Sunsets, angles and amplitude

In looking at my photo from the other day, and my guess that the mountain in the second photograph was Mt. San Jacinto, I decided to use a little detective work to figure out what mountain it is.

Of course, I could probably just look on a map and guess, but that's not as fun, and directions and distances can be deceiving. Serendipitously, my shadow was pointing straight towards the mountain in the photograph.

The facts I gathered, some extraneous and not needed (and correct I hope!):
I was in a park that is about 34 degrees north latitude.
The photograph was taken a few days before the winter wolstice (we'll call it close enough).
The sun is hovering over 23.43 degrees south latitude at the winter solstice (the Tropic of Capricorn).
The sunset "travels" at 1041.67 miles-per-hour at the equator ("slower" as you go north).
The maximum amplitude of the sun for this latitude is 28 degrees north/south (according to: The Essential Wilderness Navigator, by David Seidman and Paul Cleveland). This means that the greatest difference from a true west sunset (270 degrees) at this latitude is 28 degrees.

Mt. San Jacinto is east-southeast of here, about 100 degrees. Can I rule it out?

Stay tuned for the answer.

Magic Time!

I had a lovely walk with my dog in the park today. Great views of snow on the mountains, just when the "sunset spotlight" was shining on the hills... I love it. The snow was down to maybe 3000'- although I'm not sure. That's Mt. San Jacinto in the distance with snow. These are pics from my blackberry- not bad!
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Experiment photos

Seeds of a new experiment

Call it first-experiment nerves... I planted some seeds on two hillside aspects- northeast and southwest, and for days I would check them but nothing was coming up! So much for the establishment of this "vicious" plant.

Microclimate may have a huge effect on whether this grass establishes or not. Thus, I've planted seeds, with permission, on a hillside near campus. Finally, I checked them on Thursday and some are up! Since this is a warm-climate grass, not surprisingly, the southwestern-facing slope (warmer) have popped up all over, while the northeast-facing slope seeds are just poking along.

I was a little afraid that they'd all washed away in the recent storm. It still seems possible, but at least a few have come up. Now I can stop being such a nervous nelly and get down to the science- biweekly visits and data collection. And more importantly, a lot less time spent planning, designing datasheets (surprisingly a lot of time), and worrying!
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Happy Thanksgiving!

Cranberry Sauce (2008 version). I just learned that 11 people will be at dinner. I hope its enough-- well nobody eats that much cranberry sauce anyway. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Blog anniversary

Happy birthday blog! It's been a year since I decided to have a place to write online, practice popular-style science writing and keep my family up to date.

Seems to have been a successful experiment so far.

Update on research: Got my plots in about 16 hours before our very first rainfall event here is southern California!

Stochasticity... in all her glory

Change. One thing we can depend on. Especially in nature. It seems that sometimes the best way to mimic nature in an experiment is to leave it to nature. As opposed to field plots where you control diversity, in natural systems, you have to embrace diversity, change, and yes, stochasticity.

These can and should be seen as factors inherent to natural processes. In fact, if nature were dependable, fair and balanced (that's actually fair and balanced... no homage to Fox News here), the world would look very different. For instance, one ecological hypothesis holds that a mild-to-moderate level of disturbance is a factor that maintains diversity in communities. That is, if several plants are competing in a benign, nutrient-rich, favorable environment, the superior competitor for resources will win, hence, excluding the others. Events like, say, a big rainstorm, a flood, high winds, animal foot traffic can serve to keep all of the species on their toes, and ensure continued opportunities for all of the plants to have a fighting chance.

For instance, my dog goes for a lovely jaunt, chasing a balloon through a field with only one species of flower. The other plants have been out-competed, but their seeds are waiting in the soil to germinate.

This is a common route for my dog, however, and I find the following year that another species is making an inroads in the community, taking advantage of the trampling effects of increase in soil compaction, and increased light, for instance. He continues to love to run here and eventually, this area is now converted to the white flowers. We move away, leaving the field to itself, and years later, we return, only to find yellow flowers abound once more.

Currently I'm dealing with a problem of variability of resources in nature. Not a disturbance process, but a stochastic process. This process may be the key to the establishment of a species. If all years had average rainfall, it is even doubtful that this species could gain a foothold in certain places. It seems that a higher-than-average year every now and then allows the species to establish, and then just survive the low years. Therefore, models including only year after year of average weather may miss something important.

