Grow Your Own Energy

By Winifred Bird

The 17 supernovas are gone. So are some of the fossil fuel megastars. In their place glow far more smaller pools of light, each surrounded by a small, dense frizz of transmission lines feeding nearby homes and shops. And the light sprinkle of dust you saw in 2012? It’s now as thick as powdered sugar on a beignet.

If proponents of a decentralized, or distributed, energy system have their way, this is what Japan’s future electricity grid will look like. We don’t just need to shift to renewable energy sources, they say. We also need to fundamentally change the way we think about producing, storing, and generating electricity.

“The attempt to say we can keep a top down vertically integrated system and just put wind farms in the pipeline rather than nuclear plants is bogus,” said Paris-based international energy policy consultant Mycle Schneider, one of Europe’s leading proponents of getting out of nuclear and into renewable energies. “The basic question is: what are the energy service needs? Absolutely nobody needs kilowatt hours. People need light, cooked food, communication, and mobility. How do you provide these services to a given community in the most intelligent way? The way that turns out to be the most efficient is to do it on a local level, as decentralized as possible.”

In Japan the concept is often called “enerugi no chisan-chisho,” a phrase adopted from the local food movement. It directly translates as “local production and consumption of energy,” and more loosely as “grow your own energy.” Like the globalized industrial food system, Japan’s energy system is unsustainable, risky, and controlled by huge corporations. As of 2008, 90 percent of Japan’s electricity came from fossil fuels and nuclear reactors. Due to distribution inefficiencies, five percent of that was lost during transmission from the giant power plants to consumers. 

Why not unplug from that quagmire and create something smaller and better one community at a time? A handful of local governments, academics, and NPOs were already thinking about how to do that before 3/11. Then the disaster hit, bringing widespread power outages to Tohoku and exposing the rotting foundation of the nuclear power industry. Now, communities across Japan are thinking seriously about how to achieve energy independence. 

Kamaishi, a steel and fishing town on the coast of Iwate prefecture that lost over 1,000 people in the disaster, is among them. “We lost electricity for up to a month in some areas [after 3/11]. Until last year, we’d only had pre-planned blackouts,” Kamaishi city hall employee Takahiro Sasa told me in February 2012. A confident middle-aged man dressed smartly in a double-breasted suit, Sasa heads up both corporate relations and renewable energy development. He said the disaster changed how he and many others in town think about energy security. “We now believe we need to ensure that each part of town has its own independent energy source, at least to a certain extent. If there hadn’t been a disaster like this, I don’t think we’d have thought much about it,” he said.

In fact, Kamaishi was already generating quite a bit of electricity before 3/11. Nippon Steel Corporation runs a large thermal power plant at its factory, and there’s also a wind farm with 43 1,000-kW-capacity turbines in the mountains a short drive from downtown. However, because electricity from these sources flows into a large regional grid operated by Tohoku Electric Power Company (Tohoku EPCO) rather than directly to local homes and businesses, it made little difference during the disaster. Sasa said he and his colleagues hope to reconfigure the grid so that, in the future, the town can use any electricity produced there. They also plan to add another 60 wind turbines in the next five years, put solar panels on recovery housing, help the steel mill transit from fossil fuels to wood waste and other biomass energy forms, and develop whatever other potential sources of renewable energy they can. The idea is not to cut off ties to the regional grid or go 100% renewable, but, rather, to produce and distribute enough electricity locally to meet basic needs in an emergency.

Achieving that goal could be difficult. “Even if communities want to use what they generate, the current system doesn’t allow them to do so,” explained environmental economist Hidefumi Kurasaka, a strong proponent of community-led renewable energy development. Last year, Kurasaka’s research lab at Chiba University issued a list of Japan’s “energy sustainable zones.” According to the report, electricity generated from renewable sources exceeded total demand in 82 communities in 2010. Almost none of those communities were actually using the electricity they generated, however. 

