Artist in the Anthropocene

Someone removed bark from this tree on Vancouver Island long ago, so now it wears a “culturally modified tree" ribbon. 

This has been possibly a record winter for Snowy Owls.

The birds have been irrupting farther south and in greater numbers than they have in a couple of decades, with some individuals being spotted as far south as Florida - way beyond their normal winter range.

The reason for this event is not a population crash of their primary food source, lemmings, but in fact the opposite - it was a bumper year for lemmings, and so a bumper year for the owls.

A large majority of the birds being seen are heavily marked with black; young birds are typically much darker than older birds of the same sex (though females are also darker than males, so older females and young males can often have a similar amount of black).

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Several dozen researchers have rapidly organized Project SNOWstorm this winter in response to the unusual numbers of owls.

They are collaborating to study the behavior and movement of the owls in order to get a better understanding of their winter requirements. A few owls have also been outfitted with solar-powered GPS trackers that record the birds’ movements and report them using the cell tower network. When out of cell tower range, the trackers will store the locations until the bird next returns to cell range.

Because the units are solar-powered and can potentially operate for two or three years, we have the unique opportunity to observe where these owls go and how they move on their breeding grounds in the Arctic, too.

For more on Project SNOWstorm, including movement maps of some of the tagged owls, visit here:

http://www.projectsnowstorm.org/ photo by Phil Brown (nebirdsplus) on Flickr

The Ailanthus webworm, Atteva aurea

… is a tiny ermine moth now found commonly in the United States. The Ailanthus webworm is thought to be native to South Florida and the American tropics (south to Costa Rica), habitat to its original larval host plants, the Paradise Tree (Simarouba glauca) and Simarouba amara. Another tree called Tree-of-Heaven (Ailanthus altissima), originally from China, has been widely introduced and Atteva aurea has jumped to this new host plant (giving it its common name, Ailanthus webworm). The moth does not survive cold winters, but migrates north each year so it is commonly seen in summer throughout the continental US, and occasionally eastern Canada…

(read more: Wikipedia)

Knowing Where Your Gadgets Come From

Miners for tin ore on Bangka Island. Image by Ulet Ifansasti, courtesy Friends of the Earth (via fo…

113. Anthropic Rock, noun. From Greek anthropos, “man, human,” + Vulgar Latin rocca, “stone.” A term proposed by geologist James R. Underwood in 2001 as an addition to the three basic classes of rock (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary); anthropic rock is any solid mineral-based material that has been, in Underwood’s words, “made, moved, and modified” by humans. Brick, ceramic, and even glass might be considered members of this class; concrete is its prime ambassador.

Not everyone appreciates Underwood’s attempt to draw attention to the role of man-made materials in shaping the large-scale, long-term geology of the Earth. But some anthropic rocks, like their naturally occurring counterparts, are likely to outlive our species by long eons. They are part of the planet’s skin.

Piping plovers and storm recovery: Can the shorebird help us save our beaches?

Hurricane Sandy passed through this area after my icy walk last year, and I revisited it a few weeks after the storm. My mother had evacuated her home on Atlantic Beach, then moved back to deal with a flooded basement and the worries of living close to the shore. I walked down to the beach, which had lost much of the finer sand. To the east, the houses were intact; the lawns still late-autumn green. To the west, workers were emptying homes by the pailful. They piled wet sand on the beach and hoisted rugs, furniture, Sheetrock, and keepsakes onto what was left of patios.

What had made the difference? To the east was a dune system, about 10 feet high, covered with beach grass and a few young pines: a barrier to the storm surge. To the west, the beach resembled a parking lot, graded and regraded over the years, an easy path for any storm with a decent amount of power.

Workers were moving sand and plugging it with beach grass in the area that had been protected from the storm. The winter shorebirds were back on the coast, preoccupied as ever, racing toward the ocean for a quick meal, chased back by the waves. Several Brant geese flew overhead. At the same time, up the beach, some coastal residents were doing what they’ve always done: grading the strand and carelessly encroaching on the dunes. Homeowners who paid for an ocean view were starting to groom their welcome mats for the next storm. As beach geologist Orrin Pilkey once said, “If you can see the ocean, the ocean can see you.”

Some coastal residents resent the restrictions imposed by the Endangered Species Act to protect threatened shorebirds. But others suspect that piping plovers can help us preserve our shorefront lifestyle—that the land we protect for them can serve as a barrier when the storms come through, protecting human property. It’s a pleasing notion. The truth, however, is more complicated than that.