Linda Poon: Putting Citizens at the Center of Urban Design

CityLab:

Creating a lively public space isn’t as easy as building it and waiting for the crowds to come. There’s a lot that city planners have to consider: How much space is available? What’s the target demographic? How can a public space be made energy efficient?

A group of researchers at MIT thinks that there’s an important piece of the puzzle that’s too often overlooked: the human experience. Studying how people interact with cars, buildings, and sidewalks within an urban space says a lot about its quality, says Elizabeth Christoforetti, an urban and architectural designer at MIT Media Lab.

With a $35,000 grant from the Knight Prototype Fund, she and her team are working on a project called Placelet, which will track how pedestrians move through a particular space. They’re developing a network of sensors that will track the scale and speed of pedestrians, as well as vehicles, over long periods of time. The sensors, which they are currently testing in downtown Boston, will also track the “sensory experience” by recording the noise level and air quality of that space.

In the tradition of observations of William Whyte.

NASA: Less Algae, Not Clear Water, Keeps A Lake Blue

Lake Tahoe’s iconic blueness is more strongly related to the lake’s algal concentration than to its clarity, according to research in “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2015,” released today by the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) of the University of California, Davis. The lower the algal concentration, the bluer the lake.

Data from a research buoy in the lake, owned and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, enabled Shohei Watanabe, a postdoctoral researcher at TERC, to create a Blueness Index that quantified Lake Tahoe’s color for the first time.

The assumption that lake clarity is tied to blueness has driven advocacy and management efforts in the Lake Tahoe Basin for decades. But Watanabe’s research showed that at times of the year when the lake’s clarity increases, its blueness decreases, and vice versa.

Watanabe combined the blueness measurements with data on clarity. Clarity is measured by observing the depth at which a dinner-plate-sized white disk remains visible when lowered into the water. He was surprised to find that blueness and clarity did not correspond. In fact, they varied in opposite directions.

This is due to seasonal interplay among sediment, algae and nutrients in the lake. Clarity is controlled by sediment. Blueness is controlled by algal concentration, which in turn is controlled by the level of nutrients available to the algae.

AnnaKay Kruger: A Lake's Woody Habitat

UW: Center for Limnology:

Michaela Kromrey clips herself into her bulky waders, fitting the straps over her shoulders and sealing herself into their protective rubber lining. We’ve dropped anchor near the shore of Jute Lake, and waves whip the side of the boat vigorously in the high wind. It’s a beautiful day, utterly devoid of cloud cover, but the wind is sharp and swift over the water, forcing us to don our sweatshirts and windbreakers to stave off the chill. Michaela and I, both UW-Madison undergraduates, wait in the boat while Ellen Albright, a student at Minnesota’s Macalester College, wades along the shoreline, dragging a tape-measure behind her.

Alana Semuels: Contaminated Drinking Water

Atlantic:

None of the samples Walters sent were safe to drink. Some had lead content of 200 parts per billion. Over 30 samples, the average lead content was 2,000 parts per billion, which meant that no matter how long Walters let her taps run, it still would have been toxic. This could easily have been causing the health problems that Walters and her children were experiencing.

“Lead is the best known neurotoxin, it adversely impacts every system in the human body,” Edwards told me. “Certainly it could have caused children’s lead poisoning.”

The city says it does not know why so much lead was found in Walters’ pipes, but Edwards has a theory: Many cities have lead pipes, and when water sits in those pipes, the lead can leech into the water. So cities usually add corrosion-control chemicals, such as phosphates, to keep the lead out of the water. But because Flint didn’t take such precautions when they began pumping their own water, “the public health protection was gone,” Edwards says.

See the other 'lead' tagged articles on this site. The best crime prevention may be lead reduction programs. A causal link not understood by many city government officials. 

Also this is article on Chicago water pipes and lead pollution. Some of the violence in Chicago is likely attributed to lead pollution.

Matt Sepic: Too Much Salt Reaches Lakes

MPR:

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A recent study found three dozen bodies of water with chloride levels that exceed state standards. Too much salt can harm fish and encourage invasive plants.

