GeoEcology

The Pleistocene Epoch takes a great leap backward...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:22:00 +0000

The Geological Society of America (GSA) released its new Geological Time Scale April 9, 2009. Overnight, the Pleistocene Epoch is much older, by definition!

This is GSA's first full time scale revision in 25 years. The new revision did not await final resolution and international consensus. Debate continues among researches within the International Commission on Statigraphy, an international body meant to gain international time scale uniformity. The GSA chart anticipates changes likely to come as this debate settles.

According to GSA...

"Some aspects of the GSA Geologic Time Scale do not conform to the recommendations of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The names “Tertiary” and “Pre-cambrian” were not dropped on the new time scale. The Quaternary, the status and boundaries of which are still being debated, was modified to reflect some of the pending recommendations. These differences were retained to best reflect the needs of GSA members and Divisions."

Principal among important changes; The Pleistocene Epoch now begins at 2.6 million years ago. That's 0.8 million years earlier than before. The start of the Pleistocene Epoch marks the time when significant climate cooling resulted in significant changes in the fossil record (among other changes).

Educators gather, Leave No Trace...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:52:00 +0000

Learning and teaching outdoor ethics and skills...

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics advocates sustainable outdoor recreation practiced using methods which greatly reduce visitor impacts to natural areas. The organization's mission is tightly focused on development and promotion of trainings and activities supporting outdoor ethics and skills through ascending scales of involvement. They have built an army of trainers and that army is on the march.

Outdoor ethics and skills, the road show...

This Subaru Tribeca is the Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers program vehicle. Subaru, a leader in green production, makes the Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers program possible through generous corporate giving. Subaru has pledged sustaining, multi-year funds to help LNT build core programs. They offer great deals to LNT membership, too!

A gathering of outdoor educators...

Outdoor Educators from four neighboring states representing diverse groups ranging from the Wilderness Education Association (WEA) to The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) gathered at BSA's beautiful Camp Lazarus near Delaware, Ohio to conference and catch-up on the latest advances and worldwide news about Leave No Trace progress and recent efforts, April 3-5, 2009. The conference was gathered and organized by Ohio's Leave No Trace State Advocate, Don Nash, of University Heights (Cleveland), and hosted by BSA's Simon Kenton Council Conservation Committee led by Chairperson and event co-organizer, Jackie Bain (your blogger's amazing wife) of Delaware County.

Leave No Trace programs support science-guided training...

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics gathers and guides resources; financial contributions, patron and partnership support, membership support, volunteer efforts, and professional and academic work product to support growing worldwide trainings offered by volunteers and professionals. Trainings are guided by ongoing academic research into reducing user impacts in our great outdoors while promoting outdoor recreation and values.

The "authority of the resource" sets Leave No Trace guidance apart from many environmental action groups and movements offering guidance based on less reliable philosophies. Researchers, led by recreation ecologists, bring research results to educators and work with educators to interpret and to translate findings into activity-based trainings. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics supports extraordinary integrative collaboration.

"'authority of the resource' sets Leave No Trace apart from many environmental action groups"

The integration of professional science and professional education with citizen science and citizen educators to influence widespread cultural practices in outdoors settings is a unique approach and a potent brew for stemming the upset caused by repeated misuse of our recreational environments.

"The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics supports extraordinary integrative collaboration."

The Subaru Traveling Trainers Team joined the gathering, too. JD Tanner and Emily Ressler, professional trainers, travel throughout North America (eastern mostly, this is their third year on the road) delivering trainings and building ethics and skills among school children and adults alike.

Traveling Trainers, JD Tanner (right front, with pin-flags bundle), and Emily Ressler (middle, with pin flags) introduce conference participants to a vivid demonstration of the impact of frequent casual toilet practices around a popular remote campsite.

Participants plant bright pin-flags on the spots they might have chosen for a convenient toilet spot if they had been camping nearby for a period of time, without LNT values. This activity helps participants visualize the need for sound management of toilet practices in many busy remote settings like popular wilderness campsites, and it illustrates why frontcountry park and camp users should walk the extra twenty-yards to the campground latrine.

A little history...

Early efforts to reduce human impacts centered on big obvious (often roadside) insults like accidental fire and purposeful littering. These earliest efforts to influence human impacts on public wild lands focused on narrowly defined challenges using 'poster-child' images, mascots, or caricatures and slogans. These familiar early caricatures are iconic today, and still in use.

The early appeals tweaked emotions, particularly among youth. This 'warm--fuzzy' model was first introduced broadly by the USDA Forest Service with the adoption of their cuddly little mascot, "Smokey Bear" during 1944. Today's experienced outdoor educators grew up with a young Smokey Bear and his old slogan,

"ONLY YOU can prevent forest fires."

Today, Smokey Bear is middle-aged and his deep gravelly voice-over is provided by a popular screen actor. His 21st Century slogan is worded a little differently for a new generation of forest managers who regularly use fire as an important natural area management tool. Beginning in April of 2002 Smokey's slogan became:

"Only YOU can prevent wild fires."

A short commercial spot, seen frequently lately, brings our mature Smokey into the lives and conscience of today's youth. Our modern Smokey Bear has his own website, too!

Another early mascot (1970's) addressed litter through our mythical wise owl, Woodsy,

"Give a Hoot--don't pollute!"

Woodsy Owl has enjoyed a make-over, too. He has a new look and a new broader slogan,

"Lend a hand--care for the land!"

Our expanding transportation system during the 50's and 60's, culminating in the completion of the Interstate Highway System, brought the wilderness into reach for many families, hunters and fishermen, and adventurous youth. Old style high-impact camping approaches entered our remote wild lands along with proliferating new cars, trailers, and sundry accouterments supporting a gasoline-powered onslaught of impacts. New environmental impacts followed...

Slogans and images meant to reduce litter and other impacts proliferated and were posted throughout public areas ("Take only pictures--leave only footprints."). Federal land-holding agencies during the 60's--90's increasingly worked together to unify efforts.

A new era of cooperation and effectiveness began with the new century and with the Leave No Trace organization.

A new message and a new method for a new era...

Today's Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is an independent non-profit organization, a direct descendant of the earlier multiple-agency efforts to reduce abuses in the backcountry and wilderness. And, it's a hybrid. A new partner, The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) brought new leadership and professional educators to the problem of impacts during the 1990's and developed comprehensive skills-based approaches which informed inter-agency task forces searching for solutions.

Today, the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is fully independent of federal agencies (no government funding) and reaches further and deeper into our recreation practices than all earlier approaches to managing human impacts in natural settings.

An army of educators...

The Leave No Trace training effort is reducing impacts from millions of visit-days in public outdoor settings, particularly in backcounrty and wilderness areas. Volunteer and professional educators take the message to outdoor enthusiasts through a network of state advocates coordinating trainer-trainers known as LNT Master Educators. Master Educators train Leave No Trace Trainers. Leave No Trace Trainers offer public meeting presentations, awareness workshops, youth group programs, school programs, and mentoring.

Leave No Trace programs for frontcountry...

Frontcountry programs developed by Leave No Trace are all about Conservation of Recreation Spaces. Our roadside parks and other public areas are developed and hardened with roadways, manicured trails, toilet facilities, and turf so these frequently visited areas can sustain high traffic while remaining natural. Even so, the user impacts to frontcountry public areas are often serious. Frontcountry outdoor recreation spaces are the best places to introduce concepts for reducing impacts everywhere.

Outdoor ethics in practice...

Your blogger held the after lunch agenda block so we offered a walk-and-talk to explore for user impacts and to discuss possible training approaches to reduce impacts. Along the way we introduced and practiced a 'recognition model' guided walk aimed at helping hikers learn and practice Leave No Trace skills in our frontcountry camp setting. We gathered outside the camp dining hall where we discussed the Three R's of the recognition model, Remind, Recognize, Recommend. The recognition model is not an LNT-developed approach (though there are many similarities), rather it stems from a body of literature guiding skills-based training (coaching models) used in industrial settings.

"the Three R's...Remind--Recognize--Recommend"

Remind frontcountry (or wilderness) users of their immediate opportunities to reduce impacts...

We began by reminding hikers of immediate opportunities to practice simple skills leading to reduced impacts on the frontcountry camp, such as stepping on durable surfaces, (remind is not the same as correct--reminders are opportunities reviewed before the action, not unwelcome corrections along the way).

We invited everyone to talk about what LNT skills "look like" when practiced. For example, stepping in the muddy trail-center to avoid stepping off trail--a high impact practice that leads to trail spread--you know--when the trail loops wider and wider to each side as the center mud puddle grows). Building outdoor ethics requires introducing principles, then reinforcing them through practice. Acknowledging and talking about specific skills during training sessions is a great way to develop and reinforce outdoor skills along the way.

Next, hikers paired-up to offer casual recognition to one another when seeing ongoing skills practiced during the hike. While we talked, before departure, we passed around a box of ziplock bags to help carry out any litter we might find along the way--a great reminder to pick up litter!

"...talk about what outdoor skills 'look like' when practiced."

Conference participants examine impacts of 86 years of recreation at venerable Camp Lazarus while practicing using a 'recognition model' for reinforcing skills.

Recognize frontcountry (or wilderness) users practicing skills along the trail and in camp...

While we hiked around camp to study the cumulative impacts of 86 years of very heavy use by youth and adults recreating in the great outdoors, we talked about the challenge of bringing lots of traffic into the natural setting of a nature-based camp without losing the nature in the natural setting. Conversation about "durable surfaces" and other concepts was interrupted (by design) by frequent individual and group recognitions,

"Thanks for picking up that plastic bottle."

"Thanks for stepping in that trail puddle to avoid trail-widening and side-trails impacts!"

The group quickly recognized the power of simple acknowledgment, a casual,

"Thank you"

The phrase, "Thank you" and other simple acknowledgments are powerful tools for reinforcing simple skills used along the trail.

We found the camp well designed with durable but permeable roads and trails, copious turf for running and playing and team sports, and plenty of well preserved natural landscapes inter-fingering along forested drains, bringing nature close in. We found 'hardened' surfaces designed to sustain traffic, and we found compacted surfaces in need of recovery. Most of the impacts observed centered on camper compliance with required camp methods such as proper ash disposal, avoiding casual trail development, and migrating campfire rings. These common camp problems are solvable through developing outdoor ethics and skills!

"The group quickly recognized the power of a simple acknowledgment.'"

Recommend ideas to frontcountry users to help them plan ahead and prepare...

Recommend frontcountry (or wilderness) visit dates, route ideas, and equipment suggestions to aid users in their planning and preparations for their future visits: And, recommend frontcountry park and camp maintenance and management needs to assist camp and park professionals (for example; a brush pile to block a feeder trail to an informal social trail network forming on a steep shale slope).

Discussing "lessons learned" captures important ideas for preparing for future visits. When we ask outdoor users to use reduced impact approaches, and they try, they discover roadblocks. Recommendations can help remove personal roadblocks and make frontcountry areas more user-friendly for reduced impacts.

One great example of a personal recommendation from our hike was trying-out rubber-bottom boots. Rubber-bottom type boots or trail shoes keep your feet dry when you step through trail-puddles.

The popularity of expensive designer sneakers and hiking shoes is one important cause of increased trail-widening and new trail short-cuts in my opinion. Hikers wearing clean expensive designer sneakers or sophisticated trail shoes usually go to great effort (way off trail) to keep their expensive shoes clean and dry--their shoes are part of their 'look', on trail and off. They need to keep them clean for the restaurant they will visit later in the evening. Rubber-bottom boots or shoes stay on trail--mud is no problem. I just hose-off my rubber-bottom boots when I get home.

Obtaining proper equipment for walking Ohio's often muddy trails is part of the first principle of Leave No Trace, Plan Ahead and Prepare!

