September 2018 – Stone Fig

Mark Trail and the Lost World

Finding items to write about can be an interesting and fun search. One source that might surprise is when it can be found in the Sunday funnies.

For 70 years Mark Trail and his friend, now wife Cherry, have brought hiking, conservation, and wilderness adventure to the funnies. Created by Ed Dodd, and now drawn by James Allen, the dailies and the Sunday strips can still be found in newspapers as well as on-line. I always enjoy the Sunday strip and found a recent one (9/23/2018) very interesting. It dealt with an expedition in May 2018 to a world virtually hidden from humanity atop a singular mount in Mozambique.

The initial idea for an expedition to Mount Lico came to Julian Bayliss of Oxford Brookes University in 2006 when he found the highland during a search of Goggle Earth. But it was not until six years later that he would lead an expedition of 28 scientists on a ten-day visit to the top of this granite monolith. It must have been like being on the top of the world, or perhaps the top of a new world.

The top of Mount Lico is separated from the surrounding landscape by a near-vertical 375-foot (125 meters) cliff face. This mount is likely the remnants of an ancient volcano, a cinder cone, in which lava had been pushed up into its central shaft where it hardened. Then as the millennium passed the cinder cone eroded away leaving this massive granite mesa towering above the rain forests below. But another rain forest also developed at the crown of the mount. Perhaps it started when the cinder cone was still part of the landscape; or maybe it started from seeds being blown in the wind or carried by birds. But the forest is there at the top, and it is teeming with wildlife. One new species of butterfly has been confirmed, and several other animals are under study to determine if they are new to our knowledge as well.

To reach this unexplored forest each scientist had to steel themselves for the 375-foot vertical ascent by climbing rope. They were assisted by experienced, world-class climbers who laid out the pitch and secured the novice clambering-scientists by lines. Each made the arduous and dangerous climb, and the equally arduous and dangerous descent after the 10-day survey of the mount-top forest was finished.

The age of the forest has yet to be determined. The depth of the soil which generally aligns with the age of the forest was not established. Even after a 2-meter test pit was dug and a 50-cm probe was driven into the bottom of the pit, bedrock was not found. In addition to the plants and animals found in the forest, stone pots were discovered from previous human incursions into the new-found forest. Julian Bayliss is quoted on the Earth Alliance (link below) site as saying of the expedition and its findings; “It’s very exciting.”

I would say that is truly an understatement.

How many of us have stepped from the forest track or from that path in a park to investigate a tree, a flower, a bird, that we had not seen or heard before. And then we stand in awe of a new vision and perhaps wonder who was the last person to have stood here and marveled. There have been a few times for me when back in the lonesome territory – not deep wilderness but a place where others do not often go – when I have stopped and stared and marveled. There was a time in the marsh of South Carolina when I was investigating a palmetto and pine island in a tidal flat, that I stopped and stared and then stepped back in awe and wonder at the natural temple that I found in front of me. I did not go in. My entrance would have spoiled the place. Yet I can see it still in my mind’s eye.

Where Professor Bayliss led his team was truly into the wilderness. And their trek to the base of the granite wall more than 1,900 feet (575 meters) above the surrounding plains, and then up the 125-meter climb to the top surpasses my walk across the firm, sandy soil of the tidal flat, but each of us in a way experienced a similar exhilaration. There are still places out there to be discovered.

Picture is taken from the Alliance Earth site at https://allianceearth.org/mount-lico/ “It is a Rhampholeon, or Dwarf Chameleon, found during the expedition in another forest on nearby Mount Socone.”

Mark Trail current and past strips may be found at http://marktrail.com/

That gooie plastic sandwich box

Several years ago I went on a camping trip with our cub scouts. One of the other leaders loaned me a plastic chair. As I relaxed, suddenly it cracked and fell apart. It was made of some sort of plastic/poly, and when we looked at it we could tell that years in the sunshine had made it weak. It was obvious that the sunlight had broken down some chemical bond in the plastic. When I applied my weight to the chair, it just broke down. Down being the operative word! But why? Evidently the ultraviolet (UV) rays of the sun caused a photochemical effect within the polymer structure of the chair – and crack!

