and ice sheets that allow scientists to examine the layers of ice deposited over hundreds and thousands of years akin to tree rings that record
and enjoy sleeping in hollow trees rock crevices burrows or empty termite mounds. These speedy serpents can move faster than most people can run a fact that partly explains why they are feared so.
They are also all arboreal species residing in trees. They are known to drop from branches onto their prey below.
Jameson s mamba This is a slender snake that lives in trees and actively and speedily pursues its small animal prey during the day.
#Pine tree Yields Longest Genome Ever Sequenced Scientists say they've generated the longest genome sequence to date unraveling the genetic code of the loblolly pine tree.
Conifers have been around since the age of the dinosaurs and they have some of the biggest genomes of all living things.
Native to the U s. Southeast the loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) can grow over 100 feet (30 meters) tall
Understanding the loblolly pine's genetic code could lead to improved breeding of the tree which is used to make paper
The loblolly pine joins other recently sequenced conifers including the Norway spruce (Picea abies) which has 20 billion base pairs.
For their next project the researchers are eyeing the sugar pine a tree with 35 billion base pairs.
The freezing temperatures of the prolonged winter may have delayed the blooming of trees and now that it's finally warming up trees are expected to bloom at the same time as grasses causing a dramatic rise in pollen allergy experts said.
People who may have both tree allergies and grass allergies are probably going be impacted doubly because both of those things are going to be said blooming at the same time Dr. Lolita Mcdavid a pediatrician at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland Ohio.
The 5 Most Common Allergies About 8 percent of U s. adults suffer from seasonal allergies according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But that same precipitation may have encouraged actually the growth of trees and grass resulting in greater pollen release later in the season experts said.
Allergic rhinitis In the spring trees and grass start to produce pollen to which many people are allergic.
Unfortunately for the sloth their long claws 3 to 4 inches (8 to 10 centimeters) make walking on the ground difficult so they spend most of their time in the tall trees they call home.
and South america enjoying the tall trees found in rain and cloud forests. Sloths prefer sleeping
while curled into a ball in the fork of a tropical tree. They also like to sleep hanging by their claws from tree branches.
and eating in their tree homes. The only times these mammals leave their tree is to use the bathroom
and to take a swim. Sloths in captivity sleep from 15 to 20 hours per day which can leave them very little time for social activities.
The closest a sloth gets to social time is sleeping in the same tree with another sloth.
Sloths mate in trees and give birth to their young in trees. Courting starts when a female yells a mating scream to let the males in the area know she is ready to mate.
The green of the algae helps the sloth blend into the trees hiding it from predators.
While much of the delta is choked with salt-loving tamarisk (an invasive salt cedar) now conservationists hope to see more riparian habitat growing after the pulse flow:
cottonwood and willow forests along with wetlands thick with cattail marshes. The flood was timed for the spring seed release from these trees to provide moist ground for seedlings.
After the flood ends a lower-level base flow will continue through 2017 to rehydrate several restoration sites in the delta.
Gazelles can stand on their back legs to reach leaves high in the branches of trees e
Corks are made from the bark of Quercus suber trees commonly called cork oaks which grow only in southwest Europe and northwest Africa.
More and more low-quality cork trees with thin bark are sprouting up. 6 Unexpected Effects of Climate Change Now scientists think rising temperatures
and increased exposure to ultraviolet or UV light brought on by climate change may be behind chemical changes in the bark of cork oaks.
The change in bark quality may be the trees'way of adapting. Bark acts as the protective outer layer on trees that protects the plant from drought and shields against radiation.
Cork oaks have been growing thinner and more porous layers of bark. Cork producers need bark that's at least 27 millimeters (1 inch) thick to make a good cork
but most of the trees are now producing bark between 3 mm and 10 mm (0. 1 inches and 0. 4 inches) Teixeira and colleagues write in their study
which was published June 22 in the Journal of Experimental Botany. To figure out what might be causing the changes Teixeira and a team of researchers analyzed genes in the bark of five high-quality cork trees and five low-quality cork trees growing in Portugal.
