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?

Battling an Invasive Pest – The Asian Longhorn Beetle at Dodge Park in Worcester, MA

Worcester, Massachusetts, for those who don’t know, is currently at ground zero in a major battle against an invasive specie, the Asian Longhorned Beetle.  This particular critter probably joined us via wood palette, courtesy of global commerce.  Here are a few links that will give you more information about the pest and the battle if you’re interested.  We paid a visit recently to the front lines of the battle, Dodge Park, in the Burncoat section of Worcester.  Here’s what we saw.  (Click on the image for a better view.)

(You can see the full sized panorama posted at gigapan, and get geographic coordinates for the shot here.)  If you take a visit to Dodge Park via Google Earth, this is not what you’ll see, at least not yet.  Their most recent satellite photos will show a park that is completely forested, largely with maples.  All of the maples and other susceptible trees were cut down in the past few months from what I am told. You don’t see any stumps in this image because the stumps have to be ground up as well.  The Beetle can’t live in ground wood evidently, so the wood can actually be repurposed to an extent, in this case to make paths through the now rather Martian looking landscape.  It’s quite eerie there.  The good news is that the State’s Division of Conservation and Recreation is now involved in doing some replanting.  This is a big park though, and recovery will take some time.

The battle is not without controversy.  The taking of the trees, which is actually a Federal (Department of Agriculture) and not a State decision obviously has a terrible aesthetic and natural set of consequences.  Indeed, as reported in a recent Boston Globe article, some scholars question the value of some fights against invasive species. (Though evidently very few question the value of the fight against the Beetle.)  What is at stake of course are the economic consequences of not fighting the Beetle, including the loss of the maple syrup industry in Vermont if the critters make it that far north (a possibility to be sure) as well as significant impacts on the lumber industry.  Government intervention to stop the spread of disease is as old as humanity and often quite necessary, though at the same time, painful.

On the other hand, it is difficult to know what we could possibly do to stop an invasive such as Pine Needle Scale, which I’ve written about frequently.  The reality is, the Red Pines will die, and other species will reclaim their place in the sun. Perhaps the question as to whether or not to fight an invasive isn’t the only one we should consider.  Another question might have to do with lessons learned.  On our visit to Dodge Park we had the pleasure of chatting with a DCR supervisor who was happy to answer our questions.  She said that one of the factors that promoted this particular epidemic was the Great Worcester Tornado of 1953.  The tornado passed through this part of the City and obliterated much of the standing shade trees. Replanting at the time relied heavily on  one particular species of maple, a species highly susceptible to the Beetle.  Mono species populations packed in too tightly are in general more vulnerable to the spread of disease.    This is true of Red Pines, Maples and who knows what else.  Diversity, in the face of global travel and global warming, is likely a very good thing.

Of Forests and Men

We are reminded by events in Japan of just how fragile our world is, and how dependent we are on the good will of Mother Nature.  Our sympathies go out to those effected by the earthquake there.   There is very little that we an take for granted it seems, certainly not  in the natural world.

This week I”m again posting some work by another artist, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who created a magnificent multimedia piece, Of Forests and Men. This is the International Year of Forests, a celebration (and wake up call) of the incredible importance of our relationship with forests, sponsored by the United Nations.  You can read more about it here.  One of the many aspects of this project that impresses me is the emphasis placed on the interweaving of science and art.  You can read more about their interesting approach toward educating about the forest at the link, so I’ll spare you the repetition here and offer this video as a great example.  (Those of you who don’t care about the environment will still enjoy this video I’d wager. The photography and production are terrific, a great example of what multimedia can do.   Give it a chance.)  Enjoy.

Unfortunately those of you viewing this on a hand held device may not be able to see the video.  Evidently WordPress, for security reasons, doesn’t allow embedding with I-frames.  What’s an I-frame?  Couldn’t tell you but in this case I guess it matters.  My apologies.

See you next year….

Click on the image for a cuter view.  This is Slydel by the way.  He lives at the Ecotarium in Worcester, MA.  If you’d like to know more about Slydel and his buddies, you can find out here.  Thanks for stopping by and Happy New Year.

The War in the Woods?

So, let’s talk about water.  (Excuse me, but didn’t you title this the War in the Woods????)  I’m glad you asked.  This is really about water though.

We decided to try a new gate, Gate 37 at the Quabbin Reservation. The old guidebook said that if we followed the abandoned road for maybe less than a mile, we’d cross the West Branch of the Fever Brook, on it’s way to the Reservoir.  So down the road we went, through the autumn forest. (Click on the images for a better view.)

Finally, we saw what looked like a bridge.  We got to the bridge, turned right, and saw once again that the water was low.  The Brook looked pretty anemic.

But then we turned to our left, and this particular view struck us, almost literally.

After working at this location for a bit, we decided to head back along the Fever Brook, to see what we could find.  We had already bumped into the Fever Brook on a previous photo shoot in the Federated Women’s Club State Forest, just north of the Quabbin Reservation itself.  It’s not a large river, but it’s nevertheless important.  Boston, in two years, this will be your drinking water.

So we walked further to the northwest, and came upon a remarkable feat of engineering.

