Introduction
The Navajo Nations geology makes it one of the riches deposit sites for uranium and other nonrenewable resources. Uranium is a naturally occurring element in trace amounts in the earth’s crust and has been used for many different purposes. In the last century the uranium ore was used extensively by the federal government for atomic energy defenses. Uranium mine operators removed nearly four million tons of ore from 1944 to 1986 resulting in 520 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation (Maldonado 2005). Many Navajo uranium miners report that they were never told the hazards of mining uranium, and were not given any protective equipment or proper ventilations in mines. In most cases miners used pick axes and shovels to remove uranium ore. At one point there were approximately over 1000 mines on the reservation. In the early days of mining on the reservation Navajo miners were paid minimum wage or less. Many miners in 1940s were paid less than a dollar there jobs included blasters, building wooden supports in the mines, diggers, transporters, and millers. Exposing these workers to unsafe and unsanitary conditions, many times they had their entire families with them in the mining camps. By the late 1930’s there was a strong correlations between uranium mining and high rates of lung cancer among uranium miners. Uranium tailing piles are a legacy of an “out of sight out of mind” mentality of the last century. Many of these tailing sites were left exposed to precipitation and wind carrying uranium far from the original sites.
In 1979, near Churchrock, New Mexico, 1000 tons of radioactive mill waste and 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactive solution was released into the Rio Puerco when the catchment...
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... pine. American Journal of Botony, 81. pp. 936-949
Jackson, R.D. 1986, Remote sensing of biotic and abiotic plant stress. Annual Review Phytopathology, 24, pp. 265-287.
Rock, B.N., Vogelmann, J.E., Williams, D.L., Vogelmann, A.F., and Hoshizaki, T. 1986. The remote detection of forest damage. BioSci., 36(7). pp 439=445.
Ustin, S.L. and Gamon, J.A. 2010. Remote sensing of plant functional types. New Phytoloigist., 186(4). Pp 795-816
Harder, B. (2005). Drought's heat killed Southwest's piñon forests. Science News, 168(16), 244. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database
Eichstaedt, P.H., 1994 If You Poison Us. Sante Fe, NM: Red Crane Books; 1994.
Rock, et al. 1986, 1988; Entcheva-Cambell, et al. 1999. Plant responses to stress may have spectral signatures that could be used to map, maonitor, and measure forest damage. Remote Detection of Forest Damage.
The Making of a Hardrock Miner written by Stephen M. Voynick, describes his own personal experiences as a hardrock miner in four different underground mines in the western United States, the Climax molybdenum mine in Colorado, Hecla Lakeshore Project a copper mine in Arizona, and two uranium mines in Wyoming. Rather than a book telling of the fortunes gained and lost, this book was about the relationships gained, but then also lost through mining. Stephen M. Voynick’s direct words and simple writing style provided a book that was an easy read and educational about mine work and safety.
Many variations and species of plants can be found all around the world and in different habitats. These variations and characteristics are due to their adaptations to the natural habitat surrounding them. In three of many climatic zones, the arid, tropical and temperate zone, plants that vary greatly from each other are found in these locations. In this experiment, we’ll be observing the connection between the adaptations of the plants to their environment at the Fullerton Arboretum. The arboretum is a space containing numerous plants from different environments. The plants are carefully looked after and organized into their specific habitat. Therefore, we’ll be able to take a look at the plants within multiple
Bauer, Harry L. "The Statistical Analysis of Chaparral and Other Plant Communities by Means of Transect Samples." Ecology 24.1 (1943): 45. JSTOR. Web.
Throughout this mining process a byproduct is created called chat. The chat is leftover rock and waste from mining that did not contained the desired materials. The chat was left on the site because the Bureau of Indian Affairs thought it could be of value to the Quapaw tribe (1). This chat contained high levels of toxic lead and other harmful chemicals. It is estimated that there are 75 Million tons (150 billion pounds) of chat piles remaining exposed to the environment as well as numerous flotation ponds that haven’t been taken into account (4).
