Weekly Video - Aurora Borealis

With the days growing colder and shorter, I figured I'd choose a topic generally associated with a wintery atmosphere for our weekly video. This is part of a BBC show in which the host gets to see the Northern Lights up in the Arctic Circle.

NEWS: Greatest Murder Mystery of Our Time

"Honeybee Killer Found by Army and Entomologists" - NY Times

If you pay attention to the news in the least, you may have heard over the pay several years that the American honeybee population has been on the verge of total collapse. Our bees keep dying, and no one seemed to know why. This New York Times article provides a brief overview of a paper published in the online science journal PLoS ONE explaining a possible cause for our honeybees' decline.

Working together, the scientists from the University of Montana and the United States military in Maryland (the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center) discovered a tag-team of fungus and virus that affects honeybee guts - possibly compromising their nutrition intake. Both fungus and virus were found in all of the killed colonies these scientists studied.

The article also delves into the interesting story of how these scientists united to share their work. Check it out!

Invasive Species of the Week: Asian Long-Horned Beetle

I feel obligated to begin my series of spotlights on individual invasive species with the one I am currently working with - the Asian Long-Horned Beetle.

Seen here, the ALB is generally an inch to an inch and a half long with a black body and white spots. The feet and legs of the adult beetle tend to be blue-ish. Their antennae can be quite long - as much as four inches.

Originally from Asia (where it is known as the Starry Sky Beetle), ALB came to the United States in the late '90s in wood-packing material. Since it left Asia, it has also been found in Canada and parts of Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Italy). In the United States, it was first discovered in Brooklyn. It has also been found in New Jersey, Chicago, and two different parts of Massachusetts.

Here you can really see the blue feet.

ALB is an invasive species that is uniquely threatening to the trees it reproduces in. Its reproductive cycle is quite harmful to even healthy trees. The female chews a spot on a tree for each egg she lays - 30 to 90 for each mating. The eggs hatch within a few days and as the larvae develop they chew their way through the tree into its heartwood. This means that the beetle is disrupting the phloem and cambium layers of the tree, essential for transporting water and essential nutrients from the roots up to the canopy and out to the branches. The larvae develop into pupae within the heartwood of the tree and finally hatch into adult beetle sometime during the winter months. The adult then chews its way back out to the surface, destroying more of the tree as it goes. They emerge anywhere between April and October and leave perfectly round exit holes roughly the size of a dime.

Here we see a perfectly round exit hole (they lie flush with the tree's bark on all sides much like a bullet hole would) and a few rust-colored oviposition sites where the female chews the bark to lay an egg.

ALB's favorite host trees include Acer (Sapindaceae), Populus (Salicaceae), Salix (Salicaceae), and Ulmus (Ulmaceae) - otherwise known as Maples, Poplars, Willows, and Elms, some of the most populous trees in the eastern United States' hardwood forests. Without a natural predator, ALB manages to spread with relative ease in this country, despite the fact that it cannot fly long distances on its own due to its size. Larvae and pupae have been transported in firewood and cut timber. Adult beetles can cling to traveling cars. Once infested in a host tree anywhere near other hosts, the beetle can easily spread through an entire stand - or a forest.

Luckily for us, most of the current infestations of ALB have been in urban landscapes where it is relatively easy to find, treat, and eradicate the beetle before it can spread much farther (Brooklyn, Chicago, Jamaica Plain). However, there are two important cases where this beetle can and could have gotten away from us to infest entire forests. The first case where this might have happened was in Toronto. Here, the government recognized how important it was to contain the spread of ALB and they ordered a complete removal of host trees in the affected area. It worked; ALB is no longer in the area (although they continue a vigilant survey to maintain this status).

The second case is right here in my current hometown - Worcester, Massachusetts. An infestation of ALB was discovered here in 2008 - with some evidence indicating that the beetle may have been here since as long ago as 1997. Since that time, five towns in the area have been declared infected (Worcester, Boylston, West Boylston, Holden, and Shrewsbury), and more than 30,000 host trees have been removed. There is a quarantine in the area denying individuals transport of host material out of the quarantine zone unless it has first been inspected by the USDA. There is also an ongoing eradication effort being conducted by the USDA. I am a part of this effort, being one of the ground surveyors working for a contractor to the USDA in the area. I have heard numerous estimates about the potential damage the beetle could cause if it gets away from us here in Worcester - the most horrifying being the billions of dollars of economic damage if they infest and ultimately damage the majority of our maple-dominated forests. (Imagine the effects of no more maple syrup or anything else associated with those trees.)