The MPCA’s Brian Livingston, who supervises the metro watershed district, said there are ways to reduce salt use without compromising winter road safety. Such methods, he said, include “wetting the salt so it doesn’t bounce off the highways and actually gets applied directly onto the surface, and measuring more accurately the amount of salt that’s being applied, and not over-applying it.”

Hal Schramm: Why Great Lakes Smallmouth Bass are Big

Outdoor Life

The Beaver archipelago is a group of islands in the middle of northern Lake Michigan. A comparison of fishery metrics taken from 1969 through 1984 and from 2005 through 2008 reveal drastic changes.

At Beaver Island 40 years ago, brown bullheads made up 60 percent and smallmouth and rock bass 14 percent of the total number of fish obtained in routine samples. A total of 14 other species made up the remaining 12 percent. From 2005 to 2008, smallmouth samplings grew to a whopping 93 percent of the total.

Despite their dramatic rise to dominance in the Beaver Island fish mix, neither the abundance nor the mortality of bronzebacks changed significantly from the historic periods. But smallmouth bass size structure indices (the proportions of fish greater than 12, 14, and 17 inches), growth rate, and body condition (plumpness) were significantly greater in the more recent period than they were 40 years ago.

What of warmer water temperatures?

Michel Martin: From Fishing with Mom to Top Fisheries Official

NPR:

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Mamie Parker, a former assistant director of fisheries and habitat conservation at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was the first African-American to head a regional office for that agency. But when she started out in the field, she says, she “did not see anyone that looked like me doing this type of work.”

When she was in ninth grade, Parker says, “I heard the song by Marvin Gaye, ‘Mercy, mercy me. Things are not like they used to be.’ He talked about the pollution in the air, and the wind that was blowing poison and radiation and all of that.” She decided she wanted to do something about it.

A workplace pioneer!

Michael Swearingen: BP Settlement for Minnesota's Loons

MPR:

Minnesota loons could benefit from an $18.7 billion legal settlement over the massive 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a Department of Natural Resources official said Wednesday.

Minnesota could receive up to $25 million over the next 15 years from the settlement between oil company BP and the federal government, Carrol Henderson, the department’s nongame wildlife supervisor, told MPR News.

Scientists have conducted a large amount of research documenting the effects of the April 2010 oil spill on wildlife, and the settlement might not have been reached without that research, Henderson said.

”Loons and pelicans were actually in the gulf in April when the oil spill first occurred,” he said. “My recollection is that there was just shy of 200 loons that were found dead in the oil.”

Ecological Principle: Many Things are Connected to Other Things.

Lisa Palmer: Genetically Modified Mosquitos

Yale Environment 360:

When people think of genetically modified organisms, food crops like GM corn and soybeans usually come to mind. But engineering more complex living things is now possible, and the controversy surrounding genetic modification has now spread to the lowly mosquito, which is being genetically engineered to control mosquito-borne illnesses.

A U.K.-based company, Oxitec, has altered two genes in the Aedes aegypti mosquito so that when modified males breed with wild females, the offspring inherit a lethal gene and die in the larval stage. The state agency that controls mosquitos in the Florida Keys is awaiting approval from the federal government of a trial release of Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitos to prevent a recurrence of a dengue fever outbreak. But some people in the Keys and elsewhere are up in arms, with more than 155,000 signing a petition opposing the trial of genetically engineered mosquitoes in a small area of 400 households next to Key West.

Tinkering with Nature can have unintended consequences. See Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concerns with GMOs:

The Precautionary Principle with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms

EconTalk Episode with Nassim Nicholas Taleb; Hosted by Russ Roberts

Kaye LaFond: Lake Baikal Pollution

Circle of Blue:

Nutrient pollution from outdated sewage-treatment plants degrades water quality in the world’s deepest, oldest lake.

Siberia’s Lake Baikal is the world’s largest lake by volume, containing nearly 20 percent of the planet’s fresh surface water. The ancient lake harbors an astounding array of biodiversity and is so treasured in Russia that it has its own anthem.