Take, for instance, these three years of rainfall in southern California:

If I tried to simulate an average year, how exactly do I do that? It seems, variability is part of the system. Constancy is not. Not only does this make it very difficult to do a field experiment and get it done in 1 year, but the variation itself may be important.

As a foreign professor told me yesterday, "if you want to see what happens in the nature then you have to leave it to the nature." Nature... much love.

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Angel of Climate in the Atlantic

Look on the right-hand side of the picture. In the Atlantic Ocean, A figure appears, stretching from about 40 degrees North to about 15 degrees South.

Apparently the climate gods approved of Obama's election to office? Is it mother nature? Or did Al Gore conjure up the climate gods?

My ID/ Halloween self

What you can't see is that he's eating pumpkin pie :)

No wonder we didn't have any trick-or-treaters. No bother; we watched a NOVA special on fractals (Hunting the Hidden Dimension). How nerdy am I?

At least, it seems, I succeeded in scaring away evil spirits!

Not a moonbow, not a rainbow...

...it's a lunar rainbow!

I saw this picture taken by Martin McKenna on Spaceweather.com today. It was a rainbow lit not by the sun, but by the moon! A "moonbow" is usually high cirrus clouds lit by the moon (or ice crystals high in the sky), creating a halo. I don't have a picture handy of that, but experienced it many times during cold New England winters.

I've never seen this but hope to. Incredible!

~L

Thoughts for the fall

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi
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finally found field focus?

I located some good field sites this past week. Looks like hopefully I'll be on my way to getting started with my fieldwork. They are in San Diego county and I still hope to locate some in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties. Looks promising. How terrible that I should be so delighted to find sites invaded by fountain grass! I'm actually happy to find them; I knew they existed. Now to get permission etc.

Things are looking up, for me and fountain grass. Perhaps not so much for the natural communities! But that is what I'm trying to find out...

Towards More "Elegant" Science

So here I am trying to put the final touches on my dissertation proposal. It's been laid out conceptually, but I've been finding that everything tends to get very complicated very quickly. Control for soil moisture, radiation, or season, or probable date of occurrence or propagule pressure... I think I'm getting the spins.

I was heartened to hear about an experiment wherein a scientist literally looked at the direction cows were facing in pictures in Google Earth (and possibly aerial photos, I'm not sure) and discovered that they seemed to sense the earth's magnetism, because they faced magnetic north a statistically significant amount of time.

How wonderful that such a simple idea- observation, question, simple observational study and discovery of a phenomenon- can lead to a significant discovery in this day and age! And not to mention, a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (can you see me turning green with envy?). The time of dropping things from the leaning tower of Pisa etc. is long gone, but elegant science seems still possible.

To be precise, elegance is not equivalent to simplicity, rather, it is is the accomplishment of documenting a phenomenon by using a method that captures the essence of what is going on. Often an out-of-the-box reasoning, or simple alternative to traditional methods might be used. Nature teases us ecologists with her elegance, in patterns and processes, and challenges us to find the signal among the chaos.

When I've been designing experiments now, the words (I'm not sure what the citation is here, any help is appreciated) "Simplify, simplify" ring in my head. Also, my 8th grade algebra teacher's favorite expression, KISS, or "Keep It Simple Stupid!"

With all deference to the power and value of complicated experiments, as a student, it is helpful to get back to the question you're asking, and ask, what is the simplest way that I can see if this phenomenon is occurring? It may not approach elegance, but I think it's a start.
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Olympics for all

I was very saddened today to hear that the International Olympic Committee has decided not to allow the athletes from Iraq to compete in the Games in China. What they, of all people should understand is what this actually means to the young athlete. This international stage comes around only every 4 years- an eternity for any athlete, making it often a single chance to compete.

Besides, even leaving the spirit of "We Are the World," Coca Cola commercials and Un Seul Peuple aside, this is supposed to be a neutral event, where athletes are judged by one standard. In this case, it's not discrimination (though I don't know) necessarily, but politics. Politics politics politics. Enough!

This reminds me of how I felt not long ago when there were protests against the Olympic torch. How can someone politicize an international competition, that is at least outwardly representative of peace, understanding and unity? How exactly does a runner/swimmer/javelin-throwing torch-bearer deserve to be threatened and upstaged by protests? An athlete whose goal is simple and pure- perfection of a sport and fair competition!