L.L.Bean's Maine Hunting Shoe is a longtime favorite of outdoors people, including your blogger (my boots pictured). They will always be in-style as far as we're concerned. These watertight boot designs are comfortable, breathe and protect, and they are great footwear for Ohio's muddy spring and fall landscapes where slopes are not too steep. The rubber chain-link tread is easy on both durable and not so durable surfaces. They don't pick up a lot of mud like deep tread soles. Hikers can confidently walk through deep puddles and along the durable surfaces of gravelly streambeds to avoid side-stepping, causing trail-spread, or to leave no trace on undisturbed off-trail areas by stepping the streambed gravel. The boot's soles are non-marring, too (the soles don't leave scuff-marks on rocks as you scramble over their durable surfaces).

Venerable outdoor supplier, L.L.Bean Inc., is a 2009 Special Projects Partner and longtime supporter of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. Partnerships between outdoor gear suppliers and the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics are vital for continued success.

Next we returned to the dining hall for more great programming and networking to conclude a successful summit of outdoor educators.

About forty-five people participated in the conference, odds are we'll do it again next year for even more LNT advocates!

The LNT message is summarized in Seven Principles:

Plan Ahead and Prepare
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
Dispose of Waste Properly
Leave What You Find
Minimize Campfire Impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be Considerate of Other Visitors

See my post from May 5, 2008 for more about Leave No Trace and a Leave No Trace Master Educator Course.

Florida revisted...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:22:00 +0000

For my father, whose borrowed elements have returned to the biosphere.

Thomas D. Bain Jr.
1930-2009

Solace in nature...

Sunrise over Merritt Island where the Space Shuttle is prepped and waiting to slip the surly bonds of Earth, center horizon.

Manatee browsing algae along riverside rip-rap, Haulover Canal, Merritt Island.
These gentle giants barely ripple the surface of warm water rivers and springs they visit during wintertime.

A Reddish Egret dancing-up dinner along the shallows of a Merritt Island lagoon.

This live oak, festooned with Spanish moss and resurrection fern, was a large tree when fabled Naturalist William Bartram is said to have passed by during his travels in 1774.

Gopher tortoise at home on remnant ancient sand dunes of the Lake Wales Ridge, central Florida. This 14 inch animal may be over sixty years old.

Florida Scrub Jay. Gangs of rare jays find young pine clearcuts a substitute for diminishing oak scrub.

Native oak scrub (at right), one of the most endangered habitats in Florida, supports more endemic species than any other. Citrus at left. We are looking down slope from the crest of the Lake Wales Ridge toward Archibold Biological Research Station, near Avon Lake, central Florida.

Florida oranges brighten breakfast tables everywhere. Oak scrub endemics are dozed aside to make room for citrus as demand continues.

Crested Caracara at nest site (between billboards), Moore Haven, Florida.

So many families thread connections to Florida from around the United States and Canada, the place has become a central element in the tapestry of the American experience. Aged generations move there for warm retirement, younger generations follow for fun and sun. Native flora and fauna move aside or integrate along the margins of human habitats.

Many families; Snowbirds and vacation visitors, know Florida only marginally; the beaches, the roadsides, the social environments and cultural attractions. My family is firmly threaded in this tapestry, but I was fortunate to have been introduced to the depths of the Florida experience; the plants, the birds, the mammals, the geology and fossils, and a little history. My grandfather and father reached into the sands, the skies, and the waters of Florida. I have followed them. Florida is a remarkable place, the more so beyond the margins.

My connections with Florida began during my teen years visiting grandparents wintering in Daytona. My father followed them, building and retiring in Sebring, Florida. I have followed for family and natural history visits, but I will not pursue retirement there where there is now too little room for me with surviving native species. I will visit again and again with my son and I hope he will know, appreciate, and help to protect natural Florida.

Lawn art, life-size Aluminum wildlife (non-native) for sale.

Visitors, transplants, and immigrants bring their diverse arrays of cultural influences into the depths of Florida. More and more habitat is taken for human environments, increasingly artificial and surficial. Still, there is much of native Florida left to inspire young and old, and many wonderful people pulling together for habitat for all.

Tom Bain Jr. standing on a ladder leading to service on one of many Habitat homes he helped to build with Florida families.

Tom Bain Jr. was born into that muscular post-war generation that wrestled abundant living from global tensions and globalizing prosperity. Dad rounded his life by helping to build scores of homes in central Florida, working with the generous folks of Habitat for Humanity, Highlands County, Florida. Dad, full of years--full of experience, slipped the surly bonds of Earth March 8, 2009.

Contributions in Dad's name to Habitat for Humanity are greatly appreciated by the Bain family and by many deserving Florida families helping to build their own futures.

The making of a "trail tree"...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:47:00 +0000

Natural systems create bemusing natural phenomena. Trees, in their many wonderful forms, are beautiful natural sculptures, bemusing and inspiring us.

We find local "trail trees" among the mix of tree damage types in a wind-shear zone...

A small "trail tree" type. A wind damage survivor.

Here in central Ohio, where the glaciated flatlands meet the linear north--south river valleys formed by glacial drainage, we find zones of heavy wind damage among forest trees. These damage zones follow the upper slopes where the flatlands ramp downward along fairly steep flanks to the river valleys below. Frequent wind-shear along these slopes causes recurrent timber damage. Observers can see multiple episodes of shear damage preserved in trees of different age classes. Wintertime is the best time to look for damage patterns among forest trees.

We made another visit to Bent Tree Trail, Amy Clark/Bader Bird Sanctuary, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, to chase birds, check for signs of Spring, and ponder the bemusing shapes of the many damaged trees found along the trail.

We brought along our camera to shoot a sequence illustrating natural development of contorted trees into shapes known as "trail trees."

Stage one...

About a year ago, a windstorm felled a large dead tree over the trunk of a smaller living tree. The smaller tree was struck high, bending it over without uprooting the tree or snapping-off its trunk. A smaller tree to its right did not withstand the blow, its trunk snapped several feet above the ground. The surviving tree is pinned in a near-horizontal position, held between the felled tree and another larger tree.

Stage two...

A living small branch of the pinned tree re-oriented and grew toward the sunlight, against gravity, and shot upward with vigorous growth during one growing season. Growth inhibitors manufactured by canopy leaves had suppressing growth of low branches like this one until the crown was pushed down, away from sunlight. The new growth is now the dominate growth. The pinned crown has withered and is dying.

Stage three...

A nearby tree exhibits a later stage along the development path our pinned tree will likely follow as it survives future decades. This tree was pinned, I'm guessing, twenty years ago. A small branch originally well below the crown became its new dominate growth (apical dominance) as it recovered from the insult. The original crown, and the segment of tree trunk feeding the original crown, are now gone. A naval scar (ring-scar) is all that remains of the withered trunk and crown.

Stage three continued...

My lovely field assistant brightens the forest with her smile as she stands in for scale (my wife, Jackie). Maybe I'd better say that I'm HER field assistant...

Folklore suggests that Native Americans made "trail trees" (A.K.A. "signal trees," "warning trees," "compass trees," "boundary trees," and so on...) by tying down saplings so they would survive to grow pointing in the direction of a trail or toward an important resource, a spring or a landing for a portage trail, and so on.

Some enthusiasts suggest Native Americans had a secret method of creating the cubby-hole (the ring-scar seen in the photograph above) by inserting a piece of charcoal or some secret concoction that made the tree grow a hollow they would latter use to leave secret totems, messages, and the like. This young tree made its own cubby-hole without assistance from humans (unless some secret practitioner of the lost art of cubby-hole creation still prowls our forests--anything is possible).

Stage four...

Another nearby tree exhibits a much later stage along the development path our pinned tree will likely follow, if it survives many future decades. This old survivor is much too young to have been the project of a Native American trail-blazer. It too is a product of wind damage. Nevertheless, it illustrates the potential for survival after violent paroxysms mangle trees, whatever the origin of the damage. The open truck of this tree suggests it may not survive another decade or two, but who knows.

Countless examples of all stages of "trail tree" development are scattered throughout our Eastern Deciduous Forest. I've seen hundreds of examples at all stages of development, far prettier than those pictured above (I'm going to have to start carrying a camera all the time). Some "trail trees" are so perfectly formed, they seem to approach artistic expression. At first, it seems these beautiful trees must surely result from intervention by human beings.

Through time, and broadening experience, I've encountered many trees exhibiting a complete continuum of development of these contorted shapes, all randomly distributed throughout the forests I've visited--though more frequently found in recurrent windfall areas such as wind-shear zones or along steep slopes with loose eroding soil. Nature makes "trail trees." You may label me skeptical, but my skepticism results from thousands of hours of work and recreation in our forests while pursuing professional and avocational projects.

The folklore of "trail trees" is fun, and it's very understandable. Check-out the many Internet sites offering pictures of these beautiful and bemusing trees. Large trees are inspiring regardless of personal beliefs.

Checking-out the natural mechanisms creating such beautiful mysteries is even more fun. Nature does not need our help to create beautiful mysteries.

Asteroid gadfly...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:41:00 +0000

Earth experienced an extra-terrestrial near-miss a couple of days ago. Asteroid 2009 DD45 surprised observers. Asteroids known and unknown gadfly humanity.

Asteroid Itokawa, Credit & Copyright ISAS, JAXA.
NASA's Picture of the Day, May 22, 2007.

Asteroids, like this giant studied by Japanese researchers, are big chunks of early solar system rock moving at very high speeds in eccentric orbits around the Sun. This one is much larger than our recent gadfly, Asteroid 2009 DD45.

Asteroid 2009 DD45 unexpectedly whizzed close by Earth a couple of days ago, giving just a couple of days warning. Closest approach came less than five Earth diameters away. The lump of rock was between 19 and 43 meters across--more than big enough to equal the Tunguska Event, a massive air blast over Siberia which leveled 800 square miles of ancient Siberian forest in 1908. Most investigators think the Tunguska Event resulted from the explosion of a similar size asteroid as it entered the atmosphere.

Today, the impact of an asteroid of this size would result in human and economic, and natural catastrophe, wherever it occurred, whether or not we saw it coming.

The time scale of human life, even that of human civilization, is small compared to the frequency of catastrophic impacts of all sorts, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The geological record is punctuated by countless catastrophes.

Even as we reflect on the occasions of the 200 year anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150 year anniversary of the publishing of his On the Origin of Species; do we fail to fully encompass the stochastic nature of change that resulted in today's diversity and distribution of life?

Charles Lyell, geologist, proponent of "uniformitarianism," published his influential three volume Principles of Geology in 1830-1833. He gave Darwin deep time in which to operate his slow agents of change. And, he gave us all the next best thing to no change at all--gradualism, slow change we can live with comfortably.

If our lives spanned millennia rather than decades, maybe we'd have a better grasp of the importance of the sudden hiccups that shake things up and change outcomes globally. Maybe then we would encompass the meteoric speed of change Homo sapiens has brought, and the Earth-changing impact of that collision.

Asteroid 2009 DD45 details can be found at Tom's Asteroid Flybys Webpage.

See goodSchist for a discussion of asteroids and cosmic precursors for life: Cerces, Dawn and (no) Panspermia.

Winter wings over The Wilds...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Bundled birders rendezvous with raptors at The Wilds.

Red-tailed Hawk pushing through its first power stroke after leaving a perch at The Wilds.

Photo by Mike Maier, Photographer, Avian Expressions.

Record low temperature did not dissuade hardy birds or the hard-core birders determined to discover them at The Wilds. About one-hundred and fifteen birders gathered with all manner of winged-things wild and free for the Ohio Ornithological Society's (OOS) 4th annual winter raptor rendezvous at The Wilds, January 17.

Bulky-bundled birders exhaled swirling breath-clouds into piercing sub-zero air while gathering in The Wilds' visitor's center parking lot to organize eight field teams early in the morning (my vehicle thermometer dropped to 12 below zero Fahrenheit while passing through low hollows among surrounding hills).

