CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF THE EARLY JURASSIC PETRIFIED FOREST OF HOLBAV AND CRISTIAN AREAS (BRAȘOV REGION, SOUTH CARPATHIANS, ROMANIA), 2nd PART

The present paper represents the second part of the palaeoxylotomical study on the “Grădinaru Collection” that is housed by the National Museum of Geology, Bucharest. By the study of a new material collected from the Getic domain of the South Carpathians, Romania, the following taxa were identified and discussed in detail: Protocupressinoxylon dragastanii, Protojuniperoxylon holbavicum (sp. nov.), Brachyoxylon holbavicum, B. cristianicum, Palaeoginkgoxylon sp., Bucklandia sp. A, and Bucklandia sp. B. All the studied specimens suggest to a tropical Early Jurassic petrified forest. Thus, the new data have not only palaeobotanical importance, but they also contribute to the palaeobiogeographic, palaeoecologic and palaeoclimatologic knowledge of the Mesophytic

Evaluation of the tourist attractions of Canton Puyango, Province of Loja-Ecuador

Multi-criteria evaluation studies in the tourism field have gained importance in recent times due to the Covid19 pandemic that has presented challenges and new social, cultural and lifestyle changes in today's society. Therefore, in this context, the CME helps tourism planners and managers to have a clearer vision to make decisions in the prioritization and production of products that help to energize the local economy based on the tourist attractions with the greatest potential. The objective of the study is to inform planners, which tourist attractions have the greatest potential in the canton of Puyango. The research becomes strategic for the canton since the results determine that the petrified forest of Puyango, the 8-sphere clock of the San Jacinto church, the sphinx of the Lord of Giron and the Alma Lojana Gourmet coffee are in the top four positions that are strategic to develop efforts in tourism.

Carson McCullers’s ‘Look Homeward, Americans’ (1940)

Chapter 11 takes a short essay by Carson McCullers as the basis for a discussion of America’s national trait of being ‘homesick most for the places we have never known’. It considers this phenomenon with reference to the writings of Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald who made nostalgic wonder part of the American vernacular. It also draws a comparison between the forward-looking nostalgia McCullers analyses and Robert Sherwood’s 1935 play The Petrified Forest in which the young heroine dreams of returning to a home she has never known. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man—‘a veritable Ulysses of the black experience’—and a short story by McCullers called ‘The Aliens’, both of which urge a mature, hopeful, and inward-facing quest for ‘the homeness of home’.

Paleoclimatic inferences based on wood growth interruptions in Late Triassic flood deposits from the southernmost Brazilian Gondwana

The goals of this study were to establish patterns in a silicified wood assemblage to depict the evolution patterns of the Triassic paleoclimate in southern Brazilian Gondwana during an interval of global arid to semi-arid climatic context, and the taphonomic process that led to the preservation of the so-called “Petrified Forest”, which is preserved in the central area of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Analyses were developed with an assemblage of 13 permineralized conifer wood, using standard thin sections, whose anatomical details were studied in transmitted light. Ground-Penetrating Radar was used to obtain information about the depositional characteristics of the site. Main results are: true growth rings are absent in all samples, and the boundaries of the interruption zones are marked by an abrupt decline in cell diameter, but they are not accompanied by a reduction of cell wall thickness. The subsequent reversion to normal tracheid diameter is also abrupt, revealing the return of the previous growing conditions. Ground-penetrating Radar analyses confirmed that the Mata Sequence deposits correspond to a river. The identification of growth interruption zones in a Late Triassic wood assemblage in southernmost Brazilian Gondwana (Paleobotanic Garden of the city of Mata, RS) indicates the presence of tropical, temporarily dry climate conditions, characterized by irregular, short-term environmental disturbances to growth. The taphonomic process was related to a river-channel infilling depositional process, under the influence of high-energy flood events that dragged and buried the trees. Keywords: Wood growth patterns, Mata sequence, gymnosperms, Triassic climate, petrified forest.

Assessment of the Environmental Carrying Capacity for Protected Areas: A Study of Petrified Forest and Hassanah Dome, the Great Cairo

The research aims to quantify the environmental carrying capacity of both Petrified Forest Protectorate in East Greater Cairo and Hassanah Dome Protectorate in West Greater Cairo, with their sustainable use and preservation. The environmental carrying capacity works as a sustainable method not to exceed the environmental limits of nature reserves or in other words, the number of visitors does not exceed the maximum allowed for visiting the reserve. The methodology used in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been used. The elements of the methodology are at 3 levels, namely, physical carrying capacity (PCC), which depends on the optimal rate of space used per capita and open period, real carrying capacity (RCC), which depends on environmental and social factors, and effective carrying capacity (ECC), which depends on administrative and operational capacity. The results of the research found that the Petrified Forest Protectorate (East of Greater Cairo) accommodates 186,286 visitor per day, and Hassanah Dome Protectorate (West of Greater Cairo) accommodates 26,612 visitor per day. In addition to assessing the level of the ecological carrying capacity index (ECCI), which measures the extent of support for the population and its activities, and by comparing the total environmental carrying capacity of the two protectorates that reached 212,898 visitors per day with the population of Greater Cairo (Cairo Governorate and Giza Governorate), which reached 17 million (Capmas, 2017), it was found that the environmental carrying capacity of the two protectorates is not sufficient to support recreational activities and environmental tourism for people of Greater Cairo.