I got up and dusted myself off, and carried the broken chair to my car. I would take it home and dispose of it. Then I went on my way without thinking much beyond being able to put the broken chair at the curb for pickup to be recycled. However, others have taken this photochemical effect and enhanced it to help reduce the problem of plastic pollution.

Flash forward to a road trip I recently took out west. Often we would stop and buy tomatoes and cheese and english muffins and make a classic roadside sandwich for lunch. Other times we would get a pre-made sandwich to go from a convenience store when we stopped for supplies or for gasoline for the car. In a roadside rest stop I would sit at a picnic table and relax in the shade of a tree while enjoying my lunch. Ham and cheese with mustard is always a favorite of mine. But after I have peeled back the plastic film from the formed, plastic package, and after I have enjoyed the sandwich, what to do with the plastic sandwich box? It has bits of mustard and bread and cheese crumbs stuck to it. Our county’s recycling protocols ask that I do not recycle this with other “clean” plastic waste. My sandwich container is contaminated. The organics, and the chemicals in the mustard will cause problems down the recycling line as this waste plastic cannot be recycled because of the contaminants. The contaminants create weaknesses in the reformed plastics. So my sandwich container, along with other plastics contaminated with food and other organic and chemical residues is NONRECYCLABLE!

But there are clever people who work on the issue of recycling old plastic into new, and they have developed a process that addresses the issue of contaminated, nonrecyclable plastic. An article in Chemistry World reports on work that may help reduce the burden of nonrecyclable plastics on the waste streams, public spaces, and the world’s oceans.

The process being studied not only reduces the pollution burden but also aids in the recovery of the energy that was put into the making of the plastic in the first place.

Moritz Kuehnel and Erwin Reisneer of Swansea University and the University of Cambridge respectively and their colleagues have devised a process that uses a photocatalyst to degrade otherwise nonrecyclable plastics. Their testing included pure plastic product as well as plastic that was contaminated with various organic and chemical residues which would normally cause the plastic to not be recycled into new usable products. Their process uses cadmium sulfide (CdS) quantum dots as a photcatalyst for sunlight. These quantum dots are high quality nanoparticles which are generally fabricated to act as catalysts in chemical processes. There are four elements to the process; the plastic, the CdS quantum dots, water, and sunlight. From the process, called photoreforming, hydrogen is generated.

The hydrogen has many applications including, as we look down the road, as fuel for hydrogen fuel cell cars! However, there continues to be a debate on whether hydrogen fuel cell powered cars or electric vehicles are the next giant leap forward in zero carbon transportation. But the process reported in Chemistry World may help address the energy intensive generation of hydrogen from water. The chemistry in the reported process has been shown to work, and now the team as well as others is working to scale up the process so it is economical and beneficial as it has the potential to convert huge amount of contaminated and nonrecyclable plastic wastes into useful chemicals and fuels.

The Chemistry World article may be found at https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sunlight-converts-plastic-waste-to-hydrogen-fuel/3009467.article

Hurricane

I was six years old. As I stood looking out the big, plate window of my room I saw what I thought was a branch that had fallen to the ground in the wind. Then as the branch seemed to grow in size I realized that the earth was splitting open. I stepped back from the window unsure of what was happening. What might rise from beneath the surface of the earth? Then the huge, ancient beech tree toppled, sliding through the rain as its roots clung desperately to the earth even as its leaves betrayed it to the wind. The storm had been blowing since dawn. I could hear the wind blowing across the chimney top as a nightmarish groaning rolled out of the fireplace and into the room. This was my first hurricane.

Hurricane Carol barn-stormed into Connecticut and Rhode Island in late August 1954. Like so many nameless storms that had proceeded Carol, she had strengthened over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream before speeding up and racing up the east coast to her destination.

The warm waters of the Gulf Stream arise out of the Gulf of Mexico. These warmer waters flow around the tip of Florida and up the southeast coast of the United States remaining close to the shore until the current passes North Carolina at Cape Hatteras. There the currents change direction to flow northeasterly towards northern Europe. The Gulf Stream remains significantly warmer than the waters of the central Atlantic or the coastal waters of the southeast United States. It is a band of swiftly moving warm currents between the shore and the deep ocean. Hurricanes that enter the Gulf Stream gather energy and moisture from the Gulf Stream due to the warmer water temperatures. The storms pick up moisture due to the higher rates of surface water evaporation. The storms intensify as the energy from the warmer surface waters rises through the storm causing the storm to rotate faster.

