How Old is that River?

I saw a travel ad recently for Asheville, North Carolina that claimed that the New River that runs through town was the second oldest river in the world, second only to the Nile. I was surprised to hear this. I don't know why, I guess I was just surprised that something so old would be so close to where I live.

I decided to look into this. What I found was that there is no universally applicable and accepted method of determining the age of a river. About the best you can do is to put an upper and/or lower limit on the age. For instance, if you can determine through other methods when the rock that the river runs through first pushed its way up to the earth's surface, that would give you a maximum age. If you can date the sediment or fossils at the bottom of the river bed, that would give you a minimum age.

In many cases, these methods give you a very wide range that makes it impossible to accurately rank the ages of rivers. Here is a good article from the State of West Virginia that explains how difficult it is to determine the age of the New River (the New River runs through West Virginia and Virginia along with North Carolina). The info about the age is at the end, but the rest of the article is interesting as well.

According to the Journal of Geography, "Appalachia's New River was labeled 'the second oldest river in the world' during the 1970s as part of a campaign to save the river from being dammed. Despite the absence of geomorphic evidence, the promotion of the superlative age of the river was so successful that the mythical label became reality in the minds of the region's populace."

Can Magnesium Energy Save the Planet?

Did I say in my last post that nuclear energy could save the planet? I meant to say magnesium energy!

I was checking out Time Magazine's 2009 "Heroes of the Environment" and saw an article about Takashi Yabe. Mr. Yabe is a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who is working with Mitsubishi Corporation to develop an engine fueled by refined magnesium. One of the beautiful things about this engine is that the only waste product is water vapor. No CO2 or other greenhouse gases, no toxic chemicals.

The second beautiful thing is that the energy intensive process of mining and refining the magnesium is powered by free energy from the sun. Not expensive solar panels, but big lenses and solar powered lasers - industrial versions of the magnifying glass we used to start fires with as a kid (or I did anyway). The source of the magnesium is seawater, so there are no destructive and dangerous underground or strip mines. They don't mention what happens to the sea life that needs the magnesium for biological processes, but we will have to keep an eye out so we don't extract too much.

Beautiful thing number three is that once the initial magnesium is refined, it is not "burned" or "used up", but rather recycled. The engine reacts magnesium with water, and the reaction products are hydrogen (burned to create more power), heat (which powers the engine), water vapor and magnesium oxide. The magnesium oxide is broken down again by the solar lasers into magnesium and oxygen.

According to Mitsubishi's website (see above), this was supposed to be commercially available this year, so they are a little behind schedule. But considering how long it takes to get approval for a new nuclear plant, they still might beat the nuclear industry in saving the planet!

Can Nuclear Energy Save The Planet?

Here is more from Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto ...

One of the main themes of this book is the idea that a renaissance of nuclear power is required in order to head off global warming. Mr. Brand gives many reasons to support this, but the one I am most interested in is safety. He contends that nuclear energy is safer than traditional forms of energy, especially when you consider the deaths from air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants. He backs this up with numbers, although I decided to look into this myself. (Some of Mr. Brand's sources throughout the book are less than reputable, including Wikipedia.)

Here is an article from the International Atomic Energy Association Bulletin. Granted the name of the organization makes them sound a little biased, but they are a well-respected, scientific, non-profit organization that is part of the United Nations. Their article is based on a study published in an independent, peer-reviewed journal that is not associated with the nuclear industry. In the interest of factual blogging I have ordered a copy of that article from my local library.

In the mean time, you can see that Mr. Brand appears to be correct, and the risk of death to the public from nuclear accidents and long-term illnesses is lower than that from fossil fuel power generation. And these numbers don't even include projected deaths from global warming.

This is an interesting topic ... more on this another day!

Space-Based Solar Power

I am reading the book Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, by Stewart Brand. Mr. Brand is the founder of the seminal Whole Earth Catalog.

One of the ideas Mr. Brand discusses for saving our world is space-based solar power. The idea is that satellites carrying large solar panels would orbit earth, placed where they can receive the sun's rays practically 24/7 and unimpeded by our atmosphere. The energy they collect would be transmitted to earth in the form of microwave radiation, from an antenna on the satellite to an antenna on the ground.

Although the book was only published this year, Mr. Brand has already distanced himself from this idea. In his online footnotes (page 81), he quotes alternative power guru Elon Musk as saying that space-based solar power is too expensive and too inefficient to ever be viable. I hope the public has more faith than that in the viability of the electric cars produced by Mr. Musk's Tesla Motors!

At least three companies have enough faith in the viability of space-based solar power to invest in significant development: PowerSat Corporation, Space Energy, and Solaren Corporation (supported by Pacific Gas & Electric). I don't know if this will work out in the end, but it is fascinating technology!

