Summary Lesson 3

According to legend, an Ethiopian goatherd first discovered coffee. In the past, coffee was a simple food and beverage for African tribesmen. Now, it is sold in large quantities worldwide as one of the top in value in trade. All coffee exporting countries depend on coffee as the main income and many people depend on it for their living. Millions of people drink a lot of coffee. In 1975, a frost killed almost half of Brazil’s coffee trees which changed the prices drastically. In 1979, frost hit Brazil again. Every tree lost result in no income for a three to five years and the income loss is huge considering 15 million trees were lost. Brazil had to stop the export of coffee. Importers bought it in bulk afraid of the shortage. Prices increased and farmers planted more until coffee was in abundant and the prices fell. Farmers began substituting coffee for other crops. Both producers and consumers decided to limit production to what the market can absorb, have a reserve and sell at an agreeable price.

-

(173 words)

-

-

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.- Steve Jobs

Reflective Summary

I learnt that the term 'mangrove' refers to the highly adapted plants found in tropical intertidal forest communities or the ecosystem itself. The different types of mangroves are red mangroves, white mangroves and black mangroves. I also learnt that mangroves are disappearing at a rate of 0.8 percent a year in Casamance (Africa) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that mangroves are critically endangered or approaching extinction in 26 out of the 120 countries in which they are found. At first i thought that the most poisonous snake is the King Cobra, but, it is actually the Sea Snake! (The Sea Snake has 10 times more poison than the King Cobra.) I also learnt that the term 'abiotic' refers to the non-living or physical components of an ecosystem. I also learnt that in any ecosystem, the abiotic factors are not identical over the whole area. There are a lot of animals living in the mangrove. They are the Sea mullet, mudskipper, dusky honeyeater etc.


(167 words)


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.- Steve Jobs

Reflective Journal 5

Abiotic Factors in the Mangrove

The term abiotic refers to the non-living or physical components of an ecosystem. We are going to look at three abiotic factors:
Salinity
Temperature
Oxygen
To do this we are going to use two pieces of equipment:
A datalogger with a temperature and a salinity probe attached and
an oxygen meter.

Go to one of these abiotic features now.
Salinity
Temperature
Oxygen

In any ecosystem the abiotic factors are not identical over the whole area. The tide has a lot to do with the distribution of plants in the ecosystem. Mangroves occur in areas that are inundated daily. Further away from the water in areas that only covered with water during the highest high tides are found saltmarsh plants. In the areas that are covered with water most of the time are the seagrasses.

Flow of energy and matter in a mangrove swampEnergy is used for all the processes that occur in organisms. Energy is not recycled in the environment it is stored, used or is lost as heat. It flows through the environment. The source of energy for the mangrove ecosystem is the sun. Plants use sunlight to provide energy for the process of photosynthesis. This energy is then passed through the food chain as organisms consume other organisms. At each step in the food chain there is a loss of energy as heat. If the organisms in an ecosystem do not use the available energy it is lost to the ecosystem.

Matter on the other hand is recycled in the ecosystem. A carbon atom that is part of a mangrove tree leaf may fall to the ground and decay. This detritus may then be eaten by a crab. The crab converts the matter into its own body material which may then be eaten by a fish. An ibis then eats the fish. The carbon atom that was part of a mangrove may become part of a crab, a fish or a bird.

The mangrove ecosystem has a detrital food web. Many of the animals that live in this ecosystem consume detritus.

Edited From: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~janewest000/Mangrove/abiotic.html

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
- Steve Jobs

Reflective Journal 4

Did You Know?

1. Mangrove are disappearing at a rate of 0.8 percent a year in Casamance (Africa). The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that mangroves are critically endangered or approaching extinction in 26 out of the 120 countries in which they are found.

2. The Sea snake has 10 TIMES more venom than the King Cobra!

Taken From: Group presentation [mangrove]

3. Do you think that mangroves are more threatened than rainforests?
Ans: Yes! Surprisingly, it is! Destruction of mangrove forests could leave the world deprived of their important ecological services by the end of a century.

4. With their dense vegetation, thick and often smelly mud, mangroves are not generally perceived to be particularly appealing habitats to visit. Yet this ecosystem has a diverse and fascinating flora and fauna, and plays a critical role in the conservation of the coast and the productivity of the sea.

MUDFLATS

5.Mud flats or tidal flats are also held in poor regard by many visitors to the coast. In fact, in Thailand, mud flats are in many places part of the mangrove system, being areas not yet colonised by the salt-tolerant trees. They are important feeding grounds for molluscs and marine invertebrates that crawl into the thick shifting sediments, emerging from their burrows to feed when the tide is in. They also attract millions of shore birds, including migrating and over-wintering waders. Over 40 coastal species of birds use the mud flats of Thailand. Bird watching enthusiasts will be very familiar with the significance of tidal mud flats for shore birds throughout the world, not just in Thailand.

Below is a picture on mudflats.

