The environment around us is full of amazing features and facts you might not know. One of the best ways to appreciate the earth around us is to learn more about how we interact with nature.
Explore the factsThe source of life
About 71% of the earth is water. The oceans hold approximately 96.5% of this water and the ice caps hold about 2%.
The remaining water exists in rivers, ponds, glaciers, ice caps, lakes, as water vapor and our taps, among other water bodies.
Only 1% of the earth’s water is safe for human consumption.
The world has over 3.04 trillion trees in the world. However, 27,000 of them are cut down daily to make toilet paper. This translates to about 9.8 million trees annually. One single recycled edition of the New York Times newspaper could save 75,000 trees.
Fungi play a protective role in the environment. From digesting minerals out of rock formations to consuming fossil fuel spills, and even de-radiating the environment.
Moulds are made up of very fine threads (hyphae). Hyphae grow at the tip and divide repeatedly along their length creating long and branching chains. The hyphae keep growing and intertwining until they form a network of threads called a mycelium. Digestive enzymes are secreted from the hyphal tip. These enzymes break down the organic matter found in the soil into smaller molecules which are used by the fungus as food.
Macroscopic filamentous fungi also grow by producing a mycelium below ground. They differ from moulds because they produce visible fruiting bodies (commonly known as mushrooms or toadstools) that hold the spores. The fruiting body is made up of tightly packed hyphae which divide to produce the different parts of the fungal structure, for example the cap and the stem. Gills underneath the cap are covered with spores and a 10 cm diameter cap can produce up to 100 million spores per hour.
Yeasts are small, lemon-shaped single cells that are about the same size as red blood cells. They multiply by budding a daughter cell off from the original parent cell. Scars can be seen on the surface of the yeast cell where buds have broken off. Yeasts such as Saccharomyces play an important role in the production of bread and in brewing. Yeasts are also one of the most widely used model organisms for genetic studies, for example in cancer research. Other species of yeast such as Candida are opportunistic pathogens and cause infections in individuals who do not have a healthy immune system.
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