Rocky Mountain Elk Rut

Here is another photo from my trip to Colorado two years ago. This one is in Estes Park, which is just outside Rocky Mountain National Park. Believe it or not, this is in the parking lot of a hotel a couple of doors down from where I stayed. I got a much better view of the wildlife in the hotel parking lot than I did driving through the National Park!

This is a bull (male) elk, in the rut (mating) season. I caught this one in the middle of "bugling". This is a call they use to attract a "harem" of females and to keep other males away. It was a chilly morning, and you can see the plume of condensation from his breath to the left of his head. It sounded like this bull was competing with another one across the street who we could also hear bugling. Soon after I took this picture, he headed off across the road.

Unfortunately I did not take any video for you to hear the bugling. It is a loud and haunting bellowing noise. It was actually a little scary, coming from an animal this large and this close. Below is a YouTube video taken in Banff, which is in the Canadian Rockies. The acoustics of this recording are great.

Garden of the Gods

The photo above is from a business trip I took to Colorado a couple of years ago. It is at Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs. The geological formation above is called "Balanced Rock".

Here in the East, we often see precariously perched rocks like this, which have been deposited by glaciers. They call them "glacial erratics". But the "Balanced Rock" was formed by a different process.

Amazingly, the Rocky Mountains that we see today are actually the "Modern Rockies". Before the Modern Rockies were uplifted, a previous mountain range had already been uplifted and eroded away. Some of the red granite sand and pebbles eroding from these "Ancestral Rockies" settled here in Garden of the Gods. You can see the layering of this sandstone, especially in the bottom half of this rock.

So what you see above is actually unevenly eroded sandstone, rather than one rock balanced on top of another.

Keep America Beautiful

At the risk of boring my (admittedly small) audience, I am writing my third post in a row about Native American respect for our land. I don't know what made me think of this, I guess I had my mind on the topic and it forced this up from the depths of my memory.

I was only 8 years old when this Public Service Announcement first aired on Earth Day in 1971. It made a huge impression on me as a little kid, and it still chokes me up today. Along with my years in the Boy Scouts, I think this ad really shaped my views about our environment. And the music is a case study in building drama and emotion.

Native American Conservation

While we were at the American Indian Arts Festival this weekend (see my prior post), I bought a copy of "A Brief History of the Powhatan Renape Nation" by Chief Roy Crazy Horse. This is an excellent and very readable history of this Native American Nation. The most powerful parts are where Chief Crazy Horse tells the story of the European conquest of America from the standpoint of those who were "discovered".

This being a nature blog, I would like to pass along the following quote from the book:

"When your grandfathers came to these shores and met my grandfathers, they found here a people who were healthy, who had good lives, who enjoyed an unparalleled independence, who looked after themselves and the old people, who saw to it that no one was in want.

"You found here a beautiful land, where game and fish abounded, where the water in any river was fit to drink, where the air was pure and clear. Truly, your ancestors found a paradise. This was the land which the Creator had given to us in the beginning of time, and we had taken good care of it.

"Your grandfathers learned about democracy from the Native People they met. You marveled that our leaders always consulted their councils, which consist of all the Old and Wise. And the Youth was also consulted ...

"Now you are many and we are few. But our strength never depended on numbers - even one person alone can represent the Truth. And so we still speak out, few as we are, with a moral authority, calling upon you to renew the vision which our grandfathers had.

"Join with us to bring back democracy, where the leadership moves on the Breath of the People, where there is justice for all.

"Join with us in restoring the land to health, making the water of the rivers once again good to drink, the air fit to breathe."

To read an (even briefer) history of the Powhatan online, or to order this fascinating book, click here.

Eurasian Eagle Owl

Today we visited the American Indian Arts Festival at the Rankokus Indian Reservation. One of the performers was Jennifer Pena, from the father/daughter team Flight of the Raptor. The photo above is of a Eurasian Eagle Owl.

I was really amazed by the bright orange color of this bird's eyes. I looked around and was not able to find any evolutionary reason for this unusual eye color. But I did find some interesting information about owls' eyes in general.

Owls' eyes are tubular in shape rather than round like ours. This gives their eyes a longer focal length, like a telescope, which is great for picking out critters for dinner. But this tubular shape means their eyes cannot rotate in a socket like our "eyeballs". So, they have to turn their whole head, which they are very good at because their necks have twice as many vertebrae as ours. This guy was constantly turning his head around, so I had to snap quite a few pictures to get this lucky one of him looking right at the camera!

To learn more about owls' eyes, check out this website. To really have fun, order some "owl pellets" online and pick them apart. Owl pellets are the regurgitated remains of the owl's meal, which contain the parts that can't be fully digested. We did this with my son's Cub Scout pack several years ago and the kids loved it. You can reconstruct the skeleton of the mouse, mole, etc. that the owl ate. Gross and educational at the same time, and what's better than that?

