Category Environtal Studies

Where can we find the perentie, the fastest reptile?

Generally considered the fastest recorded reptile, the perentie, is most commonly found in Australia. It is Australia’s largest lizard, and grows to over 2.5 metres in length. It has a long neck with a stout and robust body, and has a long, tapering tail as well. Perenties have a yellow body, or a cream body with tawny brown rosettes edged in dark brown on their back. They have dark limbs with white spots, with a head and neck that are pale creamy- white with a reticulated pattern of black lines and flecks.

Perenties are found in the arid parts of South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory, where they are usually found around rocky hills and outcrops. They often find their shelter in burrows that they dig themselves. These burrows can be extensive and have several escape exits.

The diet of younger perenties include lizards, insects, and small mammals. As they grow, they will spontaneously attack large venomous snakes, rabbits, birds and their eggs, and even small marsupials such as wallabies. They are rarely seen as they are extremely shy and live in remote areas away from human habitation. They are considered to be a species of least-concern according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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Heatwaves to make regions uninhabitable within decades

Heatwaves will become so extreme in certain regions of the world within decades that human life there will be unsustainable, say UN, Red Cross.

GENEVA A HOW United Nations Red Cross report into climate change alludes to certain parts of the world becoming so hot within a matter of decades that human beings will be unable to survive there.

The bleak joint report predicts extreme heatwaves could become so fierce that they exceed human physiological and social limits in parts of Latin America, central Africa and south and southwest Asia.

The world’s lowest-income countries- those least responsible for climate change-are already experiencing a disproportionate increase in extreme heat, as was witnessed this year with the heatwave catastrophes in Somalia and Pakistan

The report is published by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) ahead of Novembers COP27 climate change summit in Egypt.

What can be done?

IFRC secretary-general Jagan Chapagain urged countries at COP27 to: invest in climate adaptation and mitigation in the regions most at risk.

OCHA and the IFRC suggested five main steps to help combat the impact of extreme heatwaves, including: providing early information to help people and authorities react in time and finding new ways of financing local-level action.

They also included humanitarian organisations testing more “thermally-appropriate emergency shelter and “cooling centres, while getting communities to alter their development planning to account of likely extreme heat impacts.

OCHA and the IFRC said there were limits to extreme heat adaptation measures. Some, such as increasing energy-intensive air conditioning, are costly, environmentally unsustainable and contribute themselves to climate change. The report concludes that if greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change, are not aggressively reduced now, the world will face previously unimaginable levels of extreme heat.

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Which is the world’s tallest tree?

The Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the tallest trees on Earth. They are found along the coastline of the Redwood National Park in Northern California. Apart from being the tallest trees on the planet, they are also some of the oldest living things on Earth. They have a life of up to 2,000 years. Even though it is not clear exactly why these trees can live to be so ancient, we do know that climatic conditions play a key role in this. They are also some of the most resilient trees on Earth. Their tannin-rich bark seems to be impenetrable to the fungus and diseases that affect other trees.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the king of these giants is a tree known as Hyperion. When it was last measured in 2019, it stood 116.07 metres tall from top to base, taller than a 35-storey building. Hyperion’s exact location is a closely held secret, but it is known to be found in a hillside in which most of the old-growth coastal redwoods have been logged. Hyperion is estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old.

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Is our world undergoing the sixth mass extinction?

There’s proof we are increasingly losing species, and this is not good for us humans

What is mass extinction?

To be classified as a mass extinction, at least 75 % of all the species on Earth must go extinct within a short geological period of less than 2.8 million years. That timeframe seems long to us because modern humans have only existed for about 2,00,000 years so far.

Mass extinction is not new

Extinctions and speciations (species evolving over time) do not happen at uniform rates through time; instead, they tend to occur in large pulses interspersed by long periods of relative stability. These extinction pulses are what scientists refer to as mass extinction events. The Cambrian explosion was a burst of speciation some 540 million years ago. Since then, at least five mass extinction events have been identified in the fossil record (and probably scores of smaller ones). Arguably the most infamous of these was when a giant asteroid smashed into Earth about 66 million years ago in what is now the Gulf of Mexico. The collision vapourised species immediately within the blast zone. Species were killed off later by resultant climate change and volcanic activity too.

Are humans responsible for the current crisis?

