Western Australian Economy

Western Australian Economy

Western Australia is one of Australia's leading states, in economic growth and is the biggest sate of Australia. Western Australia is one of the worlds leading contributors to petroleum, mining, iron, gas, nickel and gold(WA extracts 75% of the whole of Australia's gold!) . It also produces 20% of the world's Alumina. Not only is WA one of the worlds leading ore and mineral providers, it also has great agricultural exports and imports. It creates and exports things such as wheat, barley and wool. WA even has a rising tourism rates which just tops off WA as being probably one of the best states in the entire country.

WA has many regions since it is such a big state, these different states create different goods and services.

The Kimberley-

Pearling, mining, agriculture, aquaculture, indigenous art and tourism

Pilbara-
Mining, petroleum, iron ore

GoldFields-
Gold, nickel, agriculture, fishing, wheat, barley

South West-
Alumina, mineral sands, agriculture, timber, viticulture

As mentioned above, Western Australia is a very strong economy with quite a few strengths. But just like everything that seems perfect in life, it has its flaws.
Western Australia's strengths are: good employment rate, high literacy rate, having the highest per capita output then any other state, it includes the state offices of many major banks such as NAB, Westpac and ANZ, it is very good with it's foreign exchange with countries such as China and a few European countries and we are having a HUGE boom.
The Weaknesses of WA are not very noticeable yet there are still some:
The price of our housing and land is sky rocketing due to the demand of housing because of the boom (the price of housing has gone up by over 40% since 2006!), WA is quickly becoming very crowded since it has such high job appeal because of all the job opportunities.

Western Australia like all things around the world is changing. From the rising prices of land, to the developing technologies. WA's changes are majorly contributed by the rising global problems. Global warming seems to be making weather a lot hotter which means more drought for us, the price of fuel is soon going to be $2.00 per litre, due to rising sea levels in the near future our beaches might be too far into shore to properly enjoy any more. Since there are now more people living WA then ever demand and supply for things will be greatly disrupted.

Antarctica

Society and Environment:
Climate Change in Antarctica

An Introduction to Antarctica

Antarctica is a huge continent that is 1.4 times bigger then the USA, and 58 times bigger then the UK. It is the coldest place on earth and contains 70% of the world’s freshwater frozen as ice, and also contains 90% of all the ice in the world. There are no native tribes or permanent human residences there, but around 26,000 tourists from around the world come to experience the Antarctic every year.

The land features are as follows:

• Has an area of 13,829,430km2


• Has a mountain that is 4892m tall called Mt.Vinson


• 0.32% of Antarctica is not covered in ice.
  
• The average Winter temperature at the South Pole is -60 degrees Celsius.


• The average summer temperature at the South Pole is -27.5 degrees Celsius
  
• It has the record for the lowest temperature ever -89.2 degrees Celsius, and the windiest place on earth with winds reaching 248.4km/h
  

Antarctica is made of many landforms, most of which come from ice. The main few ones are:

• Glaciers


• Deserts


• Mountains


• Plains


• Plateaus


• Valleys


• Nunataks
  

How has Antarctica been effected by Climate Change?
Antarctica has always been a place that has been known as the coldest place in the world, a place of ice and a place full of interesting biodiversity. And everybody has always expected it to be the same, always keeping the earth's temperature down. But what happens if the Antarctic suddenly disappears? then what happens? The truth is, this is becoming a reality as a result of global warming. Since Antarctica is such a cold place, any rises at all in temperature can have a huge effect on an area. It has been recorded that the average temperature in Antarctica has gone up by 2.5degrees celsius since the 1990s. This has caused ice fields to melt faster then they can grow back, glaciers have begun to show signs of shrinking (all around the world in fact) , it has melted away lands of ice, so that water is in its place. As a result of this, for the first time ever a polar bear has drowned from not being able to find sufficient land to rest upon. Another major thing that has happened in Antarctica is that the Larsen B iceshelf has broken away as shown:
And the terrifying truth of it is, this is only the beginning of the effects of Global warming, and if we don't stop letting off carbon dioxide and living the way we are things are only going to get more and more extreme, not just for Antarctica but for the entire world.