The scientists discovered that heat shock proteins are essential to the bark of high-quality cork trees. These proteins help the tree grow normally even under stressful conditions like drought
and high temperatures and promote cell division that makes the bark grow thicker. Bad cork trees have fewer of these shock proteins
but they have more genes that produce huge amounts of phenolic compounds UV-absorbing chemicals that collect inside the bark.
Teixeira and colleagues found that poor-quality cork trees have twice as many phenolic compounds as good-quality cork trees
which suggests the bad-quality cork trees are adapting to protect themselves from elevated radiation levels.
The researchers also discovered that the trees with thin layers of bark have lots of lenticular channels small airways that allow gas exchange between the bark and the outside air.
Corks made from this kind of bark are considered low quality because the lenticular channels allow more air to enter the bottle.
and Fragrance Journal found that consumers could not tell the difference between wine corked with a natural oak-based cork
However many wine producers still prefer the original oak-based cork but the choice between a cork and a metal cap is debated hotly among wine enthusiasts.
Teixeira says that after more genetic testing it may be possible to select the best cork oaks for breeding
In the future it may even be possible to genetically engineer cork oaks with high-quality bark.
versus not enough heat reaching the surface of the Earth said study co-author Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington in Seattle.
and Tung an atmospheric scientist said they couldn't find the missing heat in Pacific ocean temperature measurements.
and under the Pacific we couldn't find enough heat to explain the hiatus Tung told Live Science.
Tung and Chen then searched ocean by ocean until they hit on the North Atlantic where the heat was playing hooky The pair primarily relied on Argo floats which record ocean temperature
Tung and Chen noticed that the North Atlantic's heat content (a measure of stored energy) shifted in 1999 about
The likely culprit is a natural climate cycle linked to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) current Tung said.
Such natural cycles make global warming look more like a staircase than a steady rise in temperatures Tung said.
By the end of the Devonian progymnosperms such as Archaeopteris were the first successful trees. Archaeopteris could grow up to 98 feet (30 meters) tall with a trunk diameter of more than 3 feet.
It had a softwood trunk similar to modern conifers that grew in sequential rings. It did not have true leaves
when our bodies produce allergic antibodies to the proteins in tree and grass pollens. The antibodies then sit in the immune cells we have on all surfaces of our bodies in contact with the outside.
Pollens from birch alder and hazel trees are the biggest culprits in the UK causing early spring symptoms.
So if you re sensitive to both tree and grass pollens then inconvenience is guaranteed from February right through until August of any given year.
There is nothing innately harmful about tree pollen for example but some people's immune systems look at tree pollens
and say'I'm going to have a reaction to this'Costa said. If you didn't have allergies as a kid it can happen to you as an adult he said.
But he said the wind-carried pollens from trees grasses and weeds that cause seasonal allergies are very light and stay airborne for a long time.
In contrast pollens from trees (such as birch oak elm maple and cottonwood) grasses and weeds are very light
Unlike with tree and grass pollens you can control your exposure to flowers Costa said.
Perhaps the cuddliest is the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) a mini-carnivore that lives in the trees of Andean cloud forests.
The mother of dragons tree (actually known as Keweesak's Dragon tree) is a gorgeous 40-foot-tall (12 m) monster found in Thailand.
The tree has elongated leaves and creamy white flowers with orange filaments reminiscent of dragon fire. A world away but seemingly from the same tale is Tinkerbella nana an unbelievably small parasitoid wasp with feathery delicate wings.
and slender limbs and lurks on rocks and trees during its nighttime hunts. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+.
Based on the longstanding research at the Ecological Restoration Institute of Northern Arizona University these treatments included protecting the older trees mechanically thinning small young trees in select areas around the community to remove unnaturally high densities of trees
and kill trees. The fact that there were treatments between Flagstaff and the Slide Fire accomplished several things perhaps the most important
The dry frequent-fire forests of the West evolved with this type of fire a slow-moving low severity surface fire that would remove young trees
and provide ample fuel for high-severity crown fires that kill old-growth trees. These catastrophic fires can be difficult and costly to contain
In Arizona we still have 15 million to 20 million acres of forest including ponderosa pine pinyon juniper
and mixed conifer all primed to burn. And it is not a matter of if they will burn but when.