There are currently 12 host species in this area: Maple, Poplar, Elm, Willow, Ash, Mountain Ash, Birch, Hackberry, Sycamore, Horsechestnut/Ohio Buckeye, Katsura, and Mimosa. In Canada, Rose-of-Sharon was also listed. There are also several other species that are questionable hosts (beetles may have infested them in a lab situation - or laid eggs in them that never hatched). For our part, we are conducting a thorough ground survey of all the host trees within the quarantine zone. Any suspicious tree are climbed by USDA climbers. All positive trees are cut, chipped, and their stumps ground to eight or so inches below the surface.

A replanting effort is in place with the goal to replace every host tree being cut. Replacement trees include: Serviceberry or Shadbush, Ironwood, Southern catalpa, Turkish filbert, Ginkgo, Honey locust, Kentucky coffeetree, Tuliptree, Dawn redwood, White oak, Swamp white oak, Bur oak, English oak, Japanese lilac, Bald cypress, Basswood, and Little-leaf Linden.

* USDA site about their ALB eradication program (APHIS)
* Mass.gov's information site
* An excellent identification site with many common look-alikes
* Washington Post article providing a brief overview of invasive insects in the US and the damage they could cause

Brief Note

I have been remiss about posting lately. I apologize. Starting a new job tends to wreck your normal scheme of things. Assume normal scheduling returning this upcoming week!

In honor of the extended edition Lord of the Rings movie marathon I'm attending with my friends tomorrow... (Why, yes, I AM that much of a geek.) Have a lolcat. :)

Weekly Video - Sea Serpents

Ever wonder where the legends of sea serpents come from? The oarfish is a pelagic Lampriform fish that can grow up to 30 feet long. (One species with the amusing name "king of herrings" holds a record of 56 feet in length.) This is what one looks like when we see them at the surface:



Amazingly, the oarfish was recently caught on camera in the Gulf of Mexico:



Utterly insane stuff. This is just a reminder of all that we have yet to learn about the inhabitants of our world's oceans.

Science Fair at the White House

"Today, President Obama will host the White House Science Fair celebrating the winners of a broad range of  science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions. The White House Science Fair fulfills a commitment the President made at the launch of his Educate to Innovate campaign in November 2009. That campaign aims to move American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade." (Find the announcement and a list of the exhibits that were on display HERE)

So President Obama has held good on his word to help restore science to the White House and America in general. In addition to the science fair held today, he has also named Dr. Subra Suresh as the new director of the National Science Foundation. An expert in nanotechonolgy and the Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT, Dr. Suresh is the first actual research scientist to hold this position in quite some time. Hurrah!

Weekly Video: Pale Blue Dot

For your weekly video of awesome I have decided to take things in a slightly different direction.

All hail Carl Sagan.

Invasive Species of the Week

I have to admit, when I was looking for something to start this subject off, I asked a few friends what their favorite invasive species was. They all gave me the same answer: humans. You guys are so cynical and morbid! I mean, sure, we've adapted to live all over the globe and often push out other species to do so not to mention destroy large swaths of forest or swamp or grassland without compunction... Okay. So by any normal person's standards, we probably count as an invasive species. However, humans have adapted to be the dominant species on Earth. We have technology and global communication and travel in a way that no other species does. What I want to take a look at here is how our global expansion has contributed to the expansion of other species - and how that hasn't always necessarily been for the best.

A few definitions before we begin with our first victim:

"An invasive species is a non-native species (including seeds, eggs, spores, or other propagules) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic harm, environmental harm, or harm to human health. The term "invasive"; is used for the most aggressive species. These species grow and reproduce rapidly, causing major disturbance to the areas in which they are present."
- http://www.invasive.org/ 

"An "invasive species" is defined as a species that is

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and
2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. (Executive Order 13112).

Invasive species can be plants, animals, and other organisms (e.g., microbes). Human actions are the primary means of invasive species introductions."
- http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/ (USDA)


You see already that the emphasis on invasive species is how they harm humans. The Nature Conservancy says this: "Invasive species damage the lands and waters that native plants and animals need to survive. They hurt economies and threaten human well-being.  The estimated damage from invasive species worldwide totals more than $1.4 trillion – five percent of the global economy." That's not an insubstantial sum of money. Governments and organizations around the world look for ways to halt and stem the damages done by invasive species all the time. But it's not an easy issue to tackle...

In the same way the ecosystem management is difficult, so is containing or minimizing the impact of an invasive species. In most cases, we simply do not have all of the information we need. This has led to the release of one invasive species to control another only to have the second take over and have an even bigger impact than the one we sought to eliminate first. We have doused ecosystems in deadly chemicals without even knowing what the consequences would be for native flora and fauna, or the watershed. Without a doubt, the problem of invasive species is real and ongoing - and we should all be a little more aware of how these things can spread in order to stop the problem from happening in the first place.