I attended a party for an (American) Olympic athlete last month. She'd just qualified for her event after years and years of training (and previous Olympic appearances) and her friends and family threw her a giant party to celebrate her achievement. The joy, pride and awe in her achievement after overcoming significant obstacles to compete was palpable, even with such a supportive environment: the party was in a large, beautiful home in Orange county, and sponsors, friends and fellow trainees were there to celebrate.

I'd like to try to picture how Dana Hussain, one Iraqi athlete, celebrated her qualification, in a time when her country is at war, and the difficulties of training and living in Iraq were likely not easy... how she's dreamed about this for months and years. And now she is unable to compete. Without the Olympics, what is the future of a female professional sprinter in Iraq? And what is the future of the children of this country that is struggling to start over- denied the inspiration and hope that comes from seeing their best compete on the world stage?
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Summer fun

Well my explorations will take me far and wide this summer. First up is the search for fountain grass! I will be down to San Diego and up to Santa Monica. Not bad places to go to get out of the 90-degree temps of the inland empire, if I do say so myself. I hope to establish a field site on a nice hillside, with ocean breezes, views to the mountains and oceans, and perhaps with a Starbucks nearby... I know of PhD who studied coral reefs partially due to the location. You can't blame her!

You have to remember here that most of us have paid our dues as interns or technicians in wind, rain, black flies, and toxic dust! I think after about 2 years of service to the feds and various states, I've earned the right to pick a nice field site! Actually most all of us like getting completely dirty-- there's something very satisfying when your exterior reflects the amount of work you've done and how hard it was!

This picture is actually my friend's legs on a field job a couple summers ago. We would roll out of the kayak and slog through mud up to our knees. When we got back we would use a hose to clean our pants, let them dry and then wear them the next day! (you can only bring so many changes of clothes for a 10-day shift)

I guess I do miss it, and I'm sure I'm in store for all sorts of heat, sunburn, ticks, and dust. But I will LOVE IT!

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Un "black hole" a la Francaise?

I was a little disturbed to read today about the CERN project in France that has something to do with colliding particles and powerful magnets. Some are fearing that this could make a black hole that would swallow earth. As a scientist, I know too many stories of people worried irrationally about impossible consequences from things, often spurred by a lack of education on the subject. In this sense, I will admit that I am ignorant on the subject of physics (never took it though my dad taught it long ago! Maybe I absorbed some around the house when I was little).

I know nothing of the physics of this issue, and feel a little silly being concerned about it. However, one thing does bother me. If we are looking for hypothetical molecules, and dimensions that have been calculated in mathematical rather than physical reality, then there is a large unknown here. As in many things, it seems that the more we learn, the more we see how little we know! In any case, the fact that the "destruction of the planet" was named in a lawsuit aimed at stopping the project should raise more eyebrows, although I will concede that in this case, we could similarly argue that monkeys will fly out of the sun if we turn on this machine, as we think they may inhabit the 6th dimension.

Lastly, how exactly can we produce a safety report judging the risk of something so unknown? Am I wrong and there is more known? So perhaps my problem is not with the project itself, but our claim that we can even calculate the risk in this case. (I will also concede here that I am fully out-degreed by the risk assessment panel including a Nobel laureate.)

I just feel that as a citizen of the earth, perhaps more people should have a say in this. We are no longer countries with small populations of farmers and traders. We are large countries that have built things far more powerful than we are. Incredible, but also disconcerting. We are un seul peuple; hard to say if the larger masses of us are qualified to make a judgement in this case, but should we be more careful about the decisions the few make for la foule?

If you would like to see some physicists argue about this stuff, and a moderately technical explanation of the possibility of a mini-black hole actually forming, see this post.

Done, passed, and on to research!

And to try to get a plant named after me...

Outside magazine reporter - "I noticed there is a Central American ant, Pheidole harrisonfordi, named after you. How did you swing that?"

Harrison Ford - "You buy drinks for Edward O. Wilson, the world's leading expert on ants."

Passed!

Passed my written exams. Funny- one question was basically asking for the same explanation of the processes involved in the "iconic megaflora" entry. Blogging comes in handy sometimes! It helped me practice for that question!

I just hope my passing oral exams won't be such a stochastic process. Advice was to "have fun with it." We'll see if I can do that!

Almost Exam Time!

Well, Botany retreat done and over with! Teaching responsibilities almost done! And now it's time for my exams on Thursday. I have found that it is true that one cannot study for more than 2 months. I have reached a psychological overload with just a few days left!

