I have loved maps just about as long as I can remember anything. I collected them. They showed up in my dreams. I spent significant chunks of time looking at them, reflecting on their meaning, appreciating their beauty, connecting with the hearts and minds of their makers.
I found this article today at WIRED that features the work of a team of contributors that included John Hessler, a Library of Congress cartographer, to publish a new book, Maps: Exploring the World. I would love to read it.
From the article:
Still, all maps serve as some alternate form of world history. Like art, they use visuals to reveal truths about a particular time and place. Maps can act like a memory frozen in time, as seen in John Auldjo’s map of Mount Vesuvius eruptions. They can highlight the issues of the day or chart the trajectory of human exploration and advancement.
A little brown bat with White Nose Syndrome hangs in the Greeley Mine in Vermont. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service/Bloomberg
Maybe some good news for bats? Chris Cornelison, a wildlife researcher at Georgia State University wonders if Rhodococcus rhodochrous -- a common bacteria found in soil and known to inhibit mold growth on some fruits and crops -- can be used to limit the spread of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bat communities.
So far, wildlife researchers have tried a lot of different interventions for WNS, but nothing has worked. Cornelison says that bat researchers and wildlife ecologists have been willing to "try anything" out of desperation.
Some have used artificial heaters in caves to prevent the fungus from growing. Others tried closing caves off to humans to prevent people from introducing or spreading stowaway spores. They’ve even sprayed fungicides in caves or introduced other fungi that could outcompete P. destructans. The most prevalent intervention, says Indiana State University bat researcher Joy O’Keefe, has been decontamination—spraying anti-fungal solutions on spelunkers and cave tourists, as well as any equipment they are bringing in and out.
O’Keefe, who was not involved with the trials, thinks one of the biggest advantages to using R. rhodochrous is that it negates the need to physically handle bats to treat them. “A lot of bat deaths result from these kind of WNS experiments,” she says. “All that handling can be adverse to bat health by decreasing the energy and disrupting their hibernation even more.”
At this point, says the article, researchers don't necessarily see R. rhodochrous as a "cure" for WNS. The data that's been collected needs more analysis before wildlife researchers can accurately interpret and apply knowledge gained from results. As with treatment of any wildlife disease, researchers will also need to make sure that introduction of R. rhodochrous into bat habitats won’t harm other cave-dwelling plants and animals.
This spring I've seen more bats than I have in the past five years or so. When I moved to Tennessee in 2000, I commonly saw two or three different species of bats clearing the air of insects on spring and summer evenings.
I hope R. rhodochrous proves to be useful for bats and safe for other species. I really need all the help I can get with the bugs up here!
Klamath Basin Tribes and allies from the commercial fishing and conservation organizations stage a rally at the bi-annual meeting of the international hydropower industry- Hydrovision 2006. [Photo credit: Patrick McCulley]
Good news for rivers: dam removal works pretty well. A paper published yesterday in Science reports findings that rivers recover relatively quickly from negative consequences of dams once they are removed:
Dam removal and the resulting river ecosystem restoration is being studied by scientists from several universities and government agencies, including the USGS and U.S. Forest Service, as part of a national effort to document the effects of removing dams. Studies show that most river channels stabilize within months or years, not decades, particularly when dams are removed rapidly.
“In many cases, fish and other biological aspects of river ecosystems also respond quickly to dam removal,” said co-author of the study Jeff Duda, an ecologist with USGS. “When given the chance, salmon and other migratory fish will move upstream and utilize newly opened habitat.”
Such an awesome view of the Rocky Mountain Trench, one of my favorite regions of North America.
From the article:
While geologists still debate the circumstances that created the trench, the section seen here likely formed due to underlying normal faults that emerged in the aftermath of tectonic collisions that pushed up the mountains. Normal faults are ruptures in the rocky outer part of Earth—the lithosphere—that generally emerge when land surfaces get stretched out. In a normal fault, one piece of lithosphere drops down relative to another.
In this case, the normal faults that underlie the southern half of the Rocky Mountain Trench likely formed as the lithosphere stretched after a period of mountain building that occurred between 185 million and 55 million years ago. At least three chains of islands plowed into the western coast of North America, forming mountains by bulldozing rock layers onto North America. In this part of western Canada, mountain building progressed from southwest to northeast, so the Columbia Mountains are older than the Canadian Rockies. With the normal faults in place, rivers and glaciers have since worked to widen and deepen the trench through erosion.
Great video on the origins of the Rights of Nature movement as Ecuador becomes the first country to include Rights of Nature in its Constitution and communities across the United States adopt Rights of Nature and assert their community rights.