Birding teams were dispatched in rotation through eight breezy observation areas by OOS organizers Marc Nolls and Cheryl Harner to ensure good habitat coverage and good birding. Teams canvassed grassy reclaimed hills and swales searching high and low for winged-things wild and free. Raptors were abundant and birders were not disappointed.

A nest box for American Kestrels erected through partnership between OOS, AEP, and The Wilds, overlooking one of the hundreds of frozen reclamation lakes, ponds, and wetlands dotting The Wilds and surrounding American Electric Power's tp://www.aep.com/environmental/recreation/recland/">ReCreation Lands.

Here, at The Wilds, over ten thousand acres of rolling grasslands and shrub-steppe habitat interrupt and diversify the steeply divided deciduous hillsides of eastern Ohio's Allegheny Plateau. Here, open-country birds of the northland find new winter habitat where forests once dominated.

Ninety-percent of the acreage at The Wilds has been surfaced mined for the bituminous coal that powered economic growth during the Baby-boomer heyday in the Midwest. Award-winning reclamation, and partnerships between AEP, The Wilds, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, inspired by a new era of reclamation legislation in Ohio, resurrected this wild area from a post-mining spoil wasteland to its youthful steppe ecosystem friendly for vertebrates, wild and semi-wild. Today, The Wilds is home to conservation science and research and home to some 29 species of rare mammals from around the world, some no longer found in the wild. The Wilds is a giant research zoo; and, The Wilds is a winter raptor magnet!

Some of the raptors and other birds my group enjoyed seeing:

Golden Eagle, Rough-legged Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, Northern Harrier, Short-eared Owl. Other groups spotted a Merlin, too. Snow Buntings made an appearance. A number of waterfowl kept a small spot of water open below the visitor's center. Among them were Tundra Swan, Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, Mallard, Canada Goose, American Black Duck, Hooded Merganser, and Lesser Scaup.

This event was organized and staffed by generous volunteers with the Ohio Ornithological Society.

Chipping Sparrow endures Ohio winter...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:02:00 +0000

Today, we found an out-of-season Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) subsisting on suet and sunflower seeds at feeders in Hogback Road Nature Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County.

A Chipping Sparrow visiting a suet feeder in Delaware County, central Ohio. The wing toward the camera is drooping, suggesting the bird is injured. The injury may explain why this strongly migratory bird has remained in the north. The gray rump, strong eye-line and superciliary (eye-brow line), and two-toned bill are important fieldmarks.

The 'clincher' fieldmark is found just in front of the eye: The 'lores', between eye and bill is dark, continuing the strong eye-line evident behind the eye. This one fieldmark separates the Chipping Sparrow in winter from other similar species.

Note the wing-bars and streaked crown.

Summertime chippers are more boldly colored. The crown becomes rich chestnut bounded by long white superciliaries and black eye-lines, a striking pattern, to be sure. I look forward to their return every spring.

Chipping Sparrows are familiar springtime and summertime birds of lawn and garden, park lands and cemeteries, throughout Ohio. Their cheery trill announces their spring return with the emergence of showy wildflowers in April. Chippers are likely to nest in your yard and mine annually. With the advancing season their strong migratory impulse compels them to move well south of Ohio, most leaving by late October. Very few linger into December. January records are accidental to casual in Ohio. Warming climate and the proliferation of feeding stations are two possible reasons more and more Chipping Sparrows are reported each winter in Ohio and other northern states.

A view of crown and nape detail.

"Squirrel plagues" and 'side-hunts'...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:04:00 +0000

American history as presented to elementary students offers an heroic view of wilderness settlement. Our founding fathers and pioneer ancestors "carved" civilization from trackless "wastes" as they "conquered" wilderness North America; its flora and fauna and its native peoples were swept aside. They called it progress. We celebrate these "victories" still.

Conversion of North American ecosystems to support agriculture and development continues today, though our values and our challenges have changed. Today, we seek to preserve and recover remnants of the wilderness and the wildlife now mostly gone while attempting to sustain continued economic growth--the present economic "correction" notwithstanding.

Our pioneer ancestors faced challenges that we can't appreciate, today. Biological abundance was a fact of wild America. Spectacular wildlife populations and vast forests assured a prevailing mythology of inexhaustible abundance. Frequent depredations brought on by overwhelming hordes of gray squirrels or Passenger Pigeons, and some large carnivores, particularly wolves, to row-crops, orchards, and livestock excused excesses; regular slaughters ensued.

Squirrel plagues...

This account of a squirrel migration, by Christian Schultz, is typical of early accounts. He described countless squirrels swimming the Ohio River, or drowning in the attempt, while he floated down the Ohio River during 1807.

The mast forests of eastern North America; our abundant oaks, hickories, chestnuts (formerly abundant), and beech supported huge populations of squirrels and giant flocks of Passenger Pigeons, long ago. White-tailed deer and Wild Turkeys, Ruffed Grouse and Rusty Blackbirds consummed abundant mast, too. Mast trees, particularly the oaks, produced massive crops some years followed by small crops other years, regionally. This boom and bust crop was critical for vertebrate wildlife, and caused population growth, declines, and migrations on a grand scale.

Synchronized masting over large areas ensured superabundant crops would overwhelm ravenous wildlife populations so future forests could seed from mast left behind. Abundant years were followed by years offering hardly any mast. These sometimes unpredictable and irregular masting cycles challenged squirrels, intractably bound to the earth and trees by gravity. Passenger Pigeons, on the other hand, enjoyed the freedom of flight. Massive pigeon flocks simply flew away from barren areas to discover abundant crops elsewhere. When pigeons found a heavy mast, they descended like a "plague of locusts" and devoured it in a "biological storm" of foraging.

This combination of cyclical synchronized masts and random "biological storms" occasionally left squirrels with empty cupboards, empty stomachs, and an itch to flee to abundance elsewhere: The great squirrel migrations followed. As settlement spread, squirrels were pressed further, and the inevitable intersection with human agriculture followed by crop depredations made these migrations "plagues" in the view of settlers.

Side-hunts...

Local pioneers gathered seasonally for spirited competitions to see which 'side' could kill the most squirrels, pigeons, deer, rattle snakes, or a mixed-bag. The objective of these 'side-hunts' often centered on a local scourge, frequently superabundant squirrels, and anything else passing in front of their gun sights.

Frontier hunts were important social gatherings where men exhibited their hunting prowess, and women and families sometimes gathered to barbecue the bag, put-up food, and consider future pairings. The results of frontier side-hunts occasionally made newsprint, if first-hand reports made their way to distant printers.

An 1801 'side-hunt' for squirrels, near Lexington, Kentucky, was reported in an early regional paper printed in Chillicothe, Ohio:

Scioto Gazette vol.II No.58 Thursday, May 28 1801.

Lexington, (Kentucky) May 18.
SQUIRREL HUNT.

"On the 8th inft. the citizens of the

counties of Mercer and Lincoln, had

a hunting match, for a barbacue. The

match was to have been 25 hunters on

each fide, but only about 20 on a fide

met ; in the courfe of the day, they kil

led 5,442 fquirrels, and bets were offered

that the fame company could kill double

that number the day following. We have

the above information from one of the

party."

Happy New Year, naturally...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0000

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones,
and good in every thing..."

William Shakespeare

Find yourself in nature in 09.

A New Year is here...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Make a resolution...

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

It's never too late!

"A Christmas Bird-Census" and "that ornithological millennium"

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, Editor of Bird-Lore, the "official organ of the Audubon Societies," revived and revamped a quintessential American frontier tradition, the 'side-hunt', and launched a new millennium for bird conservation, "that ornithological millennium when the value of birds to man will be common knowledge."

Bird-Lore, the "official Audubon Societies publication" at the turn of the 19th Century

Frank M. Chapman launched a new era of public involvement with wildlife a century and eight years ago. The December 1900 issue of Bird-Lore (Volume 2, Number 6) carried Chapman's proposal to a growing readership of popular conservationists, particularly women:

"Now Bird-Lore proposes a new kind of Christmas side hunt, in the form of a Christmas bird-census, and we hope that all our readers who have the opportunity will aid us in making it a success by spending a portion of Christmas Day with the birds and sending a report of their 'hunt' to Bird-Lore before they retire that night."

Chapman's genius was to reawaken a popular frontier social event, long past, by way of substitution, a gathering for a bird count in place of a bird and wildlife shoot.

Chapman explained,
"It was not many years ago that Sportsmen were accustomed to meet on Christmas Day, 'choose sides,' and then, as representatives of the two bands resulting, hie them into the fields and woods on the cheerful mission of killing practically everything in fur or feathers that crossed their path--if they could.
These exceptional opportunities for winning the laurels of the chase were termed 'side-hunts,' and reports of the hundreds of non-game birds which were sometimes slaughtered during a single hunt were often published in our leading sportsman's journals, with perhaps a word of editorial commendation for the winning side."

Chapman continued,
"We are not certain that the side hunt is wholly a thing of the past, but we feel assured that no reputable sportsman's journal of today would venture to publish an account of one, unless it were to condemn it; and this very radical change of tone is one of the significant signs of the times."

Competitive indiscriminate hunts, side-hunts, for all manner of winged and wild things already were mostly a thing of the past, in large part, a victim of the Sportsman's ethics movement that had increasingly vilified indiscriminate slaughter during the later decades of the 19th Century. Side-hunts were a frontier phenomenon; they were tamed as the frontier was tamed.

Sportsmen were prominent among leaders of the early conservation movement. Up until the late 1800's nearly all conservationists were Sportsmen, and visa verse. There were social divisions over hunting wildlife during those times, but these divisions were not so much between hunters and non-hunters as between recreational sportsmen and the massive commercial kills of market gunners and pot-hunters feeding the public hunger for food and fashion among America's exploding population.

Legions of ladies launched a new century of bird conservation...

Chapman made poster-children of colorful birds, and engaged a growing army of concerned women to battle the millinery trade which fueled massive worldwide bird kills for colorful and elegant quills to adorn stylish ladies' hats. Extravagant urban bonnets might feature whole birds and even their nests with eggs arranged atop a fashionable lady's head!

Popular reaction to costly slaughter of birds for bird-adorned hats may have resulted in much more than the elimination of bird quills from bonnets; public reaction to the slaughter of beautiful birds moved a generation toward conservation and environmental concerns beyond birds and wildlife.

The Condor 3 (March 1901), 55.

A cartoon published in The Condor, a leading ornithologist's journal, pictured Chapman leading an army of women!

Chapman was buoyed by successes during that "red-letter year," 1900, which brought several giant leaps in bird conservation, capped-off by passage of the Lacy Act, the first federal law criminalizing the interstate transport of illegally acquired wildlife for sale.

Chapman's genius engaged conservation-minded people in conservation-related actions from active protest to bird-counting. This was a great leap forward from parlor-gossip and editorializing.

The first Christmas Bird Count was held Christmas Day 1900 by 27 participants in 25 locations throughout North America. The count did not immediately attract legions of bird watchers, but grew steadily, and over time became more structured and pervasive.

Today, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (the CBC) is the largest and longest-running wildlife census, ever. This year's count period between December 14 and January 5 will involve close to 60,000 birders in thousands of counts worldwide (mostly in North America) in the 109th consecutive CBC. The CBC is an important social event for birders and naturalists, annually, much as were the seasonal side-hunts of frontier America.

Hats-off to Frank Chapman and the men and women who launched the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, and to all who helped to curtail the mass slaughter of North America's wildlife so that we may know it today!

2008: What a cool year...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:47:00 +0000

It's official, 2008 was the coolest year this century! Several major worldwide climate monitoring networks have recorded the subtle cooling. The cooling is not being felt everywhere, but here in the Midwest United States it's definitely noticeable, and it's a relief.

