Happy Arbor Day – In Massachusetts, USA

Environment oriented celebrations naturally would occur in the Spring, wouldn’t they.  After all, that’s when it hits you right in the face.  Last week it was Earth Day, yesterday, in Massachusetts at least, it was Arbor Day.  Sensibly, Arbor Day is set on a state by state basis, and arrives earlier in the south than up here in (what used to be at least) the cold north.  No matter, some good things happen in New England that I’m told don’t necessarily happen in some other parts of the country.  We get a “reverse foliage” effect.  The new leaves on many of the deciduous trees start with a distinct yellow “pop.”   Others, with a more subdued red.  It last for two weeks or so, and then everything turns straight green.  Enjoy it while it lasts…  This is one of my favorite trees, the Lancer Oak, on the grounds of Worcester State University.  It is thought to be one of the oldest trees in the City of Worcester.  Click on the image for a better view.

The Extreme Ice Survey

(Mobile readers, as I feared, wordpress is not embedding the video in a fashion that will make it visible for you.  On my iPhone, it doesn’t appear.  My apologies.  Can’t be helped I’m afraid.  If you’re interested, track down the old lap top and have a look.)

As we contemplate today Western Pennsylvania getting hit by a blizzard (no kidding, check the weather channel, it’s true), it occurred to me that it might be useful to say a bit more about Earth Day.  Climate photography has many inherent challenges, not the least of which is the fact that climate change unfolds over time. We do of course have an app for that, time lapse photography.  One of my favorite environmental photographers, James Balog, established on-going time lapse monitoring of a number of the most threatened glaciers in the world, creating what he subsequently described as The Extreme Ice Survey.  He and his colleagues set up cameras at  strategic locations around the glaciers and equipped them for extended time lapse work.  This meant protecting and powering a large number of Nikons, mostly D200′s I believe.  If you click on the link above, you will see before your very eyes, the impact of global warming.  Massive glaciers are melting at an alarming pace.  Alarming?  Yes, remember he’s only been collecting imagery for five years. Have a look. Meanwhile, I’ve embedded a promo here that will give you an idea. James is also a film maker and his an exciting film on the Extreme Ice Survey out this year.

Photographers take note.  How can we be more creative and useful in documenting what is important about the natural world and how it is changing?

Happy Earth Day 2012

Happy Earth Day, 2012.  (The image below is a panorama, even though it doesn’t look like one.  You’ll really need to click on it, to see what we saw, just last week. When you click on it, you should then see a small plus sign on your cursor.  Click again and you’re there.)

Peppermill Pond, at the southern end of the Quabbin Reservoir.  May we be blessed by such wonderful places (and drinking water and fresh air) for yet another year.

Refuge

Throughout the United States, we’re blessed with a wonderful set of places, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  We had a chance to visit several recently. These images are from the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the coast of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not far from Hatteras.  The Refuge provides a home or a stopping point for millions of birds and other sea loving critters, each year.  We saw plenty of those folks during our visit, but I was struck by the use of the term “refuge.”  Perhaps its really a refuge for humans.

Just behind us, the damage to this fragile place wrought by Hurricane Irene was still clearly visible.  When you stepped over the dunes, however, that all seemed so far away.

Thanks to those who had the fore site to understand that our environment nurtures us on many levels.  It’s not just about biology.  FYI, you can get an App for that. The Park Service has released their “MyRefuge” app, available for free, from the App Store for those with i-devices.

Tech Note:  These were taken with the Nikon D3s and a 70 -200 mm lens.  I was dragging the shutter here, down to around 2 seconds, to get the smooth surf look. That required the use of about five stops  of neutral density filtration on the front of the lens. It was, however, a very difficult shooting situation as the sun was blinding. It was like shooting with film, in that the LCD on the back of the camera was useless.  I ended up shooting a number of these images, and praying.

How Warm Is It?

Being laid up with a cold is bad for one’s photography, but does provide opportunities to think.  It’s very warm.  Almost frighteningly so, for the most part.  But how unusual is this?  Naturally I was drawn to my catalogue of images from this time last year and the results were fairly surprising.  These are from late March, and early April, 2011.  The first is from Hadwen Arboretum, March 28.  It had snowed a few weeks earlier, but the snow was gone and the ground was largely bare.

From Grafton, Massachusetts, on April 2.  Getting some fog as the humidity rises in the air and the warmer temperature nears the dew point.  The evaporation of what’s left of the snow is helping in the formation of the fog I would guess.

So it was starting to get warm last year maybe two or three weeks later than this year, but still, in spite of all the snow we had in the winter of 2010-11, the warm up was relatively speedy.  If you really want to know how things stand, here is a chart of the global temperature published by (and courtesy of ) NASA.  This is a measure of the overall temperature from around the globe, so local fluctuations, which are considerable, are largely smoothed out.  This is a measure of climate, rather than weather.  You can find the link to NASA’s press release here.

Notice anything?