Richard Conniff: Wildlife in an Urbanized World →

Yale360:

“we know almost nothing about what ecologist Meredith Holgerson at Portland State University calls “these cryptic changes happening” as humans occupy and alter a landscape. For her doctoral research at Yale University, she looked at the effects of suburbanization on wood frogs in 18 ponds in the prosperous Connecticut suburb of Madison. The area around the ponds had developed largely with two-acre zoning, allowing for survival of “pretty good red maple swamps and vernal ponds,” says David Skelly, a professor of ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who oversaw the research. But chemical analysis of the ponds demonstrated that, along with other changes, the wood frog larvae were getting as much as 70 percent of their nutrients from materials leaching out of septic systems. “It suggests,” says Holgerson, “that tadpoles and other pond organisms are made up of human waste.”

The consequences of that remain unknown. But it also suggests that we may change the entire nutrient flow of an ecosystem, cause eutrophication, or introduce hormone-disrupting drugs or other chemicals in our waste — and still imagine that we live in a relatively intact habitat. ”

Sarah DeWeerdt: Leaky Sewers a Source of Pollution→

Anthropocene:

““Wastewater treatment facilities are not equipped to remove many pharmaceutical compounds,” lead author Emma Rosi, an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit research organization in Millbrook, NY, said in a press release. “We were interested in how stream microorganisms – which perform key ecosystem services like removing nutrients and breaking down leaf litter – respond to pharmaceutical pollution.” Rosi and her colleagues studied biofilms—complex assemblages of bacteria and algae that make rocks and leaves in streams slippery – in four waterways in and around Baltimore, Maryland.

The study sites represent an urban-to-suburban gradient of habitats, and they each harbor a different assemblage of microbes, the researchers found. The biggest differences were between Gwynns Run, the most urbanized stream with a documented history of sewage contamination, and Gwynnbrook, the least developed stream.

First, the researchers looked for six different drugs in the streams: acetaminophen, caffeine, sulfamethoxazole (an antibiotic), diphenhydramine (an antihistamine), amphetamine, and morphine. They detected all of the drugs in all four streams, with the highest concentrations in the most urbanized stream and the lowest concentrations in the least urbanized stream.”

Bill Donahue: Aging with Intention→

Outside:

Heinrich examining a raven’s skull. (Jesse Burke)

“In 1951, when Bernd was 11, his family wrangled passage to the U.S. and landed in western Maine. They planned to grow pota­toes. Instead they were taken in for a summer by a kind family, the Adamses, whose ramshackle farm was a mess, a melange of dogs and cows and chickens and broken tractor equipment. To Bernd, the place was paradise, as he writes in his 2007 memoir, The Snoring Bird, recalling the adventures he shared with the two eldest Adams kids, Jimmy and Billy. The boys built a raft out of barn wood and spent countless hours watching baby catfish and white-bellied dragonflies. The Adamses taught Bernd English. He killed a hummingbird with his slingshot. He ran around barefoot and shirtless.

Bernd Heinrich is now 77 years old and the author of 21 books. The vaunted biologist E. O. Wilson speaks of him as an equal, calling him “one of the most original and productive people I know” and “one of the best natural-history writers we have.” Runners also revere him, for his speed and for his 2002 book, Why We Run. “He was the first person of scientific stature to say that ultramarathoning is a natural pursuit for humans,” says Christopher McDougall, author of the 2009 bestseller Born to Run. “He did the research himself, in 100-plus-mile races.””

Fascinating story of Bernd Heinrich's interesting and productive life.

Mimi Kirk: A Rational Housing Solution→

The Atlantic:

“When Kol Peterson moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2010, affordable housing was a priority, as it was for many newcomers in this city’s booming real-estate market. He looked at two frequently discussed options for high-cost cities—tiny houses on wheels and communal living—but decided on another option: accessory dwelling units, or ADUs—also known as “granny flats,” or basement or garage apartments...

“By 2020, ADUs will take off in tens of cities,” he said. “This doesn’t mean there will be an explosion of them overnight, but the concept will become more popular in the next couple of years.”

Peterson recently wrote a book, Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development, that walks potential ADU builders through the planning and construction process, and tackles the social, economic, and environmental issues that relate to such housing.”

