for National Geographic Daily News
It was a storm of epic proportions: The tornado that hit El Reno, Oklahoma, was as wide as Manhattan, spun off subvortices as fast as NASCAR drivers circle a track, and had some of the strongest winds ever measured. It took the lives of three highly experienced storm chasers. Yet it's going down in the record books as a mundane EF3. The reason: The May 31 storm just didn't do enough damage to achieve a higher Enhanced Fujita (EF) rating. Now weather scientists are asking if the rating system needs an overhaul in the age of mobile Doppler radar and other sophisticated tracking techniques, and some are pressing for a new rating formula that would include measurements of maximum wind speeds. Pam Matson discusses her agricultural research in the Yaqui Valley and how it relates to the Green Revolution. She also reflects upon the politics of sustainable agriculture and how we might go about feeding the 9 billion people we expect in the coming decades. As a final thought, she offers some advice to those who are coming of age in the Anthropocene, and why we shouldn’t waste our time trying to assign blame. Pamela Matson is an interdisciplinary Earth scientist who works to reconcile the needs of people and the planet. Her research addresses a range of environment and sustainability issues, including sustainability of agricultural systems; vulnerability of particular people and places to climate change; the consequences of tropical deforestation on atmosphere, climate and water systems; and the environmental consequences of global change in the nitrogen and carbon cycles. With multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, managers, and decision makers, she has worked to develop agricultural approaches that reduce environmental impacts while maintaining livelihoods and human wellbeing. [LISTEN IN] Published in Grist
What ever happened to “Save the whales”? In the 1970s and ’80s, it was the quintessential environmentalist cause, the one that anyone who cared about the earth could unequivocally rally behind. It was the topic of international negotiations and treaties, and endless campaigns from environmental groups. (“Uh-oh, that guy down the street with the long hair has a clipboard, and is that a Greenpeace T-shirt he’s wearing? Quick, act busy!”) These days, we’ve got bigger things to worry about — climate change, mass extinction that could wipe out half of the species on the planet by mid-century, and a human population rocketing toward 9 billion. 'Canopy Meg' wants you to care about the rainforest. Podcast interview with Dr. Meg Lowman7/20/2012
Meg Lowman climbs trees for a living. A botanist by training, she wanted to study the rainforest canopy. The only way to get answers, she says, was to get up there herself. So back in the 1970s, using her own makeshift equipment, she figured out how.
“It’s amazing to me to think that only in the last 40 years have we explored the tops of trees,” says Lowman, the director of North Carolina’s Nature Research Center. Walking down a rainforest trail, it may seem like there’s a lot going on, but that’s really only a small slice of the whole picture, she says. “It’s almost like going to the doctor and if he checked your big toe and said ‘Oh, you’re perfectly healthy.’ It’s just such a small part of the whole body of the forest.” Unfortunately a lot of what she’s found up there isn’t nearly as fun as the process she uses to discover it. “I’m going to level with you that I get pretty depressed about what’s going on with deforestation,” Lowman says — and it’s not just the critters that are suffering. “We’re seeing enormous quality of life disappearing for many cultures because of our greed and our lack of understanding.” I spoke with “Canopy Meg” about her tree-climbing exploits, the power of Google Earth, and the importance of spirituality in rainforest conservation. [LISTEN IN] Published on Grist A lone rider spurs his horse as he gallops across the desolate plains. An explorer heads into the Sierras, the cathedrals of the wild. These are the classic images of the frontier and the romantic heroes who pushed into the wilderness to build the American West. They are also relics of a time when we could imagine that the human and natural worlds were separate. “It’s as if the idea of the frontier kept open the illusion that there was more nature out there that was as yet unaffected by human beings,” says environmental historian Jon Christensen, executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. “That really never did exist.” “We now see, in the Anthropocene, that even the wilderness is a product of human forces and is very much shaped by human ideas,” Christensen says. “The city is also full of nature.” These insights will be crucial as Earth’s population continues to grow to the 9 billion people we expect in 40 to 50 years, and as we continue to cluster in urban areas. In this brave new world, the frontiers will be urban ones, where humanity and nature mix and interact. The ways in which we allow these cities to grow and absorb the population, thus affecting the natural environment within and around them, is “going to determine so much about the future of life on Earth for people and the way we live,” Christensen says. Can we design cities in a way that fosters both human and ecological health? “That,” Christensen says, “is the 9 billion-person question.” I sat down with Christensen recently to talk about the mythos of the frontier, “ecological urbanism,” and the questions that remain for Generation Anthropocene. [LISTEN IN] Originally published on Grist. Not Quite Vegetarians--'flexitarians' choose diets that minimize environmental and health damage6/4/2012
Ithaka co-op in Palo Alto is a group of 17 Stanford undergrads, grads and recent alumni who live together, pitch in for food and share house jobs, including cooking daily communal dinners. The residents have a policy of not serving meat; and they do not allow this fare to be cooked in their primary kitchen. But, while most individuals within the group consider the meat-free practices a good thing, only a minority of them actually deem themselves true vegetarians. Many of those who live in Ithaka (I’m one of them) are part of the growing trend of “flexitarianism.” It’s a term used to describe the practice of reducing the consumption of meat without completely embracing vegetarianism. This podcast features me talking about my recent article, "More tourists head to Antarctica, affecting the region’s ecosystem and science."