This graph here shows us how much our Co2 emissions have been rising with temperature

How Will This Effect the Inhabitants of Antarctica?

Antarctica has no permanent human settlers, but there are always scientists in Antarctica to study and check on everything there. So there is no-one to complain or adapt to the changing climate (apart from the scientists, because thats what they go there for). However Antarctica has a diverse range of wild life living in it, such as: Polar bears, Penguins (of all different species), whales, seals and variety of birds. At the moment global warming is only beginning to start its effects, and no animals have been forced into becoming endangered yet. But it will happen soon, because krill, a type of food for penguins and numerous other animals are being affected by the rise in temperature. This is because krill feed off algae that lives underneath the surface ice, but since the ice is breaking/melting up, the krill are starting lose their source of food. If they were ever to become extinct this would have a chain reaction effect on the entire food chain in the Antarctic.

FACT: The number of krill has declined by almost 80% since 1970

Polar bears, as mentioned before are losing pieces of land to rest upon and are now occasionally drowning because of it.

Future change to the environment

If the temperature continues to rise like it is, then the Antarctic summer ice will disappear altogether, sea ice will shrink even more, and the permafrost will begin to thaw. Krill will end up being unable to breed faster then the demand for them, and will die out, and polar bears will have to find a new habitat.These are just some of the consequences that could happen if we continue with our ways as we are now. As you see below, krill is one of the most important creatures in the Antarctic food chain therefor showing how devastating it will be if they die out. The entire landscape will eventually disappear, because almost all of Anarctica is covered in ice, and all habitats for antarctic animals will be destroyed. If this happens a huge part of the worlds unique biodiversity will be rendered extinct, or they will have to adapt very quickly.

How this effects the entire world?

Economical Effects:

If the Antarctic melts, then the global sea level will rise immensely. this means that there will be less land to live on, on top of the fact that the world is covered by over 70% with oceans. And with growing populations means the need for more houses. The price of land will sky rocket, even more then it is now and the countries will be running out of places for tourists and even their own citizens to live in. But also, this will make ship routes, and ships themselves more effective, so the boating companies could benefit greatly from this. This could also flood popular tourist attractions or certain landmarks and lose tourism for certain countries.

Political Effects

Global warming, and the Antarctic ice caps are a currently big issue in politics. As most people would know, Al Gore ex-vice president of the US has been going around flying to places around the world to get the threat of global warming across. But a lot of scientists and politicians have said all of this Global warming hype is for nothing, that our ice caps are not melting, that the temperature we have is completely normal. I believe that the truth is that politicians would prefer to focus on things they think are more important then climate change. Because they are more occupied with things like the war in Iraq, and earning more money for their country's budget. If the ice caps melted away completely in Antarctica, then people would have to believe Gore's theory and the politcal world would be thrown around, with all other current issues abandoned to try and cover up the effects of global warming, but of course by then it would be too late. And all there would be is to throw around the blame, and could lead to fighting and even maybe wars, for the blame of who has contributed most to global warming. This all my idea/ opinion on this matter so it has a high chance of being false.

Shortly put-

Short term effects : distracts politicians from other troubles in the world

Long term effects: can end up with a lot of debate and fighting with blame.

Social Effects

If the Antarctic melts then as said many times before, the global sea level will rise, this will cause societies to have to move to a more crowded place, that they cannot call their own. If the amount of water continues to expand, then it will open up new ship routes which could bring some countries closer to one another, maybe opening up more friendships. The fact that the low lying islands are being flooded, has made it so that they must move to a different country, meaning that the country will not have much room left in it, and fighting could break out, because the locals might not like having others in their country.

