DAILY QUICK READ - AUGUST 1, 2016

Yellowstone

The awe and majesty of this place is incredible.  As is the uniqueness of the thermal features.  This park and its companions are some of the best places of not just the United States, but the world.

The iconic vistas of Yellowstone, America's first national park, have become synonymous with the definition of the national landscape. It's unthinkable today for developers to pave over the park's wilderness, but in the 1870s the barely-settled West was anyone's game.

Intrepid geologist Ferdinand Hayden invited photographer William Henry Jackson to document his 1871 expedition exploring northwestern Wyoming, and their efforts permanently changed the fate of the Yellowstone area.

Bradly Boner, a photographer, set out to revisit the original sites of Jackson's images in the 21st century. "I was very interested in seeing how this experiment of the national park… had panned out," said Boner.

While Boner encountered obstacles — washed away locations and crumbled rocks — he was more surprised by what remained unchanged. It was those moments that moved him the most.

Water – Kind of Important

Woolly mammoths ran out of fresh water and died off.  A preview of things to come?

This population of woolly mammoths, one of the world’s last, had been comfortably living there for a few thousand years — they had no predators (humans didn’t arrive until the 18th century), a good amount of fresh water and plenty of food. But environmental changes, strikingly similar to those in our time, caused the mammoth population on this island to die out.

At the time, a changing climate caused sea levels to rise, shrinking both the island’s size and the mammoth herd. A drier climate meant less rainfall and lower lake levels, and the lack of freshwater may have been a driver of the mammoth’s extinction, according to a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors argue that this extinction offers important lessons about freshwater availability and island populations in a changing climate.

As sea levels rose around the island, the salt water pushed inland and displaced some of the freshwater, so the mammoths had less to drink. This happens all over the world now, in large part because of groundwater extraction, and can contaminate drinking-water wells.

Burrowing Owls

Burrowing owls are under incredible pressure in the western United States. 

The burrowing owl is in imminent danger of becoming extinct…unless we act now. Once widely distributed in California, the burrowing owl has declined significantly over large portions of its former range. The number of breeding burrowing owl pairs statewide declined 60% from the 1980’s to the early 90’s and continues to decline at roughly 8% per year.  The Institute for Bird Populations documented declines of 8% to 10% in state-wide censuses in the early 1990s and 2007 and extirpation in 12 counties.  In 2014, a Yolo County census revealed a 76% decline in the seven years since the 2007 state-wide census.

Most of California’s remaining burrowing owls are on private property.  In a 2006-2007 state wide census, the Institute for Bird Populations found 87% of burrowing owl breeding pairs were on private property. In 2014, a Yolo County census found 67% of owls were on private property.

And that pressure is often driven by irresponsible human behavior.  This from New Mexico.

The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust are offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the shooting of a burrowing owl on the Caja del Rio Plateau near Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating the case.

The owl was found dead just days after being photographed on June 27 with the bird’s mate. The bird was missing a leg, and X-rays showed shrapnel in the animal’s wing and shoulder.

Oh, and by the way, what good are zoos?  Maybe that provide hope for endangered species.

At the Queens Zoo, three darling owlets have hatched, according to a statement released on Wednesday.

In mid-June, the adorable owlets started appearing outside of their burrows. Earlier last month or in late May, they hatched. In the burrow, the females lay eggs and for 30 days, they incubate them. During the incubation process, food is brought by the male owl to his mate. Both parents feed the owlets upon hatching in the burrow for several weeks prior to the fledglings' venturing out of it.

There are nine total owls in the group, including the new youngsters.

Burrowing owls once ranged throughout portions of South and Central America and much of North America. The species inhabits habitats with low vegetation, such as deserts and grasslands. Due to prairie dog eradication and habitat loss for land development, burrowing owl populations are declining in the western United States and Canada. Their population in Florida is also threatened by land development. 

Climate Change – Holy Crap

Reanimating old strains of horrible diseases. 