Excessive nutrients, most likely from outdated sewage-treatment facilities in coastal cities, are now spoiling the waters of Baikal with waves of an alga called Spirogyra. During the fall of 2013, researchers found blooms of the algae along the northwest coast of the lake, near the town of Severobaikalsk and the estuary of the Tyya River.

Great infographic summarizing the issues for this Great Lake.

John Seewer: States Agree to Reduce Phosphorus Runoff to Lake Erie

Associated Press:

Ohio and Michigan have agreed to sharply reduce phosphorus runoff blamed for a rash of harmful algae blooms on Lake Erie that have contaminated drinking water supplies and contributed to oxygen-deprived dead zones where fish can’t survive.

The two states along with Ontario, Canada, said Friday that they will work to cut the amount of phosphorus flowing into western Lake Erie by 40 percent within the next 10 years.

It’s a significant move to combat the algae blooms that have taken hold in the western third of the lake over the last decade and colored some of its waters a shade of green that’s drawn comparisons to pea soup and the Incredible Hulk.

Researchers have linked the toxic algae to phosphorus from farm fertilizers, livestock manure and sewage treatment plants that flows into rivers and streams draining into the lake.

The goal will need to be followed up with effective actions. Lake Erie is a great resource, and it is great to see politicians making commitments to clean up this lake.

Doug Smith: Governor Dayton signs bill to mandate buffers

Star Tribune:

The governor said the ­buffer bill will be one of his most important legacies.

“I think we’ll see in the next couple of years a very significant expansion in the number and quality of buffers to make our water cleaner and increase wildlife habitat,” he said. “Given the predictions that were made at the beginning of the session, that nothing would happen, I think this is a very significant accomplishment.”
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Said Dayton: “We put the deterioration of Minnesota’s water quality and wildlife habitat on the front burner. It directs attention to the fact that we need to be doing a lot more. “It’s a very important first step, but it’s not the last step.”

Well done Governor Dayton! You tackled a difficult issue, informed people along the way, found reasonable compromises to move it forward, and acknowledged that more work still needs to be done. Good governance and great progress on an important environmental issue. 

Eric Jaffe: Tear Down the Expressway in Toronto

CityLab:

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Writing at the blog Architect This City about the Gardiner debate, transport planner Darren Davis of Auckland, New Zealand, gives a simple four-part explanation for what happens to traffic when a major roadway gets removed or altered. Some people change their routes. Some shift their travel times to hit the road earlier or later. Some switch from cars onto public transit or another mode. And some—typically the case for non-work travel—just don’t make the trip at all.

At the end of his recent op-ed favoring a teardown, Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic asked: “But are we building a city? Or a highway?” Toronto won’t live or die based on the Gardiner decision, but it will be answering that critical question.

One should tear it down for the opportunity for citizens to be close to the waterfront. 

John Myers: Study finds widespread drug pollution in Minnesota lakes

Pioneer Press:

A chemical associated only with X-ray technology is showing up in Lake Kabetogama in Voyageurs National Park and other northern lakes, one of many industrial compounds showing up in samples taken from Minnesota waterways.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency on Tuesday released the results of its latest survey of 11 lakes and four rivers tested for 125 different chemicals, many of which are suspected of being harmful to the environment and, possibly, to humans.

Several of the compounds are considered so-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals that, in other studies, were shown to cause male fish to develop female characteristics and spurred other disruptions in ecosystems.

The survey shows that even remote Minnesota waters are contaminated by a variety of pharmaceuticals, ingredients of personal care and hygiene products as well as endocrine-disrupting compounds — everything from antibiotics, nicotine, caffeine and antidepressants to medications that regulate diabetes, cholesterol and blood pressure.

The chemical DEET, for example, a common ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellents, was found in 10 of the 11 lakes studied.

