Nature is full of heartwarming stories about partnerships. One of my all-time favorites is the three-way mutualism between Western ponderosa pine trees, tassel-eared squirrels and mycorrhizal fungi. The trees house the squirrels in their branches and the fungi on their roots. The mycorrhizae break down nutrients in the soil for easier absorption by the tree roots, and the trees supply sugar to the fungi. The squirrels eat the fruiting bodies of the fungi, called truffles, then defecate the spores throughout the forest, thereby inoculating new trees. Everybody benefits; forest health improves.
Pan east about a thousand miles to the Great Lakes region. Lurking beneath Lake Michigan is another partnership that’s just as impressive. But its effects on the Lake Michigan ecosystem are anything but beneficial, at least the way we perceive a healthy freshwater scene.
Earlier today, about 30 of us attending the Society of Environmental Journalists conference toured the University of Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Water Institute in Milwaukee. We also cruised the lake for a couple of hours aboard the EPA’s research vessel, called the Lake Guardian. Of all the research, I was most struck by new insights into the efficient relationship between quagga mussels and an algae called cladophora.
Hi from Madison, Wisconsin, where the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists is off to a solid start. This video is the product of an all-day workshop using video editing software that I’ve only recently met. Much to my chagrin, I see I’ve got a long way to go.
Still, early indications are that my co-producer and I showed some raw talent today. Note the reaction of Ted Chamberlain, editor at National Geographic News: “FABULOUS! I love the silent, almost heartbreaking ending… I’ll have my people call yours. Don’t do anything until you have a chance to hear me out. If I end up in a bidding war with Discovery over this, you’ll never eat lunch in this town again!”
Fluorite at an abandoned mine near Jamestown, Colorado
Back in the 1880s, George W. Coffin lived along St. Vrain creek, which flows in a mountainside ponderosa pine forest northeast of Boulder, Colorado. He made good use of the water, for irrigation. So did the Left-Hand Ditch Company, even though they lived a ways south of it — closer, actually, to another drainage called Left Hand Creek. Left Hand Creek ran smaller than the St. Vrain, with not enough water to supply the company’s business. So the company dug ditches to divert water from the St. Vrain into James Creek, and from there into Left Hand Creek, and then through still more ditches so they could sell it to irrigators. One year, there was a bit of a drought. Ol’ Mr. Coffin tore out part of the Left Hand Ditch Company’s dam, effectively restoring the natural flow of St. Vrain Creek — toward his own property where by rights, he thought, it ought to go.
The Colorado Supreme Court decided otherwise, thereby laying down (in 1882) one of the still-standing cornerstones of Western water law: first come, first serve, even though the Left Hand Ditch Company diverted the St. Vrain into an entirely different drainage to the exclusion of people living on its banks. They’d gotten to it first, and Coffin was out of luck.
This week, more than 100 years later, we studied the case for Charles Wilkinson’s environmental law class at CU Boulder. And today, in a happy convergence, I got to see Left Hand Creek for myself.
The Ted Scripps Fellowship continues to keep me busy and happy. Through Charles Wilkinson’s environmental law class, I’ve become acquainted with Wallace Stegner and his book about John Wesley Powell. Too bad the class discussion won’t likely focus on Powell’s brave first run of the Colorado River; the descriptions triggered big homesickness for canyon country and are firmly etched in my mind. But I agree that the meat of the book lies in Powell’s revolutionary attempts to brand Western land policy with sound ethics; and that’s of course what will be most important for the class.
Meteorite!
I’m completely enamored with mineralogy class, in the geology department. I was hooked the first day, when our encyclopedic instructor, Joe Smyth, passed around a meteorite somewhere around 5 billion years old. It was black (iron) but metallic, and really heavy to hold; a true marvel. Mineralogy has sent me back to the chemistry textbooks I thought I escaped years ago, but willingly now, because I want to understand what rocks are made of (e.g., the minerals) as a window into the structure of the Earth and other planets. And of course there’s my special interest in the mineral apatite, the source of much of the world’s phosphate — and a pretty gem, as it turns out.
There’s a bit of a conflict between what I’m learning in mineralogy class and in my mining law class. Geologists say a mineral is (among other things) a solid that is not formed by biological processes. But United States mining laws for more than two centuries have included coal, oil, gas and even water as minerals. Nope, that’s not a typo. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1978 (Andrus v. Charlestone Stone Products) that water is indeed a mineral. Bit of a mind-bender, yes?
There are other opportunities that come with the fellowship. On Friday, all of us fellows took a field trip up to Niwot Ridge. The high-altitude site is home of the Mountain Research Station, a facility of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).
Sunset over the Pacific at Arica, Chile. Image courtesy of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, CO.
When it comes to teasing out the factors affecting Earth’s climate, the Sun is a compelling character. A rare breed of enthusiasts got pretty vocal about the Sun in the past year, when the great orb stayed quiet about a year longer than expected between the end of Solar Cycle 23 and the beginning of Solar Cycle 24, which has now begun — maybe. More about that in a minute.
The “enthusiasts” I mean are the ones who suspect that natural factors (e.g., not human-caused carbon emissions) are major players in any warming or cooling trends on Earth. They point to the Maunder Minimum in the 17th Century, when a lull in solar activity (as measured by sunspots) was linked with cooling in parts of the globe, especially Europe. Some members of the “global warming is a hoax” camp even latched onto the idea that if we were to succeed in reducing our carbon emissions, we could actually sabotage a sort of blanket that would help insulate us should the Sun stay mum. Sounds to me like a cop out — a cheap way to avoid cleaning up our act. Chances are we won’t get to find out if they’re right anyway, because the Sun appears to be ramping up toward another maximum around 2013.
Regardless, the Sun’s power to influence Earth’s climate is highlighted anew in a Science study this week.
The new study is suggesting a sun-climate connection that’s disproportionately large given the small overall variation in the Sun’s output (up to a tenth of one percent) during different parts of its cycle. And Earth’s response isn’t all about temperature, the authors report. Their models reveal a three-way interaction between the Sun, the atmosphere and the ocean, such that a peak in solar activity results in more precipitation over the western tropical Pacific, and cooler, drier conditions over the equatorial eastern Pacific.
There are other opportunities that come with the fellowship. On Friday, all of us fellows took a field trip up to Niwot Ridge. The high-altitude site is home of the 