But, wait: 2008 was very warm compared with the 20th Century. It was the 9th warmest year since 1880 according to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss). I guess we are just getting used to the balmy greenhouse climate of the 21st Century.

Global warming has not reversed, but we are getting a breather from the really warm preceding decade as La Nina, a minor climate cycle driven by Pacific Ocean temperature and current flow variations, wanes. Her partner, El Nino, is full of hot air and may be just around the corner: Fingers crossed. Let's hope the cool trend lasts a while longer.

"Peter Scott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the UK Met Office of which the Hadley Centre is a part, suggested that in previous decades 2008 would have stood out as unusually warm."

Quoted by the BBC, speaking of 1998, the warmest year on record, Scott suggests, ""Human influence, particularly emission of greenhouse gases, has greatly increased the chance of having such warm years," he said.""

Rising greenhouse gases and exceptionally strong El Nino conditions pushed thermometers to an average of about 14.52C for 1998.

The ten warmest years since 1880:
1998 - 14.52C

2005 - 14.48C

2003 - 14.46C

2002 - 14.46C

2004 - 14.43C

2006 - 14.42C

2007 - 14.40C

2001 - 14.40C

1997 - 14.36C

2008 - 14.31C

Data: Met Office Hadley Centre

A BTU conserved is more than a BTU earned!

Read more from the BBC here.

Great white squirrel...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Well, not really white...

A golden-white fox squirrel visiting our Delaware County, Ohio yard.

This beautiful fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) was a one-day wonder, it did not return. One fuzzy photo was all I could manage.

The leucistic* fox squirrel visited our yard recently, envious of the feeding station access our local gang of four fox squirrels enjoy. Its repeated attempts to approach our feeding station failed. The locals were decidedly unfriendly! This squirrel appears to lack some dark pigments but retains others.

* I use the term leucistic as a catch-all for all light-side pigment irregularities, reserving the term "albinistic" for completely white, red-eye wonders with two recessive genes causing total lack of pigmentation. I'll welcome a recently published reference offering a set of definitions clarifying descriptive and genetic terminology about these integument irregularities.

FLOW through a winter watershed hike...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:29:00 +0000

FLOW members (Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed) hike Deer Run through Camp Lazarus.

Wintertime opens our temperate landscapes for easier viewing while deciduous leaves are down. Landscapes and landforms are much easier to see when they are not veiled under summertime green. This is the best time to explore geology. Members of FLOW joined Jackie and I in exploring the fresh white winter landscape and geology of Camp Lazarus Saturday, December 6.

Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed exploring Camp Lazarus. Left to right; Joe Brehm, Joanne Leussing, Megan Zale, Mike Welsh, Greg Hostetler, Joanne Wissler, Rich Wissler, your blogger. Photo by Jackie

FLOW is a 501C3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Lower Olentangy River watershed quality while hyper-development spreads through the watershed's landscape. They partner with stakeholders and work with decision-makers to guide responsible development of the watershed to protect watershed resources for all of us.

Jackie is Education Coordinator with Preservation Parks of Delaware County, and an occasional host of FLOW hikes. I joined the hike to offer geoecological insights and just to explore and have fun with fellow naturalists.

We hiked Deer Run, a small tributary of the Olentangy River south of Delaware, Ohio from near its origin along State Route 23 near the entrance to BSA's venerable Camp Lazarus, to its junction with Lazarus Run near the Olentangy River terrace.*

Topographic map of Lazarus Run and Deer Run, Delaware County, Ohio. Lazarus Run courses east-west. Deer Run joins from the north. The Olentangy River at far left.

Snow fell throughout our two-hour scramble along the steep waterway. Birds were mostly quiet, the usual cast of characters made brief appearances, Downy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Dark-eyed Junco, Eastern Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadee, and so on. Squirrels and cub scouts were abundant.

Our walk assembled on glacial till, a flatish ground moraine left by the last ice sheet at least fifteen thousand years ago. The ground moraine supports remnant vernal pools, dry this time of year. Scattered pin oaks flag the dry vernal pools area. Shagbark hickories and a few shellbark hickories mark the slightly drier areas.

A constant crunch of hickory nuts underfoot announced a really abundant mast crop this year. Sugar maple and American beech thrive among red oaks and scattered white oaks as we approached the steepening slopes. Soon we stepped off of the thin ground moraine and onto slopes formed of shale bedrock. Oaks dominated the steep dry shale slopes.

It's a fairly short walk behind the camp nature center to where the slope begins to increase as the terrain descends westward toward the Olentangy River 120 feet below. Deer Run begins as a small drain easily straddled by a hiker near the roadway. It's dammed along a short segment for a small pond used by scouts for nature programming, then it runs free to the Olentangy River.

Deer Run deepens and steepens dramatically over a short distance. Its steep youthful profile exhibits the rapid down-cutting and headward erosion caused by the rapid cutting of the Olentangy River Valley.

Geologically speaking, Deer Run formed fast and furious and continues to form, today, more slowly. Its meandering path suggests it first found its course on a fairly uniform and low slope moraine surface before down-cutting quickly deepened the channel, greatly slowing meander-widening.

Glacial meltwater cut the Olentangy River Valley quickly through about ninety feet of shale bedrock, the Ohio Shale and the Olentangy Shale, then through about thirty feet of Delaware Limestone, a silty dark limestone with fossil beds. The resistant Columbus Limestone beneath it greatly slowed down-cutting as it is a very resistant bedrock.

The geo-speak for the pattern of watercourses in this area is "consequent drainage." It happened this way: The Olentangy River Valley formed as the Wisconsin ice sheet (or earlier ice sheet**) melted, its channel carried immense volumes of water and glacial outwash sediments southward to the Scioto River. While draining the huge volume of meltwater the river eroded deeply quickly, forming steep slopes flanking its course. Drainage along these steep slopes quickly consolidated into the tributaries we recognize today which cut down quickly to keep pace with the deepening Olentangy.

Along the way we noted the jointed (regularly fractured) Ohio Shale and we snapped pieces of fresh black shale from the streambed to smell the organic echo of long ago life (The Ohio Shale here was deposited about 365 million years ago). The Ohio Shale is 30 percent organic by volume.

The streambed was littered with glacial erratics, rocks not of the immediate area, which were originally left in moraine high above, and since have eroded free and rolled or slid downslope to the streambeds.

Our journey continued to the geological contact between the Ohio Shale and the gray silty Olentangy Shale, then back up slope through the camp.

The geological contact between two bedrock formations where Deer Run joins Lazarus Run. Above, the brownish weathered organic Ohio Shale formation. Below, the grayish silty Olentangy Shale formation. This is a sharp contact exhibiting abrupt change in sedimentary conditions.

Watch the Preservation Parks of Delaware County website and the Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed website for future opportunities to explore Delaware County nature and geology.

*Camp Lazarus is private property. Permission must be obtained in advance from The Boy Scouts of America to visit the camp.

**At least four major ice sheets advanced into Central Ohio based on sediments described. More ice sheets probably visited the area before these but their sediments do not survive to be described. The original formation of the Olentangy River Valley might have occurred much earlier. The valley might have been cut into bedrock, then filled with glacial sediments, then eroded again several times during the Pleistocene.

Crossbills and kames, nomads from the north...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:21:00 +0000

We visit with White-winged Crossbills visiting a "marble orchard" on a glacial kame in Wyandot County, Ohio...

White-winged Crossbills feasting on hemlock seeds, Oak Hill Cemetery, Wyandot County, Ohio.

Old fashioned cemeteries are great birding spots, and there's something touching about beautiful birds visiting our beloved. Oak Hill Cemetery, located a few miles due south of Upper Sandusky, Wyandot County, Ohio is a great example, a wintergreen garden full of mature spruce, hemlock, and arbor vitae. Just find the community of Upper Sandusky, Ohio, then leave town going south on Route 67 a short distance to county highway 119. Go left on 119 to the first curve and enter at the gate.

Birding begins as you drive along the gravel entry passing a long hedge of tall arbor vitae ("tree of life") watching for Pine Siskins. Next, head for the nearest magnificent spruce and hemlock trees shading the "marble orchard" (That's areal photo interpreter jargon for old cemeteries, often placed on glacial kames. Kames really 'pop' when viewing 3D stereo images for terrain analysis. Cemeteries were often placed on hilly glacial kames as were orchards--both uses required well-drained soils).

Monday, Jackie and I, with naturalist Kim Banks stopped by Oak Hill Cemetery to glimpse the visiting White-winged Crossbills reported by Rick Counts and others on the Ohio Birds listserv this weekend. Rick was there and he commented that he'd been stopping by this cemetery for ten years looking for birds; perseverance pays! Through birder generosity and the internet, we all net benefit.

We saw a flock of crossbills as soon as we entered the cemetery, even before we could lower our windows to hear their cheery calls. We followed the flock to a large hemlock where birders already had them staked out. We got the low-down as we approached the observers, Ben Warner was there with Rick. There were about 40 birds total, earlier, including a Red Crossbill in the morning, and a few Pine Siskins, too.

We saw at least two flocks of White-winged Crossbills during our visit. The larger flock of 26 birds included both sexes and cooperated nicely. Red-bellied Woodpeckers were vocal, too. The red-bellied's are local but the crossbills are rare visiting nomads moving south to the tune of melodies we can't hear, but we think they are conducted by the northern cone crop cycles and such. This year is shaping up as a good invasion year--watch the listserv for a sighting near you!

Our most rewarding sighting unfolds like this: First, we hear cheery calls as a noisy flock wheels overhead passing this evergreen and that until they choose a cone-laden tree to visit. They drop in, spreading throughout the treetop and vanishing instantly among the green boughs. Next, we approach the tree and scan. Soon we begin seeing one crossbill after another high in the tree. Their antics tickle smiles across our faces. There are lots of raspberry males and limey females busily wedging cone scales. They bring to mind little parrots, the way they cling in all manner of positions, bouncing and swaying in the wind, while getting at the cones.

As time passes we see more and more as they descend the outer boughs of the evergreen, lower and lower, until nearly in reach; these guys are tame. Rick comments, "I bet these guys have never seen a human." They are seeing plenty at Oak Hill Cemetery, the word is out.

Ohio's landscape offers interested observers limitless lessons in glacial geology. It's Glacial Geology 101 everywhere you look. Geology is womb to biological diversity, even when humans intervene with evergreens. This cemetery was placed long ago by people who had to dig graves the old fashioned way, by hand. Like many older cemeteries in central Ohio, it's on a steep-sided glacial deposit, a pile of sand and gravel called a kame. Kames are ice-contact stratified drift, that's geo-parlance for water sorted coarse sediments deposited in irregular piles or terraces at the snouts of melting ice sheets.

Cemeteries often sprout on glacial kames, and grow glossy headstones and tall evergreens thanks to our cultural practices! The crossbills are attracted by the evergreens we plant, our symbols of everlasting life growing alongside our loved lost, and the birds are fed as we are comforted!

Glacial kames often grow prairie plants, too, a flora preserved in remnants today only because these cemeteries have unkempt brushy margins. These are search-central for rare plant hounds looking for new records of remnant prairie flora. Here's a tip, look closely at those hard to mow steep slopes, especially along the margins of those out-of-the-way plastic flower dumps found nearby every cemetery! I'll bet locals named this pretty spot "Oak Hill Cemetery" because it was formerly a bur oak savannah.

Glacial kames are nomads moving to a different drummer. Their scale of motion is measured in ten-thousand year intervals, a glacial pace. They are nomads nevertheless. Their rocky mix is carried from the north and left piled until the next ice sheet advance punches its travel ticket for a more southerly location. Ice sheets will came again. Our sins will be erased, and North America will begin again (less a lot of today's species), so sayeth those pesky geologists.

Sandhill Cranes migrate over Ohio Young Birder Club visiting Blues Creek...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:32:00 +0000

Young birders explored Blues Creek Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio Saturday, November 1.