A NOAA article on tropical cyclones states “As long as the base of this weather system remains over warm water and its top is not sheared apart by high-altitude winds, it will strengthen and grow. More and more heat and water will be pumped into the air. The pressure at its core will drop further and further, sucking in wind at ever increasing speeds. Over several hours to days, the storm will intensify, finally reaching hurricane status … .”¹

From the interaction of the warm water and pressures waves that originate off the west coast of Africa, storms develop that may end up hammering islands in the Caribbean, states on the eastern seaboard of the United States, or the states on the Gulf of Mexico. These storms are terrifying, and they are deadly. They destroy homes, businesses, and lives. Hurricane Carol which I witnessed as a young boy wreaked havoc on communities along the coast as it flooded businesses and homes, and tore apart fishing boats. However, it was by no means the greatest of these storms, nor the most costly. More people now live on the coast than 50 years ago. What were pristine beaches and wild salt-marshes in the 1950s are now crowded communities of condominiums and homes. Storms that caused inconvenience in years before now cause millions and millions of dollars in damage.

After Hurricane Carol passed we went outside. We stared at the huge beech that had shaken the foundations of the earth when it crashed to the ground. In coming days, we would play in its branches until it was eventually cut up and hauled away. When we ventured out onto the board avenue next to our apartment house, the street was crisscrossed with other fallen trees. There was a fallen tree about every 20 feet. It was like a ladder with the fallen trees as rungs. It was all fascinating and yet surreal that such great trees that only days before had shaded us from the summer sun now lay prostrate before the wind. I would see it again in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Today I hope the 300-year-old sycamores on our old North Carolina property still stand after Florence. A massive pine that had ruled the yard since my earliest memories had crashed to the ground in a storm five years earlier leaving a hole in the earth twenty feet across and eight feet deep. The same could have happened to these other great trees.

I know these trees; they are part of my life. My memories are of times spent in their shade. But I also I remember the terror of the wind. And I remember the family cleaning up the yard after the storm. I remember my mother cooking in the fire place for several weeks before power was restored, and I remember the final picnic under the ancient beech fallen now. The storms pass.

NOAA Ocean Explorer site; https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/hurricanes.html

Tree Foam

The first time I noticed tree foam I was hiking in the mountains of Virginia. It was Fall and delightfully cool, and to make it better it was raining. A hike in the rain can be terrific. You can give yourself over to the rain. The rainfall creates a smaller world with you at the center. All around you is the random fall of the drops. They drum on the leaf canopy above and then drip down onto the understory below – including you. The rain and the trees and the understory have created a universe that is bounded by a curtain of the rhythm of the rain. As the drops beat on the leaves they create a barrier against the outside world of noise from cars and planes, and from the general hub-bub of humanity. It becomes just you in the much smaller, much cleaner universe that is centered on your hearing. You can turn and look around and look up and see the dimensions of your new world. And for a while you can enjoy the true uniqueness and quietude of a world that is all your own.

As you look around, you may see what looks like sea foam building up at the base of a tree. It’s a small but growing mass of white bubbles right at the roots. I mainly notice it on the pine trees. And the foam is not just at the base. The foam collects at the base, but it can be seen coming down the tree as pale, flowing streaks of rain water. The mass of foam at the base of the tree billows and grows at more than one spot. As I look further, I realize there is foam at the base of several of the trees. What is it? Is it a disease? Is it a fungus? Not necessarily. It’s a common occurrence brought on by the chemistry of the tree, the roughness of the bark of the tree, and the surface tension of the water that usually holds the shape of the drops as they roll down the tree.

When it rains in the woods few if any of the drops reach the ground directly from the sky. The rain that falls directly to the forest floor by-passing the canopy of the trees and the growth of the understory is considered “through-fall”. Some of the rain falling into the canopy is captured and remains on the leaves and branches. Other droplets flow down the tree’s exterior to reach the ground. The drops that do not flow all the way to the ground are given up to the atmosphere though evaporation. The water droplets that roll down twig and branch and then flow down the trunk in numerous little rivulets is “stem flow”.

