How big can a tsunami be?

A tsunami is a wave or series of waves caused by the displacement of water, as with seismic activity. Tsunami can be caused by landslides, glacier activity, underwater explosions, and earthquakes. Some tsunami are so massive that they can cause extensive damaged to populated and natural areas of coastline. In 2011, an earthquake and the resulting tsunami destroyed the Tohoku area of Japan. 

According to National Geographic, tsunami can reach heights of over 100 feet. When tsunami occur out in the deep ocean, they may be barely visible from the surface, only reaching a height of about 3 feet. As the wave moves closer to shore, however, the wave height increases as there is less space under the water-level for it to move. The wave length of a tsunami might be many miles long. The size of a tsunami is proportional to the activity which caused it-- an event which causes greater displacement of water will result in greater wave activity.

What are the effects of kelp forest decline on specific organisms in the food chain?

Kelp forests are complex and critical components of cold water rocky marine coastlines; their destruction--often as the result of overfishing--has a detrimental impact on the organisms that feed off of and around (or dwell in) these forests.

Kelp forests exist within the same ecosystems as fish, crabs, molluscs, sea urchins, marine mammals, algae, and many other biota. An important function of kept forests includes serving as a habitat and canopy for predatory fish. As kelp forests experience deforestation, the population of organisms that would typically serve as prey increases. This causes a significant shift in the food chain, with new predators emerging and normally flourishing populations dying off at unusual rates.

The rise of sea urchin populations also contribute to the deforestation of kelp through overgrazing. Urchins feed on kelp forests, and if left unchecked by apex predators who consume them (such as sea otters, whose deaths are also a result of overfishing), they can turn an entire kelp forest into an urchin barren.

To examine specific species, we'd have to narrow our subject to determine what kind of kelp forests you are interested in. For example, if we are examining the kelp forests of Southern California, we can return to the above example. Sea otters, spiny lobsters (Panulirus interuptus), and sheephead fish (Semicossyphus pulcher) act as the dominant carnivores in an ecosystem. These creatures feed on the dominant herbivores, such as the white sea urchin (Lytechinus anamesus), the purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus), and the red sea urchin (S. franciscanus). If the dominant carnivores disappear (again, from overfishing or the presence of even larger predators, like killer whales), the above sea urchin populations will skyrocket; with more urchins feeding on the forest, the very sensitive kelp forests will be dramatically impacted. A paper published by The University of Maine called "Kelp Forest Ecosystems: Biodiversity, Stability, Resilience, and Future" beautifully explains this phenomenon. I've included the link below:

Whatever regulates sea urchin abundances or their grazing behaviour often controls the distribution and abundance of kelp forests... Predators are commonly strong interactors... and as such are the single most important agent controlling sea urchin populations... When sea urchin predators become the focus of intense and unsustainable fishing that extirpates them, hyperabundances of the sea urchins and kelp deforestation often result. 

This kind of event naturally has a detrimental impact on the other organisms feeding and living in this ecosystem, from molluscs and smaller fish to other algae and epibiota. 

For more information, please see the sources I've included below!

Does Romeo ever compliment Juliet on her personality and not just her appearance?

Romeo and Juliet are together three times during the course of the play. It's actually four, but it's hard to count Act V, Scene 3 because they don't really speak to each other. Throughout the scenes when they do speak, Romeo mainly concentrates on Juliet's looks and says virtually nothing about her personality. A good reason for that could be that he really doesn't know her very well and most of their discussions are pronouncements of love or, in Act III, Scene 5, a debate over which bird is singing outside of Juliet's bedroom in the morning after their honeymoon night. Romeo, however, does attempt to compliment something other than Juliet's appearance in the wedding scene, Act II, Scene 6. When Juliet arrives at Friar Laurence's cell, Romeo suggests that Juliet has more ability than he does to put into words the future happiness the two will share:

Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy

Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more

To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

This neighbor air, and let rich music’s tongue

Unfold the imagined happiness that both

Receive in either by this dear encounter.

Juliet replies that she is now so rich because of their love that she cannot even count half of that wealth.

What quotes from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald show that Nick is a judgmental person?

In Chapter I, Nick says that he "snobbishly repeat[s]" something that his father used to say: "a sense of fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."  This shows that Nick believes that some people are lacking in such fundamental decencies -- and he's referring to people like Tom and Daisy -- and this is judgmental on his part (even if it is true). 