I have been reading and reading and became exhausted just before it's time to cram knowledge into my head. I'm not sure if I'm actually tired because I know I've done enough I should or if it's psychological. I just can't find the motivation to study any more!

Oh well. I'll do my best! Thanks, dad for the poem (that I revised slightly):

Oh I'm just a little Main-ah,
With a bandaid on my knee,
And I'm stressed by 6 professors
Who I hope will be kind to me!

So U-Cally, oh it's too soon,
Don't now cry for me,
'Cuz I'm smarter than they all know,
And I know my Bo-Ta-Ny!

Woes of the Iconic Megaflora

A new report out from (*gasp*) the White House (well, their climate change science program) details possible effects of climate change- on agriculture, and biodiversity. From a ScienceNow Daily news article (Climate Change is Bad News for U.S. Agriculture):
"'We risk losing iconic charismatic megaflora such as saguaro cactus and joshua trees,' co-author Steven Archer of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said at a press conference."

I do appreciate the upgrade of cacti to the ranks of such cliche charasmatic fuzzy icons as polar bears. (I wouldn't suggest hugging a cacti though, or a polar bear, for that matter). But such a "doomsday" lead is common in the media reporting of climate change, but the media could do better to explain these effects to the public, albeit about a psychologically taxing subject. I think I know why they predict the decline of desert species, but to the untrained reader, you'd think, well, why would desert species decline if it's going to get hotter? Why does that mean drier necessarily? In fact, these factors are important, but it may be the (unmentioned) carbon dioxide increase that actually matters most here.

This article is apropos today for me, since today is dedicated to studying up on arid-land-adapted grasses. These species have a special photosynthetic mechanism (the C4 photosynthesis pathway) that gives them a competitive advantage in drier areas (they can use water more efficiently than "normal" C3 species). Will this be the rise of C4 plants? I'm sure there are plenty of articles about this out there. Mean temperature during the growing season is highly correlated with their growth, and a higher summer temp should give these an advantage, as long as there is still summer rain to be had (otherwise, the summer rain growing season will be nill and the growing season will be in the winter, when other species have an edge).

However, cacti, like the saguaro also have a special photosynthetic mechanisms, Crassulacean Acid Metabolism, or CAM. Like C4 plants, they are able to save water by using a different pathway. Cacti open their stomata (pores) at night, taking up CO2 when it's cool, and closing them during the day to prevent water loss. The advantage for both of these species is that they are more effective in the uptake of C02 at higher temperatures.

We all know that climate change will have global effects, but it is important to remember that these effects are not linear increases and decreases in rainfall and temperature. Ecosystem feedbacks may cause differential regional effects. For these plants, if they become dominant, evapotranspiration will be less over large areas (they don't lose as much water to the air as others). Therefore, increasing temperature, which may shift the distribution and local floras, may feedback (or forward?) and cause a simultaneous decrease in rainfall due to less moisture coming up and out of the plants.

HOWEVER, the decline of saguaro cacti might actually happen do to a loss of its competitive -C02-capture -advantage. Higher carbon dioxide concentrations actually will favor the "normal" plants over these plants. I won't go into the details... (even I recognize there is a limit to the utility of a full explanation)

Not exactly first page material. But I am glad to have a new buzzword... iconic megaflora!

Mountain fans!

We should all be so fascinated by Nature!
I thought this was a fabulous shot. Sometimes seeing things
in a different way is so enlightening!

Photo by Jim Hayes, posted with permission.
www.jimhayes.com/photo/Photo/Photos.html

Eat ice cream with no guilt?

The new Haagen Dazs commercial at least gives some attention to the issue of the decline of honeybees. I think they are making a new flavor (honey I think?) that will fund research to help research the problem.

The commercial is really cute though but I wish it had more information! How do we save the bees? Stop the mysterious wind that is ripping them from the flowers while the two sing to one another? No web address at the end or specific product? Well that's the result of working with the consumer attention span.

While I don't know enough about the issue, it seems sort of an odd mouthpiece for the issue. I guess someone had to do it.

No Gems, just words, words, words

Well I'm beginning to be a bit burnt out from all of this reading. I gave myself Thursday off, as that's my 12- hour-marathon-teaching-responsibilities-day. Friday I was tapped to grade exams unexpectedly, which led right up to happy hour (yes, yes I know I shouldn't go!).