[LISTEN IN HERE] One hundred years after explorers first reached the South Pole, Antarctica’s appeal as one of the last pockets of wilderness left in the world hasn’t faded. Images of white expanses and frozen seas attract thousands of people each year to see what they think is a pristine, unaffected land. But the resulting tourism explosion may be diminishing the very wilderness that visitors set out to experience. As a student in Earth Systems’ oceans track, it would be quite unfortunate if I couldn’t say that I like learning about what goes on under the sea. And I do like thinking about the marine world; I like coming to those realizations of just how important the ocean is to our global homeostasis. I have enjoyed gaining a greater understanding of it through courses such as physical oceanography or marine biogeochemistry—in fact, I think it’s really important that we can take classes on Stanford’s campus about the processes that govern 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. But I also think that those theoretical understandings pack more punch when they’re anchored to something a little more concrete. Which is why I love that we also have the opportunity to study at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. Studying at Hopkins means getting to go poke around tide pools for class, using science as an excuse to get back in touch with your five-year-old self. I can’t deny that I find it just as wonderful now as I did then that the ocean draws back from the rocky shore about twice a day, unveiling organisms more surreal and captivating than I, for one, could possibly imagine. I still can’t help breaking out into a broad smile as I lean over an Anthopleura sola—a giant green sea anemone with radial lines emanating from its mouth—or giggle as I dip my hand into its cool, shallow pool and feel it gently stick to me as it fires the nematocysts that help it catch its prey into the callus on my finger. It’s a more-than-theoretical, but still hard to grasp, reminder of the staggering number of possible forms life has managed to find on this earth. One that makes me think of Steinbeck’s advice from The Log from the Sea of Cortez to, “look from the tide pools to the stars and then back to the tide pools again.” Studying at Hopkins also means getting to go snorkeling or SCUBA diving on weekends, during those awkward gaps between classes, or sometimes even on a field trip for class. It means immersing yourself in the very thing you are studying, in the most literal sense possible, and gaining insights into the adaptations that allow marine life to thrive. It becomes a lot easier to remember the role of a fish’s swim bladder when you’ve tinkered with a BCD in order to get your buoyancy just right; it’s harder to make fun of the harbor seals flopping around on the beach when you’ve attempted (and failed) to get in and out of the water gracefully while clad in eight millimeters of neoprene. Studying at Hopkins means having 24-hour access to what is, in my opinion, Stanford’s best library. Not only is almost every marine reference you might wish to use meticulously organized within Harold A. Miller’s walls, I’ve found that writing and reading papers becomes so much easier when you can structure your sentences or reflect upon their meaning while looking out the window at the waves crashing down on the California coast. And, of course, spending a quarter at Hopkins also means having the privilege to interact with some of the country’s front-lining marine scientists on a daily basis. Witnessing their enthusiasm for a particular topic, learning about their current research and seeing it in process motivates engaging in an intellectual immersion of everything marine that almost rivals the physical one of jumping in the water. Originally published in Sussing Sustainability at Stanford (SUSS): http://suss.stanford.edu/blog/?p=3825 |
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