Note the two foot drop in the water level.  The beavers had done their thing, to good effect.  The Brook will be fine, and there are many ecological benefits to beaver ponds (at this end of the Reservoir, away from the tunnels that take water to the public where beaver engineering is not considered desirable).  Turning to head back, however, we came upon another feat of engineering.

This was a logging site and exit road. I’m guessing the site is several years old, though it’s hard to tell.  Let me stress going forward that I’m not anti-logging.  As a business school professor I’m very concerned about the health of business opportunities.  But the Quabbin is a complex ecosystem and what we as a society have to find is a way to balance a variety of competing interests, for the long-term.  This particular logging activity appears to have been actually closer to the Reservoir than I had ever seen, and certainly closer to the Brook than the 400 feet which I believe is the customary protective zone in which all logging activities are prohibited. But here’s where we pick up the talk of war.

We can thank Channel 5, WCVB for doing, what is the word I’m searching for here…oh yeah, actual journalism, in a series of pieces that they developed for Chronicle.  At this point, you’ll be tested as to your level of interest.  If you’d like to know about the challenges of managing those competing interests in the Quabbin, have a look here, for starters, at segment one of The War in the Woods (about five minutes long).

If you made it through segment one, you’ll immediately note that we’ve got lots of tough issues here, many of them having to do with important scientific questions.  What do we do with this incredible resource, our forests?  If you want to dig a bit deeper, I’d strongly suggest that you have a look at an important document developed at the Harvard Forest, just north of the Quabbin Reservation, Wildlands and Woodlands, A Vision for the Forests of Massachusetts .  I’ll give you a very brief overview of some of their recommendations (from page 5 of the report).

1.  We should hold approximately 250,000 acres, largely state-owned, as wildland reserves, with minimal human intervention, only passive recreation (no ATVs) and no commercial logging.  These acres would be approximately contiguous so as to create opportunities for wildlife habitat.

2.  We then would be left with 2.25 million acres, public and private, on which active recreation and sustainable forestry could take place.

So the bulk of our forests would actually be available for sustainable commercial purposes, while a smaller portion would be set aside for almost total protection.  They suggest that the Quabbin be a part of the wildlands for a variety of reasons that you can read if you’re so inclined.  I find their notions interesting in that, if implemented, the needs of most stakeholders would get some attention.  But I said this was about water didn’t I. Have a look at segment two of the War in the Woods .

I had actually seen this piece several days prior and I knew where Mr. Wacaluc (I hope I’m spelling his name right, apologies if I’m not) was standing in the report.  It’s a very well known location, inside Quabbin Park on the south side of the Reservoir.  It’s marked by an old foundation and cellar hole maybe 100 feet from the road.

It wasn’t hard to find the Japanese Barberry to which he was referring. Here’s a shot of the so and so..

Can you believe that this stuff is still available for purchase?  (Please don’t.) If you’re not sure whether or not it represents a threat, here’s a report from the University of Maine.

So here’s the punch line.  By the side of the logging activity we found at Gate 37, nearly twenty miles to the north of Quabbin Park, we found, you guessed it…

Japanese Barberry.  (If you’d like the coordinates for this find, send me an e-mail.  This image was geotagged.)

Those of us who live in an around Worcester are pretty sensitive to the problem of invasive species.  The Asian Longhorn Beetle has decimated thousands of fine old trees throughout entire neighborhoods of the City. Being concerned about invasives doesn’t represent political extremism in my view, but the shameful state of political and policy discourse in this country makes it hard to explore such critically important issues scientifically.  Is logging related to the growth of an invasive species at the Quabbin?  Clearly this particular invasive is there.  I’m not a biologist but if logging, or certain types of logging practices, are effectively an “accelerant,” that should give us all pause.

This is about our water, as well as our forests.  The Quabbin watershed extends far beyond the borders of the Reservation.  Forests throughout the state help to purify our water supply, while also providing us opportunities for recreation, learning, reflection and economic activities such as tourism and forestry.  An ecosystem cannot be parsed into water and forest.  It’s a system. No forests. No water. Efforts to sustain the system overtime require that we keep an eye on the system, and perhaps even intervene through appropriate forest management practices.  (Indeed, there are likely situations in which timber harvests are necessary to stop a disease or invasive species. Logging per se isn’t the villain here.)

The State is I think actually trying to do a better job of dealing with this terribly important but complex situation (though you might not know it from these two video clips). Again, the questions don’t succumb to easy answers.  Should the Quabbin be a wildland or reserve?  That would seem to be one simple solution, but a counter argument can be made on ecological grounds as well.  The forest at the Quabbin is to a significant degree a human creation. Thousands upon thousands of pines were planted there for instance during the late 30′s and 40′s.  These trees are all similar in age, and in many places, as one can easily see, they are quite close together.  Are they more vulnerable as a result?  Do they need to be thinned to maintain their health? If you’d like to know more about State efforts, I’d suggest you check out  the current administrations Vision document for moving ahead with parsing out the use of public forest lands. But their work is not without its critics, including Massachusetts Forest Watch .

Importantly, there will be a series of public forums sponsored by the Division of Conservation and Recreation in the coming weeks on State Forest and Landscape designations.  The first meeting will take place on Monday evening, November 15 at Union Station in Worcester, beginning at 6:30.  If you care about the forest, and the water, I hope I’ll see you there.