I will illustrate the problems associated with invasive species further by swinging the spotlight on a different one each week. We'll begin in the United States - simply because that's the area I am the most familiar with. And we'll expand from there. Tune in every Friday to learn more.

What value is there in nature? (part one - biodiversity)

One of the biggest questions that must be answered for environmental management of any kind is what we value about the system. And while there are myriad reasons why we humans might value an ecosystem, one of the most popular answers is biodiversity.

The 'Hall of Biodiversity' at the American Natural History Museum.

Biodiversity is a key word that gets thrown around in the environmental Green movement almost as much as sustainability. We'll get into sustainability later. I want to focus on biodiversity now because I feel that it is something not many people understand the value of beyond "something we should protect because it's good to have." Honestly "because it's good to have" is no reason to protect or invest any energy into caring about anything. That would be like jumping off the proverbial bridge just because all your friends are doing it, and I certainly don't condone people acting like sheep.

A Canadian education website defines biodiversity as: The diversity of life on earth, consisting of genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystem diversity. I think this definition describes much more than what generally comes to mind. It is also the definition that the government ostensibly works with, and what most biologists mean when they use it. Recognizing this sort of all-encompassing approach to biodiversity is essential to understanding its ultimate importance.

You might think about it this way: What kind of team is more successful? One in which everyone has the same or similar skills? Or one in which people have different skill sets with the potential to complement each other? Ecosystem, species, and genetic diversity all contribute to a collective whole with a greater power to survive and prosper in the world.

The most important reason we should care about biodiversity is a little something called ecosystem services. You've no doubt heard of this before, but take a moment and let something sink in. If there was a sudden decrease in the world's pollinators, what would the effect on people be? No more crops, flowers, trees... any plant relying on an outside species to pollinate them would be crippled. Unable to reproduce. This is a bit of an exaggeration - but, honestly, there are so many ways in which life on Earth intertwines that we aren't even sure what all the consequences would be of eliminating ANY species. 

We do however know that biodiversity affords humanity the following things: 

- food in the form of crops, spices, seafood, game meat

- clean water

- any number of medicinal uses

- products for use in industry as well as energy production

- regulation of: climate, carbon, waste, purification processes, pollination, pests, diseases

All of these things are absolutely essential if we'd like to go on living the life the way we have. And I didn't even mention the cultural or spiritual values we find in nature. The entire ecotourism industry is hugely popular and constantly growing as well.

This is a brief overview of this large and all-encompassing topic. If you'd like to hear about anything in more depth, I will gladly do more posts on specific aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Just let me know. 

All right! Now that you understand why biodiversity is important, you have one HUGE reason to value nature. And we also have much of the information we need to delve into my next weekly broadcast.... Introduced and Invasive Species. Oooooh.... Ahhhhh....

Weekly Video - Weird Nature Roundup

I love the BBC's Weird Nature segments. (See the vid about the alcoholic vervet monkeys I posted awhile ago.) Here are a few that never cease to amuse and amaze.

Pistol Shrimp - they literally use their claws like a gun.



Doing Wheelies - we weren't the first to exploit the invention of the wheel.



Breakdancing skunks...?



Want more? Just search "weird nature" and you'll find plenty to keep you occupied.

Weekly Video - Barnacle Sex

This week's video was actually featured in a lecture by my marine biology professor when I was an undergrad student. Did you know that barnacles have the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom? Well, you will after you watch this educational and highly amusing music video.




And for even more fun, a clip from the BBC's hilarious show of talking wildlife footage, Walk On the Wild Side.

Weekly Video - Starling Flocks

Tuesdays are slow and sometimes dreary. The weekend seems like it will be forever in coming, and we could all use a little stimulation. Therefore, I declare Tuesday my official day of the week to post nature/science videos that will intrigue, interest, and sometimes humor you.

Today we have starling flocks! If you've ever seen this phenomenon, you know how improbable it seems that these birds can fly in the thousands without all crashing into each other. But there are no failed flights, there are only these beautiful and fascinating waves of birds in the sky.

Alcoholic Monkeys? What next!

Probably the greatest thing about science is how inherently fascinating it is. No one knows this better than the wildlife camera crews over at the BBC. Here's a great piece on Vervet monkeys in the Carribbean and how they've "adapted" to our human lifestyles. (This video always makes me laugh, and if you're living anywhere on the east coast of the United States, you could probably use a laugh to stave off the heat!)