In any case, I had to start up again this morning after a 2-day break, which was hard. I'm still planning this time as the "read every and all background information" and then the second week with each topic being the "current research and how this applies to my proposal" time. I still think it will work OK. I have faith.

I jealously read about a retreat of a friend of mine to a cabin in the woods... while my assignment was ironically to read about how Thoreau contributed to the birth of ecology through his saunterings.

If I could only get to the muskrat level of perception, perhaps all of this will make sense. I'll just commune with nature and it will reveal itself to me, right? .... seriously, right?

Gem of the week- plant perception

This is the photo of the mint plant that I took during the hailstorm a few weeks ago. Have I "psychologically" damaged my poor little plant by using the flash?

Some species of plants use the length of the dark period [i.e. night] to sense the photoperiod, and hence, the proper season to flower, be it spring or fall. Not so much in highly seasonal places, though, where obviously temperature is a better cue.

In a phenomenon summarized by Bernier et al, (in The Physiology of Flowering) a short flash of red light (same effect as white light) during the night was sufficient to "confuse" the plants [read delayed or interfered with flowering]. Using a far-red light after this was sufficient to "undo" the effect.

Does this mean that we mess plants up with our houselights, headlights, flashlights, etc? I guess it would depend on the species, and the location of the plants involved... and it would have to happen over and over again. It would be like telling the plant "no wait it's still summer... no reason to flower and set fruit!"

Intricacies aside, basically, this effect is mediated by a light receiver called phytochrome, which has two forms, absorbing red and far-red respectively, and uses differences in absorption between the two as a signal for various things in the plant (including whether an obstacle is a plant or an opaque object such as a giant rock, how deep a seed is buried under leaf litter, etc.). Incredible!

This week: Physiological Ecology for dummies!

So this segment of my blog can be paperclipped and put in a folder called "L studies for her exams." Hopefully this fun chapter in my life will soon be bound and sent off to the recesses of my memory to reside as a reminder of how smart I can sound to a room full of 5 tenured experts.

For the next two months, I have 2 weeks with each of 4 sets of subjects. They are: physiological ecology, plant ecology [community (1) and ecosystem (2)], and weed ecology. This short time constraint means that, at any given moment that I am not physically teaching a lab, or grading quizzes (or sleeping, perhaps, although that's debatable), I will be studying.

This chapter also might be subtitled: "L has no fun whatsoever." Included might be stories such as "L went to happy hour and now feels very guilty." Sample of type of fun that is now banned:

So I apologize in advance to anyone actually reading this that my thoughts for the next two months may run towards the dramatic, weary, or downright apocalyptic.

If I don't write anything here, don't fear, my advisor has been known to send out search-and-rescue missions [her husband] for students if they have not been heard from in a week or so. Stay tuned for updates...

The Elite:

(not my photo)



And... Elitism... according to Jon Stewart
[To the presidential candidates]:
"The job you're applying for... they might carve your head into a mountain... If you don't think you're better than us, then what the f*** are you doing?"

Teaching - Satisfactory +

Well I've been really busy with my first week as a Teaching Assistant for an intro course. It's actually been pretty fun. It can be so much more satisfying to teach than to do research! It's nice to show or guide someone through something and have them have that "Aha!" moment rather than to sit for hours at my computer re-sorting data or something.

Not that I don't love research. I love it (hear that, dissertation committee?). It's been a nice review and a nice break. The students are actually much more polite and interested than I expected. Give them another week to bare their monstrous selves, right?

It has restored my faith in undergrads!

Owners of images

If you get down to it, nothing we do is truly original. I take influence (with due respect and deference) from every photographer whose work I have ever seen. I also could possibly credit my photography professor in 1999, Dr. (whose name escapes me). Every artist I know takes can take credit for the establishment of conventions from former artists- from how to cut the matte board to taking advantage of known aesthetic preferences such as the 2/3 rule to using burn-and-dodge.

However, reading several random blogs lately has caused me to collect another pet peeve (it seems so un-me to have pet-peeves) [another aside- my other pet- peeve is having to say goodnight to random restaurant hostesses as I leave a restaurant even though I have never met them in my life]. Getting to the point, several that I have read lately have used OTHER PEOPLE'S PHOTOGRAPHS in some sort of pseudo-hip montage of images that they like. One of them had some really neat new-age music playing to "his" photos of urban Tokyo that I was really enjoying. These two blogs that I'm thinking of mentioned only later on or in another post ("again, these are not my images"...) that these images were not their own. How much was I suddenly disappointed with my fellow human being, as fast as I was impressed by him, when I saw that statement?