As the water’s stem flow passes over the tree’s bark it picks up tiny bits of organic material and the chemical residue from the surface of the tree. These bits create a chemical change in the water’s molecular bonds which reduces the surface tension of the water droplets. The reduced surface tension allows more air to become entrained in the water. The droplets gather into larger rivulets and flow over and around the bark of the tree. This acts like waves in the ocean or rivulets in a stream and exposes more and more of the surface of the water droplets to the air. This stirring action creates the foam that can be seen flowing down the trunk and which accumulates as the mass of bubbles at the base of the tree.

The rain water that reaches the base of the tree may run off on the surface of the forest floor to be absorbed into the ground where it may be taken up by the tree’s root structure. Other run-off that is absorbed by the ground will infiltrate further downwards to mix with the water table and perhaps enter a stream that flows down towards the ocean. Eventually, through root uptake and transpiration by the tree, or through evaporation from a stream or the ocean, the water is taken back up into the atmosphere and from there to fall again as rain on the joyful hiker.

Information on tree foam may be found in a NOAA site, www.oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seafoam.html.

A similar article can also be found at a terrific hiking blog, http://ramblinghemlock.blogspot.com/.

saying Goodbye

I remember standing on south front street and watching the elephants parade past.

We see greed all around us. And we see desperate want. Combine the two and we have the diminishing of a proud species, the African elephant.

Loxodonta Africana! Whither will you go?

I remember when I was a small three-year old I went downtown and stood in front of my grandmother’s store and watched the circus parade go by. I have a picture in some dusty shoebox of me gawking at the elephants as they were paraded from the train station to the circus grounds. This was a long time ago and a very small town. A circus was a big deal. It was summer entertainment, and everyone would go. And we would be amazed.

The picture above is that of a younger me at the elephant house in Washington, DC. My mother and father were taking us to the zoo. In this picture, I do not look too amazed and seem to be distracted by a peanut that someone had dropped on the ground. And the elephant does not seem too interested in me. Elephant enclosures have changed over the decades. They are more spacious, and the elephants, though still captive, are better treated.

Even with the picture the memory becomes pale. Is it time to say goodbye?

I do not want to say goodbye. I want to know that the elephants are out there. I may feel sorry for the captives in the zoo, but are they the luckier ones of their species?

The elephants’ ivory tusks drive the greed. Their ivory is used to make decorative items sold to tourist and collectors around the world, sometimes illegally. The chain begins with the elephant poachers that are often trying to make a living to support their families. There is a lot of poverty and hunger in these parts of Africa. There are people in the chain between the poacher and the collector that are making plenty of money, but I doubt that the poachers are. And there are job-related safety issues. Poachers that are found out are at risk of being shot by park rangers. One group of poachers was recently found to have been eaten by lions.

But I despair for the L. Africana in the wild. In an article published on the National Geographic website, 87 elephants – EIGHTY-SEVEN! – were recently found murdered and butchered inside a safe-haven in Botswana.

There are estimated to be around 700,000 African elephants still in the wild. This sounds like a large number, but I fear that in my life-time the species will be lost to us. It will be lost because of greed and a desire to own a trinket made of ivory that is much more beautiful on the creature than it is on someone’s crowded shelf. There are good organizations trying to fight back against the rising tide of the ivory trade. But demand is not slacking; demand is increasing. The National Geographic article goes on to say that there are a rising number of wild and unfortunate interactions between the elephants and the people of the area. As the number of people looking for land encroach more and more into the areas once safe for and ruled by the elephants, wild interactions between people and elephants will increase and demand for protection of crops and homes and people will take precedent over preserving space for the species in the wild.

It’s a sad thing to think that something of such beauty and magnificence will be gone from the world. I have never seen an elephant in the wild. I wish I had seen them. I was thrilled to read stories of Africa, about the large unpopulated areas where these magnificence beasts and many others roamed free. But these areas are disappearing and the parks set up as protected areas are not able to ensure that the elephants will stay in the park, nor ensure that poachers will not enter the park to massacre the elephants as happened in Botswana. The National Geographic article states that in a seven-year period ending in 2014 the continent-wide population of wild elephants had dropped by 30%!

