Natural Vegetation & Wildlife

Natural vegetation and wildlife exist only in the narrow zone of contact between the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere that we call bio sphere. In the biosphere living beings are inter-related and interdependent on each other for survival. This life supporting system is known as the ecosystem. Vegetation and wildlife are valuable resources. Plants provide us with timber, give shelter to animals, produce oxygen we breathe, protects soils so essential for growing crops, act as shelter belts, help in   storage of underground water, give us fruits, nuts, latex, turpentine oil, gum, medicinal plants and also the paper that is so essential for our studies. There are innumerable uses of plants and you can add some more.   Wildlife includes animals, birds, insects as well as the aquatic life forms. They provide us milk, meat, hides and wool. Insects like bees provide us honey, help in pollination of flowers and have an important role to play as decomposers in the ecosystem. The birds feed on insects and act as decomposers as well. Vulture due to its ability to feed on dead livestock is a scavenger and considered a vital cleanser of the environment. So animals big or small, all are integral to maintaining balance in the ecosystem.

USES OF NATURAL VEGEGATION

Many agricultural species are grown for single products and for specialized uses, but forest trees are often grown for more than just pulp or timber, and even those products have multiple end uses. People began life on this planet as forest dwellers. They were food gatherers and depended on the forest for all their needs: food, clothing, and shelter. They gradually became food growers, clearing a small patch in the forest to grow food.     1. Food :   Plants are the basic producers which provide the human world with food to eat and survive. The food chain depends completely on these producers which is the only living component that can produce its own food. Much of human nutrition depends on land plants, either directly or indirectly.   Human nutrition depends to a large extent on cereals, especially maize (or corn), wheat and rice. Other staple crops include potato, cassava, and legumes. Human food also includes vegetables, spices, and certain fruits, nuts, herbs, and edible flowers. Beverages produced from plants include coffee, tea, wine, beer and alcohol. Sugar is obtained mainly from sugar cane and sugar beet. Cooking oils and margarine come from maize, soybean, rapeseed, safflower, sunflower, olive and others. Food additives include gum Arabic, guar gum, locust bean gum, starch and pectin. Livestock animals including cows, pigs, sheep, and goats are all herbivores; and feed primarily or entirely on cereal plants, particularly grasses.   2. Grazing animal husbandry :   Animal husbandry involves the process of increasing the population of cattle animals so as to provide their milk, meat, wool, hides etc. This involves the grazing of these cattle in vegetation areas. This is now leading to overgrazing which leads to soil erosion. But the vegetation is the main producer which provides the animals to feed.     3. Employment:   Forests provide employment opportunities to rural and tribal folk and provides wood and to rural and tribal folk and provides wood and forest products like honey, herbs, fruits, berries and materials for domestic use. Other people of the urban areas are employed in the forests for lumbering and other vegetation products for industrial use.     4. Fodder:   Fodder from the forest forms an important source for cattle and other grazing animals in the hilly and the arid regions and during a drought. There are many varieties of grasses, trees, and shrubs that are nutritious for the livestock. Care is taken to see that trees poisonous to cattle are not grown. Trees that produce a large crown above the reach of cattle are preferred.   5. Wildlife preservation: Forests are the natural habitat for wild life. Wildlife have four basic requirements: food, cover, water and space. Different wildlife species require different stages of forest growth to meet these needs. Several aspects of your property determine how many species can live and thrive in your forest - plant cover, harvest operations, water resources and topography. Your forest may have streams, swamps, rivers, ponds, and areas that adjoin fields, pastures, roads and other openings. Even managing these "edges" of your forest is crucial to abundant populations of some wildlife species. The relationship between vegetation management and wildlife species habitat is well established. Hence forming a natural habitat for the fauna.   6. Shelter: In many parts of the world wood is used for creating proper shelter against the elements. Items found in the wooded structures we call home are also made with wood, a plant product. Furniture, for example, is made up mainly of wood and cloth, from the fibers of plants. Walls in homes may be decorated with wallpaper, and many paints are derived from plant extracts.   7. Wind breaks and shelter belts: Trees grown for wind breaks should be bushy and sturdy to withstand strong winds, both hot and cold. Along the Saurashtra coast in India, casuarina has successfully been planted to check degradation due to salt laden coastal winds. A species of prosopis, called P. juliflora, planted along the desert border in Haryana and Gujarat has successfully halted the advance of the desert.   8. Fencing: Fences created with trees and shrubs are preferred in developing countries as they are cheap to maintain yet give protection. Species that have thorns or are prickly and have stiff branches and leaves that are not edible are preferred. These species should be fast growing, hardy, and long lived.   Wildlife Domestic animals are tamed and cared for by man. Wild animals roam free in forests and mountains. Both are useful to us. Animals keep the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in nature. They give carbon dioxide to plants that make oxygen and carbon dioxide in nature. They give carbon dioxide to plants that make food and release oxygen. They also provide us milk and other useful products and services. We get milk from cows, buffaloes and goats. Milk is rich in proteins and facts. It is called completed food because young babies live wholly on milk. Curd, cheese, butter, ghee and ice- cream are made from milk. Some people eat flesh and eggs of animals. But current scientific researches are against these. Flesh and eggs rot very soon and cause food poisoning and much communicable disease from the animals and the environment. We get wool from the fleecy hair of sheep, yak, Angora rabbit etc. woolen clothes keep us warm in winter. Honey is sweet liquid. It is made by honey – bees. Honey bees also make wax. They use this wax to make their home. Men use this wax to make candles, medicines. Dog watches our house farms and animals. It is also a good companion people breed cats, rabbits, pigeons etc. for their beauty and grace. Parrot is beautiful bird which can talk like humans. People have been using cattle dung as manure and fuel. But now gobar-gas is made from it and the remaining waste it is used as good manure. This manure helps us to maintain the fertility of the soil.     MODIFICATION OF WILDLIFE:   During the last few decades, wildlife all over the country has come under intense pressure. Habitat destruction poses the most important threat to the survival of wildlife. Pollution, climate change, deforestation, industrialization and population explosion have destroyed the natural habitat of wildlife. Hunting, habitat reduction and land degradation have threatened the biodiversity in the industrial world. Large scale poaching of animals for their fur, skin, tusks, horns, antlers, and other body parts is responsible for the rapid extinction of many animals. Animals are sold on a large scale in international markets for handsome amounts of money. Animals are in great demand in zoos and as pets. They are also used in scientific research and experiments. Smuggling rare endemic species out of the country illegally is increasingly common.   Today most of the animal species of the world stand at the edge of extinction. Over 600 species are officially acknowledged to be endangered. Large animals are especially at risk form habitat destruction. Their natural population tends o be quite small, because each individual requires proportionately more territory.