Living trees take in carbon dioxide which they need to grow. Dead trees release their stored carbon back into the atmosphere through decay.</
</p><p>Full Story:<<a href=http://www. livescience. com/44235-amazon-rainforest-carbon-cycle-measured. html target=blank>Amazon Rainforest Breathes In More than It Breathes Out</a p><p>Tattoos are all about self-expression
Starving Rats Ate Trees By now most of North america has thawed out from a brutal winter that introduced unhappy phrases such as polar vortex into the lexicon.
One surprise was the discovery that starving rats in New york city had attacked the trees in urban parks for sustenance.
So they went after the trees. 6 Invasive Pests Threatened by Cold weather The trees which even in winter have some carbohydrates mostly sucrose) in the vascular tissue beneath their bark had been gnawed by rats all the way around the base of the trunk a practice called girdling that usually kills a tree.
Invasive pests'march halted In addition to rats a number of other pests had a rough time during the winter of 2013-2014
Invasive insects such as the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) and the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) both of which have decimated native tree populations in the Northeast may have had their march across America slowed
Other invasive pests vulnerable to subzero temperatures include the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) the brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) and several species of ticks (Ixodes sp.
Larry Linden a former partner at Goldman sachs who founded the Linden Trust for Conservation (LTC;
#Trees: Unlikely Culprits in Ozone Pollution Pollution from forests? As this map shows trees do emit compounds that can worsen ozone and increase aerosols in the atmosphere.
The purple areas on this map show places where satellites have detected formaldehyde. This chemical forms from isoprene a volatile organic compound that trees can give off
when temperatures are hot. Trees also emit compounds called terpenes. Both isoprenes and terpenes interact with sunlight to create a sort of natural smog.
This haze is where the Great smoky mountains get their name. Terpenes may be the reason that climate change has yet to influence temperatures in the Smokies
But tree pollution has its downsides too because it can contribute to high ozone levels near the ground said NASA's Earth Observatory.
These effects have lent sometimes themselves to misconceptions perhaps most famously President Ronald Reagan's 1981 statement that trees pollute more than cars. 6 Politicians Who Got the Science Wrong
and because forests absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere slowing climate change it would make little sense to go after killer trees in the war against pollution.
During a recent trip to Utah I came across an iconic gnarly tree clinging to the top of the canyon wall at Dead Horse Point State Park and
While one of my cameras shot time-lapse footage of the Milky way moving across the sky behind the tree
I wanted to make sure the final image of the scene centered on this amazing tree so
I processed the images again to extract as much shadow detail as possible from the tree bushes canyon walls and ground.
The La Sal mountain range is directly behind the tree and the bright light to the left of the tree is light pollution coming from the town of Moab
which is about 10 miles away from that spot as the crow flies. The light-colored stripe just to the left of the tree at the bottom of the canyon is one of the evaporation ponds at a potash mining facility just outside of Moab.
Taylor's most recent image post was Aurora at Moonlight. The views expressed are those of the author
Trees That Dominate the Rain forest Researchers already knew that angiosperms had diversified and spread before the dino-killing meteorite smashed into Earth and reset life on the planet 65 million years ago.
In modern tropical forests sun-loving trees grab the most energy with tightly packed leaf veins
while trees relegated to the shade have leaves with veins spaced wider apart. This leaf vein density is a hallmark of photosynthesis
because a litter assemblage is the closest analog to a fossil flora the leaves that have fallen from the trees accumulated on the ground
Just as volcanic ash entombed the citizens of the ancient Roman city dental plaque preserved bacteria and food particles on the skeletons'teeth.
#Chernobyl Trees Barely Decomposed, Study Finds Almost 30 years ago the world's attention was fixed on Chernobyl the nuclear power plant in Ukraine that exploded in one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.
The dead trees plants and leaves at the contaminated site don't decay at nearly the same rate as plants elsewhere researchers have found.
We were stepping over all these dead trees on the ground that had been killed by the initial blast Tim Mousseau a professor of biology at the University of South carolina said in a statement.