"Related Topics." Plant Science Research : Ozone Effects on Plants. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
Once the gray wolf population had declined in the National Park, many ecological impacts were observed. Without a sustainable wolf population in the park, the elk population began to take over and increase in size. Due to this increase in elk, many of the deciduous woody species began to become overgrazed. With the e...
As a result of these factors, the flora has adapted to these conditions in a variety of ways including their shape, leaf type, root system, and color. One of the most prominent adapt...
Schumann, Gail L., and Cleora J. D'Arcy. Hungry Planet: Stories of Plant Diseases. St. Paul: American Phytopathological Society, 2012. Print.
The another devastating abiotic stress which is considered to be highly responsible worldwide for decreasing yield and quality of crop productivity is drought (Lambers et al. 2008 ; Moghadam et al .,2011; Mohsen Pourgholam et al.,2013 ; M. Farooq et al., 2012; Abolhasani and Saeidi, 2004 ; Monjezi et al., 2013).It harms plant growth and development and reduces crop growth rate and also affects biomass accumulation. Generally, in crop plants drought severely affects the cell division and expansion, elongation of root, leaf size, proliferation of root and inhibition of shoot growth (Sharp & Davies 1989; Spollen et al.,1993;Yamaguchi et al.,2010). Furthermore ,it also badly hampers all kinds of plant functions and physiological and biochemical traits such as mineral elements, carbohydrates, free radicals, ions, hormones, lipids, and nucleic acids (HongBo et al., 2005; Yasar et al., ; Moghadam et al .,2011,Mohsen Pourgholam et al,2013) .The transportation of nutrients from the roots to the stem severely get affected by drought as the rate of transpiration is reduced and damage of active transport and membrane permeability take place (Viets, 1972; Alam, 1999; Yasar et al ). Simultaneously, due to decrease in soil moisture, problem occurs with the low distribution of absorbed nutrients by the plant roots in the soil (Alam, 1999; Yasar et al ). More importantly, drought leads to rise in generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) due to energy accumulation in stress condition of plants (Smirnoff 1993; Asada 2006; Waraich et al.,2011).Drought diminishes photosynthetic carbon fixation primarily through restraining the entrance of CO2 into the leaf or by reducing metabolism (Smirnoff 1993; Loggini et al., 1999; Ap...
Extreme weather events, such as drought, are tremendously important when considering stressors to water resources. History of drought has been documented in Paleoclimate studies using long lived tree species indigenous to Texas. Tree-ring proxies are especially useful when reconstructing histories of climate change across a large region like Texas, since many can be sampled from different areas. Annual tree ring data can give a precise year-to-year temperature and precipitation records. Tree ring data has shown droughts lasting a decade or more staggered throughout the state happening randomly since the 1600’s. (why this is important to water supply) [Brenner]
The health effects from uranium and radioactive run off is well known on the Navajo Reservation. The uranium boom in the 1950s left much of the reservation in shambles; piles of mill tailings seeped into the ground and released radon into the air. The mill tailings, then, leached into the Navajo’s groun...
Kai Erikson argues that radiation and other forms of radioactive waste are a new species of trouble (Erikson, 1994). Nuclear waste disposal is a pressing issue of extreme importance. Nuclear waste is material that either contains a radioactive substance or has been contaminated by radioactive elements and is no longer useful. With all of the dangers surrounding nuclear waste and a half-life of one hundred thousand years this issue must be solved with complete certainty. Any mistakes or miscalculations can destroy the environment.
...onald P., Pitelka, Louis F., Solomon, Allen M., Nathan, Ran, Midgley, Guy F., Fragoso, Jose M.V., Lischke, Heike & Thompson, Ken. (2005, September). Forecasting regional to global plant migration in response to climate change. BioScience 55(9), 749(11).
Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
In our days, mining for resources is inevitable. The resources we need are valuable in everyday life. Such resources mined up are coal, copper, gold, silver, and sand. However, mining poses environmental risks that can degrade the quality of soil and water, which can end up effecting us humans if not taken care of and many of the damages are irreversible once they have occurred.