Kurasaka explained that while anyone can generate electricity for their own home or company using solar panels or other micro technologies, things get complicated when producers decide to send electricity to other users. To begin with, government regulations generally prevent towns or companies from building and managing their own local transmission grids. Grid construction is also prohibitively expensive, and most cities lack the technical expertise needed to manage a grid or design energy policy (Tokyo is one of the few exceptions). Instead, huge regional utilities control the transmission networks. Renewable energy developers have little choice but to plug into these networks, which usually carry their electricity out of town and bring in electricity generated at thermal or nuclear plants elsewhere.

Sasa said that, in the case of Kamaishi, Tohoku Electric’s control over the transmission grid has made renewable energy development difficult. “In the planning process for the wind farm, we faced the issue of grid connection,” he said. “We identified one location on the grid we found, we could have used a short connecting cable. We thought it would be good to connect there. But the utility said it wasn’t possible because the windmills would produce more electricity than their line could handle. In the end, a 40-kilometer connection had to be built [to a supposedly better connection point]. The line cost 400 million yen. If the connection had been shorter, say only one or two kilometers in length, there would have been greater profitability. The scale of the wind farm had to be expanded to make construction worthwhile.” 

Takahashi Suzuki, a press officer at Tohoku Electric, was not able to confirm that the utility turned down Kamaishi’s initial request. He said Tohoku Electric had offered one connection point about 20 kilometers from the wind farm, and added the utility’s recovery plan for the disaster area includes measures to increase renewable energy and related infrastructure. But he also admitted that, in the past, the utility has frequently been unable to offer connection points as close to renewable energy facilities as producers request, or to accept all applications for grid connection. “There are limits to the amount of renewable energy our grid can handle, and the number of wind power developers requesting grid connection has increased. In 2011 we instituted a bidding and lottery system,” he said. 

Grid limitations come up often in arguments against a rapid shift toward decentralized generation of renewable electricity. The amount of electricity from certain renewable sources (solar and wind in particular) varies widely throughout the day and year. If storage systems, monitoring technology, and other “smart grid” innovations are not incorporated along with new types of energy, electricity supply can become unstable. One way to dilute these fluctuations is to feed renewable energies into a grid with a large supply of nuclear or thermal power available around the clock every day of the year. 

“Many people have a tendency to want to discuss the distributed style of energy supply systems,” noted Keisuke Murakami, director of the new and renewable energy division at the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) – a bureaucratic body historically allied with the nuclear and thermal power industries – at a press conference earlier this year. “Of course it’s a very important issue. But still, the renewable energy supply is very unstable so the logical solution is to connect very big pools of supply and demand.”

To a degree, Murakami’s argument makes sense. If Japan were to suddenly destroy its national electricity grid and replace it with isolated microgrids fed only by renewable resources available locally, communities would be extremely vulnerable to local fluctuations in supply and demand, as well as to localized natural disasters. But this is not what most proponents of “growing your own energy” envision. Instead, they see households, businesses and communities making full use of local energy resources and having a degree of autonomy, yet also still being linked to a national grid. 

Tokyo-based political economist Andrew DeWit believes that while technical challenges to the rapid expansion of distributed renewable energy generation do exist, a bigger problem is “the political power of those interests wedded to the status quo.” Utilities profit from their control over a centralized grid, and they have traditionally enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the politicians and bureaucrats who determine energy policy. DeWit thinks the tide is turning against this old system. 

He points to statistics and anecdotes that suggest local and prefectural-level politicians, business magnates in the financial and high-tech sectors, and even major bureaucracies like the Ministry of Agriculture are re-thinking the energy status quo. The new feed-in tariff that ensures companies producing electricity from renewable resources get higher prices (and profitability) when selling to utilities goes into effect in July 2012. And a METI taskforce has been formed to debate breaking up utilities’ monopolistic control over the distribution network. “This revolution, if it really is of the scale it seems to be, is already reshaping Japan’s establishment. The old boys who can’t or won’t evolve are lumbering towards a cliff,” said DeWitt.

Chiba University’s Kurasaka is less sure. “The government still hasn’t fully gotten behind the idea of locally-led renewable energy development. The feed-in tariff applies to any type of development – the goal is to allow renewable energy companies to profit. Big investors, like Softbank, are eager to get into mega solar for that reason. What I’m afraid is that mega solar projects will be developed in the disaster area but [the developers] will just be renting the land. The money won’t come into the community. Profits will go to companies like SoftBank, which are based in big cities, recreating the same structure we had with nuclear power plants,” he said. 

