Posts tagged with POSTCARD

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Oregon Moves (Slowly) to Gird Schools for Inevitable Quake

Here’s a Dot Earth “postcard” on an encouraging financial development in earthquake-threatened Oregon from Ted Wolf, a co-founder of Oregon Parents for Quake-Resistant Schools. As longtime readers here know, Oregon will inevitably be struck by a potent earthquake generated along the Cascadia subduction fault offshore. The only question is when, not if.

The state has been slow to gird for this calamity, which is not surprising considering that the last great quake (and tsunami) struck in 1700. (That tsunami was strong enough to be noted and recorded by historians across the Pacific in Japan; here’s a simulation of the waves.)

There was little to destroy back then, of course. But now — just to take schools as a sample — there is enormous vulnerability. One fact: “Of the 2,161 public school buildings in a state inventory comprising most of Oregon’s 1,355 public elementary, middle, and high schools, 2,027 (94 percent) pre-date the state’s first seismic building codes.” Close to 1,000 schools are estimated to be at risk of collapse in the next Cascadia jolt, state officials estimate.

Here’s Wolf’s post: Read more…

Postcard from Kashmir

A Kashmiri Muslim man walks past the Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jeelani Shrine, which was destroyed in a fire in Srinagar, India, in June.Dar Yasin/Associated PressA Kashmiri Muslim man walks past a shrine that was destroyed in a fire in Srinagar, India, on Monday.

Nelson Guda, a world-wandering photographer, artist and writer (with a doctorate in biology), sent me a note early this week from Kashmir, the beautiful and turbulent patch of territory caught for decades in a border dispute between India and Pakistan. Tensions were heightened when a revered Muslim shrine was destroyed in a fire on Monday. (The cause is still in dispute.) Guda is there for his Enemies Project, in which he is photographing people on opposite sides of conflicts around the world. I invited him to send a Dot Earth “Postcard,” which is posted below with more background and news links: Read more…

Trinidad Leatherbacks, Large and Small

Carl Safina with baby leatherback turtles in Trinidad. David HuntleyCarl Safina with baby leatherback turtles in Trinidad.
Safina with an adult female leatherback. David Huntley Safina with an adult female leatherback. 



Carl Safina, the peripatetic ocean conservationist and author, is in Trinidad, filming for the PBS “Saving the Ocean” program. He sent photographs of his interactions on a beach with newborn and egg-laying leatherback turtles (the species that’s the focus of his book “Voyage of the Turtle”). He included this “Postcard” (please send one yourself if you are in a place or situation that resonates with Dot Earth themes):

Leatherback turtles. They start out very little, and if all their luck holds, one out of 2,500 come back 25 years later–as dinosaurs. There are a lot more leatherbacks here now than 20 years ago because in Trinidad they are no longer killed while nesting. The hatchlings are from this week. Adults lay eggs April thru August. Females dig an average of 6 nests 10 days apart during a nesting season (they come ashore for nesting every other year). So earlier nests are hatching now, while females are still laying new clutches that will hatch later this summer.

You can learn more about the status of leatherback turtles in Trinidad at the Nature Seekers Web site. While they are mostly protected there now, and doing well in other spots, including Gabon, the species is still listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The Tussle Between Energy and Ecology Moves to the Australian Outback

Paola Cassoni owns the 20,000-acre Bimblebox Nature Refuge in the outback of Queensland, Australia, which is threatened by plans for a mine supplying coal to China. Mike O’ConnellPaola Cassoni owns the 20,000-acre Bimblebox Nature Refuge in the outback of Queensland, Australia, which is threatened by plans for a mine supplying coal to China.

Here’s a Dot Earth “Postcard” from the outback — specifically from the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, a 20,000-acre patch of drylands ecosystems in Queensland, Australia, whose owners are fighting a plan to mine surface and subterranean coal seams to supply China’s relentless needs.

