Welcome to Gaia! ::

After she slid into her seat, Coralie found herself staring in mild dismay at the board as Dax spoke. This sort of assignment was really far more in line with Ashlynn's interests. Still. If she wanted to do well enough in school to graduate, she would have to try. Tapping a pencil against her chin, she studied the questions and then began to write.

The mountain hadn't always been a mountain. It could, just barely, recall a time when it had been nothing but flatlands. That had been before the Great Shaking, when the earth had been torn apart and forced back into new and strange configurations.

The mountain hadn't minded so much at first. Except that the river that had once flowed so tranquilly over it had become far less tranquil. Once it had burbled smoothly along and all manner of plant and animals had crowded it's banks. Things had been much less lonely then, the mountain thought. When the upheaval came, the river had changed somehow. It wasn't a slow, gentle thing anymore. Now it cut through the mountain in a blaze of rapids and tiny falls. Animals and plants had changed too. The mountain wasn't as lushly green as it had once been.

Thick, green grasses and flowers had given way to hardier shrubs that could dig their roots into the mountain's soil and hold on through the thunderstorms and occasional lightning fires. Thin soil that only seemed to nourish small, scrubby plants and hardy pines now. The only birds the mountain saw now were the hunters. And they only stayed for the fish that sometimes were knocked silly by the rapids and stranded on dry rock. Or for the multitude of tiny beasts that could survive in the thinner air and on nothing for pine nuts.

Oh, the mountain was sure that there were other beasts and plants near it's summit and beyond, but they hadn't stayed when the mountain became a mountain. Fickle, flightly things, they'd avoided the colder climate and rocky ground. They'd stayed where the living as decidedly easier. Only the toughest and hardiest of plants and animals had stayed to keep the mountain company during it's long watch over the land.

Absently chewing on the eraser of his pencil, Ares thought about which question he wanted to answer. After several minutes' thought, he settled on the question "How would volcanic eruptions affect weather or climate?" He wasn't entirely certain he wanted to put that into something's point of view, so he opted to make it from third person.



Finishing up his paragraph about it, he double checked it for any errors. Hoping that it was what Dex was looking for, he turned in his work and returned to his seat.

Sascha's brows piqued as the questions and assignment were revealed. It seemed easy enough, a short paragraph or two of information. He took his pen out, tapped it against his chin, and began to write.

Volcanic eruptions make thick clouds of ash and smoke, which can cover entire civilizations in a matter of hours. The ash itself tends to coat things and preserve them, like amber would preserve a fossil or the body of an insect. However, despite this wonderful preservation skill, the ash is not safe to inhale and will kill or inhibit anyone who is exposed to it for too long. An eruption can also trigger thunderstorms because of how good the particles of ash are at attracting water droplets.

This affinity for attracting water also causes another problem, which starts with the formation of something called volcanic fog. This often constant fog forms from a vent inside of a volcano and contains high levels of sulfur dioxide. The sulfuric dioxide, when introduced to the atmosphere, then combines with water droplets to form sulfuric acid droplets, which then get carried by the wind and can cause the quality of air in an area to drop. This can also lead to acid rain, which contaminates and damages all sorts of things on land, such as houses, plants, and drinking water.

He set his pen down on his desk once he'd run out of things to say and checked to make sure that everything made sense. Hopefully this was what Dax wanted to see!

Yue chewed on the pencil before wondering which question would be the easiest, especially if she had to write it from someone else’s point of view. Well it might be fun to explain a mountain during an eruption. She’d write it out and see what exactly came of it. Hopefully it would be good enough.

The mountain had always loved the plant life and animal life around him, everything was peaceful and he was friends with everyone. However one day something changed, he got angry and there was a fire burning in his tummy. He tried to hold it back but it burst, hot lava bubbled forth from inside of him and destroyed anything in its path. Animals fled in terror, plants and towns found in the lava’s path were wiped out, and the mountain cried because it was a barren waste land and everyone had left him.

The mountiain watched as ash rose up into the air and condensed into the water droplets, clouds formed and with the crowds rain came, and with the rain thunder and lightning crashed. The mountain was sad, his animals where gone and his plants where dead but he knew he just had to wait it out and maybe one day that peaceful time would be back.

There that long enough right? wrapping up her assignment she gathered up the paper and turned the assignment in.

Draven sat back and thought for awhile, not quite sure where to start. He thought about the mountains for awhile, and the sort of changes that would impact the wildlife, maybe that was a good place to start?

Elevation is separated into zones, and the higher up you go the colder it becomes due to altitude. With the cold comes the need for adaptation to the climate, either thicker fur, fat storage, or a higher calorie diet. With vegetation at a premium the higher you climb, most creatures in higher zones are carnivores. It also explains other adaptations such as flight, like the Chimeras who have no trouble dealing with such a climate.

Hmm, maybe that was all he needed? What would it be like to live in the mountains, he wondered.

Phyre found learning about all these animals amazing. There were so many different kinds of creatures, and all so different from each other! For sure the world of Below had lots of variety to it. How could one possibly see all the animals there was? It had to be impossible.

When it came to Phyre's turn to speak on her favorite animal, she thought about it for a moment before speaking to her teacher ", I like the turtle. It is a reptile I believe? It lays eggs and is scaly minus its hard shell, like the snake and lizard in the worksheet."

Dax had to scan his class list at the question of how cats purred. "Ah, well..." he pushed his glasses up. "Dante, no one really knows how cats purr. We know that they purr when they're happy or content, but they also purr when they're hurt or in pain and that it helps them heal from injuries. It's believed that what they do is tighten and loosen the folds in their vocal cords," he indicated where they were on his throat, "or possibly the muscles of the larynx, which covers the vocal folds. It's really a bit of a mystery." he said with a smile before moving on to the next child.