I will always cheer for the elephant and will try to help the organizations that are trying to protect the wild elephant population. But with numbers of elephants massacred being driven by a rising tide of greed for ivory and ivory dollars – I despair.

Too soon the elephant may become an old, faded memory in a dusty shoebox. I fear that all to soon I will have to say goodbye.

The National Geogrphic article may be found at http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/msn/87-elephants-killed-by-poachers-in-africa%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98last-safe-haven%e2%80%99/ar-BBMTkqF

The organization mentioned in the article and which found and counted the elephant carcasses is Elephants without Borders. Their website is http://elephantswithoutborders.org/

Or Maybe Not a Comet !

On August 17, I wrote about a possible comet that I had “found” and had reported to the Harvard Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT). For several days I patiently awaited the knock on the door. Perhaps even a medal struck in my honor, but it was not to be.

Science is as much about saying what a thing isn’t, as it is about saying what a thing is. It’s not just about saying you’re right; it’s also about saying you’re wrong.* And I have to say I was wrong. Although I do not say it with chagrin or shame (a modicum of embarrassment perhaps) as I believe I accurately described the object I saw in the night sky. But if nothing else a comet moves, and my object did not.

I can still see it faint and fuzzy in basically the same location when I look for it with my binoculars. When I first saw it I was exploring the constellation Lyra. I also knew that the famed Ring Nebula was close by. Actually, I had been looking for the Ring Nebula when I first spotted the fuzzy object. All my charts showed the Ring Nebula, Messier-57, on the line between Lyra-beta and Lyra-gamma at the base of the lyre. The object that I saw seemed well above this line. Perhaps I had mistaken two different stars, Lyra-lambda and Lyra-Nu, as the base of the lyre. This would place M-57 above the line that would connect those two stars. That would place it in about the position that I first saw the fuzzy object. But lambda and nu are also considerably less bight with a lower magnitude than the stars that form the true base of the lyre. This would have been a difference that I believe I would have noticed.

The object is still there. I can resolve it (barely) with my binoculars. It looks the same – faint and fuzzy. But it is not moving. I will try to find a better optical instrument for viewing it. I will check other and perhaps more detailed star charts. If it is the Ring Nebula, which I now suspect, then with a better optical device I hope to be able to resolve the object into the beautiful ring shape created by the transformation of a star. The nebula was formed when a red giant star passing through the last stages in its evolution explosively cast off its outer layers. It is now collapsing into a white dwarf.

And I can continue to wait for the telegram from CBAT. I have to laugh, but at the same time I feel a certain level of embarrassment for a comet this is likely not.

I will go outside and observe the object again tonight. The moon does not rise too soon to interfere by flooding the humid, late summer sky with light. I will try out my old and fairly trusty telescope – as soon as I fix its tripod.

And now I have a story to tell, and a question to answer. What is that object that I see?

* In his November 2012 blog post to Scientific American, Steven Pomeroy speaks to the rightness of being wrong. He relates what Richard Feynman said on the subject; “”If it disagrees with experiment (note: in the instance of my observed object if it does not fit the parameters of a comet), it’s wrong. In that simple statement, is the key to science.”

SAND.

When I think of sand I imagine the vast expanses that I recall from my childhood. There was Third Beach in Middletown, Rhode Island that I thought was as wide as the Sahara. There was Fort Macon State Park in North Carolina with its long, flat expanses and massive dunes. There was Polly’s Beach in South Carolina with the light house that we could climb. And there were sand castles to build and holes to be dug. There were walks to be taken. And there were those terrible grains that somehow always found their way into my sandwich. There were endless quantities of sand.

But those beaches have vanished. They eroded away with the storms and the construction. No one lived at the beach back then. There were miles and miles of impenetrable salty oak and brush that separated the road from the shore. Now it’s mile after mile of careless condos and beach homes. And the dunes at Fort Macon, they are long gone under the tread of the bull dozer. It seems that everyone lives at the beach now.

More than the sand has been eroded.

But where did it go?

The Guardian published an excellent article on the theft of sand around the globe. They point out that the global building boom has driven the need for sand far beyond what can be provided by legitimate means. Around the world sand is stolen.

