A lot of silt (sediment) that is carried by the river has been trapped in the reservoir. Eventually, if the dam is not removed, the reservoir will fill with silt, making it useless. Also, because the river's silt doesn't go downstream anymore, the city of Shanghai will suffer because there has been no silt to replace land that is washed away at the river's mouth. In a high-silt content river like the Yangtze, sediment can clog the dam's outlets, and it cannot release water. The water would back up behind the dam and have nowhere to go, and would eventually go over the dam, making it collapse.
The dam is also a possible target in war, weakening China's national security. It is also possible that the dam sits on a seismic fault.
The Gezhouba Dam (Gezhouba Water Control Project, Chinese: 长江葛洲坝水利枢纽工程) is an afterbay (smaller dam in front) of the Three Gorges Dam. It forms a pool that extends upstream to the base of the Three Gorges Dam, improving navigation. The dam was built from December 30, 1970 to December 10, 1988. The dam is long and up to tall. It generates 2,710 megawatts of electricity. There are three ship locks at the dam. Lock No.2, which is long, wide, and deep, is among the 100 largest in the world.
A series of other dams are also planned upstream, on the Yangtze and Jinsha rivers. About four dams are planned on the stretch of the Yangtze River, and they will produce 38,500 megawatts in total. Eight dams are planned on the Jinsha River, and eight more upstream of it, and one original plan called for a dam in the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest river canyons in the world. This plan was, however, scrapped in December 21, 2007, because of the gorge's status as a World Heritage site.
Ericaceae
Ericaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Ericales. Plants of this family grow both in Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere. The common English name of Ericaceae is the "heath family".
Many plants of Ericaceae are shrubs, but there are also trees and herbs.
There are about 120 genera and about 4000 species in this family.
Many plants of Ericaceae are evergreen plants with small flowers in the shape of bells or tube. The color of flowers may be white, pink, red, violet, rarely yellow. It may be interest plants for gardens.
Fruits of some species are edible.
Some plants of Ericaceae have a poison in all their parts.
The genus "Epacris" was treated in a separate family, Epacridaceae, but "Epacris" is now in this family.
Alternation of generations
The term alternation of generations is used to describe an alternation of forms in the life cycle of plants and some protists. One form is diploid, with 2"n" chromosomes: the sporophyte. The other form is haploid with only one set of chromosomes: the gametophyte. Both forms are multicellular.
In sexual reproduction, organisms have a haploid phase with one set of chromosomes and a diploid phase with two sets of chromosomes. In animals the body (soma) is usually diploid, while the haploid stage is only the gametes.
In eukaryotes an alternation of generations may occur. This means that both the diploid and the haploid phases are multi-cellular organisms. The classic example is the mosses, where the green plant is a haploid gametophyte, and the reproductive phase is the diploid sporophyte. The two forms often occur "together", as shown in the illustration on the right
The term "alternation of generations" refers only to the sexual cycle: organisms may have asexual reproduction as well. The term should not be confused with life cycle stages in animals, which may "look" very different, but where all cells have two sets of chromosomes.
The alternation of generations is an important concept in the evolution of plants. All land plants have alternation of generations.
In mosses and their relatives (Bryophytes), the haploid gametophyte is the dominant generation, and the diploid sporophytes are sporangium-bearing stalks growing from the gametophytes. In ferns, the diploid sporophyte is much larger, but the haploid gametophyte is also a little plant that can grow for a long time.
For flowering plants ("Angiosperms"), the sporophyte generation is almost the whole life cycle (the green plant, roots etc.) except the small reproductive structures (pollen and ovule).
The sporophyte produces spores (hence the name), by meiosis. These develop into a gametophyte. Both the spores and the resulting gametophyte are haploid, meaning they have half as many chromosomes. Later, the mature gametophyte produces male or female gametes (or both) by mitosis. The fusion of male and female gametes (fertilization) produces a diploid zygote which develops into a new sporophyte. This is the cycle which is known as alternation of generations or alternation of phases.
In the landmark work "Variation and evolution in plants", Stebbins discussed how alternation of generations related to the overall evolution of plants. He began:
Later Stebbins comments:
The point is that, in diploids, new alleles are sheltered and (collectively) they are a reservoir of potential variation in the population.
Most algae have dominant gametophyte generations, but in some species the gametophytes and sporophytes are morphologically similar (isomorphic).
Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts) have a dominant gametophyte stage on which the adult sporophyte is dependent on the gametophyte for nutrition. The sporophyte develops from the zygote inside the female sex organ, so its early development is nurtured by the gametophyte.
An independent sporophyte is the dominant form in all clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms (flowering plants) that have survived to the present day.
Early land plants had sporophytes that produced identical spores: they looked the same whichever sex they developed into. The ancestors of the gymnosperms evolved complex heterosporous life cycles: the spores producing male and female gametophytes were of different sizes. The female "megaspores" tending to be larger, and fewer in number, than the male "microspores".
During the Devonian, several plant groups independently evolved "heterospory" and later "endospory", in which single megaspores were kept inside the sporangia of the parent sporophyte. These endosporic megaspores had a miniature multicellular female gametophyte with female sex organs and egg cells. The ova were fertilised by free-swimming sperm produced by windborne miniatuarised male gametophytes in the form of pre-pollen.
The resulting zygote developed into the next sporophyte generation while still inside the single large female megaspore in the sporangium of the parent sporophyte. The evolution of heterospory and endospory were among the earliest steps in the evolution of seeds of the kind produced by gymnosperms and angiosperms.
Some Chromalveolata, some fungi and some slime moulds have what seems to be genuine alternation of generations. These groups include such a wide range of different types that lt is difficult to say how common the phenomenon is. Certainly slime moulds are not a monophyletic group, and that may be true of the other two groups,
Alternation of generations between a multicellular diploid and a multicellular haploid generation does not exist in animals.
In some animals, there is a life cycle with different diploid stages. This has sometimes mistakenly been called "alternation of generations", but is quite different from what happens in plants and some protists. The most common case is that there are two distinct generations, where only one has sexual reproduction. Animals where it has been found include the Cnidaria and the Tunicates. The images on the right show the case of jellyfish: The medusa looks different from the polyp; they are different phenotypes. Only the medusa reproduces sexually.
Other animals with life cycle forms include parasites such as certain flukes, which live in different snails for one part of their life, and in vertebrates for another part.