If a tree had fallen in my backyard it would be sawdust in 10 years or so.
Much of their work has taken them into the Red Forest the infamous wooded region surrounding Chernobyl where the trees turned an ominous reddish-brown color before dying.
Some species though lay their eggs in tree holesground tunnels rock cavities and termite mounds.
Last week at a coffee farm in Costa rica I stumbled upon hundreds of butterflies probably some kind of Heliconius species all fluttering around a particular spot.
what particular plant attracted the butterflies at the coffee farm but there are a number of sweet-smelling plants around the area.
#Garcinia cambogia: Weight-Loss Supplement May be Toxic to Some The use of Garcinia cambogia a popular weight-loss supplement may pose health risks to people who are taking certain antidepressants a recent case report suggests.
Last year in Oregon a 35-year-old woman who had been taking Garcinia cambogia supplements for two
or three months while also taking an antidepressant started stuttering and sweating profusely. In the emergency room of a local hospital the medical staff noted that the woman's heart rate
I am hesitant to label it Garcinia cambogia as a dangerous supplement because until we see more than one case we want to make sure that this actually is something that is going to occur said Dr. Robert Hendrickson one of the authors of the case report.
However previous studies on people and animals have shown that Garcinia cambogia may indeed increase serotonin levels.
Garcinia cambogia also known as tamarind is a small pumpkin-shaped fruit and diet supplements made from it are touted for helping people lose weight.
A 2010 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified microfossils of plants such as date palms legumes and grass seeds stuck in Neanderthal teeth.
#Will Iconic Sequoias Fall to Climate Change? SACRAMENTO Calif. California's iconic trees the giant sequoias may sail through the state's current extreme drought.
The huge trees survived even drier conditions during their long lives studies show. The oldest sequoias live for more than 3000 years.
But will giant sequoias still be around as California's climate shifts under the influence of global warming?
It's hard to know there are still too many unsolved mysteries about these massive trees many scientists say.
Even during California's last serious drought in the 1970s giant sequoias started growing faster though no one is sure
what is driving the gains. But climate models forecast even warmer and drier conditions by 2100 for California which could make the sequoias'mountain soil too parched for the world's biggest trees.
To better understand how to protect and preserve giant sequoias scientists are looking at how sequoias live today
and where they lived in the past. We're particularly concerned about the giant sequoias because they're really dependent on the snow melt in the Sierras said Anthony Ambrose a research scientist at the University of California Berkeley (UCB).
Nature's Giants: Photos of the Tallest Trees On earth Biggest straw On earth Since the 1950s the Sierra nevada snowpack has shrunk by nearly 15 percent.
With less winter snow which sequoias rely on for much of their summer water supply both trees
and their seedlings may suffer during long dry summers. The Sierra nevada mountains are the only place in the world where sequoias are found.
The President Tree an enormous 3240-year-old tree in Sequoia National park slurps 2831 liters (748 gallons) of water every day during its growing season according to research presented here at the Ecological Society of America's annual
meeting Aug 11 through Aug 14. All Yours: The 10 Least Visited National parks (Photos) All that water supplies the mighty tree's huge amount of wood and almost 2 billion leaves.
The leaves alone weigh in at just over 2 tons (1831 kilograms) Ambrose said. That's just mind-boggling he said.
Ambrose and his colleagues climb sequoias and their cinnamon-colored cousins the coast redwood measuring how the trees change from bottom to top.
The study is part of the 10-year Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative funded by the Save the Redwoods League in San francisco. From their preliminary results they found the leaves at the tops of these tall trees seem different than those at the bottom.
The tallest sequoias top out at more than 250 feet (76 meters) and some fallen trees are even longer.)
The lofty leaves seem more resistant to tension from water pressure from the tree working to pull water from its roots
and they have different levels of carbon and oxygen than lower leaves the researchers reported at the meeting.
Measuring these elements can reveal more information about how sequoias use water Ambrose said. At the root level sequoias influence the surrounding soil researchers have discovered.
On the downhill side of the trees where more leaves and branches pile up the ph is compared higher to soil beneath nearby sugar pines Stephen Hart an ecologist at the University of California Merced reported at the meeting.
