- Settore: Biology
- Number of terms: 15386
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Terrapsychology is a word coined by Craig Chalquist to describe deep, systematic, trans-empirical approaches to encountering the presence, soul, or "voice" of places and things: what the ancients knew as their resident genius loci or indwelling spirit. This perspective emerged from sustained ...
Formulated by philosopher Edward Goldsmith as corrections to the reductive laws of thermodynamics. The Laws postulate that living things seek to preserve their structure, grow toward climax (maturity) rather than entropy (nonexistence), move into mutualism and wholeness, and survive and flourish through spontaneous, adaptive self-regulation.
Industry:Biology
A relatively new discipline operating on an ancient assumption: the deepest levels of the psyche are tied to the Earth (unlike environmental psychology, which looks in linear fashion at the impact of surround on psyche). Theodore Roszak, for instance, posits an “ecological unconscious” at the core of the psyche; Stephen Aizenstat describes a “world unconscious” similar to what early philosophers described as the anima mundi or world soul. As with deep ecology, ecopsychology insists that to be healthy, our relations with the Earth must be reciprocal, not exploitive. "Ecopsychology is the effort to understand, heal, and develop the psychological dimensions of the human-nature relationship (psychological, bio-social-spiritual) through connecting and reconnecting with natural processes in the web of life. At its core, ecopsychology suggests that there is a synergistic relation between planetary and personal well being; that the needs of the one are relevant to the other. " -- Robert Greenway, Amy Lenzo, Gene Dilworth, Robert Worcester, Linda Buzzell-Saltzman.
Industry:Biology
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a fatal, infectious disease that degenerates the central nervous system of cattle. It might have evolved from scrapie, a similar disease that infects sheep and goats. In Britain, the practice of feeding cattle with the remains of other cattle not known to have been infected helped spread the disease in the mid-1980s. (Given how the meat packing industry treats them anyway, no wonder the cows are mad. )
Industry:Biology
Sexual reproduction makes evolutionary sense despite its complexities because it allows species to evolve new defenses against parasites. (Some lab evidence suggests that sexual reproducers fend off parasites more efficiently than asexual reproducers. ) Also: biologist Leigh Van Valen's idea that a species must develop continuously just to keep up with species co-evolving with it. (Red Queen refers to a chess piece in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking Glass who tells Alice that one must run just to stay in place. )
Industry:Biology
Urban systems whose dominant members occupy various niches, some of which compete. Rather parasitic, the large ones, in that they take from all over without giving, bereft as they are of natural producers. Because of their exclusive emphasis on growth and productivity, they are locked into an ecological immaturity that wastes resources and widely and indiscriminately pollutes. For all these reasons they are as unsustainable as the civilizations that spawn them.
Industry:Biology
Chemical decomposition of minerals and rocks. Types: oxidation (substances dissolved in oxygen--iron oxidation, for instance), hydrolysis (in acidic water), carbonation (limestone dissolved in water), hydration (weathering through water absorption), chelation.
Industry:Biology
A research protocol that distinguishes between "black box" approaches where the researcher manipulates an unknown, and "white box" approaches where knowledge of how something works determines the methods used to study it. By and large, ecology confines itself to black box methods by looking at natural events from the outside, "objectively," whereas deep ecology, ecopsychology, and other more interactive perspectives strive to be in touch with the inner workings of nature.
Industry:Biology
The Mediterranean fruit fly, one of the most destructive pests of deciduous fruits like pears, stone fruits, and apples. Its larvae also eat vegetables and nuts. Yellow-brown with reddish purple eyes. Chemical sprays do not control them effectively because of the brief time it takes the adult to lay eggs below the surface of the offspring's future food source. Braconid wasps and other parasites seem to do a more thorough job (see Biocontrol).
Industry:Biology
Planting plants that do well together near each other. Here are some:
* Marigolds around tomato and pepper plants. * Asparagus and parsley. * Beans with potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, kohlrabi, spinach, strawberries. * Basil near tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. * Carrots near beats, radishes. * Slow thistle with lettuce. * Corn to shade cucumbers. * Mustard near cabbage and cauliflower. * One spinach plant per four Bibb lettuce plants. Some combinations to avoid (opponents):
* Dill with carrots. * Apple trees with potato seedlings. * Beans or peas near garlic, onions or shallots. * Wormwood with anything; eucalyptus with anything.
Industry:Biology
Marine invertebrates that secret a calcium carbonate exoskeleton and live symbiotically with algae, with the algae providing nutrients like carbon and the coral nitrogen, phosphorous, and an abode. Corals are perforate (porous skeleton) or imperforate (solid skeleton). Colonial corals live in deep water, and reef-building corals in warm, shallow water where their zooxanthellae algae can receive sunlight. When corals die, their outer skeletons remain, growing the reefs layer upon layer (see Atoll). As of the second millennium, two fifths of the world’s coral had disappeared due to industrial pollution, and all of the remainder is under threat.
Industry:Biology