Kurasaka is determined not to let that happen. Earlier this year, he helped organize a symposium in Sendai to teach communities how to develop their renewable energy resources by combining investment from local businesses and credit unions with expert technical and policy advice from further afield. He admitted the skills involved aren’t simple. In this sense, the appropriation of the phrase “grow your own” from the food movement is misleading. Shifting from mega-corporate oil and gas to DIY solar and wind is certainly more of a leap than switching from store-bought veggies to homegrown ones. 

Yet Kurasaka pointed out that reconstruction offers a unique opportunity to rebuild energy systems in a new way. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster wiped away the physical infrastructure for electricity generation and distribution all along the northeastern coastline. But the triple disaster also upended long-held assumptions about the system that provides them with energy. A vacuum, however brief in time, has opened in the center of Japan’s energy system. It could be the perfect chance to experiment with a new way of producing and distributing electricity, one that empowers local communities in both a literal and figurative sense.

For further information log on website:

http://www.kyotojournal.org/the-journal/nature/grow-your-own-energy/

Fats Burning Breakfast Foods

Happy couple enjoying breakfast in kitchen Photo Credit Ridofranz/iStock/Getty Images

Breakfast is Breakfast provides your body with the energy and essential nutrients that it requires for optimal physical and cognitive function and increases your metabolism, according to Health Services at Columbia University. If you are trying to lose weight, you should be familiar with what to eat for breakfast to support your fat loss efforts.

No Foods Burn Fat

delicious fresh berries in a bowl Photo Credit brebca/iStock/Getty Images

Despite popular belief, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System explains that no foods actually burn fat. Food and beverages have calories, and these calories are used for energy. There is no such thing as negative calorie foods that take more calories to digest than their caloric content. While this may come as a disappointment, there are plenty of breakfast choices that can help you lose weight. Remember, in order to lose weight, you must eat less calories than you burn. Skipping breakfast is counterproductive because it will lower your metabolism

Egg Whites and Vegetables

egg white spinach omelette with fruit on plate Photo Credit Scott Karcich/iStock/Getty Images

An egg white omelet or scrambled egg whites make an ideal low-calorie breakfast and are recommended by the American Council on Exercise. Egg whites are nearly 100 percent protein and contain no saturated fat, carbohydrates or sugar. Try adding fat free cheese to your omelet or scrambled egg whites for an additional protein boost. Vegetables such as spinach and broccoli are other healthful and nutritional low-calorie options to add to your omelet. The American Council on Exercise states that spinach is the "epitome" of health food and two cups of spinach is only 14 calories. If you buy pasteurized liquid egg whites, you can add them to a fruit smoothie to make a healthful liquid breakfast.

Oatmeal

three blueberries atop oats on a wooden surface Photo Credit jayet/iStock/Getty Images

Health Services at Columbia University recommends oatmeal for a healthful breakfast. Oatmeal, unlike high sugar breakfast cereal, has no sugar and is rich in fiber. Dietary fiber can help keep your blood sugar stable and will help satisfy your appetite and keep you full. Columbia University suggests cooking your oatmeal in 2 percent milk, but you can substitute skim milk or unsweetened soy milk if you want to avoid the milk fat. Fruits such as raisins, blueberries or banana slices make low calorie nutritious toppings if you want to boost the flavor. Buy oatmeal without added sugar or sweeteners.

Grapefruit First?

Close up of halved grapefruits Photo Credit moodboard/moodboard/Getty Images

If there is one food that is often associated with fat-burning food myth it is the grapefruit. While grapefruit doesn't actually burn fat, it can be helpful in your health and weight-loss efforts, according to a study in the February 2011 issue of "Nutrition and Metabolism." In the study obese participants consumed grapefruit, grapefruit juice or water 20 minutes before their meals as a pre-load. At the end of the study, which lasted 2 weeks, all had lost weight but those who consumed grapefruit or grapefruit juice also had an improvement in their overall cholesterol levels. The American Council on Exercise recommends grapefruit because it low in calories; a medium-sized grapefruit is only 40 calories. It is usually better to opt for whole fruit rather than juice; fruit juice has often lost its fiber content and the fruit sugar is absorbed more quickly into your bloodstream.

www.livestrong.com

BIOGEOGRAPHY

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through (geological) time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area. Phytogeography is the branch of biogeography that studies the distribution of plants. Zoogeography is the branch that studies distribution of animals.

