Lake Tahoe, an enormous expanse of clear, blue, fresh water surrounded by meadows and dense forests and rimmed by snow-capped peaks, is one of the world's great scenic and ecological wonders. Tahoe's water is world famous for its amazing clarity. Even today, one can see objects 70 feet below the surface, a clarity matched almost nowhere in the world. The Tahoe Basin had a slowly evolving and essentially balanced environment for thousands of years, with surrounding forests, meadows and marshlands helping to maintain the clarity and purity of the lake.
This pristine environment also provided habitat for great diversity of plants and wildlife. Hundreds of species of native plants thrived in forest, marsh, and meadow. But now, in scarcely a century, an equilibrium that endured for thousands of years is rapidly being lost due to environmental degredation and resource values are steadily deteriorating because of human activities. While there is an appearent lose of wildlife and environment that exists in The Lake Tahoe Basin, there is also an insurgance of environmental conservation that has become increasingly powerful in the attempt at stopping these adverse affects on the environment from happening in the hope that the beauty of Lake Tahoe will continue to exist for generations and generations more.
The first major change in the environment came with the logging of the 1860s, when much of the basin's forest was clear-cut. The logging tapered off with the collapse of the mining boom, but not before most of the Tahoe's virgin forest was gone. By the 1920s, cars and better roads made Tahoe accessible to the ordinary visitor, and landholdings began to be subdivided for summer homes, especially along the southern and western portions of the basin.
The urbanization of the Tahoe Basin remained a relatively slow process until the 1950s, when the opening of Highway 50 and the completion of Interstate 80 brought the San Francisco Bay area within a four-hour drive. Year-round access to the lake encouraged expansion, as modest clubs designed for seasonal business were transformed into towering casinos packed with visitors throughout the year. The new access in winter also attracted thousands to the basin's ski slopes, and in addition to this increase due to accessability, the 1960 Olympics were held in the Lake Tahoe Basin, at the Squaw Valley Ski Resort. This event crea...
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...ve a healthy environment we must conserve the land that has remained untouched. For this reason, the TRPA organization and many other environmental protectionist groups of the Lake Tahoe Basin, support redevelopment as an alternative to new development, and we strongly believe all development should be contained within the existing urban boundaries. Redevelopment allows for many environmental improvements to be made.
Bibliography
League to Save Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe’s Annual Clarity Chart, South Lake Tahoe, California.
Douglas Strong, Tahoe: An Environmental History. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, c1984), pp 22-31.
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, About TRPA: Mission Statement. Online. Available: http://www.trpa.org/Mission.htm. Accessed: June 1, 2005.
U.S. Forest Service, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Lake Tahoe Federal Advisory Committee. Online. Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu/local/ltfac/. Accessed: June 1, 2005.
U.S. Census Bureau. California Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990. Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/cencounts/ca190090.txt. Accessed: June 1, 2005.
As I looked out the window of the restaurant, I could see the sun bouncing off the sparkling water below. Boats and other water craft scatter the water as well as people on water-skis and inner tubes. The picturesque view makes life seem so much better and just looking at the river makes a person calmer. The scene just described is the view from the window of a restaurant called Sophia in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the corresponding river is the mighty Mississippi. Although Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, this scene could be found right here in the valley of Phoenix. The way this is possible is through the Rio Salado Project.
The Logging Industry vs. The Old Growth Forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Spotted Owl.
What is the difference between a. and a. Five Year Review of Tar Creek Superfund Sites. Ottawa County, Oklahoma; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 6: Dallas, TX, 1994. 12. What is the difference between a.. Cates, D.; Technical Report After Action Monitoring of the Roubidoux Aquifer at the Tar Creek Superfund Site. EPA Cooperative Agreement #V-006449-01-N. U.S. Department of Environmental Quality: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 2006.
Virtually everywhere in the United States is affected to one degree of another by wildland fires. Even if a community is not directly involved with the fire itself, chances are that some of its members have gone to help fight wildland fires in other areas of the country by providing manpower, financial support, or other humanitarian aid.
The Blackwater fire of 1937 was a forest fire that occurred when a lightning strike ignited a tree in the Shoshone National Forest. It lasted for 6 days and killed 15 people, injuring a further 38; David P. Godwin (investigator of the fire) said,“not since 1910 have so many lives been lost on a single national forest fire”. The fire consumed a total of 1700 acres of forest woodland1 in this time. The Blackwater fire’s dire effect therefore resulted in the methods of firefighting that were used at this time being reviewed and updated to try to make firefighting safer for those involved in combating fire.