Ben Mylius: Ecological Indifference in the Face of Ecological Crisis

Minding Nature:

A growing literature from many disciplines now views our ecological crisis not just as an “environmental issue,” but as a symptom of deep failures in our ways of thinking and being.[2] The philosopher Timothy Morton calls it “a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, [which confronts] us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding.”[3]

This failure of thought, and the crisis it has caused, poses grave risks to our capacity to continue in negotiated co-existence with each other and with other species. How grave? Kevin Anderson, of the United Kingdom’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, asserts that the levels of global warming predicted are “incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—an organization not known for its sensationalist language—is now warning us about climate change’s “severe and irreversible effects.” Graham Alexander and Cathy Turner, tracking the Club of Rome’s predictions in 1972’s Limits to Growth, advise us to “expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.”[4]

These claims are undeniably significant. Many people and communities are already responding to their implications. Given the stakes of the game, we should expect nothing less. Continued indifference, from any quarter, is deeply problematic.

In this article, I propose that the majority of jurisprudence—the academic discipline that gives us our theory of what law is, of where it’s from, and how it works—is currently crippled by exactly such “ecological indifference.” Our dominant doctrine, legal positivism, claims that ecological crisis makes no difference to how we understand the content and validity of laws. It assumes that there is a sharp division between matters that are internal to our law (as a system of rules) and matters that are external to it. As a consequence, when the time comes to ask what makes our laws valid and what determines their content, ecological crisis can simply be dismissed.

I've not thought about environmental problems in this light. But the author makes a convincing case that the social construct of our laws is fundamentally flawed. Since there is not a Lorax in our court system, our system of laws generally fails to protect that what we all depend on - Nature.

Greg Seitz: Unlocking Lake of the Woods

St. Croix Watershed Research Station Blog:

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Lake of the Woods is the vast body of water that makes up most of the spur on Minnesota’s northern border. Sprawled across the U.S.-Canada border, it is 70 miles north-south and 60 miles east-west, contains more than 14,552 islands, and boasts 65,000 miles of shoreline. It is the size of Rhode Island and a good candidate as the “sixth Great Lake.”

Like Lake Erie and other Great Lakes, Lake of the Woods is also plagued by harmful algal blooms. Even after nutrient pollution was reduced, Lake of the Woods seems to keep getting greener.

Enormous amounts of waste discharged from paper mills on the Rainy River poured into the lake for decades, carrying phosphorus, which fed the algae. City wastewater also went straight into the river. After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the waste discharges were significantly lowered and the overall cleanliness of the water entering the lake was improved.

Jed Kolko: How Suburban Are Big American Cities?

FiveThirtyEight:

Our analysis showed that the single best predictor of whether someone said his or her area was urban, suburban or rural was ZIP code density. Residents of ZIP codes with more than 2,213 households per square mile typically described their area as urban. Residents of neighborhoods with 102 to 2,213 households per square mile typically called their area suburban. In ZIP codes with fewer than 102 households per square mile, residents typically said they lived in a rural area.2 The density cutoff we found between urban and suburban — 2,213 households per square mile — is roughly equal to the density of ZIP codes 22046 (Falls Church in Northern Virginia); 91367 (Woodland Hills in California’s San Fernando Valley); and 07666 (Teaneck, New Jersey).

Other factors played minor roles in predicting how respondents described where they live. Residents of very small cities and towns rarely said they lived in an urban area, even if their neighborhood was quite dense. Residents of lower-income neighborhoods with older housing stock often said they lived in an urban area, even if it was lower-density. Residents of lower-density ZIP codes with lots of businesses sometimes called their neighborhoods urban; so did residents of lower-density, higher-income ZIP codes that are next to higher-density ZIP codes. But, in general, ZIP code density alone gets us most of the way to predicting whether people say they live in an urban, suburban or rural area.

Density makes a place vibrant. Density makes a city work. Density is the word and our answer to make better communities. Holly Whyte said "we are going to have to work with a much tighter pattern of spaces and development, and that our environment may be the better for it." 

We need to confront the need for density. I've denied and deluded myself that density was not the main issue. I've used words like 'compact', 'vibrant', and 'urban'. What is meant is more people per unit area, as well as mixed use and class. 