There are echoes of a conflict in Ecuador over a biological eden that lies atop substantial oil reserves, and the brewing fight in the Pacific Northwest aimed at preventing big new coal exports to China. Here’s the postcard from Paola Cassoni, a co-owner of the refuge:
Read more…

A Ranch With Room for Cattle and Capybara

Slide Show

Here’s a Dot Earth Postcard from Rhett Butler, the founder of the essential Mongabay.com blog tracking issues related to conserving forests and biological diversity worldwide. Butler took the images above while visiting a ranch in Colombia that is managed to accommodate both livestock and wildlife. Whether in South America, the Adirondacks, the Serengeti or Asia, there’s enormous logic in finding ways to mesh human livelihoods and wildlife that don’t involve fences. The card was prompted indirectly by my recent coverage of raids of Gibson Guitar facilities under environmental laws. His dispatch is below (I’ve added some contextual links): Read more…

Studying Microbes in Antarctica?

[8:34 p.m. | Updated The first couple of paragraphs have been revised to clarify that the focus of the work is on water and sediments, not soil.]

Here’s a “Dot Earth Postcard” from Michael SanClements, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado who’s part of a team in Antarctica’s Dry Valley region.

The scientists, with National Science Foundation backing, are studying dissolved organic matter in water within glaciers and in ice-covered water bodies. Such organic substances exist in almost any water body, so why go to one of the most remote regions on the planet? That’s the only place where the researchers can assess the contribution of microbes to generating dissolved organic matter without plants complicating the measurements.

Below you can watch a narrated slide show on the work, which is led by Christine M. Foreman of Montana State University. To set the scene, here’s video, taken from a radio-controlled helicopter by Marco Tedesco of the City College of New York, that helped survey the study area for these and other researchers:

Here’s the slide show on the project, narrated by SanClements (A transcript is at the bottom of this post): Read more…

‘Shrinking’ the Climate Problem

I’ve written here before about the substantial part of the climate challenge that isn’t out in the world of greenhouse gases and coal furnaces, but within the human mind.

Still, I was intrigued earlier this month when I heard from Renee Lertzman, a research fellow in humanities and sustainability at Portland State University, that she was speaking on “the myth of apathy,” the subject of a book she’s writing, at “Engaging With Climate Change: Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” a meeting of psychoanalysts and behavioral researchers in London.

In regarding the polarized, confused, paralyzed discourse around global warming for more than two decades (including my own focus on the field for so long), I’ve sometimes thought that Freud would have had a field day in this realm. Now his successors may be starting to dive in. (The photograph below is from the Freud Museum in London.)

Lertzman sent a link to the “Beyond the Couch” Web site of the Institute for Psychoanalysis, which held a fascinating list of talks at the meeting, including “Unconscious obstacles to caring for the planet,” “Engaging with the natural world and with human nature” and “Climate change denial in a perverse culture.”

I invited Lertzman to send a Dot Earth “post card,” which you can read below, followed by a brief set of followup questions and her replies:

I’ve just returned from speaking at the international headquarters of psychoanalysis, the Institute of Psychoanalysis, established in 1913 in London…. I imagine this was the first time eminent psychoanalysts, environmental professionals, activists and scholars have gathered within these hallowed halls to contemplate our current environmental predicaments. For two full days, almost two hundred people came together to “shrink” the climate change crisis….

Psychoanalysis may be most popularly known as an insular and esoteric relic of the Victorian era. However, it’s come a long way since Freud; this event ably demonstrated that psychoanalysis is an essential voice on these matters. At least it is, if we want to address the messiness of how the human mind can cope with such overwhelming issues.