Solar System

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objectsgravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their moons, five currently identifieddwarf planets and their seven known moons, and billions of small bodies. This last category includes asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids andinterplanetary dust. In broad terms, the charted regions of the Solar System consist of the Sun, four terrestrial inner planets, an asteroid belt composed of small rocky bodies, four gas giant outer planets, and a second belt, called the Kuiper belt, composed of icy objects. Beyond the Kuiper belt lies the scattered disc, the heliopause, and ultimately the hypothetical Oort cloud. In order of their distances from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, andNeptune. Six of the eight planets are in turn orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after Earth'sMoon, and each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other particles. All the planets except Earth are named after gods and goddesses from Greco-Roman mythology. The five dwarf planets arePluto, Makemake, and Haumea, the three largest known Kuiper belt objects; Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt; and Eris, the largest known object in the scattered disc.

Oberon is the outermost major moon of the planet Uranus. It is the second largest and second most massive of Uranian moons, and the ninth most massive moon in the Solar System. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, Oberon is named after a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies partially outside Uranus'smagnetosphere. Oberon consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is likely differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water may be present at the core/mantle boundary. The surface of Oberon, which is dark and slightly red in color, appears to have been primarily shaped by asteroid and comet impacts. It is covered by numerousimpact craters reaching 210 km in diameter. Oberon possesses a system of canyons (scarps) formed as a result of the expansion of its interior during its early evolution. This moon probably formed from the accretion disk that surrounded Uranus just after the planet's formation. As of 2010, the Uranian system has been studied up close only once: by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in January 1986. It took several images of Oberon, which allowed mapping of about 40% of the moon’s surface

• ...that Yogi Rock (pictured) is a rock found on Mars by the Mars Pathfinder mission that looks surprisingly like Yogi Bear's head?

• ...that the Kuiper crater in the Kuiper quadrangle, named after Dutch American astronomerGerard Kuiper, has the highest albedo recorded on Mercury?

• ...that 6Q0B44E, a recently discovered satellite of Earth, is thought to be a large piece of space debris?

• ...that 17th century philosopher Cesare Cremonini refused to look at the Moon's mountains through Galileo's telescope, because Aristotle had proved the Moon was a perfect sphere?

• ...that ridges and escarpments in the Victoria quadrangle of the planet Mercury have been associated with the stresses caused by the sun slowing Mercury's rotation through tidal forces?

• ...that J002E3 was at first thought to be a new moon of Earth when discovered in 2002 but was later found to be the third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V?

• ...that the Tooting impact crater on Mars was named after the London suburb of the same name because the discoverer "thought [his] mum and brother would get a kick out of having their home town paired with a land form on Mars"?

• ...that 99% of the mass of the Carme group, a group of retrograde irregular satellites of Jupiter, is located inCarme?

• ... that the first engineering analysis of a manned mission to Mars (artist's conception pictured) was made by Wernher von Braun in 1948, which included ten ships with seventy crewmembers?

• ...that water vapor is probably present in the tenuous atmosphere of Mercury, being brought to the planet by comets?

• ...that the Tagish Lake meteorite originally came from a part of the asteroid belt which existed when our solar system was being formed?