Frontispiece to Alfred Russel Wallace's book The Geographical Distribution of Animals.

Knowledge of spatial variation in the numbers and types of organisms is as vital to us today as it was to our early human ancestors as we adapt to heterogeneous but geographically predictable environments. Biogeography is an integrative field of inquiry that unites concepts and information from ecology, evolutionary biology,  geology, and physical geography.

Modern biogeographic research combines information and ideas from many fields, from the physiological and ecological constraints on organismal dispersal to geological and climatological phenomena operating at global spatial scales and evolutionary time frames.

The short-term interactions within a habitat and species of organisms describe the ecological application of biogeography. Historical biogeography describes the long-term, evolutionary periods of time for broader classifications of organisms. Early scientists, beginning with Carl Linnaeus, contributed theories to the contributions of the development of biogeography as a science. Beginning in the mid-18th century, Europeans explored the world and discovered the biodiversity of life. Linnaeus initiated the ways to classify organisms through his exploration of undiscovered territories.

The scientific theory of biogeography grows out of the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Hewett Cottrell Watson (1804–1881), Alphonse de Candolle (1806–1893), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), Philip Lutley Sclater (1829–1913) and other biologists and explorers.

Introduction

The patterns of species distribution across geographical areas can usually be explained through a combination of historical factors such as: speciation, extinction, continental drift, and glaciation. Through observing the geographic distribution of species, we can see associated variations in sea level, river routes, habitat, and river capture. Additionally, this science considers the geographic constraints of landmass areas and isolation, as well as the available ecosystem energy supplies.

Over periods of ecological changes, biogeography includes the study of plant and animal species in: their past and/or present living refugium habitat; their interim living sites; and/or their survival locales. As writer David Quammen put it, "...biogeography does more than ask Which species? and Where. It also asks Why? and, what is sometimes more crucial, Why not?."

Modern biogeography often employs the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to understand the factors affecting organism distribution, and to predict future trends in organism distribution. Often mathematical models and GIS are employed to solve ecological problems that have a spatial aspect to them.

Biogeography is most keenly observed on the world's islands. These habitats are often much more manageable areas of study because they are more condensed than larger ecosystems on the mainland. Islands are also ideal locations because they allow scientists to look at habitats that new invasive species have only recently colonized and can observe how they disperse throughout the island and change it. They can then apply their understanding to similar but more complex mainland habitats. Islands are very diverse in their biomes, ranging from the tropical to arctic climates. This diversity in habitat allows for a wide range of species study in different parts of the world.

One scientist who recognized the importance of these geographic locations was Charles Darwin, who remarked in his journal "The Zoology of Archipelagoes will be well worth examination". Two chapters in On the Origin of Species. were devoted to geographical distribution.

History

18th Century

The first discoveries that contributed to the development of biogeography as a science began in the mid-18th century, as Europeans explored the world and discovered the biodiversity of life. During the 18th century most views on the world were shaped around religion and for many natural theologists, the bible. Carl Linnaeus, in the mid-18th century, initiated the ways to classify organisms through his exploration of undiscovered territories. When he noticed that species were not as perpetual as he believed, he developed the Mountain Explanation to explain the distribution of biodiversity. When Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat and the waters receded, the animals dispersed throughout different elevations on the mountain. This showed different species in different climates proving species were not constant. Linnaeus’ findings set a basis for ecological biogeography. Through his strong beliefs in Christianity, he was inspired to classify the living world, which then gave way to additional accounts of secular views on geographical distribution. He argued that the structure of an animal was very closely related to its physical surroundings. This was important to a George Louis Buffon’s rival theory of distribution.

Edward O. Wilson, a prominent biologist and conservationist, coauthored The Theory of Island Biogeography and helped to start much of the research that has been done on this topic since the work of Watson and Wallace almost a century before.