I find no fault with homage, or with illustrating a point using a stock image or illustration, but I think these cases cross the line from art appreciation to plagarism.

The blogosphere unfolds as it will, and the essence of this space is that there are no rules and people can express whatever they want. Build whatever persona they want. However, it seems to be with the intention of advancing one-self by creating this larger, more chic, more edgy and more artistic self do these people post art that is not theirs...

Needless to say, all images here (with the exception of the pen-and-graph graphic) are my own.

Speaking of budburst

A few weeks after the rains and I'm a little late checking out the flowers. A trip to the desert helping out another student convinced me it was the last chance to see the spring wildflowers here in Southern California.

So I headed out to Joshua Tree with a friend, to the northern part, but ended up seeing more as we headed home through the southern part.

Here are just a few of the highlights.

Tracing the ebbs and flows of ecosystems

I was looking for data at the USGS site when I came across a link to a new National Phenology Network.It's about time that we started tracing the so-called "Pulses of our Planet." This will be a massive amount of information.

Like many newer technologies being used in natural sciences and land management, this type of information has been collected by amateurs (Maine Nature News) and professionals alike over the past few centuries (going back to Franklin, Thoreau and Leopold) and perhaps millenia. Just as tools in GIS technology developed to automate tasks like overlaying maps over a light-table or a window, this is hopefully the start of a large dataset that we can all use to look at the changes in our natural world.

A citizen-input site started last year out of the project's working group, Project Budburst. This year they hope to expand this.

So, this spring, watch the buds burst along with scientists!

In news from across the universe

I just read an article on CNN entitled sensationally "Star explodes halfway across universe."

Two lines down, they mention that this star is 7.5 billion light years away. They mention that this was able to be seen from earth. What is wrong with this headline?

It hit me right away-- if we are seeing on EARTH something that is billions of light years away, that's OLD NEWS for sure!!! "Explodes" in the current tense implies a current event... certainly this a case where this is unquestionably NOT current news.

Truly it is amazing to see something that happened 7.5 billion years ago. Before our earth was a twinkle in the eye of the universe!!

Hail!!

I was heading home from a birthday party when it was thunder, lightening and hail! We knew it was coming, especially on the dog walk when the wind got really chilly suddenly and huge dark clouds moved in.

It wasn't until 11pm that the storm hit- just in time for me to be driving home. I had the good luck (?) of hitting the same storm twice-- I outran it driving home and then it hit once I got home!

I've never had that experience. I'm fairly sure that it was the same storm because each time it had the same characteristic two one-minute-long "pulses" of hail associated with it. I'm pretty terrified of lightening storms and I'm glad that we don't get them too often.

Another California harvest

Another batch of goodies for helping other people out. A lab-mate does research on artichoke thistle and I headed out today to help her measure her plants. On the edge of her plots, she has planted border rows, which are normally to ensure that there are no "edge effects" on the growth of the study plants. Since her artichoke thistles are related, and may be partially descended from feral crop, she has planted border rows of horticultural varieties all of the same species. These include globe artichoke, and cardoon. Lucky for us, some of the flowers are early!

She said that it's rare to have artichoke and asparagus at the same time.

We're just about to steam them. Mmmm.

The avocados and star fruit were just a random bonus from other projects. Often folks need to plant a large amount to take only a few samples, and have way too many to use, but too few to sell.

Cheers to that!

One picture to get us all by...

A bloom in an unlikely place is always uplifting.
Like this flower I saw in Death Valley (Geraea canescens).

I think I need this flower to get me through this week. Such power!

On a lighter note

Fractals in flowers and fields

Consider what this picture has in common with the next two.

"The term ‘fractal’ (from the Latin fractus, meaning ‘broken’), introduced by Benoit Mandelbrot about
25 years ago, is used to characterize spatial and/or temporal phenomena that are continuous but not
differentiable. Geometrically, a fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided
into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole...
"Fractal properties include self-similarity or affinity, scale symmetry, scale independence or invariance,
heterogeneity, complexity, and infinite length or detail...
"Fractal theory offers methods for describing the inherent irregularity of natural objects. In fractal analysis, the Euclidean concept of ‘length’ is viewed as a process. This process is characterized by a constant parameter D known as the fractal (or fractional) dimension."

