This review aims to understand the environmental impact that tailings produce on land and marine ecosystem. Issues related flora, fauna, environment are revised. In first instance, origin of treatment disposal mining waste in Chile other countries is studied. The importance tailings’ valuable elements analyzed through mineralogy, chemical composition, oceanographic interactions. Several treatme...

Woodlots are forest islands embedded within an urban matrix, and often represent the only natural areas remaining in suburban areas. Woodlots represent critical conservation areas for native plants, and are important habitat for wildlife in urban areas. Invasion by non-indigenous (NIS) plants can alter ecological structure and function, and may be especially severe in remnant forests where NIS ...

Tropical Southeast (SE) Asia harbors extraordinary species richness and in its entirety comprises four of the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots. Here, we examine the assembly of the SE Asian biota through time and space. We conduct meta-analyses of geological, climatic, and biological (including 61 phylogenetic) data sets to test which areas have been the sources of long-term biological diversit...

The Southern Espinhaço Range consists of large areas covered by quartzitic or metaliferous tropical altitudinal fields. The Espinhaço Range ecosystems are endangered by anthropic high impacts, particularly due to mining and urbanization. We conducted a one-year inventory of the bee flora and fauna at the quartzitic Ouro Branco Mountains and a two-year survey of the metaliferous Ouro Preto field...

Using mtDNA sequences and 12 microsatellite loci, we compare populations of Testudo graeca from Sardinia and North Africa. The observed pattern of almost no differentiation combined with reduced variation in the Sardinian population is consistent with introduction in prehistoric or historic times from what is now Tunisia and neighbouring Algeria. Furthermore, in the light of the recently publis...

Lifemapper (http://www.lifemapper.org) is a predictive electronic atlas of the Earth’s biological biodiversity. Using a screensaver version of the GARP genetic algorithm for modeling species distributions, Lifemapper harnesses vast computing resources through ’volunteers’ PCs similar to SETI@home, to develop models of the distribution of the worlds fauna and flora. The Lifemapper project’s prim...

It might be useful to start by stating arguments for the positive image of, or even prejudice about, Croatia as a country with some key and untapped advantages in comparison with other countries. Can we consider as founded the claims that this country has a preserved and relatively clean environment – air, land, water, soil, flora and fauna – an advantageous geo-strategic location and creative,...

world’s most important centers of biological diversity; and Monteverde is one of the most diverse and important environments in the country. A key to this diversity is that the Monteverde zone encompasses seven different life zones (Holdridge 1967) found on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes of the continental divide. Species turnover is high (Harvey et al. 2000) because each life zone has a ...