Jake Walsh: Learning about Consequences of Non-indigenous Species→

UW - Center for Limnology

“For reasons we don’t yet completely understand, nutrients concentrations have been lower and beach conditions have actually been better since spiny water flea showed up in Lake Mendota. Somehow, there seem to be fewer nutrients available to cyanobacteria to feed really big blooms, which means we likely have as much control over preventing summer blooms now as we did before the invasion by reducing nutrient concentrations in the lake.

Getting to the bottom of these new findings can help us get more of something we enjoy in Lake Mendota – good water quality. Of course it’s unlikely that we’re done making mistakes, particularly when it comes to invasive species. Invasive zebra mussels were detected in Lake Mendota in 2015, six years after spiny water flea’s detection. We’re already learning more about both zebra mussels and Lake Mendota as they grow in abundance and transform the lake bottom.

But, like the spiny water flea, there’s still that silver lining – mistakes teach. If we continue to study lakes carefully over long periods of time, we can uncover more about how they work and use that information in positive ways. And, just maybe, we’ll not only learn from these mistakes but also learn how to stop making them.”

Andy Balaskovitz: Offshore Wind on the Great Lakes→

ENSIA:

“Eight miles north of Cleveland in Lake Erie, the Icebreaker Wind project is poised to become the first offshore wind project in the Great Lakes. The project, lured by LEEDCo, is owned by Icebreaker Wind Power through the Norway-based investor Fred. Olsen Renewables. Pending federal and state approval, developers anticipate construction will begin in 2020 on the six-turbine, 20.7 MW project.

Some renewable energy advocates hope Icebreaker will catalyze further Great Lakes offshore wind development by settling economic, environmental and regulatory concerns. Skeptics fear it could be a one-off demonstration that is unlikely to be scaled up. And opponents like the North American Platform Against Wind Power and others with concerns about aesthetics, renewable energy or potential impacts on wildlife worry it will lead to a flood of projects throughout the region.”

Amy Crawford: Need to Rethink Alien Species→

Smithsonian:

“In the 19th century, European and American landscape architects expressed a patriotic pride that was sometimes tinged with nativist suspicion of “foreign” plants. In the 1930s, the Nazis took this concept to the extreme with a campaign to “cleanse the German landscape of unharmonious foreign substance.” One target was an unassuming Eurasian flower, Impatiens parviflora, which a 1942 report condemned as a “Mongolian invader,” declaring, “[A]n essential element of this culture, namely the beauty of our home forest, is at stake.”

Today’s critics of invasive species rhetoric are quick to clarify that they aren’t calling their colleagues racist. But Macalester College ecologist Mark Davis, for one, questions whether our modern campaign against non-native species has gone too far.

Davis is perhaps the field’s most notorious heretic, lead author of a widely-read 2011 essay in the journal Nature, co-signed by 18 other ecologists, that argued for judging non-native species based on environmental impact rather than origin. He believes that invasion ecology has been led astray by its central metaphor: the idea that non-native species are invading native ecosystems, and that we are at war with them. “Militaristic language is just so unscientific and emotional,” says Davis. “It’s an effective way to bring in support, but it’s not a scientific way.””

Greg Breining: Road Salt's Problems and Solutions→

ENSIA:

“A recent study of 371 lakes in North America — most in the northern states and southern Canada — showed chloride concentrations rising in more than a third. More than two dozen were nudging toward levels harmful to aquatic life. Extrapolated to all lakes in the U.S. northern Great Lakes and Northeast regions, about “7,770 lakes may be experiencing elevated chloride concentrations, likely due to road salt runoff,” the study concludes.

U.S. road maintenance departments have been spreading salt on streets and highways to melt snow and ice since the 1940s, but the use of salt skyrocketed over time — from 0.15 metric tons (0.16 tons) per year during the 1940s to about 18 million metric tons (19.8 million tons) per year today. Road salt use is common and growing throughout Canada, Europe, Japan, China and even South America. As much as 60 million metric tons (66 million tons) may be applied worldwide each year. Unlike chemicals that break down into less harmful compounds, road salt persists and may remain in water and soil for years, until it eventually is diluted and carried away by moving water...