• ...that the trans-Neptunian object Eris (formerly known as 2003 UB₃₁₃) is native to a distant region of our solar system known as the scattered disc?

Points to Know

Q.1 Which of the following countries has overtaken Thailand as the world's largest rice exporter in 2015?
a India   bChina   cJapan   dVietnam

  Q.2 Who among the following has been appointed as Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta by the Supreme Court on 28th January, 2016?
  aRanjan Gogoi   bSanjay Mishra   cVirendra Singh   dVijendra Singh

  Q.3 The index issued by the Transparency International reported one of the following countries has tops 2015 global corruption index. Identify the country.
  aSweden   bFinland   cDenmark   dNew Zealand

  Q.4 With which of the following states the Indian Railways on 27th January, 2016 entered into two separate agreements for the formation of joint venture companies (JVCs) with state governments.
  aKarnataka and Kerala
  bTamil Nadu and Kerala
  cKerala and Andhra Pradesh
  dTamil Nadu and Karnataka

  Q.5 Around 165,000 students in 1,000 schools across India will benefit from CLIx, launched by Tata Trusts on 27th January, 2016, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. CLIx stands for…
  aConnected Learning Classes
  bConnected Learning System
  cConnected Learning Institute
  dConnected Learning Initiative

  Q.6 US-based Cognizant on 27th January, 2016 has acquired, a global consulting and technology services company for an undisclosed amount. Name the company.
| a KBACE Technologies
  bGetronics Technologies
  cCapgemini Technologies
  dScience Applications International Corporation

  Q.7 Kellton Tech, a Hyderabad-headquartered firm with development centres in the country and the US, has acquired a Houston-based enterprise, cloud and analytics services provider in January, 2016. Name the company.
 a Cloud Expo  b3Leaf Systems   cIlad Enterprise   dIland Enterprise

  Q.8 IT major HCL Technologies Ltd on 27th January, 2016 announced acquisition of one of the UK based company for £8 million (approx Rs 78 crore). Identify the company.
  aPalace Software
  bTatvaSoft UK Ltd
  cPoint to Point Ltd
  dMcLaren Technology Group

  Q.9 Which of the following ace Indian shooter secured an Olympic quota for the country women's 10-meter air pistol event at the Asia Olympic Qualifier on 27th January, 2016?
a Heena Sidhu   bSushma Ran  cAnjali Bhagwat   dApurvi Chandel

New Commers

  Q.1 Which among the following mobile apps has been launched by the Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh for farmers in New Delhi on 23rd December, 2015?
  a e-kishan   bCrop Insurance   cAgriMarket Mobile   dBoth B and C

  Q.2 Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will dedicate to the nation, the first cable-stayed bridge of North India in December, 2015. It will be constructed in…
  aPunjab   bNew Delhi   cHimachal Pradesh   dJammu and Kashmir

  Q.3 Name the Indian-American tumour scientist, who has won US National Science Medal in December, 2015.
 a Prof. Rakesh Jain   bDr. Paul Shrivastava   cProf. Manjul Bhargava   dProf. Chandrashekhar Khare

  Q.4 Amazon India unit signs MoU with one of the following organizations in December, 2015 to encourage online growth of small businesses. Identify it from the given options.
  aNational Skill Development Corporation
  bICONIC Skill Development Training Centre
  cMinistry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises
  dThe National Institute for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development

  Q.5 Which among the following Banks has tied up with railway's e-ticketing platform IRCTC to sell rail tickets through its website in December, 2015?
  aAxis Bank   bIDBI Bank   cICICI Bank   dHDFC Bank

  Q.6 Who among the following cricketers has been named Cricketer of the Year for 2015 at the ICC Awards ceremony in Dubai in December, 2015?
 a Steve Smith   bAB de Villiers   cMichael Clarke   dJosh Hazlewood

  Q.7 In Badminton, India's men's doubles pair has ended the season on a high by claiming their maiden Grand Prix title in December, 2015. Identify the pair from the given options.
  aTarun Kona and Arun Vishnu
  bManu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy
  cRupesh Kumar and Sanave Thomas
  dPranaav Jerry Chopra and Akshay Dewalkar

  Q.8 Which of the following formidable pair has been named as Women’s Doubles World Champions by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in December, 2015?
 a Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis
  bMartina Hingis and Leander Paes
  cBethanie Mattek-Sands and Mike Bryan
  dBethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Šafářová

  Q.9 Uttarakhand Governor Krishna Kant Paul on 23rd December, 2015 released a commemorative stamp on renowned Hindi poet….
  aTulsidas   bMahadevi Varma   cSumitranandan Pant   dSuryakant Tripathi 'Nirala'

  Q.10 To commemorate the birth anniversary of one of the following great mathematician India celebrates National Mathematics Day on 22nd December 2015. Identify the Mathematician from the given options.
  aHarish Chandra   bSrinivasa Ramanujan
  cSatyendranath Bose   dCalyampudi Radhakrishna Rao