Closely after Linnaeus, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon observed shifts in climate and how species spread across the globe as a result. He was the first to see different groups of organisms in different regions of the world. Buffon saw similarities between some regions which led him to believe that at one point continents were connected and then water separated them and caused differences in species. His hypotheses were described by his books, Histoire Naturelle, and Générale et Particulière, in which he argued that varying geographical regions would have different forms of life. This was inspired by his observations comparing the Old and New World, as he determined distinct variations of species from the two regions. Buffon believed there was a single species creation event, and that different regions of the world were homes for varying species, which is an alternate view than that of Linnaeus. Buffon’s Law eventually became a principle of biogeography by explaining how similar environments were habitats for comparable types of organisms. Buffon also studied fossils which led him to believe that the earth was over tens of thousands of years old, and that humans had not lived there long in comparison to the age of the earth.

Following this period of exploration came the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, which attempted to explain the patterns of biodiversity observed by Buffon and Linnaeus. At the end of the 18th century, Alexander von Humboldt, known as the “founder of plant geography”, developed the concept of physique generale to demonstrate the unity of science and how species fit together. As one of the first to contribute empirical data to the science of biogeography through his travel as an explorer, he observed differences in climate and vegetation. The earth was divided into regions which he defined as tropical, temperate, and arctic and within these regions there were similar forms of vegetation. This ultimately enabled him to create the isotherm, which allowed scientists to see patterns of life within different climates. He contributed his observations to findings of botanical geography by previous scientists, and sketched this description of both the biotic and abiotic features of the earth in his book, Cosmos.

Augustin de Candolle contributed to the field of biogeography as he observed species competition and the several differences that influenced the discovery of the diversity of life. He was a Swiss botanist and created the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature in his work, Prodromus. He discussed plant distribution and his theories eventually had a great impact on Charles Darwin, who was inspired to consider species adaptations and evolution after learning about botanical geography. De Candolle was the first to describe the differences between the small-scale and large-scale distribution patterns of organisms around the globe.

19th Century

In the 19th century, several additional scientists contributed new theories to further develop the concept of biogeography. Charles Lyell, being one of the first contributors in the 19th century, developed the Theory of Uniformitarianism after studying fossils. This theory explained how the world was not created by one sole catastrophic event, but instead from numerous creation events and locations Uniformitarianism also introduced the idea that the Earth was actually significantly older than was previously accepted. Using this knowledge, Lyell concluded that it was possible for species to go extinct. Since he noted that earth’s climate changes, he realized that species distribution must also change accordingly. Lyell argued that climate changes complemented vegetation changes, thus connecting the environmental surroundings to varying species. This largely influenced Charles Darwin in his development of the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin was a natural theologist who studied around the world, and most importantly in the Galapagos Islands. Darwin introduced the idea of natural selection, as he theorized against previously accepted ideas that species were static or unchanging. His contributions to biogeography and the theory of evolution were different from those of other explorers of his time, because he developed a mechanism to describe the ways that species changed. His influential ideas include the development of theories regarding the struggle for existence and natural selection. Darwin’s theories started a biological segment to biogeography and empirical studies, which enabled future scientists to develop ideas about the geographical distribution of organisms around the globe.

Alfred Russel Wallace studied the distribution of flora and fauna in the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago in the mid-19th century. His research was essential to the further development of biogeography, and he was later nicknamed the "father of Biogeography". Wallace conducted fieldwork researching the habits, breeding and migration tendencies, and feeding behavior of thousands of species. He studied butterfly and bird distributions in comparison to the presence or absence of geographical barriers. His observations led him to conclude that the number of organisms present in a community was dependent on the amount of food resources in the particular habitat. Wallace believed species were dynamic by responding to biotic and abiotic factors. He and Philip Sclater saw biogeography as a source of support for the theory of evolution as they used Darwin's conclusion to explain how biogeography was similar to a record of species inheritance Key findings, such as the sharp difference in fauna either side of the Wallace Line, and the sharp difference that existed between North and South America prior to their relatively recent faunal interchange, can only be understood in this light. Otherwise, the field of biogeography would be seen as a purely descriptive one.