Li, Bai-Lian. 2002. "Fractal dimensions"in Encyclopedia of Environmetrics. Abdel H. El-Shaarawi and Walter W. Piegorsch, eds. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester,Volume 2, pp 821–825

These are concepts that I'm learning and just beginning to understand. Heterogeneity here appears somewhat self-similar, although ecological patterns are often actually scale co-variant. For your consideration.

Next post will not include more flowers, I promise!

California bouquet

It's a flower explosion right now in the sage scrub! Here are some of the flowers I picked nearby in the park.

Lunar eclipse...d by clouds

I can't believe that I didn't know about the lunar eclipse tonight! My nerd-by-association hubby actually told me when I got home.

It was visible for a few minutes before the clouds came in. When it popped out again, I was ready with my camera, with no card. When I came back out 1 minute later, it was gone again, and hasn't returned since.

Thus all we could do was participate in the scene simultaneously playing out in various languages all over the western hemisphere: reminding ourselves of the nuts-and-bolts of an eclipse by acting it out, with a motorcycle helmet (as Earth), and two fists, as, of course, sun and moon. "Non, non, regardes... la lune, c'est ici, et la terre, c'est la-bas!"

So here's my picture of what ... ok, scratch that thought. My pictures of the clouds weren't that good.

I'm sure that SpaceWeather has some good photos.

I promise not to take clear skies for granted anymore!

Sunday drive

I decided to test-drive my new eco-friendly truck- I call it the "Environmentor"


Just kidding-- don't even ask!

News from the non-green-thumbed botanist

Spring has sprung on my bathroom counter. Actually, it's late winter, but nonetheless, roots are growing
in happy synchronized harmony.

Why is it spring? I'm really not sure. I'm sure it has to do with dormancy, the protective hesitation of seeds (and bulbs) that requires some sort of cue to grow. This pause makes sure that the seed grows at the most opportune time, say, after the winter, not just in a random spurt of hot weather in October, after a fire, etc.

So back to my bathroom counter. About 3 days after Christmas, along with a wiser party (who should surely know better!), we put some bulbs in a glass jar with polished stones and water, hoping to have a nice little jar of sprouting bulbs and flowers in a few weeks.

Weeks passed, then months, and nothing happened. Of course, we'd chosen a variety that needed a period of cold in order to sprout. However, out-of-the-blue, within the last week, 4 bulbs have simultaneously sprouted roots. How is this possible? First one sprouted roots (and I shouted in joy from the toilet, causing some confusion in the household), then another 3 days later, and then 2 others I noticed today!

Warm weather? Well, they are in a temperature-controlled house, between 68-78 degrees every day. Light? they've been in the near-darkness for about a month in the bathroom (on advice from a friend). PH? I can't imagine the pH has changed- but possibly after the root-breaking of one, there was some sort of signal to the other bulbs.

We'll see what happens! More soon!

Seeing

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."

William Blake

This week, a New York Times editorial, "A Track in the Snow"
brought that poem back to mind.

I was walking in my dog in the park with my iPod on yesterday and
realized that I needed to shut it off. There was so much I was
missing, or rather, it was the silence itself that I needed to
pay attention to.

Normally this walk is a decompression time. Of course, it usually
takes 10 minutes or so for the fresh air to infiltrate my brain.
I walk until my breath starts to normalize, my to-do list stops running over in my
head, and I start to see patterns and processes of nature. If I'm wound up enough,
usually these thoughts run back to my research and classes, but at least I know that
I've been grounded again; the models and experiments and hypotheses have had a chance
to rub up against the truth of what is around me.

On a daily basis, I could only hope to see "eternity in a grain of sand." For now I'm
content if by the time that my earlobes are beginning to feel the burn of the wind,
my eyes are following the line of the hills, noticing the emergence of spring.