...the biggest single change to use less salt is switching to liquid solutions. The brine spreads more evenly, stays put and begins working immediately because the salt is already in solution. As a result, spraying liquid brine is more effective while using less salt.”

Tia Ghose: Can We Manage the World's Largest Organism?→

Live Science:

“Pando is a colony of quaking aspen that spans 106 acres (43 hectares) of south-central Utah. Because of an explosion of deer in the area, new sprouts from Pando are eaten before they have a chance to mature, and the venerable organism is at risk of dying out altogether. “The system is not replacing itself; it’s highly out of balance,” said Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University and the director of the Western Aspen Alliance.”

Eliminating or reducing common predators has consequences. 

Michael Casey: Loons Poisoned by Lead→

Associated Press:

“More than year after New Hampshire passed one of the nation’s toughest bans on using lead fishing tackle, loons are still dying from ingesting fishing weights and lures.

The 2016 law prohibits the sale and use of lead tackle in the state as part of an effort to revive the state’s loon population. But Loon Preservation Committee senior biologist Harry Vogel says eight loons have died this year from lead poisoning, up from two last year.

”The day this law was passed, we knew we would continue to see lead-poisoned loons,” Vogel said. “As long as Grandpa’s old tackle box is in the dusty corner of the garage, some people will just put lead tackle on the line and continue to fish. The hope is that it will become less and less common over time.””

From necropsy studies, I've estimated that between 100 and 200 Minnesota loons die each year due to lead poisoning.

James Kunstler: The Infinite Suburb is a Joke→

The American Conservative:

Jun Cen

“In their visions of the future, the elite graduate schools of urban planning lately see a new-and-improved suburbia, based on self-driving electric cars, “drone deliveries at your doorstep,” and “teardrop-shaped one-way roads” (I think that means cul-de-sacs) as the coming sure thing. It sounds suspiciously like yesterday’s tomorrow, the George Jetson utopia that has been the stock-in-trade of half-baked futurism for decades. It may be obvious that for some time now we have lived in a reality-optional culture and it’s vividly on display in the cavalcade of techno-narcissism that passes for thinking these days in academia.

Exhibit A is the essay that appeared last month in The New York Times Sunday Magazine titled “The Suburb of the Future is Almost Here,” by Alan M. Berger of the MIT urban design faculty and author of the book Infinite Suburbia — on the face of it a perfectly inane notion. The subtitle of his Times Magazine piece went: “Millennials want a different kind of suburban development that is smart, efficient, and sustainable.”

Note the trio of clichés at the end, borrowed from the lexicon of the advertising industry. “Smart” is a meaningless anodyne that replaces the worn out tropes “deluxe,” “super,” “limited edition,” and so on. It’s simply meant to tweak the reader’s status consciousness. Who wants to be dumb?

“Efficient” and “sustainable” are actually at odds. The combo ought to ring an alarm bell for anyone tasked with designing human habitats. Do you know what “efficient” gets you in terms of ecology? Monocultures.”

Kunstler at his best. Suburbia is a high-energy development form -- it can only exist with abundant and cheap energy. Suburbs are scaled-up, jazzed-up hunter-gather type communities. The original hunter-gather communities existed in the wilderness where one lived with one's tribe, and they were likely good places to live. However, our big-sized suburbs exist on our cities' outskirts with unknown and sometime friendly neighbors, eating land, wasting resources, and in troubled times often fostering a culture of fear.

Jim Robbins: Functional Biodiversity→

Yale360

“Some scientists concluding that understanding the function of species can tell us more about ecosystems than knowing which species are present — a concept known as functional diversity. This idea is not merely academic, as scientists say that understanding functional diversity can play an important role in shaping conservation programs to enhance biodiversity and preserve or restore ecosystems.

“The trait perspective is very powerful,” says Jonathan Lefcheck, a researcher at the Bigelow Marine Lab in East Boothbay, Maine who studies functional diversity in marine environments. “Some species in an ecosystem are redundant, and some species are very powerful.”...

Some scientists now compare knowing which species are present in an ecosystem to knowing only which parts of a car are present. Functional trait ecology is a deeper dive into ecosystem dynamics to help understand how the parts come together to create a natural environment ...”