Communication is key.

"So many scientists think that once they figure it out, that's all they have to do, and writing it up is just a chore. I never saw it that way. Part of the art of any kind of total scholarship is to say it well."
--- Stephen Jay Gould ---

One of the biggest issues standing in the way of truly carrying out the spirit of forest ecosystem management is communication. Or rather, lack thereof. Not only do scientists need to be better at communicating their findings to the public so that people are better informed, but managers need to be better at learning the public's value and opinions. At the moment, no one seems to be happy. Neither scientists or the media think the media does a good job at handling scientific stories. People aren't hearing the things they should be. And there has simply been a lack of taking people's values into account in general when it comes to ecosystem management. Or at least placing a heavy importance on them.

If scientists could better communicate with the public, they could change the perceptions of the public on important issues. We have seen this happen with fire regimes as I mentioned in an earlier post. Another good example is the recent public debate over global warming. Better communication by scientists would also help explain natural disturbances to the public and avoid panic reactions to large events that may be seen as disastrous, but which are actually fairly normal and maybe even necessary parts of the ecosystem.

(Better communication by scientists would also secure much-needed political will and funding for further scientific studies. Need I mention how important this is? You have only to look at the most recent presidential election to understand that American students are woefully far behind the global curve in their scientific training and knowledge.)

Meanwhile, once managers learn to make public values a larger part of their plans, forest management should become a smoother process. Knowing these values will help determine how people will react to management plans as well as helping to deal with the inevitable conflicts that will arise over these plans. Social research can identify unanticipated social responses before they occur.

Preparation and communication can arguably solve any problem.

"All forms of life modify their contexts." -- Lynn White

I took a course that focused on environmental ethics when I was an undergraduate student, and I maintain that it is one of the best things I could have done for myself as a scientist. Understanding the evolution of social and logical thought involved in the approaches we take to the environment is helpful toward both understanding public reaction to environmental management practices as well as learning how to communicate effectively with non-scientists.

Ethics is tricky business. And saying that we want to incorporate public values in forest ecosystem management is easy. Doing it is entirely different. But the opinions and values of the average person in relation to forests should matter greatly to forests scientists and managers. Without the understanding of the public, both science and management efforts will lack the necessary funding and political support needed to advance their causes.

The utilitarian philosophical base of traditional forestry has largely ignored the emerging aesthetic, spiritual, amenity, and ecosystem function value of forests. In general, we (and I say this as a person, not just as a scientist) are now interested in how forest ecosystems fit into the Earth system as a whole. Our management practices should reflect this change in values. Managers should be required to ask the following*:

--- How and for whom should public lands be maintained?

--- What objectives should we use to guide forest management?

These are questions that simply cannot be answered by science.

To that end, we need to delve a little deeper into the ethical basis of things. My environmental ethics professor explained it to me this way: when trying to reach a conclusion to a moral debate, there are four questions that need to be answered. What do people think the problem is? Whose welfare are we considering in the matter? What values matter in this situation? And how do we count what matters? By answering these questions, we can come up with either a prioritizing solution or a balancing solution. Prioritizing solutions satisfy the strongest moral claim in the matter. Balancing solutions seek to split the moral claim equally among those involved.

When it comes down to making the nitty-gritty decisions in forest ecosystem management plans, whether we use prioritizing or balancing solutions is still hotly debated. I suspect that this is a matter that must be decided specific to the situation every time by the people who are directly involved.




* These questions were specifically mentioned in a paper from Society and Natural Resources by David N. Bengston called "Changing Forest Values and Ecosystem Management." (1994)

Aristotle says...

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development."

The history of forest ecosystem management is large in the American public consciousness. Throughout the history of America, people and the government have both tried to control and manage forests, often to the detriment of all. During the expansion of this country, forests were clear-cut, burned, and invariably changed due to human interference. Trees and underbrush were cleared to make room for agriculture. Logging provided valuable timber for the building of houses, furniture, boats, and other important amenities during the buildup to and takeover of the Industrial Age. During all of this expansion, old-growth forests were all but eliminated. Our ability to rapidly change the landscape took precedence to our understanding of how forest ecosystems work.

The consequences of our actions are still being realized today.

How about a little fire, Scarecrow?