Tomato, the fruit

Last weekend, an irresistible opportunity for botany outreach presented itself. A local NPR radio show about construction was light-heartedly asking viewers whether tomatoes were a fruit or a vegetable. While this is a funny question to a popular audience, as our modern nutritional categories are pretty arbitrary and normal people don't consider this on a day-to-day basis, but this is sort of a non-question to a biologist.
I was listening on my radio at home, and it was about five minutes until the show was over, and a caller came up with a answer that offered a seemingly clear-cut answer to this question. The caller announced that, in essence, a fruit has seeds on the inside, while vegetables have seeds on the outside.
I couldn't help myself. With a few minutes remaining in the show, I wrote in an email on the subject, including my educational affiliation, and my first name only, explaining that a vegetable is a food made from the vegetative part, or body, of the plant. A fruit is a result of the flower phenology of the plant; part of the inflorescence.
I waited with sort of bated breath, as it was sort of exciting for me, and they spent the last few minutes discussing something like the cost involved in removing "popcorn" ceilings from a home. The hosts then closed the show.
Disappointed, but somewhat relieved, I realized that I had sort of put myself out there by being a know-it-all. I forgot about this completely.
This weekend, I took a bike ride and came home to an email from a lab friend who asked whether I had called into a radio show about construction with a botanical explanation of the tomato as a fruit! I was shocked, as they had decided to read my email the following week on their show. She said that they read my email and then tried to figure out what this meant for other fruits and vegetables, somewhat confusedly. Of course, I wanted to make sure that my answer was right, and I asked my friend, a PhD in botany, whether I was right. She said it was an excellent answer. Whew! Thank goodness.
Being sort of a private person, the whole thing was sort of thrilling, and funny. My affiliation, and first name, of course, gave me away to my friend. My attempt at anonymity didn't work-- it's a small world! I think I'll leave the public radio talk to others. However, it's good practice for me, as I've done small-group outreach, I've never had to explain things to a large, popular audience. This is something I'm sure I'll be asked to do in the future.

Ode to Herbivores

Oh herbivores, how I love thee.

First, you make magnificent shadows.

Second, your selection pressure on plant populations. You are likely responsible for the creation of caffeine (and some other -ines), which are plant defenses- attempts to prevent your attacks. I thank you daily as I drink my coffee.

Shame on you, though; you don't always disperse to new regions with your food source. Hence, your chosen plants "escape" you (herbivore enemies) when arriving on new shores. On arrival, the local plants are being munched, while your food plants multiply, unchecked. This is one reason for the invasion of exotic plants, although it is subject to some debate.

On the up-side, you may provide the way to control invasive plants- by importing you from your homeland to the new location to munch away. That's why the old lady swallowed the fly. We only hope we don't have to then use a spider, a bird, a cat, a dog... you get the picture. Or other unintended effects on the foodweb. See this article: A Weed, A Fly...

So far, you have spared my little container garden outside. My dog is the only one browsing my potted bamboo.

Lastly, the unintended consequences of your lack of action, exploding weed populations, is my raîson d'etre, and the raîson for my graduate school funding, and I thank you for that.

Count me

It's an odd sensation, knowing you are being counted constantly. As I purchased my organic diced tomatoes and Kashi granola bars last night, I was aware, as usual, that using my Ralph's card to get a discount also meant that my purchases were being tallied in a database somewhere.

I don't mean this to be a paranoid observation. I find solace that my choices are being noted somewhere, while in this busy phase of my life in which I don't have time to write to my senators, actually edit blather like this for a newspaper editorial, or sometimes even to vote in local elections.

I buy organics sometimes just to make a tiny tick in the column of the "good guys." I click on news stories on CNN that have to do with the environment, health, and nature. Even if I don't read them. I note with dismay the "most viewed" articles on various news websites are the "man bites dog" types.

I give "hits" to websites I like. Indeed, there are some that actually are paid by their commercial sponsors by the click (see http://www.therainforestsite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=4 -- no endorsement implied).

While I do find some of this borderline intrusive, of course, (e.g. advertising website cookies), going about the business of living my life at the moment means getting grocery store receipts announcing that I've earned $95 in the "Wine Club," whether I like it or not, and Amazon.com suggestions of books I'd like to buy (the latter being an amusing reminder of a journalism course I took 5 years ago, as that's the last time I bought a book from them).

However tiny our personal track record may be, at no time have our lives been so tracked, and have trends been calculated using such seemingly mundane details of our lives.

So count me, why don't you?

The tiniest avocado!

Had a great time visiting with my parents while they were here. Many neat places seen, some new to me. Many fun plants, and fruit found. This berry was found on one of our last outings. I'm growing the seed now according to the toothpick method.

We''ll see how that goes. I've actually failed at this before, but I'm hoping it works this time. It would be really fun to have a tiny avocado tree-- although I'm not holding out hope for fruit. That would take some time. Ironically the parent tree had the tiniest fruit and the largest leaves. Resource allocation oddity?