Over one-hundred American Goldfinches and dozens of Eastern Bluebirds foraged weedy parking area fields heavy with ripe seed and ornamental fruits. Bluebirds under blue skies in crisp air flavored the clear autumn morning--birding was beautiful beginning in the parking area.

Sapsucker sap wells drilled into the base of a maple tree last year no doubt provided sweet water for migrating Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Sapsuckers often linger to tend their wells and glean insects. Young birders learned to watch tree trunks and listen for the "Morse code" tapping of sapsuckers drilling wells.

Quiet steps and low voices stalked the nearly dry gravelly creekbed of Blues Creek dissecting the Central Ohio Clayey Till Plain in western Delaware County alongside venerable Ohio birder, Charlie Bombaci, and Park District Education Coordinator, Jackie Bain, with your blogger in tow.

The riparian belt along Blues Creek was laden with wild fruits attracting frugivores. Creekside common hackberry treetops peppered with round fruits drew hundreds of American Robins and small flocks of Cedar Waxwings.

Chicken of the woods, a.k.a. rooster comb (Laetiporus sulphureus), a common fungus found on a dead stump along Blues Creek. Identifying the fungus among us is not one of my strengths but I'm pretty sure this is a small dry growth of rooster comb. This fungus grows large bright sulphur-yellow clusters of wavy fleshy shelves. Some say the fleshy parts are good to eat.

Eagle-eye Charlie spotted cranes high overhead and counted 35 birds so high up we could not hear the croaking calls characteristic of Sandhill Crane flight chatter. Others busy inspecting an interesting tree could not pick out the high specks in the endless blue sky.

Several deeply scoured meanders along Blues Creek were found holding deep pools of water though the last rain and runoff were long ago. Young birders concluded that small fish in these pools survive long bitter winters by staying deep in water warmed by the slowly flowing groundwater. The water seeps into pools from upstream channel reservoir then seeps through and into the gravelly streambed downstream again.

Modern water tables are lower than when local fields were first cleared. Some streams dry up entirely, ground water is too deep nowadays to keep them wet: ground water is below the deepest meander scours. Many of today's dry stream miles used to support diverse small fish species and mussels year-round which have since gone the way of our once upon a time giant trees.

Lots of birds were found feeding along Blues Creek; Eastern Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet (one), Golden-crowned Kinglet, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, White-throated Sparrow, Blue Jay, American Crow, Red-tailed Hawk, Hairy Woodpecker, Song Sparrow and so on.

A gnarled survivor (the tree) along a dry flood swale beside Blues Creek. Long ago windfall partly pinned the much smaller younger tree. It survived by sending two rapid growing leaders toward sunshine to fuel recovery and return to vigor. Trees retain their mangled shapes from long-ago injuries. Your gnarled blogger below for scale.

Young birders discover new birds and bent trees...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:04:00 +0000

Eager young birders found life-list birds and oddly bent trees while exploring the growing trail system at newly opened Deer Haven Preserve, a new natural area restoration taking shape in old farm fields and wooded ravines near the Olentangy River, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio.

The Ohio Young Birders Club, Delaware affiliate, gathered with parents still young at heart and Education Coordinator for Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Jackie Bain with her geoecologically-bent husband (your blogger) to explore and learn new skills Saturday, October 18.

A name-sake tree along Bent Tree Trail.

Big birds like Great Blue Herons make big impressions for new young birders, but a star emerged from among mixed-species foraging flocks: Ruby-crowned Kinglets, little bundles of supercharged feathers wing-flicking and chasing through the shrubbery close-in along the new wetlands pathway. Jaws dropped behind awkwardly held binoculars trying to follow the busy kinglets.

A flurry of foraging Yellow-rumped Warblers made a great show, too. Curious minds are eager for new tidbits and tales so our small group learned to look past the birds to see much more and to question what they saw. "Why do they have yellow rumps?" "Why do different kinds of birds fly around together?" "How can you tell those black birds flying up there are Red-winged Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbirds?"

Cedar Waxwings whistled overhead in small flocks while we discussed invasive bush honeysuckle. It's bright red fleshy berries carry just enough sugars to keep the birds coming. Seeds are dispersed in bird droppings along fencerows and woodlands, everywhere. It's taking over!

Blue Jays congregated in American beech tree-tops scurrying for ripe sunshine-filled beechnuts and raining them to the ground around us while we discussed family chores and family economy long ago when abundant beechnuts were important food for American Indians and early settlers.

A Belted Kingfisher rattled from the pond nearby, a good beginner's song to get young birders thinking of bird listening, not just bird watching. "How do you know that was a kingfisher?"

Young birders found curious caddisfly larvae cases made of little bits of stone glued together on the undersides of dry streambed rocks as we discussed the erratic rounded rocks we overturned--those rocks and boulders so out of place on slopes and collecting in the streambed. "Where did they come from?"

The crystalline igneous rocks rode glacier ice all the way from Canada. Young birders turned their binoculars to see backward through objectives magnifying the interlocking crystals gleaming on a freshly chipped granite boulder. "How did they get here?"

We searched tree trucks for the diminutive Brown Creeper calling nearby but could not find the little camouflage expert as we talked about the anachronistic honey locust pods, scattered trees were drooping under their burden of long leguminous pods. Many pods already had accumulated on the ground under the trees and remained uneaten, though some were nibbled by seed predators that kill seeds rather than distribute them.

Mammoths and Megalonyx (the giant Jefferson's ground sloth, extinct) are no longer around to chew the sweet pods and swallow the small slippery seeds whole then distribute them in their dung*. Curious young minds devour tales of giant beasts of yore; just don't use words like, "anachronistic" and "leguminous" during the telling!

A Hermit Thrush scolded gently from the brush in the ravine where Eastern Towhees called repeatedly for tea, "Drink your tea!" American Robins "laughed," Downy Woodpeckers pecked, and huge Turkey Vultures raised from nearby roosts to ride early thermals just over the heads of young birders discovering bent trees.

Bent Tree Trail, a tree story...

A mangled tree along Bent Tree Trail, Deer Haven Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio. This old sugar maple is a survivor. The major limbs were broken-off close to the trunk during an extreme weather event. It survived by sending fast-growing leaders from the broken limb-tips toward the sunshine (candelabra shape).

Injured trees don't heal wounds, they wall them off to protect undamaged wood and bark near the wounds. Mangled trees retain the scars of their battles with weather and wildlife even when fully recovered.

Our recent hurricane Ike brought record winds to central Ohio and left behind a new pattern of damage to trees, extreme in places, light in others. Our young birders discovered Ike-damaged American beech trees among older fully recovered beech and sugar maple trees with severe damage from long ago, still obvious.

This huge American Beech along Bent Tree Trail lost its top forty-percent or so to Hurricane Ike. Several large trees nearby are severely damaged. Their location along a ridge slope leading toward the Olentangy River valley put them in harms way as high winds tore through the valley during the hurricane remnant's assault.

Badly mangled trees take on curious shapes inspiring wonder and begging explanation. Some large unique mangled trees inspire folklore tales. Surely they must have been manipulated by people. Didn't American Indians intentionally shape trees to signal the entrance to trails, or the direction of important pathways? No, says my professional archaeologist friend.

Nature has shaped wondrous trees in central Ohio with wind and ice many times since Pleistocene glaciers retreated and forests spread northward from southern refugia to raise their grand nearly continuous leafy canopies over the Midwest.

The old sugar maple pictured below is one of the bent trees that inspire wonder and it's one of the trees for which Bent Tree Trail is named. It was a young sapling before the oldest of the tree-watchers among us were born, but not by much. It certainly was not around when American Indians might have had reason to mark trails.

A closer look explains this tree's recovery. Look at the navel-like ring scars at the bends of large limbs, the successful leaders at the tips of limb stumps, and the failed leader close to the trunk on the large limb.

A careful look at this tree, and at damaged trees nearby, suggests a long ago severe weather event is the origin of the damage. The view pictured above is brightened and tightened from the first image to more easily see the scars holding the secret to this tree's recovery.

The close-in heavy branch pictured retains an obvious ring scar at the bend, as does the more distant limb. These scars closed-off damage around the breaks where limbs severed long ago. The nozzle-like protuberance leading to the ring scar is smaller in diameter and offers us a good clue to the size of the branch at the time it was broken-off.

Most of the large limbs of this tree show evidence of breaking-off at the same time and close to the trunk due to the same extreme weather event decades ago: Likely caused by very heavy ice-loading and high wind. I'll give odds it was an ice storm.

The major limbs were broken-off so close to the trunks of several damaged trees that all the determinate-growth bud sprouts (limited growth twig buds that produce annual growth in healthy trees) fell away with the limbs lost. The fast-growing tree-tip no doubt fell away, too. The living limb stumps sprouted indeterminate-growth leaders (fast and tall growing sprouts like the tips of fast-growing saplings, triggered by reduced hormones which normally suppress fast growth below the tips of trees). The leaders bolted upward to spread leaves in the sun.

Only the successful leaders remain these decades later, with one exception. Two indeterminate-growth leaders are visible on the large branch in the image above. A successful leader near the tip of the limb gives the tree its odd shape. An unsuccessful leader closer to the trunk was shaded-out after some years and remains in evidence because the dead stump has not yet fallen off the tree limb.

Horizontal limbs tell a tale of habitats. The unique tree pictured likely sprouted from its whirly-gig seed blown by the wind into a cut-over brushy habitat or a successional pasture with widely spaced larger trees very unlike the small tall-trunked trees of the young forest growing around it today. It's near-horizontal original limbs suggest that it bolted above surrounding competition to open a wide crown at moderate height with major branches reaching broadly outward from the trunk to capture sunlight above the brush and smaller trees surrounding it. Sugar maples are prone to crown low; given a chance they do so.

The combination of horizontally spread major limbs and vertical recovery leaders give this tree its unique appearance. Its bizarre shape will continue to inspire wonder and folklore tales for thousands of visitors for many years to come, along Bent Tree Trail.

When did a storm mangle the tree...

An increment borer drilled into the trunk of a tree can sample a pencil-thin core of tree rings for counting without stressing the tree very much. A core sample from our mangled tree would show an obvious series of very closely spaced rings for several seasons after the storm that mangled the tree, until it recovered its vigor. Undamaged older trees nearby would not exhibit the same cluster of closely spaced rings during the same interval.

American Beech trees recovered from historic damage.

Two American beech trees show damage and recovery that appears to date from the same historic severe weather event which mangled the bent sugar maples. The tree in the top image lost a major fork on its right side. A leader sprouting from near the old break has grown nearly equal in size to the undamaged fork, and has nearly obscured the old scar. The tree pictured below lost its top at the same time but retained a couple major limbs and was able to fill-in the crown with a cluster of awkward new limbs.

*Under the anachronism hypothesis, anachronistic fruits are those large fruits like honey locust pods, Kentucky coffee tree pods, and Osage orange "monkey brains" or "hedge apples" that are not wholly consumed by living large herbivores native to North America which swallow chunks of fruit with intact seeds, scarify (weaken the seed coat within the gut or between teeth) and distribute the seeds ready to germinate in scattered dung heaps away from the plant that provided the fruits consumed. Today, only horses and cattle (re-introduced with humans to North America) serve to distribute honey locust effectively (deer distribute the seeds somewhat poorly). The scattered honey locust trees we found during our walk are a clue to past land use in the area we visited. Anachronistic fruits evolved with an herbivore partner or partners which effectively distributed the species seeds, but now are extinct.
See: Barlow, C. 2000, The Ghosts of Evolution. Basic Books.

Wind power: New wings join raptors over Allegheny Escarpment...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:07:00 +0000

Wind power is taking flight on colossal white wings over the Allegheny Escarpment along Shaffer Mountain's skyline in western Pennsylvania. Photo by author 10/11/08.

Migrating raptors have owned the airspace over the Allegheny Escarpment for millions of years. Now, mega wind power is colliding with ancient raptor flight paths and with human sensibilities.

