kookaburra, perched on a grave cross, has something in common with most of the humans who have been buried in Perth’s largest cemetery over the past 123 years.

In 2022, most living WA humans do not know what it is; most of them, in fact, have a quite wrong view of kookaburras’ “place” in southwestern Australia.

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Peerless artist revealed (answer to previous post’s question)

Published August 1, 2022 by Pelidoug

Peerless artist revealed (answer to previous post’s question)

Peerless artist:  nature.

Medium: fresh, unpolluted water – in this instance,  naturally infused with plant oils and tannins as it is river-rushed, and whipped by wind and waterfall, then briefly detained in the rock-rimmed pool immediately below the waterfall.

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Coorong National Park (northern part, Autumn 2022)

Published May 25, 2022 by Pelidoug

Coorong National Park (northern part, Autumn 2022)

The featured image and the one below were both taken from a boat on the Coorong-proper – Australia’s longest lagoon.

Both photos look across its waters to the Younghusband Peninsula – the dune field that separates the Coorong from the Southern Ocean.

Sand and water are the Coorong National Park’s key components.

The former arrives via wind, and Southern Ocean waves.

Most of the “fresh”-ish supply of the latter is delivered by the Murray-Darling river system.

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Murray River meets Southern Ocean: little big mouth

Published May 22, 2022 by Pelidoug

Murray River meets Southern Ocean: little big mouth

 

The featured image’s Southern Ocean waves are breaking on the Younghusband Peninsula’s narrowest, northernmost section.

The peninsula’s tip is the southern “lip” of the mouth of Australia’s biggest river system;  the cormorants are on the “freshwater side”, as was yours truly at 3.35 pm on 30 March 2022.

If you have never been to this spot, you may be thinking, “it looks splendidly wild, barely touched by humans”.

Alas, you would be very wrong….

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Stirling Range, after fire

Published April 11, 2021 by Pelidoug

Stirling Range, after fire

 

 

At 1,159 square kilometres Stirling Range National Park is “large”, or “small”, depending on one’s perspective.

Four hours drive northwest, Perth – Western Australia’s sprawling metropolis  – occupies more than five times as much ground.

The Stirlings’ “footprint” is less than one 209th of the United Kingdom’s 242, 495 square kilometres.

Botanically, however, the Stirling Range is much the “bigger”/“hotter” place!

It has more flowering plant species than does the entire UK; many of them grow only in or near the Stirling Range.

Two recent “catastrophic” fires seemingly “destroyed” much more than half of what had been growing there…

 

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