The World’s First Green Wall Centre
Watermatic are hosting nine different types of Green Wall at their premises near Radlett. They are providing computerised irrigation and nutrients specific to each wall. The system is monitored by the CityGal control system (which can be accessed remotely via the web to observe and make adjustments. A series of webcams will allow remote viewing of the walls’ condition and progress. Green Walls have become increasingly popular with Specifiers, Designers, Users and Property Owners alike for their numerous visual, environmental and functional benefits. They are being used in an amazingly imaginative range of applications from internal and external architectural features to Vertical Edible Gardens and everything in between.
Aside from their intrinsic beauty, Green Walls can have beneficial effects on air quality, sound and dust suppression, biodiversity, thermal gain and urban psychology.
The Creative and design abilities of green wall enthusiasts have produced a wide range of Green Wall types to fit different circumstances and budgets. The growing wave of interest has seen a rapid increase of installations around the UK. And the creation of this centre will promote an even greater interest and encourage new applications for Green Walls in the Green Decade
The Green Wall Centre is the brainchild of Zac Ribak, MD of Watermatic Ltd – Zac said “I wanted to create a ‘state of the art’ focal point for displaying these wonderful walls, and also to monitor them providing feedback and some real running data which will also help with research, testing and development”.
CENSUS FINDS SURPRISINGLY FEW WHITE SHARKS OFF CALIFORNIA
In the first census of its kind, research led by UC Davis and Stanford University found that there are far fewer white sharks off central California than biologists had thought.
The study, published today in the journal Biology Letters, is the first rigorous scientific estimate of white shark numbers in the northeast Pacific Ocean. It is also the best estimate among the world's three known white shark populations (the others are in Australia/New Zealand and South Africa).
The researchers went out into the Pacific Ocean in small boats to places where white sharks congregate. They lured the sharks into photo range using a seal-shaped decoy on a fishing line. From 321 photographs of the uniquely jagged edges of white sharks' dorsal fins, they identified 131 individual sharks.
From these data they used statistical methods to estimate that there are 219 adult and sub-adult white sharks in the region. (White sharks are classed as sub- adults when they reach about 8-9 feet in length and their dietary focus shifts from eating fish to mostly marine mammals. They are adults when they reach sexual maturity -- for males, that is about 13 feet long; for females, it is about 15 feet.)
"This low number was a real surprise," said UC Davis doctoral student Taylor Chapple, the study's lead author. "It's lower than we expected, and also substantially smaller than populations of other large marine predators, such as killer whales and polar bears. However, this estimate only represents a single point in time; further research will tell us if this number represents a healthy, viable population, or one critically in danger of collapse, or something in between."
"We've found that these white sharks return to the same regions of the coast year after year," said study co-author Barbara Block, a Stanford University marine biologist and a leading expert on sharks, tunas and billfishes. "It is this fact that makes it possible to estimate their numbers. Our goal is to keep track of our ocean predators."
Satellite tagging studies have demonstrated that white sharks in the northeast Pacific make annual migrations from coastal areas in Central California and Guadalupe Island, Mexico, out to the Hawaiian Islands or to the "White Shark Cafe," a region of the open ocean between the Baja Peninsula and Hawaii where white sharks have been found to congregate -- and then they return to the coastal areas.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164