In other words, an anthrax strain that has spent 75 years resting, sleeping a lot, going a few times a week to the Bacteria Gym, and generally muscling up, gets another chance at sickening reindeer and people because the Great Climate Change Hoax has thawed the permafrost, so it gets its shot at the reindeer and people that didn't die in the record wildfires. I would point out that one of our two major political parties doesn't believe that any of this is happening, and that the party's candidate for president thinks it all might be a hoax thought up by the Chinese.

I'm not kidding. Somebody should do something about this.

DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 10, 2016

NASA Mapping Coral Reefs

Through technology we can measure the damage and pinpoint the causes, but do we have the will through politics and statecraft to fix the damage and put lasting cures in effect?

Nasa and top scientists from around the world are launching a three-year campaign on Thursday to gather new data on coral reefs like never before.

Using specially-designed instruments mounted on high-flying aircraft, the scientists plan to map large swaths of coral around the world in hopes of better understanding how environmental changes are impacting these delicate and important ecosystems. 

The researchers hope to discover how environmental forces including global warming, acidification and pollution impact coral reefs in different locations by creating detailed images of entire reef ecosystems.

Yellowstone’s Raptors Need More Study

Although this year’s study of golden eagles was put together on a shoestring budget, Smith is hoping to extend the work for at least one more season.

More information will help the scientists reach a better understanding of why so many of the eagles are using this high mountain landscape, as well as establish a point of reference for any future studies of the big raptors as Earth’s climate changes.

“Golden eagles need to be on the lips and minds of visitors,” just like other wildlife in Yellowstone, Smith said. “If people know about them, conservation follows. If people don’t know about them, nobody cares.

What Good Are Zoos?

Genetic diversity is critical to a species survival in the wild.  Programs like this at the San Francisco Zoo are critical in insuring diversity.

The pack is part of a captive breeding program to contribute to the genetic diversity—and therefore the survival—of wolf populations that have been reintroduced to their historical ranges in the southwestern U.S. and central Mexico.

“There’s a lot of talk about animal reintroduction into the wild, but it’s not as common as the layperson thinks,” says David Bocian, Vice President of Animal Care at the San Francisco Zoo.

Genetic diversity is a major challenge to such programs, continues Bocian. The more narrow the gene pool, the more vulnerable the population.

“If they aren’t adaptable to adjust to those curve balls that nature throws at them,” he says, “they’re not going to survive.”

Plastics:  Mans Benefit and Natures Bane

“I want to say one word to you….plastics!”

Recovering and repurposing plastic waste from the ocean.  Several companies have focused on dealing with ocean trash in creative ways.

Scientists estimate that more than 5 million pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans. From flip-flops to microbeads, this pollution poses a serious risk for marine animals, which often mistake plastic for food and starve to death or get caught in plastic packaging and suffocate. Giant plastic islands like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can span for miles.

Since it’s too late to stop that trash from entering the seas, the question is how do we clean it up? Here are some creative ideas.

Recycling plastic bags from environmental curse to cloth.

One such initiative comes from Reform Studio, which has developed a rather ingenious solution to our plastic bag epidemic, in which the bags become the feedstock for a traditional, yet disappearing, industry in Egypt - handweaving.

Reform Studio is the brainchild of two designers, Mariam Hazem and Hend Riad, who came up with the original concept as their project for the Faculty of Applied Arts at the German University in Cairo two years ago, in which they followed their belief that "design can solve stubborn problems."

Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks

Lowest May average ice area ever recorded.  Arctic heading for lowest ever observed.

The average area of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean last month was just 12 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That beats the prior May record (from 2004) by more than half a million square kilometers, and is well over a million square kilometers, or 500,000 square miles, below the average for the month.

This matters because 2016 could be marching toward a new record for the lowest amount of ice ever observed on top of the world at the height of melt season — September. The previous record September low was set in 2012.