What are the unconscious dimensions of climate change? Is it possible that anxiety and fear are profoundly impeding our abilities to respond proactively and creatively to our impending crises? How can we explain the inertia and paralysis on the part of both the public and our politicians? Read more…

Chronicling Science as Journey

This is a shout-out to a great new blog at The New York Times: Scientist at Work. Science is, as often as not, as difficult a journey as that taken in this picture I took of Harry Bader, a researcher studying the thawing of Alaska’s North Slope tundra:

One of the reasons the public has a hard time making science-based decisions, to my mind, is the lack of broad understanding that scientific research is not the process of revealing crystalline truths, but rather a journey toward understanding, with lots of bumps, false turns and rarely a final end point. The new blog is precisely about such explorations, providing a lens on field studies as they are unfolding. I’ve tried to bring fieldwork into the open here on occasion, but Scientist at Work will do this every day. Read more…

Postcard From the Arctic Sea Ice

For several years, Rhett Herman, a physics professor at Radford University, has been leading students on an expedition each spring break to study the condition of the sea ice off the coast near Barrow, Alaska. A blog of this year’s trip and photos and journals from previous trips are online. Below you can read a “Dot Earth postcard” Dr. Herman sent last week (they’ve just returned home). I’ll be adding some of the students’ post-trip thoughts in the comments section. The photo below, by Dr. Herman, shows students using an OhmMapper to generate a cross section view of the ice beneath their feet. (Mythianne Shelton hauling the gear, Susan Christopher at the tail end of the array and Jason McLarty nearby.)

If you know of students and teachers at any level involved in field work related to the core questions explored on Dot Earth, encourage them to send a postcard from the field (video, imagery, even audio clips accepted). Ever since my high school biology teacher in East Greenwich, R.I., got our class hooked up with state natural resources scientists doing a study of a salt marsh, I’ve understood the educational value of getting dirty and wet.

From Rhett Herman, Barrow, Alaksa:

I’m teaching a class at Radford University called Physics 450—Arctic Geophysics. This class is built around a trip to Barrow, Alaska, to do some real research on the structure and possible health of the polar sea ice. The students learned how to use the equipment and process the data before we left, do the research at the beach (yes, we’re staying on the beach just like so many college students now), and then we do a lot of data processing after the trip so that we can present it to the university in a forum in mid April.

Here is an image from the data that we got today [March 9] with the OhmMapper (made by Geometrics, Inc.).

The OhmMapper gives what is essentially a CAT-scan-like image (after a lot of data processing) showing the different electrical properties of whatever is beneath your feet. Solid ice is a lousy electrical conductor while (salty) seawater is a good electrical conductor. So when we see the electrical conduction go from bad to good, and all things between, we can see the structure of the sea ice. Read more…

Postcard From a Guangzhou Traffic Jam

Charles Komanoff Charles Komanoff at a bike rental shop in Guangzhao, China.

Charles Komanoff is an environment, energy, transportation and traffic specialist, who for decades has focused on New York City. But last week he was in China, helping the country explore approaches — like congestion pricing — to prevent  vehicle overload in city centers. Mr. Komanoff helped shape and promote a pricing strategy in New York, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sought to start charging drivers for access to Manhattan’s busiest blocks. The effort failed when it was opposed by state officials beholden to car-owning commuters. Below, you can read a “Dot Earth postcard” from Mr. Komanoff, describing his experience there (he shot the photo in a traffic jam):

I’m in Guangzhou, China’s third largest city, for an “International Symposium on Analysis and Countermeasures of Traffic Congestion in Urban Centers.” Although the talks run the transportation gamut from infrastructure to travel-demand management, the purpose of the meeting is to explore congestion pricing as a possible antidote to traffic that is snarling China’s booming cities.

Guangzhou’s new Bus Rapid Transit system is barely a month old, yet its high-speed service, with pre-paid boarding and exclusive lanes, is already attracting 800,000 passengers a day — half as many people as ride New York City transit buses. Five subway lines have been built since 1999, and four more are slated to open in the next several years. I toured these facilities this week and also saw real-time traffic information systems that dispatch buses and taxis and help police clear traffic crashes.

Yet this dizzying growth in smart transit infrastructure is unlikely to stem the deterioration in Guangzhou’s traffic conditions. Read more…