A world leader in wind power development is setting up housekeeping in PA. Giant Spanish turbine manufacturer and wind farm developer, Gamesa is bringing Union-friendly green collar jobs and wind-borne megawatts to PA. Not all citizens are pleased. Local roadside signs protest the wind farm project. One example found at the ends of dooryard drives beside both McCain--Palin and Obama--Biden signs reads, "Gamesa is harvesting subsidies, not green power."

Many two-megawatt turbines are spinning on towers already. One website claims forty are slated for erection along the escarpment to complete this pioneering project. Special agreements were written to allow launching the project. Regulations will be penned as experience with mega wind power demonstrates impacts. No legislation currently exists regulating numerical impacts on wildlife (birds and bats, mainly), or requiring remedies other than changing requirements for operation. Current agreements require monitoring and reporting.

Wind turbines along the southern Allegheny Front.

An aerial photo shows the close spacing of towers currently testing the winds and flight paths of birds and bats along linear Allegheny ridge tops. I drove by several similar clusters near Route 160 between Summerset and Center City, PA in early-October.

Both presidential candidates promise large investments in alternative energy development along with a slew of green-collar jobs. No doubt, wind turbines will become a common sight on windy landscapes throughout the United States. How will wind power development impact birds and bats? That depends on placement. The photograph of turbine assembly above was taken just a few miles from The Allegheny Front Hawk Watch...

Hawk counters with the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch search the sky for raptors from their Shaffer Mountain lookout.

More than twenty pairs of binoculars rose to observers' eyes in unison when someone first called out, "Heavy bird coming in over the notch." Excited hawk watchers found the large bird and followed its approach, waiting to see more as it grew larger in view with passing seconds. Someone braved a preliminary identification, "That's got to be an eagle." A murmur of agreement arose in the crowd of onlookers. Then, without bending a wing, the big bird tipped, exposing long white patches at the base of flight feathers of wings and tail. "It's a golden," voices called in unison. Soon its smallish head (compared to a Bald Eagle juvenile) and sunlit golden hackles on its nape became obvious to all. Someone called out, "It's a juvenile Golden Eagle," The official counter added a tic-mark to the list of birds seen this day. It was the third Golden Eagle for the day at the Shaffer Mountain lookout where the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch is supported and conducted by volunteers with the Allegheny Plateau Audubon Society and guests.

The Shaffer Mountain lookout is situated on a western bulge of Shaffer Mountain overlooking a vast valley 800 feet below. It's the leading edge of the Allegheny Escarpment, the eastern continental divide.

Migrating birds of many Families, particularly raptors, move eastward from as far west as Alaska before turning southward at the Appalachian Mountains. The Allegheny Escarpment and the knife-edge ridges of the Ridge and Valley Province, particularly the Kittatinny Ridge of eastern PA. These mountains greatly predate the Pleistocene glaciations and shaped the migratory movements of birds before multiple glacial advances reshaped North America and bird migration. The sinuous mountain chain leads birds to warmer climes on wind-assisted wings.

These ancient flight paths may be at risk. We don't have enough information today to guide choices beyond obvious avoidance of traditionally observed pathways. The vigilance of birders will help guide future placement of wind farms so we can reduce bird losses while gaining green jobs, and reducing carbon tonnage in the atmosphere.

Recreation ecology...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:03:00 +0000

The science and practice of Leave No Trace.

The footprints of humanity track our natural world in every corner of the globe and in many ways. We are part of the ecology of wild places. Outdoor recreation leaves tracks and traces on our green spaces and wildlands alike. Often our collective tracks and impacts coalesce into trails and social trail networks, campsites and campsite clusters, mud puddles, migrating fire rings, severely compacted and eroded soils, and establishment of invasive species brought into wildlands by our wheels, boots, and boats. Our favorite wild places are threatened by careless use.

Fragile beauty, whether a riparian ecosystem or a single flower, is too often impacted by careless recreational use, even in the most remote wild areas. Large white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) and many other native plants will wither away where frequent campers compact the soil.

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics offers outdoor recreation enthusiasts guidance for reducing impacts to natural areas. Their science-based materials offer suggestions for diverse user groups from horsemen and fishermen, to hunters and backpackers. Leave No Trace (LNT) was developed by experts with federal land management agencies and by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Agencies worked with NOLS to combine many agency and private initiatives for reducing outdoor impacts into one science-based approach.

We may view our personal impact in the great outdoors as inconsequential, but Virginia Tech researcher Jeff Marion sees our cumulative impacts through the prism of scientific investigations, and what Jeff sees threatens the quality of our recreation spaces from city parks to national parks, and our wild places from the back-forty to federal wilderness areas. "What we need is an outdoor ethics revolution" Jeff explains. Jeff traveled to BSA's Camp Oyo surrounded by Shawnee State Forest during April to offer professional instruction to LNT Master Educator trainees, your blogger included.

Recreation ecologist Dr. Jeff Marion instructing BSA scouting council leaders in the science and practice of low impact outdoor recreation during a Leave No Trace Master Educator Course, six days of theory and practice. Jeff 'wrote the book' (and many scientific papers) on reducing impacts to wild places while sustaining outdoor recreation opportunities.

One common misconception among backpacking enthusiasts is that spreading out their tent sites in popular camping areas is good for the environment. Unfortunately, sensitive locations become established campsites after as few as three uses in a season. Even more durable locations tend to become campsites after just a dozen uses.

Interestingly, campers tend to gravitate to the same locations when searching for a campsite. Quickly, after just a few uses, lightly disturbed locations become even more inviting to others seeking privacy and an easy place to set up away from the crowd. This casual site selection process results in expanding campsite clusters with many extraneous satellite camps in sensitive areas. The same thing happens with casual trail selection. A game trail becomes an eroded shortcut after surprisingly few uses.

The answer? When camping and hiking in popular remote areas or frontcountry parks and campgrounds, it's better to concentrate use on already compacted sites and on managed trails. Some sites and pathways must be sacrificed, then managed for use by frequent campers and hikers while surrounding potential sites are left to recover.

Many outdoor recreation enthusiasts recognize the wear and tear in their favorite wild places. Many do not realize their methods are damaging the resource. Recreation area managers deal with the damage daily.

Wildlife management is a huge concern in popular wild places. Unfortunately, slogans like, "Fed wildlife is dead wildlife." often fall on deaf ears because our individual impact seems so trivial at the time. Throwing those cold French fries out the car window to that bear gets us a great close in photograph. Did you ever wonder why that bear and her cubs are hanging out by the roadside?

The LNT message is summarized in Seven Principles:

Plan Ahead and Prepare
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
Dispose of Waste Properly
Leave What You Find
Minimize Campfire Impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Legendary through-hiker and Leave No Trace expert Charlie Thorpe offering guidance to trainers in training in Ohio's Shawnee Wilderness Area, Scioto County during a trail break.

Charlie Thorpe has carried the LNT message to tens of thousands, worldwide. And, he has logged many thousands of miles on the big trails like the AT (the Appalachian Trail, the whole thing), and the PCT (the Pacific Crest Trail, again, the whole thing), and so on. Charlie has lived the message from trail to trail, event to event. He is a passionate supporter of scouting, worldwide. Last year Charlie took the LNT message to world scouting's 100 year celebration in England where tens of thousands participated.

Scouting youth spend millions of camp nights in the great outdoors annually. Outdoor ethics have been integral to scouting from the beginning 100 years ago. Nonetheless, ethical practices have changed with increased use of wild places, and some scouting units have performed poorly in the past, by using old fashioned approaches like ditching tent sites or cutting firewood in inappropriate places. The shear number of youth going camping through scouting annually is a wonder and a challenge. An occasional bad example reflects on the whole organization.

Today, scouts are practicing LNT's scientific methods more and more. Scouting rank requirements are changing to require these scientific practices for all advancement levels. Each of scouting's traditional programs, Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and the rapidly growing coed Venturing program for older youth, offer age-appropriate lessons and skills development.

There have been low impact slogans for thirty years, now; "Pack it in. Pack it out", "Give a Hoot. Don't pollute." "Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.", and so on. LNT brings them all together through peer-reviewed science, and passionate educators.

Leave No Trace, outdoor ethics and skills are all about the conservation of wild places and recreation spaces. Check out LNT today.

A personal thanks to Charlie Thorpe (traveling from Alabama) and Jeff Marion (traveling from Virginia) for their extraordinary generosity in sharing their skills and message. Thanks also to Al "Yeti" Martin, course lead instructor, Clark Sexton (traveling from Georgia), instructor, Irv Martin, instructor, Bob Havreberg, instructor, and instructor and course director Dr. Kerry Cheesman.

Field of dreams... for ramp hunters

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:38:00 +0000

A carpet of ramps greens the rounded hills of this eroded glacial terrace in Ross County, Ohio. Appalachian dreams conjure scenes like this...

Ramps (Allium tricoccum)

April is ramp season in Appalachia where communities celebrate ramps in songs, feasts, and festivals.

Pungent ramps are prized by accustomed connoisseurs, but they may be an acquired taste for the rest of us. Their sticky odor resembles onion, laden with garlic. After an Appalachian feast of fresh bulbs and leaves, their smell permeates the air in a moving cloud, following the man with a ramp-eat'n grin on his face. My friend Jimmy from Poca, West Virginia swears his wife keeps him in quarantine for days after a good feast of ramps. Some say it takes three days for the aroma to work its way through your pores.

Ramps with dogtooth violet (Erythronium americanum)

I'll bet readers can suggest recipes for newbies wanting to try a new gastronomical experience. Your blogger is not a connoisseur.

dogtooth violet (Erythronium americanum)

My recent short hike near home to confirm a Great Horned Owl (found tawny fledged young) for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II, and to stretch an injured heel close to home, was rewarded by dappled colors of spring flowers under faintly blooming trees along the riparian corridor of North Fork Creek.

Common serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea)

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)

Cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)

American Kestrels are beneficiaries of OOS partnership with AEP and The Wilds

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:38:00 +0000

Jim McCormac, OOS President, pointing out a commanding hilltop on The Wilds where AEP ReCreation Lands staff will mount an elevated perch for birds of prey. The flag marks a roadside location for a kestrel box pole.

OOS (Ohio Ornithological Society) Conservation Committee members met with AEP (American Electric Power) staff, and staff members from The Wilds to flag locations where AEP will erect recycled utility poles for mounting nest boxes and raptor perches at The Wilds and on AEP ReCreation Lands nearby during the coming weeks.

The three organizations anteed-up, betting the birds will benefit. OOS is covering the cost of quality kestrel boxes manufactured by OOS member, NASA engineer Craig Rieker. AEP will bring in poles and heavy equipment to set them up, and mount the boxes and perches at about 20 locations flagged for kestrel boxes and another ten locations marked for raptor perches at The Wilds and on AEP ReCreation Lands.

Checking out International Road, The Wilds, to locate kestrel boxes and raptor perches at optimal positions. Left to right: Cheryl Harner, OOS conservation committee; Tom Bain, OOS committee chair; Al Parker, Education professional and naturalist at The Wilds; and Jim McCormac, OOS President and conservation committee member. Jim put the pieces in place for this partnership success. Al Parker will help install poles and work the constructions into the fascinating mission of The Wilds.

Birders will benefit, too. Raptor perches located on commanding hilltops will offer large raptors like wintering Golden Eagles a place to perch, in view of birders with scopes. Another project in the works; a birding trail offering birders guidance and enhanced access to The Wilds and to AEP ReCreation Lands' birding hotspots.

Checking out old nest boxes for second life opportunities at AEP's Windy Hill ReCreation Lands facility. Jim McCormac, right; your blogger, middle; and Dave Dingey, of AEP, left. Dave Dingey is making it happen by bringing AEP's resources and manpower to the mission.