A prescribed burn is typically performed in an area surrounded by several land breaks that will not burn. These areas include; roads, already burned areas, fire lines, rivers, streams, and many other low fuel areas. When an area needs to be burned the team will map it out, distinguish proper fire lines, and plan the fire direction and intensity. The people performing...
As people of the twenty-first century, we are all too familiar with the frequent occurrence of wildfires in our nation’s forests. Each year millions of acres of woodlands are destroyed in brutal scorches. It has been estimated that 190 million acres of rangelands in the United States are highly susceptible to catastrophic fires (www.doi.gov/initiatives/forest.html.). About a third of these high-risk forests are located in California (www.sfgate.com). These uncontrollable blazes not only consume our beautiful forests but also the wildlife, our homes and often the lives of those who fight the wildfires. The frequency of these devastating fires has been increasing over the years. In fact, in the years 2000 and 2002, it has been reported that the United States has faced its worst two years in fifty years for mass destruction fires (www.doi.gov/initiatives/forest.html.). The increased natural fuels buildup coupled with droughts have been a prevailing factor in contributing to our wildfires and unhealthy forests (www.blm.gov/nhp/news/releases/pages/2004/pr040303_forests.html). Due to the severity of these wildfires, several regulations and guidelines have been implemented to save our forests. In fact, the President himself has devised a plan in order to restore our forests and prevent further destruction of our woodlands.
It is so sad to see the horror of forest fires and how they corrupt our beautiful land. So much damage comes out of what started so small. At least 603 square miles of land were burned in the early stages of the Arizona fire only a couple of years ago (BBC 2). In a Colorado fire 2.3 million acres had been burned (BBC 3). That land could have been saved if the use of prescribed burns had been in the area.
Employee wellness programs, also known as a “worksite wellness program”, are programs that are designed to promote and support the health, safety, and well being of a company’s employees. Wellness programs are meant to improve the health of the staff, their morale, and in turn also help improve their productivity. There are many components that make up employee wellness programs, for example; Health Screenings, Health Fairs, Fitness classes, Smoking cessation classes, and even wellness issue workshops. Employers have begun adopting these programs in hopes of helping their employees while they are at an age when health interventions can still help transform their long-term health choice. This paper will focus on trends found between employee weight and productivity, and the impacts these could have on a business overall.
when the settlers cleared out land with massive fires, the environment took a little longer to
9. The Salton Sea Authority and the California State Water Commission presentation of : Salton Sea Symposium II - various speakers. The Salton Sea - January 1998
In Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams blames a natural disaster—the overflowing of the Great Salt Lake in Utah--for the destruction of the place she loved most in the world, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. What Williams attempts to explain, however, is that this disaster wasn’t really “natural” at all. Refuge is critiqued by some for being over-dramatized, and Terry Tempest Williams is often criticized for blaming the world and others for the loss of the bird refuge. In fact, Williams is correct when she says that humans are responsible for the flooding of Salt Lake, which was caused by the construction of a railroad causeway that split Great Salt Lake into two bodies of water. The author is not a reckless finger-pointer, she is a realist.
Many times because of ambiguous wording contract details are up for interpretation and courts need to intervene to resolve disputes. Contract disputes can sever business and personal relationships, but that does not need to be the case. Faith in God can sometimes be the mediation needed to resolve conflicts and mend relationships that otherwise would not have been strong enough to flourish.
The Hoover Dam is one of the biggest dams and power plants in the world. It was built during the Great depression and continues to be a source of energy for the area. Between 1930 and 1936, thousands of people worked on the dam and ninety-six workers died from accidents directly relating to the building of the dam. It was the first human-made structure to exceed the masonry mass to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Another large debate in the issues and impacts of obesity is the responsibility of employer’s. Especially for those whose obesity comes from a sedentary lifestyle. Or perhaps need the preventative measures of keeping obesity at bay. A hot topic on the rise is whether or not employers should be mandated to give employees a work-out period in their schedule. The employers could offer employee’s incentives for utilizing resources (a company gym, discounted memberships, and dietician, walking a company track) and by using the resources keep costs low. Though initially it could be costly to take on the responsibility to offer extra incentives to employee’s it could offer long term potential savings. (Villareal, Apovian, Kushner, and Klein 2005) Those whose companies offer various programs and actively engage in them express more happiness, productivity, a greater quality of life, and overall better health. Better health allows for employee’s to serve their employers better. They use less sick pay, keep insurance premiums low, and are more likely to be in tune with their daily job. So while the initial cost may be high, the long term financial gain of a happy, healthy, productive team is hard not to invest in!