Arguably the largest of these consequences has been the spread of more intense and severe wildfires in the western United States. For the most part, fire is a natural part of the disturbance regimes in that part of the country, and for a century or more we were out there repressing those fires. While we had some logical reasons to do so (fires threatened property and lives then even as they do today), we neglected to understand that we were eliminating part of the ecosystem's regulating mechanism. We had in fact drastically changed the ecosystem to the point where, when fires we could not control broke out, they ended up being that much more intense due to the presence of an unnatural buildup of underbrush, detritus, and dead trees. Fires now raged out of control, killing where they would have maimed, destroying parts of forest ecosystems instead of providing them the ability to rejuvenate.

We know now that fire regimes are an important and necessary entity in our western forests. Smokey's slogan has changed in recent years. And while we still strive to protect ourselves from the powerful fires we ourselves have caused, there is a new approach that references our scientific understanding of these ecosystems. We now use prescribed burns. We often let natural fires burn. We seek to understand more of how fires affect and in some ways protect these forests.

What caused this change in thinking? About a century ago, we were still operating on the assumption that ecosystem were static entities that we could easily control. Now we know that ecosystems do change, often and sometimes with great flexibility. These dynamic entities are so complex that most ecologists would never deign to say they understand them fully. Forest ecosystems are made up of much more than trees. They incorporate all of the life within them, the disturbances that periodically affect them (both short and long-term), and their ability to change and vary in response to these things.

Fire is merely the most relatable example I can use here. There are many other stories I could tell (and will in the future) about invasive species, disease and insect outbreaks, logging, mining, and other silvicultural practices that have altered and continue to change our forest ecosystems. What is important to learn here is this: people will invariably alter their environment. Whether that be for better or worse is up to us.

Forest Ecosystem Management

There has been a social paradigm shift in how we view forest ecosystems. Once a purely utilitarian resource, we know see forests as having both instrumental and intrinsic value. This paradigm shift is having a huge effect on how we manage forest ecosystems. We have moved away from traditional forestry practices to forest ecosystem management. Forest ecosystem management includes the ideas that we mimic nature whenever possible and that we acknowledge and respond to public values associated with forests.

This can be broken down in two ways. The scientific objective of forest ecosystem management says that we should do our best to maintain forest ecosystems as interconnected wholes. And the social objective states that we should also maintain forests' aesthetic qualities as well as achieve social and political acceptability of management practices.

These things may be easier said than done.

Preface

Hello, my name is Rachel and I'm addicted to writing.

Why should this matter to anyone, I hear you ask. One simple reason: I am also a biologist. For the past five years, I have given my life over to the academic world of science. In that time, I have learned marine, conservation, and evolutionary biology as well as a lot of other "-ologies" that most people don't regularly think about. (How many of us can say they were sent to Alaska specifically to learn more about the ecology, ethology, and morphology of fish?)

I am currently completing my last semester of grad school at Clark University. Six months ago, I signed up for a weekly seminar class dealing with the current issues facing forest ecology. This is a small class of 2-3 each seniors, graduate students, and PhD students. Our professor assigns us scientific papers to read each week and we get together and discuss them. Around our third week of discussions, and I was struck by some of the things we keep circling back on. These were issues facing all scientists... and laypeople. And I have noticed that whenever my fellow science students get together to talk about ecosystem management and the ethics involved, it is quite apparent that none of us really knows how to handle things.

Why should this be? Scientists are supposed to have all of the answers when it comes to knowing what is going on with the environment, right? As a class, it was here that we could all come to a basic agreement. The purpose of science is to inform. We are not the policy-makers. In many cases, we are not even the managers of our ecosystems. We are the people who compile and report information to the best of our ability. We strive for objectivity and silence when it comes to our own opinions. Overly opinionated scientists tend to be distrusted by their own kind, and eventually by the public as well. After all, if your friend told you they expected their own set of dice to roll a certain way and they did, wouldn't you think there was something fishy going on with the normal laws of chance?

So when a scientist lays out the facts colored by their opinion, how is the layman supposed to interpret? The primary purpose of science should be to find the facts such as they are and report them. If opinion and personal ethics get involved, results tend to be clouded. Objectivity is key. As Richard Feynman said, "...the idea is to try and give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another."

In this vein, I am particularly interested in what the non-scientist thinks of nature and how we as humans should manage it. Science can point us only so far. What we are actually willing to commit to in terms of politics and management is up to society and society's values. The idea behind this blog is twofold: 1) As someone addicted to writing, I am well-suited toward the task of communicating the facts of science to the layperson, and 2) As a biologist and a writer, I am equally suited to serving as a liaison between scientists, laypeople, and policymakers toward reaching management decisions that will benefit all.

The "Green Pieces" I write for this venture will delve into many topics, but they will begin with a focus on forest ecosystem management, its history and current state.

Male moose, summer of 2009, south-central Alaska.