American Kestrels are a common bird in decline. This partnership will work to help them remain common by adding nest cavities in the grassland habitat presented by reclaimed surface mining lands. Nest cavities are vital for maintaining the population of American Kestrels. OOS is developing education and research partnerships to study the next box success and bring lessons to light for keeping kestrels common.

Big businesses, from major power corporations like American Electric Power, to agricultural businesses, from family farms to global agribusinesses, are key to future successes in keeping common birds common in our changing environment. As human population grows, increasing demand for food and power worldwide, partnerships must help protect biological diversity. My thanks to AEP for their support of this project, and their many other committed actions toward reclamation, habitat improvement, and outdoor recreation development on the topsy-turvy hills of southeastern Ohio.

A Pleistocene Serengeti: A scene that might have been plucked from the Pleistocene wilds of Ohio just decades after deglaciation, found at The Wilds.

Waterfowl migration is a spectacle at The Wilds and throughout AEP's ReCreation Lands on scores of reclamation ponds. Distant Tundra Swans, Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, American Black Ducks, Red-breasted Mergansers, Hooded Mergansers, Bufflehead, Common Loons, Green-winged Teal, Mallards, Canada Geese, and other species use the many ponds of The Wilds and of AEP's ReCreation Lands nearby during migration.

Cheryl Harner and Jim McCormac looking a bit Lilliputian in the gaping maw of progress, Big Muskie's bucket. This giant scoop turned Ohio's hills topsy-turvy to liberate fossil sunshine: Coal-fired energy powers most North American production. Big Muskie's bucket is exhibited at Miner's Memorial Park near McConnelsville, Ohio.

Big Muskie, a giant drag-line excavator, dwarfs its bucket. The bucket is seen at the end of the cables below ground level in this illustration displayed at Miner's Memorial Park. A series of mounted illustrations walk visitors through the 20th Century history of surface mining in southeastern Ohio.

Yocatangee: A view of nature and geology in southern Ohio

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:13:00 +0000

Intrepid naturalists joined me in a mix of rain and snow for a geology walk at the Ross County Park District's Earl H. Barnhart Buzzards' Roost Nature Preserve, overlooking Yocatangee Gorge(1) March 22, 2008. Annually, we ponder the complex geology of this glacial boundary region while searching for harbingers of spring.

Naturalists puzzling over the geology of Yocatangee Gorge; the remarkable gorge of Paint Creek west of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. Historian Kevin Coleman, left, with Gary McFadden, resident naturalist, viewing distant Paint Creek from a Berea Sandstone ledge along the south rim of the gorge*.

Dark crumbly Sunbury Shale is found exposed atop thick tabular Berea Sandstone along the gorge rim. Berea Sandstone forms the superstructure holding the rim in place. Hardy Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana) colors the gorge rim with green highlights, year-round.

Chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) is common on dry hilltops, and it's a dominate near the rim of the gorge on gentle slopes of Sunbury Shale. The rim is a harsh dry habitat during the heat of summer. Chestnut oak thrives on dry acid slopes, too harsh for many tree species.

Detail of deeply furrowed chestnut oak bark.

A wintergreen native orchid, Adam and Eve, a.k.a. puttyroot (Aplectrum hyemale), gathers sunshine when trees and most leaf-eating insects are dormant. Puttyroot is common in the wooded uplands of Buzzards' Roost Nature Preserve. Its green winter leaves are distinctive. Their prostrate habit and dry papery texture, resembling recently wilted dead leaves, may be adaptations to discourage grazing. The leaves will disappear as other plants leaf out. A solitary stalk will rise and flower later in spring.

Crippled cranefly (Tipularia discolor) is another fairly common wintergreen native orchid found in wooded uplands at Buzzards' Roost. The green leaves are thicker than puttyroot leaves, broad chordate (heart-shaped base), warty, and deep-purple underneath. The purple color comes from anthocyanins, pigment compounds that protect leaf cells like a sunscreen and may absorb heat, speeding chemical processes making sugars. The color may also signal unpalatability to grazers. Like puttyroot, cranefly orchid leaves disappear as other plants leaf out. Later in spring a solitary flowering stalk will bloom with cranefly-resembling flowers.

Cutleaf grapefern (Botrychium dissectum) is a winterbronze fern common on wooded and old field uplands of Buzzards' Roost, but often overlooked. Its succulent leaves blend with leaf litter. Cutleaf grapefern is lime green as it sprouts in fall, bronzing with freezing weather, overwintering, greening again in warm spring, and sending up a fruiting stalk late in spring before disappearing in summer heat.

Blocky "alligator skin" bark of common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana). This tree grew from underneath an old wooden sty where a mammal may have carried fruits from another tree nearby, leaving the seeds behind to grow up through the old wooden structure. The sty has been demolished, leaving the interesting tree.

Vernal pools and small ponds on "The Roost" are busy with breeding amphibians. Jefferson's salamander eggs, spotted salamander eggs, and wood frog eggs are abundant. Underwater egg masses are visible inside the observer's shadow.

Puzzling over geology...

A jig-saw puzzle missing many of its pieces and without a reference picture on a box-top would be declared a lost cause, the pieces thrown away by all but the most determined puzzleers. Now mix these random pieces with those of several other puzzles strewn in the bottom of a child's toy box and you have a useless collection of squiggly pieces-parts, by any reasonable standard. Even so, extreme puzzleers can't resist the challenge.

Yet, sorting these commingled puzzles into comprehensible images is child's-play compared with piecing together a view of the complex geological history of a place like Yocatangee Gorge, the gorge of Paint Creek just west of Chillicothe, Ohio.

Geology is a puzzle on a grand scale; a four-dimensional solution (three dimensions plus time) found without the benefit of a reference picture. It's a series of puzzles, really; a puzzle assembled from other puzzles. The solution is a time-lapse video, not a static image. Even simple landscapes tell convoluted stories. Every piece of each geology puzzle is as much a process as a material, and more inference than absolute. Most pieces of the original puzzles are missing, eroded away, lost in time like grains of sand in a mighty Ohio River flood. You can never really know if you have re-assembled geology puzzles correctly: and someone else will surely declare your solutions imperfect, no matter how comprehensive your effort. Nevertheless, the journey is a joy for the geologist-puzzleer.

A grand puzzle of stream piracy...

Yocatangee Gorge is a grand puzzle resulting from stream piracy(2), but how?. The existence of this new narrow gorge of Paint Creek, cut through a particularly hilly section of the Allegheny Plateau, makes no sense in terms of casual landscape logic(3), until we consider the impact of major glaciations. This beautiful gorge, and others found along Ohio's glacial boundary, are the result of at least two Icehouse climates(4), major glacial episodes in Earth's history.

Yes: The two most recent glaciations, the Wisconsin and the Illinoisan glaciations, were important formative events making the new gorges near the glacial boundary in southern and central Ohio. But, I'm not referring just to these fairly recent events of the Pleistocene. I'm suggesting a very ancient origin for parts of the Yocatangee Gorge puzzle(5), at least 350 million years old, a direct result of a Paleozoic glacial age during the Lower Mississippian Epoch of the Carboniferous; a Pleistocene-like time when continental glaciers smothered large areas of Earth long before the Pleistocene, near the beginning of the coal age. An up to date chart.pdf detailing the Geological Time Scale is found at Stratigraphy.org.

The shape of the gorge...

Look at the topographic map of the gorge seen here at 1:200,000 scale. The small red cross-hairs are centered on the map at the entry to the gorge. Chillicothe is seen at right. Route 50 is a bold red line trending SW to NE through the old broad valley of Paint Creek at left, the flattish white area. If you are new to topographic maps, just remember to see steep slopes wherever the brown squiggly lines are close together; where they are far apart, see flattish ground. The steep slopes and hills often are forested, indicated by green shading.

Now, zoom in to 1:50,000 scale to see more detail where the stream leaves its broad valley and enters the hills. You will notice right away that Paint Creek occupies a really broad mature valley along Route 50 as it flows northeastward. Abruptly, the creek turns, flowing southeastward among steep hills, through a young "V" shape gorge. WHY?

Some bedrock background...

Ohio exhibits pancake sedimentary bedrock geology. There is a 'basement' of mostly very old igneous and metamorphic rocks buried deep below a 'superstructure' of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks; multiple layers of flattish to somewhat tilted limestones, sandstones, and shales. And, a 'roof' of glacial deposits covering most bedrock in the northwestern two-thirds of the state. The layers of Paleozoic sedimentary bedrock are stacked like pancakes leaning on a breakfast plate margin. The pancake layers are exposed edgewise north to south through central and eastern Ohio as seen in the Bedrock Geological Map of Ohio. The layers dip toward the east just a few degrees in central Ohio. Yocatangee Gorge offers a view of Ohio's Devonian and Mississippian pancake geology and of deep time spanning 365 million years.

To be continued...

Notes:
*The gorge rim is a limited-access area reserved for science and interpretive programs offered by scheduled naturalists. Visitors, please don't approach the sensitive gorge rim. Stay on leaf litter well away from the edge. Foot traffic is erosive and destructive of rim-slope plants. Many rim rocks are thin sandstone block overhangs vulnerable to failure.

(1) "Yocatangee" is a name I have proposed for this deep gorge of Paint Creek found a few miles west of Chillicothe in Ross County, Ohio. The connection of the gorge with the Native American "Yocatangee" will be the subject of a future blog entry. The name derives from maps summarizing features noted in early surveys; contact-period names and descriptions applied to features in southern Ohio. These are from two sources: The first, a map of "Indian Villages..." and other features by Lewis, G. L. and Dawley, W., 1901, and the second from notations on Peter Kalm's Travels map of 1771. Today, the gorge is commonly called "Alum Cliffs" or "Alum Cliffs Gorge" or "Paint Creek Gorge." The former name is found on topographic maps, the latter name often results in confusion with the beautiful western Ross County gorge of Paint Creek cut into limestone and dolomite, now mostly flooded by Paint Creek Lake Dam.

(2) Stream piracy results when a stream intersects a second stream, diverting the second stream's drainage through the first streams channel, pirating the second streams water. Stream piracy occurs frequently as landscapes mature. Most stream piracy results from headward erosion. The headwaters of streams continually progress headward (the direction opposite the current flow-direction) by an erosive process bringing more and more elevated terrain into slope toward the stream through down-cutting, a high energy process where stream gradients are steep. The piracy of ancient Paint Creek resulted through a different process involving glacial lake formation and spillway down-cutting where the deepening lake breached a col between hills: Spill-over piracy. The earliest description (of which I'm aware) of spill-over piracy proposed for this gorge is described and illustrated by Jesse E. Hyde in Camp Sherman Quadrangle, 1921, Geological Survey of Ohio Fourth Series Bulletin 23.

(3) Landscape logic is applied common sense. Landforms evolve slowly through steady predictable processes, and occasionally by sudden changes like volcanoes, landslides and glaciations. Formative factors like rock type, climate, and elevation operate in predictable ways. Geologists often speculate on the evolution of landscapes by applying landscape logic.

(4) Icehouse climates are major cold periods of Earth climate during which series' of continental glaciations dominated temperate and polar regions for spans of millions of years. There were at least four Icehouse climate regime's prior to the the most recent, the Pleistocene.

(5) The Yocatangee Gorge puzzle solution attributing Bedford Shale and Berea Sandstone silici-clastic deposition to Devonian-Mississippian glacio-eustatic response, I present herein, has not been published in peer-reviewed literature and remains speculative (as far as I know-I'm not very active in research geology): Certainly, there are timing issues to work out more carefully. This solution was inspired by carbon isotope work suggesting a Kinderhookian-Osagean chill, like the work of Saltzman at The Ohio State University, a growing consensus around glacio-eustatic causation for Carboniferous and Permian cyclic sediments-the coal measures, and particularly by a published re-interpretation of the Blackhand Sandstone (Hocking Hills) as an incised-fill resulting from glacio-eustatic sea level changes with Lower Mississippian glaciations, a West Virginia University PhD dissertation by David L. Matchen, 2004.

