A biome is a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment in which they are found and a shared regional climate. Biomes may span more than one continent. Biome is a broader term than habitat and can comprise a variety of habitats.
Honduras is a country in Central America. Honduras borders the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean. Guatemala lies to the west, Nicaragua south east and El Salvador to the south west. Honduras is the second largest Central American republic, with a total area of 112,890 square kilometres (43,590 sq mi).
Guatemala is mountainous, except for the south coastal area and the vast northern lowlands of Petén department. The country is located in Central America and bounded to the north and west by Mexico, to the east by Belize and by the Gulf of Honduras, to the east by Honduras, to the southeast by El Salvador, and to the south by the Pacific Ocean. Two mountain chains enter Guatemala from west to east, dividing the country into three major regions: the highlands, where the mountains are located; the Pacific coast, south of the mountains; and the limestone plateau of the Petén region, north of the mountains. These areas vary in climate, elevation, and landscape, providing dramatic contrasts between hot and humid tropical lowlands and highland peaks and valleys.
Benthos, also known as benthon, is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream, also known as the benthic zone. This community lives in or near marine or freshwater sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths.
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business process and farming practices. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change, water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without damage to human or natural systems. It involves preventing adverse effects to soil, water, biodiversity, surrounding or downstream resources—as well as to those working or living on the farm or in neighboring areas. Elements of sustainable agriculture can include permaculture, agroforestry, mixed farming, multiple cropping, and crop rotation.
Agroforestry is a land use management system in which combinations of trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland. Agroforestry combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems. There are many benefits to agroforestry such as increasing farm profitability. In addition, agroforestry helps to preserve and protect natural resources such as controlling soil erosions, creating habitat for the wildlife, and managing animal waste. Benefits also include increased biodiversity, improved soil structure and health, reduced erosion, and carbon sequestration.
Parachromis managuensis is a large species of cichlid native to freshwater habitats in Central America, where it is found from Honduras to Costa Rica. The binomial name refers to Lake Managua in Nicaragua, from which the holotype was obtained. It is a food fish and is also found in the aquarium trade where it is variously known as the jaguar cichlid, managuense cichlid, managua cichlid, guapote tigre, Aztec cichlid, spotted guapote and jaguar guapote. In Costa Rica it is known as the guapote tigre.
Thorichthys is a genus of cichlid fish that is native to the Atlantic slope of Middle America, ranging from southern Veracruz and the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, to Guatemala and Honduras, with introduced populations in a few other countries. They tend to inhabit moderately-flowing to standing water such as rivers, streams, lakes, ditches and lagoons, and they are primarily freshwater fish, although T. helleri and T. meeki may occur in slightly brackish habitats.
Overdrafting is the process of extracting groundwater beyond the equilibrium yield of an aquifer. Groundwater is one of the largest sources of fresh water and is found underground. The primary cause of groundwater depletion is the excessive pumping of groundwater up from underground aquifers.
Amatitlania is a genus of cichlid fishes native to freshwater habitats in Central America from El Salvador and Guatemala to Panama. They are fairly small cichlids, typically reaching up to 6.4–10 cm (2.5–4 in) in standard length depending on exact species, although captives may grow larger.
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of Rhodophyta (red), Phaeophyta (brown) and Chlorophyta (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as kelps provide essential nursery habitat for fisheries and other marine species and thus protect food sources; other species, such as planktonic algae, play a vital role in capturing carbon, producing at least 50% of Earth's oxygen.
Freshwater biology is the scientific biological study of freshwater ecosystems and is a branch of limnology. This field seeks to understand the relationships between living organisms in their physical environment. These physical environments may include rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, lakes, reservoirs, or wetlands. Knowledge from this discipline is also widely used in industrial processes to make use of biological processes involved with sewage treatment and water purification. Water presence and flow is an essential aspect to species distribution and influences when and where species interact in freshwater environments.
Profundulus is a genus of fish in the family Profundulidae endemic to Mexico and northern Central America. It was regarded as the only genus in the Profundulidae but workers have split the genus and raised a second genus Tlaloc.
At the global scale sustainability and environmental management involves managing the oceans, freshwater systems, land and atmosphere, according to sustainability principles.
Climate change in Virginia encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Virginia.
Climate change in Senegal will have wide reaching impacts on many aspects of life in Senegal. Climate change will cause an increase in average temperatures over west Africa by between 1.5 and 4 °C by mid-century, relative to 1986–2005. Projections of rainfall indicate an overall decrease in rainfall and an increase in intense mega-storm events over the Sahel. The sea level is expected to rise faster in West Africa than the global average. Although Senegal is currently not a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, it is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Climate change and invasive species refers to the process of the environmental destabilization caused by climate change. This environmental change facilitates the spread of invasive species — species that are not historically found in a certain region, and often bring about a negative impact to that region's native species. This complex relationship is notable because climate change and invasive species are also considered by the USDA to be two of the top four causes of global biodiversity loss.
The Dry Corridor or Central American Dry Corridor (CADC) is a tropical dry forest region on the Pacific Coast of Central America. This area, which extends from southern Mexico to Panama, is extremely vulnerable to climate change due to much of the population living in rural areas and in poverty, and thus dependent on grain crops for their livelihood.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing land to help adapt agricultural methods, livestock and crops to the effects of climate change and, where possible, counteract it by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while taking into account the growing world population to ensure food security. The emphasis is not simply on carbon farming or sustainable agriculture, but also on increasing agricultural productivity.
Notonuphar is an extinct genus of water lily in the family Nymphaeaceae. It contains a single species, Notonuphar antarctica. It is only known only from the Eocene-aged La Meseta Formation of Seymour Island, Antarctica.