Rachel Cernansky: Artificial sweeteners and polluted water→

ENSIA:

“Artificial sweeteners pop up in products all over the grocery store, from diet soda to yogurt, to help people keep calories down and pounds off. It turns out their popularity has given artificial sweeteners — sucralose in particular — a purpose beyond helping with weight or carb control. Sucralose, and to some extent acesulfame, may also play a role in keeping water contamination down by helping researchers and water resource managers identify hot spots of pollutants in order to better manage them.

Sucralose is increasingly being used as what experts call a “tracer” — a substance that can help identify where contamination comes from. This ability is important for maintaining water quality, both in surface waters and in drinking water supplies...

A bigger concern is that sucralose concentrations will only increase, and it’s unclear what that will mean for ecosystems. Even less well-studied may be the effects of the compounds that form when sucralose does break down, which occurs to some extent despite how stable it is.”

Reid Forgrave: Mining vs. Wilderness→

New York Times:

“Today Ely is home to a few thousand people, a place of long, hard winters that is, in the words of one resident, “not on the road to anywhere — we’re literally the end of the road.” People do not end up here by accident. For most of the town’s history, the main reason they came was to make a living off the rocks. The ore supported abundant mining jobs for generations.

For almost as long, however, people have been coming to this area for another reason, too: to visit America’s most popular national wilderness area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, which encompasses roughly a million protected acres and thousands of lakes and welcomes 150,000 visitors annually. The “Land of 10,000 Lakes” is actually a land of 11,842 lakes, and that figure counts only those bigger than 10 acres. They are a legacy of the glaciers that retreated from the region about 10,000 years ago. As a result, the state has a significant fraction of the world’s supply of surface-available fresh water; 6 percent of Minnesota’s surface area is water, more than any other state.

Geological coincidence makes Ely — one three-square-mile town in the northernmost reaches of the continental United States — a focus of a national debate about the proper use of public lands. The place also distills the political fault lines in today’s America, pitting an angry working class against progressive activists. Just southeast of Ely, an international mining conglomerate has invested hundreds of millions of dollars during the past decade toward potential copper-nickel mines a few miles outside the Boundary Waters. The company — Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta — has drilled 1.6 million feet of core samples out of 496 holes to explore the deposit from which it soon hopes to process 20,000 tons of mineralized ore a day. The company believes the area’s valuable metals — copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold and silver — can be extracted in an environmentally responsible way and can provide hundreds of jobs to the job-starved economy of Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region, along the northwestern coast of Lake Superior.”

Is it a question of what is more important? Is the answer to this question dependent on the time horizon? Where are the best places to get our metals that each of us use? These types of questions we wrestle with as a community, and of course there are no easy answers. For us that value wilderness and lakes, we want to protect the quality of these valuable places and the risks associated with the mining are not worth it. For miners and would-be-miners, they wish to provide a means to support their family and enjoy the woods and lakes for recreation. They too do not do not want to destroy the quality of the lakes and wilderness. For the company, they wish to produce profits for the benefit of the CEO, other corporate cadgers, and shareholders. They don't wish to jeopardize those profits; however, the quality of the lakes and wilderness that remains after the extraction of precious metals is not important. 

BBC: Painted Lady Swarm→

BBC

Painted Lady Butterfly

“Scientists at the National Weather Service (NWS) first mistook the orange radar blob for birds and had asked the public to help identifying the species. They later established that the 70-mile wide (110km) mass was a kaleidoscope of Painted Lady butterflies.

Forecasters say it is uncommon for flying insects to be detected by radar. “We hadn’t seen a signature like that in a while,” said NWS meteorologist Paul Schlatter, who first spotted the radar blip.”

Painted Lady Butterflies were very abundant this summer in Minnesota.

Dan Gunderson: In the Lake We Find What We Dump→

MPR:

“A new study offers an explanation to the mystery of why pharmaceuticals and other chemicals are found in remote Minnesota lakes, far from developed land that would create contaminated runoff.

”These chemicals such as antibiotics, and anti-corrosives and endocrine active chemicals were being found in lakes where we might not expect them because there was no surrounding development,” said Mark Ferrey, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency scientist who, in search of an answer, collected snow, rain and air samples at three locations in the Twin Cities and had them tested for 126 chemicals.