Water may be considered the most valued natural resource in the world. It is needed to sustain life – all life. It is needed for industry. It is needed for farming and for homes. Everyone needs water. Some of us have the nearly unbelievable luxury of walking a few steps and turning on a tap and having clear clean water pour out. That is not the case for the majority of the world. But this article is not about water; it’s about the second most valuable natural resource on the planet. What do you think that is?

What gives something value? If we look at how we defined the value of water, value is based on its necessity for life. Most natural resources are mineral and are not generally considered to be directly used as water can be. If you are lost and thirsty, if you find a stream you can drink. Most other natural resources are bound in the earth or are awash in the sea, and they have to be mined. What then is this substance that is considered by many as the second most valuable resource on the planet. Sand!

Not what I would have initially said, but think on it. It’s used to build most everything that allows us to function in large metropolitan communities. So maybe you don’t live in or want to live in a mega city or a city or a town but prefer the country and a simple life. You pack your bags and walk out the door. Onto concrete – there’s sand. You drive down the street with curb and gutter – there’s sand. You stop at the bank and take out all your cash. The bank is made of concrete – more sand. If it’s a big city and the bank is in a skyscraper – there’s sand. You rush back to your car and onto the highway – there’s more sand in the pavement and then mile upon mile of sand imbedded in interstates and roads and bridges and overpasses. As long as you drive on a road or go to the store you are on what is “sand-built”. There’s no way around it. Or is there?

As the population of the earth continues to grow towards 8 Billion even countries that some people refer to as third world are building population centers. Out of concrete – and sand. Everyone needs and wants and is willing to pay for sand.

Don’t run out into your backyard and start digging up what you have there and try to sell it. The world wants high quality sand that has the rough edges that help concrete to bind. And it’s not only concrete; asphalt uses sand too. In asphalt the sand fills the voids in the overall matrix of sand, stone, and “tar”. So how much do we use? Using a measure of how many cubic yards of sand it takes to fill an Olympic size swimming pool, the amount of sand used in the concrete to build the Empire State Building would fill 6 Olympic size swimming pools. And how much sand does it take to build a four lane road asphalt road from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? To build 230 miles of four-lane takes approximately 54 Olympic size swimming pools. And how much sand did the Chinese use to build their artificial islands in the sea between Vietnam and the Philippines? News reports claim that the sand ship used to build the islands created nearly 3,000 acres on seven islands in one year. If we assumed that the average depth of sand underlying those acres is 10 feet (a lot of which was under water) then the project required over 48 million cubic yards of sand, over 14,000 Olympic size swimming pools.

All of this is to say that it takes a lot of sand to build our buildings and our infrastructure. Think of the thousand miles of asphalt paving all over the world that is being laid today. The need for high quality sand is huge. And wherever there is a huge market you can expect a black market to feed the supply. And yes, people are stealing sand and selling it to anyone who wants it.

So now to the point of this tale. Sand is being stolen from all over the world. It is being take off the sea floor destroying habitats. It is being piled up on coral reefs to make islands, and in the process killing the corals and the reef habitat that surrounded them. Beaches are being plundered. Sand is being stolen not from Miami beach but from poor countries that cannot control the thieves. And these thieves often provide the barest of income to the people who welcome any amount of income to try to make their lives better and the lives of their children. As they dredge up the sand or dig up the beaches the collapse of the ecological system means that people who earned their living fishing can no longer do so. Perhaps they even turn to working for the sand thieves. This is not just a question of how we can support the global demand for sand but a question of the 8 Billion (see Post of 8 August 2018). People need to make a living. They need to be able to improve their lives. Right now they will turn to any means to do so. What choice do they have?

The global demand for sand is not going to end. The demand will accelerate. What can perhaps be substituted for sand in all that concrete and asphalt? Desert sand is too round and smooth from having been blown around for eons. To answer this question will take science, inventiveness, and action by governments. Perhaps a substitute can be developed. The Guardian points out that research focused on making artificial sand out of waste plastic may be able to cover 10% of the need. Where then will the rest come from? Right now it’s from the thieves. But is there another answer?

For more insight into this issue, visit coastalcare.org.

The Guardian article may be found at https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jul/01/riddle-of-the-sands-the-truth-behind-stolen-beaches-and-dredged-islands