Most people love snow for a variety of reasons.
The cat's reason is a bit strange - snow is really similar to love, no matter how strong it is when it comes, as long as it is ignored for a while, it will disappear.
All those who like snow are happy enough at the moment.
In the middle of winter, spending long periods of time outdoors can be at risk of injury or even death from exposure to the cold, which can be made worse by the wind. So, everybody's wrapped up tightly!
For animals, the cold is a real problem. As a result, people have evolved various means: insulation, antifreeze chemistry, storing food, using body reserves, huddling together to keep each other warm, and so on.
Many animals, such as deer and cows, grow an extra thick layer of fur to prepare for the winter. Other animals, such as bears and squirrels, hibernate.
To get rid of the cold as much as possible, they dig holes and even lay plants and lichens in the holes to increase insulation. It then curls up, slows down breathing and heart rate, and shuts down much of the brain activity, greatly reducing energy use.
Small hibernators like squirrels can even bring their body temperature down to zero - a few degrees. And keep it that way for months on end, except for the occasional brief waking up to chew on some pre-hoarded seeds and then sprinkle a soak of urine.
Snow, on the other hand, is extremely important for the animals of the northern world, as it provides an insulating layer during the winter months, conserving the earth's own heat and allowing plants and animals to survive in the cold.
Many invertebrates can even thrive in the snow, including species such as spiders, wasps, beetles, snow scorpion flies and jumping insects – which are still active in temperatures as low as -5 °C.
And what about plants?No fur, no shelter from the wind, no burrowing. What keeps trees and bushes from freezing to death in the cold midwinter?
Humming the song "Birch Forest" in our heads, we take the birch, one of the iconic trees of the boreal forest, to see how plants survive the winter.
Birch trees, like other trees, resist the cold in two main ways: supercooling and freezing.
First of all, it is said that supercooling – refers to what happens when the solution drops below its freezing point but there are no impurities to initiate the (nucleation) freezing point process, so it remains in a liquid state.
Like many other plants that grow in northern latitudes, many tissues of the birch can be supercooled.
In order for supercooling to be able to help plants not freeze when the ambient temperature is well below freezing level, nucleation must be prevented. Plants typically achieve this by synthesizing specific sugars and proteins that inhibit nucleation and protect the integrity of the cell's various membrane systems.
Interestingly, some animal species (especially fish and insects) have also developed this mechanism, albeit to a different extent than plants.
Then there is the helpless freezing – no matter how hard the birch tries to stop it, some of the water still forms ice crystals.
Often, ice is lethal to living cells – which is why frostbite is so dangerous that it may even force amputation. However, in frost-tolerant plants, ice forms where it won't cause damage. Most commonly, between cells.
When water is sucked into the ice crystals outside the cell, the normally watery interior of the cell becomes dehydrated, making it increasingly difficult for it to form deadly ice crystals. Of course, there is a limit to how much dehydration a plant cell can tolerate. Excessive dehydration is the most common reason why frost-tolerant species remain frostbitten.
Birch species that are more northerly are more able to withstand internal freezing than the range of species that rely on internal supercooling.
When the snow melts in the city, it is filthy and muddy, and the trees on both sides of the road are served a cup of poisoned milk with the snow melting agent
When the snow melts in the wild, the crystal clear water droplets converge into a stream to nourish the earth;
When the snow melts in the mountains, rivers and plateaus, it turns into rolling raging waves, and the great river of life nourishes all living beings.
The author thanks for your interest (-
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