Hart and his students tested soils in Yosemite national park's sequoia groves and found more nitrogen calcium magnesium and phosphorous in the soils near sequoias.
The fertility of the entire soil is enhanced Hart said. Withstanding drought A drought could also be hard for seedlings and young trees
which don't have developed well root systems that can tap water supplies. But giant sequoia seedlings seem to have an effective drought response they completely shut down tiny pores in their leaves called stomata.
Closing their stomata blocks water loss but it also means the plants can't photosynthesize.
Instead they live on storage water explained lead researcher Stefania Mambelli a plant ecophysiologist at UCB.
Mambelli and her colleagues have raised giant sequoia and coast redwood seedlings in a nursery and shut off water to the plants for six weeks to mimic drought conditions.
Scientists are concerned also that climate change could bring a new danger to the giant sequoias via diseases.
It doesn't take moisture stress alone to kill a tree said Koren Nydick an ecologist at the Sequoia
and Kings Canyon National parks. Sequoias are normally resistant to most diseases that plague California's forests.
But a giant sequoia planted by John Muir in the San francisco bay 85 years ago outside its natural range is now dying of a fungal disease Nydick said.
And coast redwoods are not only carriers for sudden oak death they are also four times more susceptible to fire damage because of the fungus
which has killed tens of thousands of California oaks according to a study published in October 2013 in the journal Ecology.
Sequoias alive today have survived droughts. But a 1992 U s. Forest Service study of ancient pollen from a mountain meadow in Sequoia National park suggests there were fewer giant sequoias 4500 years ago
when the California climate was drier. That leads us to ask if they were near extinction Nydick said.
Despite their resistance and their huge storage capacity there is a threshold. Are we going to reach that?
Email Becky Oskin or follow her@beckyoskin. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Live Science e
#Facts About Elephants African elephants & Asian Elephants Elephants are the largest land animals On earth. They have characteristic long noses or trunks;
large floppy ears; and wide thick legs. There are two species of elephant. The Asian elephant and the African elephant live on separate continents
They use their tusks to pull the bark from trees and dig roots out of the ground.
and these sluggish tree-dwellers also serve as a hotel for moths and algae.</</p><p>Three-toed sloths descend from the trees once a week to defecate providing a breeding ground for moths that live in the animals'fur
and nourishing gardens of algae that supplement the sloths'diet new research finds. Leaving the trees burns energy
and makes sloths easy prey for predators but the benefits of a richer diet appear to be worth the perils.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/42744-why-sloths-leave-trees-to-poop. html target=blank>Why Sloths Leave the Trees to Poop</a p><p></p
and plant trees with the combined goals of preventing erosion storing rainwater and providing food and firewood to local people.
What began as a small project has grown into a network of 600 community groups that tend 6000 tree nurseries with an incredible 51 million trees planted on both public and private Kenyan lands.
Schoolteacher farmer and international carbon consultant Beatrice Ahimbisibwe too knows the value of planting trees.
In 2003 she began reforesting a one-hectare plot on her farm in Uganda after signing up for Uganda-based Ecotrust's Trees for Global Benefits carbon-credit program.
The first to join the program Ahimbisibwe gets paid in increments over its 10-year life for planting and growing trees.
After those 10 years she can harvest her trees and sell them. Her fellow villagers who declined to participate told her that people would come
when a popular nest tree is coming up. Sometimes for reasons known only to the eagles a tree might go without a nest for a year or two.
We remember those trees too. After flying over all those nests we've gotten pretty good at quickly gauging the age of eagle chicks by evaluating size and plumage.
These flights involve more than just keeping track of the numbers of breeding eagles in our territory.
or grow on trees but when it comes to chocolate it seems you can have both.
Chocolate really does grow on trees and the chemical feel-good factor comes from the world s most widely consumed psychoactive drug.
The Theobroma cacao is an evergreen that is native to tropical regions of the American continent and its seeds or beans are the source of the 4m metric tonnes of chocolate produced each year and much of it from countries like the Ivory coast and Indonesia.
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