To learn more about the Rankokus Indian Reservation, home of the Powhatan Renape Nation, click here.

Audubon's Mammals

I was looking through some old books, and I came across one by John J. Audubon. That is a painting from the book above.

No, I'm not talking about The Birds of America. Many people are familiar with that famous work of Audubon. Not as many people know that after spending more than 19 years painting for this book and working on the companion text (Ornithological Biographies), Audubon decided to tackle mammals next! He figured he could complete this new book in three years - after all, there aren't as many mammals as there are birds, right?

Fifteen years later, the paintings and text were complete for The Viviparous Quadrupeds Of North America. Those are two great SAT words - that means mammals with fours legs that give birth to live young. This nitpicking title let him off the hook for painting marine mammals, bats and humans. Later editions dropped the word "viviparous", maybe after they realized that the only mammals that lay eggs live in Australia. By the time the book was published, Audubon had already passed away, and the work was completed by his sons and his good friend and co-author John Bachman.

I hope I don't surprise anyone by revealing that Audubon didn't always paint live subjects. Here is a great quote from a letter to a collaborator who was planning to ship Audubon some snowshoe hares. This is from the Introduction to a later edition of the book, edited by Victor H. Cahalane: "The animals ought to be put in a Keg of Common Yankee Rum, and as soon as possible after death, cutting a slit in the abdomen of not exceeding Two Inches in length, and pouring Rum in the apperture [sic] until well filled. The Entrails must remain untouched." And be sure not to use Fancy Yankee Rum or Rebel Rum, it just doesn't pickle the hare properly!

Point Lobos California

We're going all the way back to 2006 for this post! That is when my wife and I visited Northern California. One of my favorite places was Point Lobos. For you literary types, this was where the character "Doc" in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row used to go to escape the cannery scene and collect wildlife from the tide pools. You can't do that today, since this is a protected area.

The photo above shows a unique geological feature of Point Lobos. If you are ever doing a class project on "sedimentary rock" or "conglomerate", you couldn't find a better picture.

Geologists call this the "Carmelo Formation". It was created 60 million years ago, when some canyons that were previously on land found themselves under the sea. Runoff from the land filled these submarine canyons over the millennia. The layers that contain pebbles mark the times when volcanoes had recently erupted inland, and the runoff contained rocks ejected from the volcanoes.

Check out this website for more details on the geology and other natural features of Point Lobos.

If you are curious to see what Cannery Row looks like today, see the photo below. Yes, the third sign from the right says "Starbucks". And those aren't sardines in the carts those people are pushing up the hill. Poor Steinbeck is spinning in his grave.

Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey

My wife and I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert last night, at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. The concert was fantastic, with lots of classic songs and Bruce a great showman as always.

But what I want to talk about is the two hawks we saw soaring over the stadium. I thought that was pretty odd. After all, we were in the Meadowlands, the quintessential Jersey garbage dump and surely barren of wildlife (at least wildlife without three heads). Bruce even sang two songs lamenting the "swamps of Jersey". I thought we might stumble across Jimmy Hoffa, but not a red-tailed hawk.

It turns out that the Meadowlands have really been turned around since I was a kid. According to the Meadowlands Development Commission, 5000 tons of trash a day were dumped here in 1969. The swamp was seen as a wasteland, with no other purpose but to be filled in and built upon.

Fortunately the Commission dropped the word "Development" from its name in 2001, and started thinking about conservation. By 2004 they had produced a comprehensive conservation and rehabilitation plan. Nature is definitely starting to recover. You can even canoe in the Meadowlands again, like the guys in the painting above (Duck Hunters on the Hoboken Marshes, 1849, William Tylee Ranney).

For more info, check out the websites of the NJ Meadowlands Commission or Hackensack Riverkeeper.

Sailing on a Sea of Methane on Saturn's Moon Titan

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to National Public Radio and heard a teaser for a show about "sailing on a sea of methane on Saturn's moon Titan". Unfortunately I missed the broadcast, so I was left with the image in my mind's eye of a stainless steel version of the ship pictured above. Its Mylar sails would be filled with Titanian winds carrying it across this strange sea to lands unknown.

When I got around to listening to the podcast, I found I was mistaken. The scientists that are proposing this ship to NASA envision "a little capsule". It would have a mast with a camera mounted on it, but no sail. It would be powered by a nuclear-fueled engine. Not very romantic, but I'm sure it would snap some really cool pictures.

By the way, the photo above is someone's idea from the early 1900's of what Columbus' Santa Maria looked like. No two "replicas" I have seen look the same, and these guys are experts. So I can't be blamed for imagining a Titanian vessel that is grander than reality.