20th and 21st Century

Moving on to the 20th century, Alfred Wegener introduced the Theory of Continental Drift in 1912, though it was not widely accepted until the 1960s. This theory was revolutionary because it changed the way that everyone thought about species and their distribution around the globe. The theory explained how continents were formerly joined together in one large landmass, Pangea, and slowly drifted apart due to the movement of the plates below Earth’s surface. The evidence for this theory is in the geological similarities between varying locations around the globe, fossil comparisons from different continents, and the jigsaw puzzle shape of the landmasses on Earth. Though Wegener did not know the mechanism of this concept of Continental Drift, this contribution to the study of biogeography was significant in the way that it shed light on the importance of environmental and geographic similarities or differences as a result of climate and other pressures on the planet.

Distribution of Fossils on Pangea According to Wegener.

The publication of The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson in 1967 showed that the species richness of an area could be predicted in terms of such factors as habitat area, immigration rate and extinction rate. This added to the long-standing interest in island biogeography. The application of island biogeography theory to habitat fragments spurred the development of the fields of conservation biology and landscape ecology.

Classic biogeography has been expanded by the development of molecular systematics, creating a new discipline known as phylogeography. This development allowed scientists to test theories about the origin and dispersal of populations, such as island endemics. For example, while classic biogeographers were able to speculate about the origins of species in the Hawaiian Islands, phylogeography allows them to test theories of relatedness between these populations and putative source populations in Asia and North America. 

Biogeography continues as a point of study for many life sciences and geography students worldwide, however it may be under different broader titles within institutions such as ecology or evolutionary biology.

In recent years, one of the most important and consequential developments in biogeography has been to show how multiple organisms, including mammals like monkeys and reptiles like lizards, overcame barriers such as large oceans that many biogeographers formerly believed were impossible to cross. See also Oceanic dispersal.

Biogeographic Distribution of European Countries.

Modern Applications of Biogeography

Biogeography now incorporates many different fields including but not limited to physical geography, geology, botany and plant biology, zoology, and general biology. A biogeographer’s main focus is on what environmental factors and what the influence of man does to the distribution of the specific species of study. In terms of applications of biogeography as a science today, technological advances have allowed satellite imaging and processing of the Earth. Two main types of satellite imaging that are important within modern biogeography are Global Production Efficiency Model (GLO-PEM) and General Information Sensing (GIS). GLO-PEM uses satellite-imaging gives “repetitive, spatially contiguous, and time specific observations of vegetation.” These observations are on a global scale. GIS can show certain processes on the earth’s surface like whale locations, sea surface temperatures, and bathymetry. Current scientists also use coral reefs to delve into the history of biogeography through the fossilized reefs.

Paleobiogeography

Paleobiogeography goes one step further to include paleogeographic data and considerations of plate tectonics. Using molecular analyses and corroborated by fossils, it has been possible to demonstrate that perching birds evolved first in the region of Australia or the adjacent Antarctic which at that time lay somewhat further north and had a temperate climate). From there, they spread to the other Gondwanan continents and Southeast Asia – the part of Laurasia then closest to their origin of dispersal – in the late Paleogene, before achieving a global distribution in the early Neogene. Not knowing the fact that at the time of dispersal, the Indian Ocean was much narrower than it is today, and that South America was closer to the Antarctic, one would be hard pressed to explain the presence of many "ancient" lineages of perching birds in Africa, as well as the mainly South American distribution of the suboscines.

Paleobiogeography also helps constrain hypotheses on the timing of biogeographic events such as vicariance and geodispersal, and provides unique information on the formation of regional biotas. For example, data from species-level phylogenetic and biogeographic studies tell us that the Amazonian fish fauna accumulated in increments over a period of tens of millions of years, principally by means of allopatric speciation, and in an arena extending over most of the area of tropical South America (Albert & Reis 2011). In other words, unlike some of the well-known insular faunas (Galapagos finches, Hawaiian drosophilid flies, African rift lake cichlids), the species-rich Amazonian ichthyofauna is not the result of recent adaptive radiations.