Humans have been implicated in smaller extinction events going back to the late Pleistocene (around 50,000 years ago) to the early Holocene (around 12.000 years ago) when most of the megafauna, such as woolly mammoths, giant sloths. diprotodons, and cave bears, disappeared from nearly every continent over a few thousand years. Much later, the expansion of European colonists throughout the world from about the 14th Century precipitated an extinction cascade first on islands, and then to areas of continental mainland as the drive to exploit natural resources accelerated. Over the last 500 hundred years, there have been more than 700 documented extinctions of vertebrates and 600 plant species. These extinctions come nowhere near the 75 % threshold to include the modern era among the previous mass-extinction events. But those are just the extinctions humans have recorded. In fact. many species go extinct before they are even discovered- perhaps as many as 25 % of total extinctions are never noticed by humans. But it’s not the total number of extinctions we should focus on; rather, it’s the extinction rate. Even the most conservative estimates place the modern era well within the expected range to qualify as a mass extinction. If the current rate of extinction continues we could lose most species by 2200.

When species disappear

One may think that so long as the species that provide resources for modern societies survive, there’s no reason to consider extinction a problem. The evidence suggests otherwise. Species loss also erodes the services biodiversity provides us. These include reduced carbon removal from atmosphere (which climate change), reduced pollination and increased soil degradation that compromise our food production, poorer water and air quality, more frequent and intense flooding and fires, and poorer human health. Even human diseases such as HIV/ AIDS, Ebola, and COVID-19 are the result of our collective indifference to the integrity of natural ecosystems.

There’s still hope

We could potentially limit the damage if societies around the globe embraced certain fundamental, yet achievable, changes. We could abolish the goal of continuous economic growth, and force companies to restore the environment. We could limit undue corporate influence on political decision-making. Educating and empowering women would also help stem environmental destruction.

Did you know?

  • In the timeline of fossil evidence going right back to the first inkling of any life on Earth- over 3.5 billion years ago – almost 99 % of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. That means that as species evolve over time, they replace other species that go extinct.
  • When the giant asteroid hit our planet, about 76 % of all species around at the time went extinct, of which the disappearance of the dinosaurs is most well-known. But dinosaurs didn’t disappear altogether-the survivors just evolved into birds.

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What is wind tree system?

Get to know about wind trees and how they help harness energy.

French innovator Jérôme Michaud-Larivière designed the Wind Tree as a sustainable energy-harnessing device that would also enhance urban landscapes. A wind tree is a tree-shaped structure that harnesses wind energy using small trembling wind turbines called ‘aeroleaves’ that look exactly like leaves on a tree.  The micro-turbines work well even when there is little wind. Just a gentle breeze as light as 7 kmph is sufficient. This is something a conventional windmill cannot do.

French innovator Jérôme Michaud-Larivière designed the Wind Tree as an elegant, sustainable energy-harnessing device that would enhance urban landscapes. The first Wind Tree was a 3-m-tall structure with 72 aeroleaves. It produced 3.1kW of power. ‘Wind Bush’ is a combination of aeroleaves and photovoltaic petals that harnesses both wind and solar energy.

For the Indian market, Larivière has created ‘Lotus’, an affordable wind tree minus the solar petals.

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Where is world’s Largest Solar Tree?

The largest solar tree in the world has been installed at the CSIR-CMERI Centre of Excellence for Farm Machinery in Ludhiana, Punjab.

A solar power tree is a device that is shaped like a tree with its steel branches holding the solar photovoltaic panels.

Just like a natural tree, the steel branches of the solar tree are arranged in such a fashion that every solar panel is properly exposed to the Sun. Moreover, the panels can be mechanically tilted east or west to derive maximum benefit of the Sun’s position. The height of the tree is about 9-10 metres. One tree can produce about 5kW of power.

One of the main hurdles in installing solar power plants is the lack of availability of large spaces. Often, farmers are reluctant to sacrifice their cultivable land for solar power production. But a solar tree with its vertically arranged branches, occupies only four sqft of area, leaving almost the entire land free for cultivation. The energy generated can be used to run pumps, e-tractors and tillers as a green alternative to diesel.

India’s first solar power tree was produced by Central Mechanical Engineering and Research Institute (CMERI), at Durgapur. The largest solar tree in the world has been installed at the CSIR-CMERI Centre of Excellence for Farm Machinery in Ludhiana. Its total solar PV panel surface area is 309.83 m2. CMERI hopes to install many such solar trees along highways and farmlands.

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