Also, in Chapter 1, when Tom and Daisy show some interest in Nick's rumored engagement from back home in the Midwest, he says,

"Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich -- nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away." 

Tom had gone on about his concern that the "white race" was being "utterly submerged" by people of color, ironic for a man who has all the power and privilege the world can afford, and Jordan had revealed that he was unfaithful to Daisy.  Daisy had hardly been better behaved.  Nick's being disgusted by them seems like the natural response of someone who lacks the sense of entitlement that they possess, but it is judgment nonetheless.

In Chapter II, after Tom and Nick have picked up Myrtle Wilson from her husband's garage and brought her to New York City, she and Tom go into the bedroom of their apartment and have sex while Nick waits in the living room.  When they come out and other guests begin to arrive, Nick comments about her change in clothes and how,

"With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change.  The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions, became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air." 

Nick judges Myrtle for her affectation, the way she becomes a total snob when she's with Tom and dressed to impress. 

In Chapter IV, as Gatsby tells Nick his "history," Nick has a hard time keeping it together.  He says, "With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter.  The very phrases were worn so threadbare [...]."  Nick feels as though he is "skimming hastily through a dozen magazines."  He judges Gatsby here, believing him to be lying, concocting this tragic and storied past in order to impress (and, in many ways, he is).

What are some moments in the play The Lion and the Jewel where Baroka is depicted as being clever?

Baroka is portrayed as the wisest character throughout the play The Lion and the Jewel and there are several scenes which depict his cleverness. In the first act entitled "Morning," the village girls participate in the "dance of the Lost Traveler" which depicts how the foreign photographer makes his way to the village of Ilujinle. After taking pictures of Sidi bathing, the lost traveler incurs the anger of the villagers, who bring him in front of the Odan tree. Baroka understands that the foreign photographer has the ability to give his village prestige and treats him with benevolence. Baroka cleverly gets him drunk and encourages him to take many photographs. The photographs end up in a magazine which portrays Ilujinle in a positive light.

Later on in the play, Lakunle explains how Baroka cleverly influenced the railroad surveyor to avoid running the tracks through the village of Ilujinle by giving him gifts and money. The surveyor "miraculously" looks at his map and declares that the ground is unsuitable to support the weight of a railroad. Baroka successfully foils the Public Works project by using his cleverness to bride the surveyor.

Baroka is also depicted as being a clever individual by successfully spreading a false rumor about his impotence to lure Sidi to his home where he convinces Sidi to sleep with him. Baroka knows that his wife, Sadiku, will gossip, which is why he tells her that he is impotent and no longer a man. Sadiku tells Sidi, and Sidi believes that Baroka is no longer a threat to her. When Sidi arrives at the Bale's palace, Baroka shows her a machine that makes stamps and promises Sidi that her face will be on every stamp leaving Ilujinle. Baroka cleverly uses Sidi's vanity against her and his plan works to perfection.

In the book Walk Two Moons, what reason do Gramps and Sal's father give Sal for going on the trip?

Sal believes Gramps is taking her along to see where her mother is resting because he knows that Sal wants to see her but is afraid to go. Gramps is going to give her some moral support. In other words, Gramps and Gram are going as an excuse to take Sal to do what she is afraid to do.

Sal believes that her father wants her gone so he can pay more attention to Margaret Cadaver, whom Sal does not like. This is not the real reason, but this is what Sal convinces herself her father thinks. Sal’s father wants Sal to talk to Margaret about her mother, but Sal refuses to do this.

Sal also believes that her father does not trust his parents, Gramps and Gram, on the road by themselves for such a long distance. Therefore, Sal is going along to offer some protection as a voice of reason. The older people will perhaps not take so many chances if their granddaughter is along.

Could you explain the epic conventions of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock?

Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock is a brilliant example of the mock epic, a style of writing that uses conventions of epic literature in a satirical setting, often to expose the foibles and absurdity of contemporary society. The poem chronicles a gentleman's theft of a lady's lock of hair, and it is based on a similar event that caused a quarrel between two prominent families of Pope's day. The poem references major epic works, such as The Iliad and Paradise Lost, and it includes many classic characteristics of epic literature, such as supernatural beings, war, heroes and heroines, and even a trip to the Underworld. However, Pope translates these tropes to high society, and so epic warfare becomes a card game, heroes become vain gentlemen, and the exciting climax becomes the theft of a lock of hair. By using epic conventions in such a setting, Pope pokes fun at the high society of his day, exposing its ridiculousness by juxtaposing it with epic literature.