Windbreaks are barriers formed by trees and other plants. Farmers plant these barriers around their fields, which help prevent the loss of soil and stop the wind from blowing soil away. They also keep the wind from damaging or destroying crops. Besides, extra trees and plants can be cut down and used or sold for wood.

Windbreaks can be highly valuable for protecting grain crops. For example, in parts of West Africa grain harvests were twenty percent higher in fields protected by windbreaks compared to fields without them.

But here is something interesting about windbreaks. They seem to work best when they allow some wind to pass through the barriers of trees or plants around a field. If not, then the movement of air close to the ground will lift the soil. Then the soil will be blown away. For this reason, a windbreak works best if it contains only 60 to 80 percent of the trees and plants that would be needed to make a solid line. An easy rule to remember is that windbreaks can protect areas up to 10 times the height of the tallest trees in the windbreak.

There should be at least two lines in each windbreak.One line should be large trees. The second line, right next to it, can be shorter trees or other plants with leaves. Locally grown trees and plants are considered the best choices for windbreaks. Trees reduce the damaging effects of wind and rain. Their roots help protect soil from being washed away. And trees can provide animals with shade from the sun.

Wild animals are human’s friends, an important part of the natural ecosystem, and valuable natural resources endowed(赋予)by nature.

Indian elephants, a subspecies of Asian elephants, have been considered endangered since 1986. There are only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Indian elephants left in the wild, and the global population is believed to be decreasing.

Habitat loss is widely considered a direct threat to Indian elephants. Recent economic growth and subsequent increased development in Asia are the main causes of this habitat loss. From expanding human settlements and mining to converting land to plantations and infrastructure(基础建设), many activities can block migratory elephant routes and drive them into smaller sub-populations. When animals are forced into smaller pockets of populations, they risk losing genetic diversity and have a higher chance of dying from disease and natural disasters.

In India, elephants have faced a 70% population decline over the last 60 years. When accounting for climate change projections, scientists predict that the elephant population in the country could lose over 40% of its habitat by 2070.

As elephants lose their habitats to human settlements and development, interactions between humans and elephants also rise. Elephant populations, especially those living outside of protected areas, wander into agricultural lands in search of food and cause crop or property loss. Even worse, these impacts may cause farmers and residents to retaliate against the elephants if they believe their assets are in danger. Poison or other deadly methods have been used.

Although countries like India, Vietnam, and Myanmar have completely banned the capture of wild elephants for any purpose, illegal hunting still happens in those and other nations where Indian elephants live.

Countries around the world are taking action to protect Indian elephants. In parts of Myanmar, teams of rangers work to protect and co-manage wild elephant populations with the Wildlife Conservation Society. They use the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool(SMART), a geographic information systems-based software to systematically collect, manage, analyze, and report data collected from forests. With SMART, park managers can deploy rangers strategically in hotpots for illegal hunting or other illegal activities, manage efforts, and organize resources.

At the age of 50, Nina Schoen expects to have a long life ahead of her, but has thought a lot about death—and why people are so reluctant to talk about it: “It’s going to happen to all of us,” she says, “but it should be a more positive experience than the fear we put into it.”

When she first heard about a new end-of-life process that turns the body into compost (堆肥), “I was really moved by the idea,” says Schoen, who became one of the first to reserve a spot with a Seattle-based company called Recompose, the county’s first funeral home to offer human composting.

Last year Recompose began transforming bodies to soil, more formally known as natural organic reduction. Before that, end-of-life options in the U.S. were limited to burial or cremation (火化), both of which come with environmental costs—U.S. cremations alone dump 1.7 billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

Katrina Spade pioneering the composting movement has spent a decade developing the process in hopes of offering people a greener option for death care. “I wondered, ‘What if we had a choice that helps the planet rather than harms it?’” Spade tells PEOPLE. “To know that the last gesture you’ll make will be gentle and beneficial and it just feels like the right thing to do.”

After she had her own two sons, she began to wonder what she might do with her body after death. A friend who knew her interest in the topic reminded her that farmers sometimes compost the body of cows, and that sparked an idea for her theory: “If you can compost a cow, you can probably compost a human,” she thought, and she set about designing a facility to do just that.

“This is about giving people another choice,” Spade says. “At first, people react with shock—‘You really can do that?’ But so many people today are looking at their impact on the Earth. This is a popular thing because when you die, you can give back to the planet.”