watershed

A watershed is a land area from which water drains into a major body of water such as a stream, lake, wetland, bay or estuary, or percolates into groundwater. Watersheds come in different shapes and sizes. Local watersheds are parts of larger, regional basins. Our Santa Clara basin, for example, is a sub-basin of the larger San Francisco Bay Basin.

A watershed begins at the top of a hill or mountain ridge and is ultimately defined by gravity. The Santa Clara Basin is bounded by the Diablo Mountains to the east and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the south and west. Raindrops falling east of the Santa Cruz Mountains ridgeline or west of the Diablo Range hills flow into our watershed. South San Francisco Bay receives the runoff water of our watersheds.

The following six major watersheds are located in the City of San José:
* Coyote

* Guadalupe

* Lower Penintenica

* San Tomas

* Calabazas

* Baylands
A watershed is more than just a drainage area. It’s the place where we live, work, play and find inspiration for our daily lives. Watersheds also provide critical habitats for the native wildlife and plants in our environment. It’s important for us to understand how our everyday activities impact our watershed so that we can protect our Santa Clara Basin.

Cognition

Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines, but is generally accepted to mean the process of awareness or thought. For example, in psychology, it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of concepts; individual minds, groups, organizations, and even larger coalitions of entities, can be modelled as societies which cooperate to form concepts. The autonomous elements of each 'society' would have the opportunity to demonstrate emergent behavior in the face of some crisis or opportunity. Cognition can also be interpreted as "understanding and trying to make sense of the world".

Manicouagan Reservoir

Manicouagan Reservoir (also Lake Manicouagan) is an annular lake in central Quebec, Canada. The lake covers an area of 1,942 km², and its eastern shore is accessible via Route 389. The island in the centre of the lake is known as René-Levasseur Island, and its highest point is Mount Babel. The lake and island are clearly seen from space and are sometimes called the "eye of Quebec." In 2007, the Manicouagan lake was astronaut Marc Garneau's nomination for the CBC's Seven Wonders of Canada competition.

Morphology

The term morphology in biology refers to the outward appearance (shape, structure, colour, pattern) of an organism or taxon and its component parts. This is in contrast to physiology, which deals primarily with function.

Also in use is the term "gross morphology", which refers to the prominent or principal aspects of an organism or taxon's morphology. A description of an organism's gross morphology would include, for example, its overall shape, overall colour, main markings etc. but not finer details.

Most taxa differ morphologically from other taxa. Typically, closely related taxa differ much less than more distantly related ones, but there are exceptions to this. Cryptic species are species which look very similar, or perhaps even outwardly identical, but are reproductively isolated. Conversely, sometimes unrelated taxa acquire similar appearance through convergent evolution or even through mimicry. A further problem with relying on morphological data is that what may appear, morphologically speaking, to be two distinct species, may in fact be shown by DNA analysis to be a single species.