Higher density is better for a city. Again, Holly Whyte:

Density also has an important bearing on the look and feel of a neighborhood. If it is urban it ought to be urban. Most of our redevelopment projects are too loose in fabric. They would look better, as well as being more economical, if the scale were tighten up... concentration is the genius of the city, its reason for being. What it needs is not less people, but more, and if this means more density we have no need to feel guilty about it. The ultimate justification for building to higher densities is not that it is more efficient in land costs, but that is can make a better city.
— Holly Whyte - The Last Landscape

Julianne Couch: Rethinking Invasive Species

Sustainable City Network:

Toby Query has worked as a natural resources ecologist for the city of Portland, Ore., Watershed Revegetation Program since 1999, and manages several hundred acres of forests and wetlands in the city. Under his watch, more than 3 million native seedlings and many tons of native grass and wildflower seeds have been planted. He also is the founder of Portland Ecologists Unite!, a monthly discussion group working to improve land management practices and increase the resiliency of the community of ecologists.

Through the years, Query said, he has slowly shifted his thinking from one that “combats evil invasives” to a more nuanced approach.

Many are doing great work on preventing non-native species movement to our wild places. In Lakeshore Living, Kristof and I advocated continuing this important work, and we spoke to the need to rethink some of our other efforts relating to non-native species. We fear that the system has become too Black & White. Why do we think this? Some invasive species management should be considered wrecks. Let me explain this and my concerns.

First, environmental harm, ecosystem harm, or ecological harm is purely a human concept. Every ecological study of a non-native species finds that the non-native created “environmental harm” or had a consequence to the environment (consistent with the Ecological Principle - that Many things are connected to other things). Second, if a species causes economic harm (or human harm) natural management agencies will manage the species, whether native or not (e.g., wolf, cormorant, or sea lamprey). Thus most invasive species thought today can be simplified to:
Non-native = BAD

Non-native species management is really a question of values – Human Values. Aldo Leopold recoiled on the anti-weed talk in his time. We are recoiling on the same phenomena today. War on Non-natives… War on Terror… War on…. Our language is anti-nature. We recoil at the Black & White, and we recognize the nuances and complexity of this issue.

One example of our invasive species management wreck is curly-leaf pondweed management in many lakes. Why do I say this is a wreck? First, we are allowing the destruction of fish habitat. Second, since we are taking an action, the burden is on us to demonstrate in the range of lakes that are now treated that there is little or no negative impact to native plant communities. This has yet to be done. Therefore, these treatments seem imprudent. The science has not changed substantially, but attitudes have.

Some history. Minnetonka Lake, an important Minnesota lake, had curly-leaf pondweed near the turn of the last century. In 1937 Dr. John Moyle recommended planting curly-leaf pondweed. Some of you might wonder why Dr. Moyle advocated planting of curly-leaf pondweed. Moyle was always ahead of his time — he was the only genius that the MN DNR has employed. On this issue, he is still ahead of his time. I suspect that once we get past the current Black & White view of non-native species, that management agencies will be recommending the use of curly-leaf pondweed in limited conditions. It may be the best aquatic plant for fish habitat in some of our altered lakes.

Our Black & White system now targets genotypes of a native species, common reed (Phragmites). This requires genetic testing. How impure does a population have to be to be called invasive? The control of common reed in our lakes seems irresponsible, given that humanity has substantially reduced the common reed in many lakes. It should be noted that that it has not been demonstrated that the genetic code or the different haplotypes of common reed were introduced by humans. Phragmites has a cosmopolitan distribution, and common reed stands are protected in Europe and North America because of their important ecological functions. Phragmites has considerable genetic variation, with geographical varieties.

Is there a problem with our NON-Native Species Fundamentalism? We think so! It decreases the value of species like Phragmites and may reduce our commitment to protecting similar species. I worry that our risk assessment is not inclusive of the ecological values of Phragmites regardless of the varietal designation, and the various actions related to promoting the perceived ‘evil' nature of this plant has decreased the perceived ecological value of this important plant. I have seen this with my own eyes — government staff denigrating this native plant because of the application of an 'invasive' label. I’m saddened by this fact.