Hurricane photos fascinate me, and (almost) never fail to draw me into their swirls to contemplate order and chaos and what it all means (or can mean) for lived experience at the edges of predictable and unpredictable. Awesome...thank you, Amanda and NASA.
NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this view of Amanda—the first named storm of the 2014 hurricane season in the Americas—southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, on May 25, 2014. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) at 21:00 Universal Time (2 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time).
Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) released a proposed rule to clarify Clean Water Act protection for streams and wetlands that form the foundation of the nation’s water resources. Over the next 90 days, EPA and the Corps will reach out to citizens, groups and businesses to gather input they need to shape the final rule.
EPA has released two short videos as part of this outreach:
The proposed rule is based on the latest peer-reviewed science, including a draft scientific assessment by EPA (pdf: 11MB!), which presents a review and synthesis of more than 1,000 pieces of scientific literature. According to the EPA, a final version of the rule will not be published until the scientific assessment is complete.
The EPA has a portal page for protection of waters of the US that includes access to the scientific assessment, the proposed rule, press releases, fact sheets and other background information. People can also find a link for submission of comments on the proposed on this page.
Just a side note on the page itself: I thought EPA did a pretty good job making aspects of this complex issue accessible without overwhelming someone who prefers summaries, talking points and overviews. People who want to dig deeper can certainly do so easily by exploring the drop down info and links on the page.
Several court cases in the past decade or so -- U.S. v. Riverside Bayview, Rapanos v. United States, and Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC), and Rapanos v. United States (Rapanos) -- challenged EPA jurisdiction in several ways.This draft rule attempts to address issues of the agency's regulatory reach into small but critical upstream waters whose protection was thrown into question by the court decisions.
For example, around 60 percent of stream miles in the U.S. only flow seasonally or after rain. Though they be small, they have a mighty impact downstream. Approximately 117 million people get drinking water from public systems that rely in part on these small, intermittant streams. EPA and the Army Corps hope the rule will clarify protection of these waters.
Specifically, the rule proposes that under the Clean Water Act (and based on the science)
Most seasonal and rain-dependent streams are protected.
Wetlands near rivers and streams are protected.
Other types of waters may have more uncertain connections with downstream water and protection will be evaluated through a case specific analysis of whether the connection is or is not significant. However, to provide more certainty, the proposal requests comment on options protecting similarly situated waters in certain geographic areas or adding to the categories of waters protected without case specific analysis.
During the comment period I'll try to post updates, analyses and other information on this rule-making process, and the very critical challenge to return US waters to good health and keep them that way.
I found a link to this awesome video of the Mount Sinabung volcano (Sumatra) at Erik Klemetti's Volcano blog on Wired Science:
Here's an excerpt from Erik's post:
In terms of the destruction they wreak upon the landscape, few volcanic hazards can top pyroclastic flows (or more precisely calling pyroclastic density currents). They hug the ground as they flow down the slopes of the volcano. These at Sinabung were generated by the collapse of the extruding lava dome at the summit of the volcano. As it crumbles due to gravity, the hot lava fractures into boulders, smaller debris and ash, which then flows downhill at remarkable speeds — in the hundreds of kilometers per hour. The volcanic debris is still hot, so not only is it moving quickly, it is seemingly hot, probably well over 400°C (~800°F) — hot enough to carbonize trees that are caught in the flow. Now, try to picture any human structure withstanding being hit by a flow of superheated rocks moving faster than an airplane — this is why pyroclastic flows are the most destructive volcanic hazard during these types of eruptions (note: a close second would be lahars — volcanic mudflows — generated by remobilizing volcanic debris).
A new USGS study quantifies how the diversity of fish changes when stream flow is altered in the Tennessee River basin:
The USGS study highlights the importance of the timing, magnitude, and variability of low streamflows and the frequency and magnitude of high streamflows as key characteristics critical to assessing how fish communities change in response to streamflow alteration. This study was completed using fish community data collected by the Tennessee Valley Authority, and predictions of streamflow characteristics at more than 600 locations.
The Tennessee River basin is one of the richest areas of aquatic diversity in the country, if not the world. However, expanding urban development, more than 600 privately held small dams on medium to small streams, and withdrawal of more than 700 million gallons of water each day threaten this diversity. Understanding the effect of streamflow alteration on aquatic ecology is increasingly important as change in land use and human population are projected.
Insectivorous fishes, such as Percinidae darters, Cyprinidae minnows, and Noturus madtoms, are among the most jeopardized fish in the Tennessee River Valley. Insectivorous fish represent a middle ground in the trophic structure of a stream, feeding on invertebrates while being prey for predator species. For their eggs to hatch insectivorous fish must lay them in gravel beds that are relatively clear of sediment. Insectivorous fish are sight-feeding and need clear water for feeding.