Adapted from an illustration in Reefs to Rainforests by Thom Henley.


Edited From: http://www.geocities.com/~nesst/mangrove.htm

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.- Steve Jobs

Reflective Journal 3

Acanthaceae

The family Acanthaceae (or Acanthus family) is a taxon of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing almost 250 genera and about 2500 species.
Most are tropical herbs, shrubs, or twining vines; some are epiphytes. Only a few species are distributed in temperate regions. The four main centres of distribution are Indonesia and Malaysia, Africa, Brasil and Central America. The representatives of the family can be found in nearly every habitat, including dense or open forests, in scrublands, on wet fields and valleys, at the sea coast and in marine areas, and in swamps and as an element of mangrove woods.

Plants in this family have simple, opposite, decussate leaves with entire (or sometimes toothed, lobed, or spiny) margins, and without stipules. The leaves may contain cystoliths, or calcium carbonate concretions, seen as streaks on the surface. The flowers are perfect, zygomorphic to nearly actinomorphic, these arranged in an inflorescence that is either a spike, raceme, or cyme. Typically there is a colorful bract subtending each flower; in some species the bract is large and showy. The calyx is usually 4-5 lobed; the corolla tubular, 2-lipped or 5-lobed; stamens either 2 or 4 arranged in pairs and inserted on the corolla; and the ovary superior, 2-carpellate, with axile placentation. The fruit is a two-celled capsule, dehiscing somewhat explosively. In most species, the seeds are attached to a small, hooked stalk (a modified funiculus called a jaculator) that ejects them from the capsule.

A species well-known to temperate gardeners is Acanthus mollis or Bear's breeches, a herbaceous perennial plant with big leaves and flower spikes up to 2 m tall. Tropical genera familiar to gardeners include Thunbergia and Justicia.
Avicennia, a genus of mangrove tree, usually placed in Verbenaceae or in its own family, Avicenniaceae, is included in Acanthaceae by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group on the basis of molecular phylogenetic studies that show it to be associated with this family.

Edited From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthaceae


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
- Steve Jobs

Reflective Journal 2

Mangrove horseshoe crab
Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda
Family Limulidae
Size: up to 40 cm in length (plus tail)

The horseshoe crab is a survivor unlike other mangrove animal alive today. It is what biologists call a 'living fossil' an organism which has remained basically unchanged for millions of years! In fact, fossils of horseshoe crabs over 400 million years old look almost identical to the species alive today. Slow and steady nonetheless, they have withstood the ultimate challenge Mother Nature has thrown at them - the test of time!Mangrove horseshoe crabs are basically scavengers, but they also feed on bivalves. They are found throughout Southeast Asia. The telson or tail is used to right itself up when overturned and not as a weapon as some believe!Their large eggs, which hatch into miniature versions of the adults, are laid in the upper parts of the mangroves. Males (usually much smaller than females), cling on to and follow their potential mates around for long periods before egg-laying. Not surprisingly, some locals identify this crab with matrimonial fidelity.

The eggs of these crabs are eaten in some areas, with locals cutting open the body and eating the unlaid eggs directly after cooking. There have been some reports, however, of the crabs being toxic. The blood of the crab is important in the biomedical world as a purified version can help detect baterial toxins, important in disease detection as well as ensuring the cleanliness of equipment.

Edited From: http://mangrove.nus.edu.sg/guidebooks/text/2076.htm


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
- Steve Jobs

Reflective Journal 1

What is a mangrove?
The term 'mangrove', is used in the broad sense either to refer to the highly adapted plants found in tropical intertidal forest communities or the ecosystem itself. The term 'mangrove' may have been derived from a combination of the Malay word 'manggi-manggi', for a type of mangrove tree (Avicennia) and the Arabic 'el gurm', for the same, as 'mang-gurm'. As a word, it can be used to refer to a species, plant, forest or community!
A mangrove community
Nature, at the highest level of organisation, consists of the ecosphere which includes all living things (biosphere) together with non-living parts (atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere). The next level is the biome which consists of groups of similar ecosystems over large geographic areas. Next is the ecosystem, which is a self-regulating community of organisms and their non-living environment.The community consists of interacting populations (single-species groups) of all the different plants and animals in the area, which in this case, is the mangrove. Thus essentially, the mangrove community is the biotic part of this ecosystem, which this book introduces.
Types of tropical rain forest
The term 'tropical rain forest' is used to describe forests of the ever-wet tropics or beyond, where there is, at most, minimal seasonal water shortage. These can be divided into dry-land and wetland rain forests. The first includes tropical lowland evergreen rain forest, which was the main type of forest covering Singapore, parts of which still exist in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

Mainland Singapore has many beaches (including artificial ones), a few mangrove patches, and one rocky shore (Labrador Beach) - all of these and more, also occur naturally on our offshore islands, and each ecosystem is occupied by a different and characteristic community.

Edited From: http://mangrove.nus.edu.sg/guidebooks/text/1002.htm


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
- Steve Jobs