Skunk cabbage, first flowering...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:02:00 +0000

Ross Lake Wildlife Area is an easy place to find the first flowers of spring. During February and March, hundreds of skunk cabbage flowers rise from muck found just a few feet north of the parking area at the end of Hydell Road, along the lakes west shore.

First flower; Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) blooms through snow at Ross Lake Fen, Ross County, Ohio.

Ross Lake Wildlife Area is just east of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. The fen is small, a little known slope-fen* formed along the northeast flank of a ravine cut into a sandy glacial terrace left by Illinoisan glaciation (the glaciation prior to the most recent Wisconsin). It's easy to find, but walking through it will be a challenge--you'll need rubber boots!

I call the place, "Ross Lake Fen" because I'm not aware of any other name used for this obscure group of seeps. This fen is located seven miles south, as crows fly, of Kinnikinnick Prairie, the more recognized but degraded fen frequently identified as the furthest south fen in central Ohio.

Skunk cabbage is exothermic, giving off heat***. Its warmth, and foul odor (often described as skunk spray with garlic) carried on the wind, are very attractive to early pollinating species looking for winter kill carrion. A plume of CO2 resulting from high plant respiration may also serve to attract pollinators. Pollinators are rewarded with warmth inside the flower.

Wetland botanists might classify this area as a series of forest seeps, more particularly, skunk cabbage seeps**. A close look, and we find the hydrological and chemical characteristics of a fen, but few calciphiles--plants that love alkaline conditions.

I'd classify this series of seeps, a fen, by functional definition. They result from geological influence driving groundwater flow. Here, groundwater seeps out of a ravine slope cut into a sandy glacial terrace. The unconsolidated terrace sand rests on a layer of clay, a hardpan. The hardpan prevents downward flow, pooling groundwater. Where the hardpan intersects the flank of the ravine, groundwater seeps out. A "perched" water table, atop the clay, drives the seeps. Organic muck is accumulating wherever seep water trickles out along the slope.

The wet green area seen here is a raised mound of organic muck accumulating where groundwater seeps out. The view is east from the western margin of the fen area. Ross Lake is seen at upper right. Skunk cabbage is found in many of these raised areas along the glacial terrace's north-facing ravine slope.

*Amon JP, Thompson, CA, Carpenter QJ, Minor J. 2002. Temperate zone fens of the glaciated midwestern USA. Wetlands 22: 301-317.
**Mack, John J. 2004. Integrated Wetland Assessment Program. Part 2: an ordination and classification of wetlands in the Till and Lake Plains and Allegheny Plateau regions. Ohio EPA Technical Report WET/2004-2. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Wetland Ecology Group, Division of Surface Water, Columbus, Ohio.
*** See here for discussion of exothermic plant physiology

Sugar maples in sunshine; how sweet it is...

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:01:00 +0000

Steam rising from a sugar shack is a harbinger of spring, and a sweet celebration of the end of winter. Throughout Ohio's Beech-Maple forests sugar maple sap rises with the morning sun during February and March, when cold night temperatures rise above freezing during daytime.

The Camp Lazarus Sugar Shack.

American beech (Fagus grandifolia), with smooth gray bark, and sugar maple (Acer saccharum), with the red marker and sap bucket, both common on Camp Lazarus uplands, are indicators of Beech-Maple Forest.

The clangor of sugar maple sap dripping from tap-hole spiles into galvanized buckets, and the laughter and grins of hundreds of youngsters, announce the annual Sugar Maple Festival at venerable Camp Lazarus, in Delaware County, Ohio, just north of Winter Road along the west side of U.S. Route 23.

During the last weekend of February, through the first weekend of March, Boy Scouts of America volunteers, friends, families, visitors and community organizations join to celebrate the season and to introduce youth to the history and ecology of sugarbush at Camp Lazarus.

A three-tap sugar maple; about 150 years old, I'd say.

Professionals with Preservation Parks of Delaware County, and volunteers with The Boy Scouts of America, partnered to offer fun and environmental education for students and parents with the Sunbury Home School Educators, February 28.

Camp Lazarus sugar-makers Carl Russel, Bob Locci, and Bob Huddler invited youngsters into the sugar shack for a rare treat, the smell of wood smoke and sweet steam rising from the evaporator.

Camp Lazarus Boy Scouts of America volunteers introduce the sap evaporator.

Warmth and glow. The evaporator's hearth boils sap to syrup; its warmth and glow warms sugar-makers and youth from sole to Soul.

Preservation Parks' environmental educators; Jackie Brown, Education Coordinator, and Kim Banks, Naturalist, introduced the youngsters and their parents to the history of sugar-making, and the science of trees through the seasons. Your blogger volunteered as photographer and gopher for the morning.

Camp Lazarus is a high quality green space and watershed reserve amidst pervasive commercial development and suburbanization northward from Columbus, Ohio. The camp is a product of partnership, too. Preservation Parks of Delaware County purchased a conservation easement on Camp Lazarus to assure protections for quality watershed. The sale of the easement assured that B.S.A.'s Simon Kenton Council retains ownership of the camp, and preserves opportunities for youth, an 85-year tradition at Camp Lazarus. Today, comprehensive outdoor programing is offered through B.S.A. almost daily, and by Preservation Parks regularly.

Sugarbush--the manufacture of sugar products from tree sap, is a long tradition at Camp Lazarus. The Lazarus family (Lazarus Department Stores) donated the camp to B.S.A. in the mid-1920's when trees were already annually tapped on the property.

A sugar maple "tree cookie" saved from a harvested tree on Camp Lazarus preserves at least 101 years of tap scars within its 198 years of tree-rings. A "spile" is seen at upper right. Spiles are tapped into shallow drilled holes waist-high on trees to direct sap into buckets. Modern efficient sugarbush operations often use plastic bags, or even tubing to collect sap.

A walk through tapped trees, and a visit to the sugar shack made youngsters a part of the process. Next, off to the nature center for energetic introduction to energy flow through tree ecosystems, offered at appropriate depth, by naturalist Jackie Brown. Youngsters explored the nature center and checked-out sugar making equipment. They explored the history of sugarbush and the family economy of early pioneers gathering late winter calories from trees. Boys and girls tried-out a bucket yoke, carrying gallon jugs of water around to experience the kinds of chores their ancestors may have done during their youth.

Jackie Brown introduces energy flow through forest cycles in bite-size bits of information, weaved into an effective presentation for a mixed-age group of rambunctious home school youngsters.

Ohio's champion eastern cottonwood

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Bain) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Ohio's champion eastern cottonwood* is inspiring, and easy to see along Cheshire Road at Africa Road in Alum Creek State Park, Delaware County. You will find easy parking along Cheshire Road at the north side of Cheshire Market. Just look north—you can’t miss this splendid tree!

Ohio State Champion Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
Circumference: 358 inches Height: 136’ Crown: 135’ Total score: 528
40.2391°N, 82.9620°W (NAD83/WGS84)

Cottonwoods are among the largest hardwoods of North America. Ohio’s champion eastern cottonwood is one of the largest of the largest, scoring nearly as high as the national champion eastern cottonwood found near Seward, NE. The Nebraska tree scores just a little higher at 563 points. The National Champion's magnificent double-trunk (see it here) is divided low near ground-level.

The trunk of Ohio's champion is even more imposing, I’d say. It's a multi-trunk tree as well, but the trunks are mingled seamlessly into a single cylindrical bole to well above ground-level before branching widely, reaching for open sky. It towers 136’ and emerges well above surrounding trees to intercept a lion’s share of sunshine.

Deeply furrowed warm-gray bark of eastern cottonwood is easily recognized at a distance.

No doubt, both champion trees sprouted in an opening where full sun encouraged growth of their divided trunks and full crowns. More often, cottonwoods grow straight or gently arching boles, and tall before branching into small to moderate crowns in a shared high canopy. Many cottonwoods grow together in even-age bands where they long ago pioneered open areas along streams and floodplains.

This magnificent tree is located near the head of a ravine opening into Alum Creek Reservoir.

About cottonwoods...

Cottonwoods obtained their name from early observers impressed by the copious quantities of seed “cotton” released from seed-pods during spring. In Ohio, during May, cottonwoods rain “cotton” along rivers and streams. Breezy tufts of delicate cottony strands carry seeds on the wind, and floating on water. A few land on sunny fresh mud where their rapid germination ensures a long first growing season free from competition with other species.

Cottonwoods are riparian trees, most successful where floods inundate low land burying woody and herbaceous competitors under fresh silt. Cottonwoods pioneer flood plain openings, sandbars, and migrating point-bars. Seedlings sprout rapidly, sending dense fibrous roots deep into silt. Once established, seedlings survive long inundation and burial in subsequent flood years. Cottonwoods mature rapidly, too, in about 35 years**.

Cottonwood ecology, the original river-dance...

Abundant cottonwoods partner with streams and rivers in an ancient meandering slow-dance of riparian renewal, the original river-dance. Spring floods renew the cycle annually. Flood water expands stream meanders. High banks erode along the outsides of meander bends while slack waters deposit fresh silt and sand on point-bars along the insides of bends. New sediment deposition is followed quickly by capture and stabilization by dense growths of cottonwood seedlings. The timing of cottonwood seed dispersal is choreographed with diminishing spring floods. Cotton-wafted seeds are certain to find fresh mud bathed in full sunlight.

Living natural streams are flanked by thin ribbons of cottonwood seedlings and saplings stabilizing fresh sediments. Landward, saplings form successively older bands. These ribbons of saplings are flanked by fewer and fewer increasingly large trees inland, often growing very large.

Many Ohio streams are dammed. They no longer follow the full, richly choreographed pattern of the ancient meandering river-dance because new sediment distribution is severely limited by modern flood-control operations. For some streams, the music has died altogether. The Ohio River is one sad example.

Ohio River "impoundments"...

The Ohio River of pre-settlement times was the central artery serving biodiversity in the Midwest, through seasonal rhythms of surging and waning waters that rippled to the headwaters of connected watersheds. Native Americans and early European pioneers found a vast verdant valley teaming with abundant and diverse life, and a tempestuous demeanor.

La Salle's "la belle riviere" ("the beautiful river") became legendary for both high water danger and low water struggle among frontiersmen, pioneers, and rivermen. It was the central artery for transportation and settlement in the Midwest until the iron age of railroads. And, it remains a waning resource conduit serving the mighty industrial heartland of North America through two centuries of immense growth. In service to economic growth, the Ohio River was dammed, dredged, leveed, and silted. Today, it is mostly a series of stabilized impoundments serving commercial transportation and flood control.

Many riparian ecosystems are impoverished today, from the loss of natural seasonal flooding—the slow heartbeat of watersheds. Long-term watershed benefits for humanity are reduced, and continue to diminish. Today, we draw diminishing dividends from ecosystem bank deposits made long before modern stream restructuring.

Cottonwood, monarch of the flood plain...

Cottonwood is king of the riparian pioneers. Abundant seed production and wind-dispersal, rapid germination, rapid growth, and the massive root-systems of cottonwoods provide important ecosystem services by slowing and reducing runoff and flood waters. Cottonwoods limit erosion of riverbanks and encourage silt deposition and stream bank renewal. Cottonwoods support migrating and nesting bird species. Cottonwoods are the most common among their guild (willows, notwithstanding). Cottonwoods construct a major framework in the superstructure of riparian ecosystems. They provide foundation and roofing, plumbing and air-conditioning; and they are beautiful trees.

*Ohio’s champion trees are detailed here:
Ohio’s 2007 Ohio Champion Trees – Native or Naturalized US

**Some P. deltoides details borrowed here:

Taylor, Jennifer L. 2001. Populus deltoides. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [2008, February 26].