Ferrey found 17, including DEET, cocaine, antibiotics, an anti-corrosion chemical, an x-ray contrast chemical and the pain reliever naproxen.”

David Peterson: Lake Water Level Appeal→

Star Tribune:

“The state of Minnesota will appeal a landmark ruling on the excessive pumping of groundwater around White Bear Lake, saying it is “not supported by scientific evidence” and would “immediately halt important development” within five miles of the lake.

In a written statement Tuesday underlining the ruling’s potential to reach all across Minnesota, DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr said: “The DNR is strongly committed to protecting Minnesota’s many precious water resources, including White Bear Lake and its surrounding aquifers. We take that responsibility very seriously. But responsible, effective water management must be supported by sound science.”

Katie Crosby Lehmann, lead attorney in a team of lawyers that worked the case over several years’ time, said in a statement late Tuesday: “We stand by the detailed scientific evidence from the monthlong trial. As demonstrated by the [judge’s 140-page] opinion, the DNR has known of the problems caused by its permitting actions since issuing its own 1998 study and has concluded that the water use in the north and east metro area is not sustainable.””

Also see Pioneer Press's article.

Sarah Laskow: The Hidden Memories of Plants→

Atlas Obscura:

“In the study of the plant kingdom, a slow revolution is underway. Scientists are beginning to understand that plants have abilities, previously unnoticed and unimagined, that we’ve only ever associated with animals. In their own ways, plants can see, smell, feel, hear, and know where they are in the world. One recent study found that clusters of cells in plant embryos act a lot like brain cells and help the embryo to decide when to start growing.

Of the possible plant talents that have gone under-recognized, memory is one of the most intriguing. Some plants live their whole lives in one season, while others grow for hundreds of years. Either way, it has not been obvious to us that any of them hold on to past events in ways that change how they react to new challenges. But biologists have shown that certain plants in certain situations can store information about their experiences and use that information to guide how they grow, develop, or behave. Functionally, at least, they appear to be creating memories. How, when, and why they form these memories might help scientists train plants to face the challenges—poor soil, drought, extreme heat—that are happening with increasing frequency and intensity. But first they have to understand: What does a plant remember? What is better to forget?”

Lizzie Wade: Human-Driven Evolution→

Anthropocene:

“During World War II, Londoners often sought shelter from German bombs in the city’s subway tunnels. There, they encountered another type of enemy: hordes of voracious mosquitoes. These weren’t your typical above-ground mosquitoes. They were natives of the Underground, born in pools of standing water that pockmarked the underground passageways. And unlike their open-air cousins, London’s subterranean skeeters seemed to love biting humans.

Fifty years after the war ended, scientists at the University of London decided to investigate the subway population. They collected eggs and larvae from subway tunnels and garden ponds and reared both populations in the lab. The outdoor mosquitoes fed on birds, but the tunnel bugs preferred mammal blood. And when the scientists put males and females from the different populations into close quarters designed to encourage mating, not a single pairing produced offspring. That sealed the deal: the underground mosquitoes were a whole new species, adapted to life in the subway tunnels people had built.

It’s stories like this one that got Joseph Bull thinking. As a conservation scientist at the University of Copenhagen, he hears a lot about how humans are driving other species extinct. If the current rate stays steady, the planet is on its way to its sixth mass extinction, a severe event on par with the meteorite impact that killed the dinosaurs. But he wondered whether there might be a flip side. Certainly people’s planet-transforming activities had to be creating new species, too. But how, and how many? Bull decided to see whether he could count all the new species humans had created or were on their way to creating, in a sort of mirror-image of extinction rates and endangered species lists.”

Samantha Oliver: Lake Trends Mostly Static→

University of Wisconsin: Center for Limnology

“Over the last few decades, change has defined our environment in the United States. Agriculture intensified. Urban areas sprawled. The climate warmed. Intense rainstorms became more common. But, says a new study, while those kinds of changes usually result in poor water quality, lakes have mostly stayed the same.

The authors of the article, published online today by the journal Global Change Biology, assessed changes in measures of water quality, including plant nutrients and algal growth in in 2,913 U.S. lakes from 1990 to about 2011. The researchers found that, “despite large environmental change and management efforts over recent decades, water quality of lakes in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. has not overwhelmingly degraded or improved.””