For freshwater organisms, landscapes are divided naturally into discrete drainage basins by watersheds, episodically isolated and reunited by erosional processes. In regions like the Amazon Basin with an exceptionally low (flat) topographic relief, the many waterways have had a highly reticulated history over geological time. In such a context, stream capture is an important factor affecting the evolution and distribution of freshwater organisms. Stream capture occurs when an upstream portion of one river drainage is diverted to the downstream portion of an adjacent basin. This can happen as a result of tectonic uplift (or subsidence), natural damming created by a landslide, or headward or lateral erosion of the watershed between adjacent basins.

Classification

Biogeography is a synthetic science, related to geography, biology,  soil science, geology, climatology  ecology and evolution.

Some fundamental concepts in biogeography include:

• evolution - change in genetic composition of a population
• extinction – disappearance of a species
• dispersal - movement of populations away from their point of origin, related to migration
• endemic areas
• geodispersal – the erosion of barriers to biotic dispersal and gene flow, that permit range expansion and the merging of previously isolated biotas
• range and distribution
• vicariance - the formation of barriers to biotic dispersal and gene flow, that tend to subdivide species and biotas, leading to speciation and extinction

Comparative Biogeography

The study of comparative biogeography can follow two main lines of investigation:

• Systematic biogeography is the study of biotic area relationships, their distribution, and hierarchical classification;
• Evolutionary biogeography is the proposal of evolutionary mechanisms responsible for organismal distributions. Possible mechanisms include widespread taxa disrupted by continental break-up or individual episodes of long-distance movement;

Notes and References

1. ^ Brown University, "Biogeography." Accessed February 24, 2014. http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BIO48/29.Biogeography.HTML.
2. ^ Dansereau, Pierre. 1957. Biogeography; an ecological perspective. New York: Ronald Press Co.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Cox, C Barry, and Peter Moore. Biogeography : an ecological and evolutionary approach. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publications, 2005.
4. ^ von Humboldt 1805. Essai sur la geographie des plantes; accompagne d'un tableau physique des régions equinoxiales. Levrault, Paris.
5. ^ Watson H.C. 1847–1859. Cybele Britannica: or British plants and their geographical relations. Longman, London.
6. ^ de Candolle, Alphonse 1855. Géographie botanique raisonnée &c. Masson, Paris.
7. ^ Wallace A.R. 1876. . The geographical distribution of animals. Macmillan, London.
8. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Browne, Janet (1983). The secular ark: studies in the history of biogeography. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02460-6.
9. ^ Martiny JBH et al. Microbial biogeography: putting microorganisms on the map Nature: FEBRUARY 2006 | VOLUME 4
10. ^ Quammen, David (1996). Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Scribner. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-684-82712-4.
11. ^ Cavalcanti, Mauro. (2009). Biogeography and GIS. http://digitaltaxonomy.infobio.net/?Software:Biogeography_and_GIS
12. ^ Whittaker, R. (1998). Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850021-1.
13. ^ ^a b MacArthur R.H.; Wilson E.O. 1967. The theory of island biogeography. [1].
14. ^ Nicolson, D.H. (1991). "A History of Botanical Nomenclature". Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 78 (1): 33–56. doi:10.2307/2399589.
15. ^ Lyell, Charles. 1830. Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation. London: John Murray. Volume 1.

Further Reading

• Albert, J. S., & R. E. Reis (2011). Historical Biogeography of Neotropical Freshwater Fishes. University of California Press, Berkeley. 424 pp.
• Albert, J.S.; Crampton, W.G.R. (2010). "The geography and ecology of diversification in Neotropical freshwaters". Nature Education 1 (10): 3.
• MacArthur, Robert H. (1972). Geographic Ecology. New York: Harper & Row.
• McCarthy, Dennis (2009). Here be dragons : how the study of animal and plant distributions revolutionized our views of life and Earth. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954246-8.

External Links

• International Biogeography Society
• Systematic & Evolutionary Biogeographical Society
• Early Classics in Biogeography, Distribution, and Diversity Studies: To 1950
• Early Classics in Biogeography, Distribution, and Diversity Studies: 1951-1975
• Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists: Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Major Journals

• Journal of Biogeography homepage
• Global Ecology and Biogeography homepage
• Ecography homepage

Wikipedia