My Bibliography

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming2.htm +

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming.htm - for general info on Antarctica’s problems and useful diagrams
_______________________________________________________________

http://www.climatehotmap.org/antarctica.html- Early warming signs that global warming is serious to the Antarctic
_________________________________________________

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060330_warming_antarctic.html online news/science articles
________________________________________________________

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1429905.htm

More proof that global warming effects the Antarctic, even the news agrees.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0203-03.htm

information on how penguins are affected by global warming

http://images.wri.org/climatescience_larsenb.jpg

Images of the Larsen B iceshelf

Seahorses

Seahorses

Why are Seahorses endangered?

• They are hunted by asian countries for medicinal use.
• Trawling nets by ships destroy their natural habitat.
• Storms sometimes push Seahorses onto the shore, or make the seahorses fall off their anchored area e.g. seaweed, macro-algae. *Seahorses cannot live without being anchored on to something, because they cannot swim for long before becoming exhausted.
• They have predators, such as crabs, rays and tunas.

Information on Seahorses

Seahorses is a very interesting animal, with over 35+ known species. They ae birth to the babies. Their diet consists of brine shrimp, plankton and other microscopic creatures in the sea, and they eat over 3000 shrimp everyday because they have no teeth or stomach and need to eat constantly to stay alive. They live in salt water, and cannot live in fresh water for very long. They are thought to have evolved 40 million years ago. They are a very unique animal because they are the only animal in the world where males gives birth to the babies, because although that the female makes the eggs, she implants the eggs into the male's pouch, which he then fertilises and gives birth to. Their average life span is thought to be from 1-5 years, and can grow from 1 inch to 1 foot, they like to live in warmer waters because it's more calm in warmer water.

What we're doing to preserve/ save them

Since seahorses are a currently endangered species there are of course people trying to save them. CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) currently is protecting them, and have made them illegal to hunt. Although this makes Seahorses even more rare, because it makes the seahorses even more expensive for illegal trades to sell. Currently there are places that have a high health gene bank for breeding each one of the seahorse species, to make sure that they cannot be hunted and never become extinct. They are not officially endangered, but research has shown that in the past 5 years, some seahorse populations have decreased by 50%!

What effect would this have on the ecosystem if seahorses became extinct?

Although seahorses may not seem to do any good for the ecosystem, they are actually very important to other animals. Such as those that prey upon seahorses e.g crabs, rays etc... and brine shrimp would over populate greatly. Because seahorses are known to eat 360 brine fish per hour. Baby seahorses provide a meal for some a large variety of plankton eating animals because they are so small.

Information on the GreyHeaded Flying Fox

The Grey Headed Flying fox is a currently endangered Australian animal that is nocturnal. It is currently very vulnerable in New South Wales, because of loss of habitat the creation of so many suburban areas are getting rid of forests and mangroves fast, and that is where the Grey headed Flying Fox dwells, also another problem is that the Grey Headed Flying Fox has a very slow reproductive rate, one born per year per couple, and it takes males quite long to gain sexual maturity
The Grey Headed Flying Fox has characteristics of :
Has a Grey head, with a red/orange mantle around the neck
They are one of the biggest bats in Australia with a wingspan of over 1m.
They have furry heads.
Although, not a decade ago, Grey Headed Flying Fox's were considered to be fine, and living in millions, but recently it has been that are only 300,000 now, and it has been found that their total population has gone done by 30%
They have a 15 year life span, which lets them survive better then a lot of other animals
Grey Headed Foxes play a big role in helping the regeneration of hardwood forests by pollinating and dropping seeds while they feed. It is estimated that one Grey Headed Flying Fox can disperse 60,000 seeds in one night

My Sose Bibliography

These are sites i used to find out about the Greyheaded flying fox
http://www.faunanet.gov.au/wos/factfile.cfm?Fact_ID=307
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-headed_Flying_Fox
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dse/nrenpa.nsf/FID/-BAA86C6B029BC723CA256BF2001E4069?OpenDocument
________________________________________________
These are the site where i found information on Seahorses