Since non-native species management is really just a question of values. Scientists are beginning to probe those values. For example, Fischer et al. 2014 [PLoS One] investigated Professional vs. Public Attitudes on Non-Native Species in a limited context. They stated: “Professionals tended to have more extreme views than the public, especially in relation to nativeness and abundance of a species.” Also from this study was the finding that professionals perceived non-natives to be less beautiful, more abundant, and detrimental than the public. Less beautiful?

Instead of the simple equation where non-native = bad. We encourage you to think about some of the complexity, to address values directly, and to have more goals than a simple statement on reducing invasive species.

We advocate for the reduction of human-assisted migration of unwanted species. In our book we suggest three additional goals. First, if a species isn’t threatening something we value, then we shouldn’t manage it at the expense of other species. The first principle we should have regarding non native species is the ‘First Do No Harm’ principle – Recently arrived non-native organisms may be managed provided that little or no harm occurs to others. For curly-leaf pondweed, we may be harming native plant communities in many of the lakes allowed to be treated. The management science related to curly-leaf pondweed is still young; therefore, we shouldn’t be allowing the current level of habitat destruction.

Second, natural-resource management agencies should prioritize places where they wish to re-create and maintain the native co-evolved diversity. Where exactly does the management agency wish do this? Can it say or list? Why or why not?

Third, recognize that a big all-out war on non-native species cannot be won. It seems old-fashioned to manage for yesterday’s conservation goal of native biodiversity — managing for wildness rather than nativeness seems more important today. We can admire the beauty of all organisms regardless of when they arrived. I’m working for nature and conservation of natural features. I’m not at war with other species. We should prudently increase species diversity in our domestic places, and conserve diversity in our wild places. And we could communicate these thoughts to the public.

Shouldn’t we have the courage to challenge the current fad or fashion, such as latest war on non-native species living with us today? And finally, we, as biologists, should have the wisdom to see the beauty of nature, no matter when it arrived or how it got here.

Ben A Minteer & Stephen Pyne: What Does it Mean to Preserve Nature in the Age of Humans?

The Conversation:

We felt the time was ripe to explore the impact of the Anthropocene on the idea and practice of nature preservation. Our plan was to create a salon, a kind of literary summit. But we wanted to cut to the chase: What does it mean to “save American nature” in the age of humans?

We invited a distinguished group of environmental writers – scientists, philosophers, historians, journalists, agency administrators and activists – to give it their best shot. The essays appear in the new collection, After Preservation: Saving American Nature in the Age of Humans.

Anna Maria Barry-Jester: Baltimore’s Toxic Legacy Of Lead Paint

FiveThirtyEight:

State tests found more than 65,000 children in the city with dangerously high blood-lead levels from 1993 to 2013. Across the United States, more than half a million kids are poisoned by lead each year, and the majority come from cities like Baltimore: rust belt towns built up during the first half of the 20th century when leaded paint was dominant. As populations and employment opportunities shrank in recent decades, poverty and neglect combined with older housing allowed lead paint poisoning to plague the city.

Despite sharp declines, the city of Baltimore still has nearly three times the national rate of lead poisoning among children, and a look at the data reveals that, like other health disparities, just a handful of neighborhoods are responsible for almost all of the city’s cases over the last five years. Sandtown is one of them.

But even these relatively stark statistics hide much of the problem. The data here represents children with blood-lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter (ug/dL), while the acceptable limit was halved to 5ug/dL by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2012 after decades of research showed there is no safe threshold for lead exposure. More than a thousand children tested for blood-lead levels between 5 and 9 ug/dL in 2013 in Baltimore, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Lead paint can be absorbed through the skin, and even a small amount of dust from frequently used doors and windows is a risk without professional abatement. Exposure to larger, lethal doses of lead is mostly non-existent in the U.S. today, but ingesting even tiny amounts can have lifelong effects, and is particularly dangerous for children under age six. Speech delays, lack of impulse control, aggressive tendencies, ADHD and other learning disabilities have been associated with exposure to lead. While it’s impossible to draw relationships between lead paint and an individual’s behavior, what happens when a population is exposed to lead is pretty clear, and it’s not pretty.