Icy beauty beyond snowflakes

The tension between geothermal warmth carried by groundwater and winter chill carried in Arctic air masses forms a delicate balance in the icy bridges that span groundwater fed streams in the Hocking Hills of southeast Ohio and in moist rocky ravines throughout the Midwest.

Fragile latticework of feathery ice bridging groundwater fed stream, Hocking Hills.

Delicate radiating ice crystals interlock for accidental strength, suspended above flowing water.

Rocky outcrops, biodiversity hotspots

Bedrock outcrops in the Midwest are local biodiversity hotspots: Its the geology--the geoecology.

Black Hand Sandstone outcrop, southern aspect, Hocking County, Ohio. A harsh vertical environment tackled by epilithic (rock surface) life forms, and more.

Outcrops along steep ravines and in monumental rocky landscapes force openings in forest canopies revealing the foundations of terrains and opening unique habitats; ecotones in the vertical dimension, landforms offering novel opportunities for unique living things--outcrop ecosystems. Bedrock controls include: increased surface area, increased harborage in rocky openings, extremes of moisture and dessication from moist low seeps to elevated sun-parched rock faces, recesses and aspects permanently shaded, groundwater chemistry not buffered by soil, and groundwater's energy inputs and impacts--warming and increasing humidity in winter and evaporative cooling in summer.

Erosion-resistant rock outcrops obtain steep inclines that surrender soil cover, litter and duff, to unrelenting gravity. Even as a cliff face slowly weathers and erodes, newly exposed bedrock renews the outcrop. New cracks and crevices, cavities and rocky shelters open. Outcrops outlast forests and stream channels, they sustain lasting habitats in changing modern landscapes. Outcrops offer abundant stable spaces and surface area supporting life processes, they are riddled with openings exploited by living things dependent upon access to geothermal energy and moisture or shelter. Outcrops open epilithic (rock surface) niche opportunities. Outcrops catalyze biodiversity. Outcrops are ecosystem multipliers.

Black rat snake escaping September heat on a double-stack Eastern Phoebe nest in a recess under a nature bridge formed by Sharon Sandstone, Pike County, Ohio.

Bedrock outcrops offer endolithic (interior rock) niche opportunities exploited by diverse microorganisms, from algae living in tiny spaces in the rock surface, to microorganisms in deep rock, to extremophiles--bacteria species living among sand grains millimeters below the surface of sun-baked southern rock exposures. Endolithic life is barely explored by modern investigators. The sandstone image below captures more than a spider. The gray, green, and blue hues and the bits and flakes that are not sand grains, are living things; algae, fungi, lichens, plus unseen microorganism diversity. The surface abundance only hints at the subsurface abundance. Extremophile bacteria have been found deep inside rocks of many types. The stability of geothermally supported micro-ecosystems in bedrock interiors and bedrock recesses support micro-biodiversity hotspots. The impact of endolithic life on larger ecosystem elements; plants, insects, animals, is a new field of inquiry. Does endolithic bacteria fuel independent shallow rock ecosystems that interact with exterior sun-supported ecosystems?

Cobweb spider anchored with its egg sack inside a pebble cavity in a Sharon Sandstone outcrop in January, Lake Katherine State Nature Preserve, Jackson County, Ohio.

Groundwater, along with the thermal energy impacts it holds, moves under gravity toward local base levels intersected by bedrock outcrops. Permeable rock delivers the moisture and its energy impacts to bedrock openings and outcrop surfaces through pour spaces in permeable layers and zones, through cracks and crevices and through rock joints, the large cracks that fissure entire bedrock formations. Soft permeable layers conduit moisture to the rock surface while tightly cemented resistant layers impede water movement and protrude from the outcrop face, lending surface texture and casting shade over moist recesses, large and small.

Long-tailed salamander prowling a moist sandstone ravine ledge during a warm morning in Wayne National Forest.

Conserve bedrock outcrops,* insist that forest buffer zones surround outcrops in logged landscapes, insist that substantial undisturbed bedrock buffers surround outcrops near anthropogenic bedrock exposures in quarry operations.

*Bedrock is revealed in naturally occurring outcrops along streams, ravines, and promontories, and by anthropogenic exposures excavated along roadsides and railroads and in quarries. Naturally occurring outcrops support outcrop ecosystems.

Ninth warmest year since 1880

2012 recorded the ninth warmest global temperature since 1880--anyone surprised?

Hot off the press: NASA's annual global temperature measurement analysis finds that 2012 joined the top ten hottest years on record, taking ninth place.

WASHINGTON -- NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.

A week earlier we heard that North America had exceeded its heat record again, 2012 was the warmest year measured in Yankeedom since measurements began in the 1880's. More importantly, the level of temperature anomaly greatly exceeded any year on record.

Coolest and warmest years since 1895, USA

Sadly, these announcements surprise no one. The personal experience and the expectations of most everyone center on measurable increasing warmth year after year.

It will be BIG news if and when we have a cool year that falls outside the top ten. Don't hold your breath. Get used to the hot air. Before you can mix up a cool drink, the counter-claims of conspiracy and poor science will hit the news cycle, take it over, and overwhelm the science with doubt in a cloud of noxious gas.

Global responses toward ameliorating CO2 inputs and adapting to inexorable warming are held hostage by the burgeoning Chinese economy screaming, It's our turn. Like you, we will fuel growth with cheap coal!

Economic interests in the West need no better excuse to stall cooperation through global agreements.

Adaptations to warmth and to weather extremes will be big business, soon!

Black Hand Sandstone terrains, scenery and refugia

Soft hemlock boughs swathe coarse sandstone walls throughout Black Hand Sandstone terrains in eastern Ohio. The Hocking Hills (Hocking County), the most extensive outcrop area of this sandstone, offers some of the best of this unique scenery.

Contorted hemlocks cling to Black Hand Sandstone walls.

The Black Hand Sandstone forms unique ravine and gorge topography, here and there, wherever it outcrops in central eastern Ohio counties trending north-south from the hills surrounding Mansfield, Ohio and the Mohican Gorge parks region in Richland and Ashland Counties, south to the Hocking Hills region in Hocking County and northern Vinton County. Ohio state parks and natural areas, Mohican State Park, Blackhand Gorge State Nature Preserve, and Hocking Hills State Park, offer rewarding access to beautiful scenery year 'round. Our favorite scenery is formed by the gigantic rock shelter at Ash Cave in Hocking Hills State Park. Nearby Rock House is a blast for kids and parents together.

Winter is a great time to find open vistas. Every winter, giant icicles gleam along seeps and delicate streamside ice crystal formations can be found near ravine heads. Uncommonly cold and wet winters in Ohio produce extraordinary ice formations wherever water flows along or seeps from Black Hand Sandstone formations. Rarely, giant frozen waterfalls connect cliffs to bottoms with giant columns of ice.

Black Hand Sandstone terrains offer much more than great scenery, unique qualities make Black Hand Sandstone terrains important refugia for plants and wildlife including disjunct populations of northern breeding bird species, Canada Warbler is a beautiful example.

All bedrock outcrops offer epilithic (stone surface) niche opportunities for unique living things from bacteria extremeophiles living among sand grains millimeters below the surface of sun-baked southern rock exposures, to abundant clinging lichens adapted to dry and moist rocky surfaces, to ancient liverworts' colonies plastering dripping moist recesses under rock overhangs, to mosses and ferns of ledges including fibrous-rooted spleenworts and cliffbrake ferns found clinging along the tiniest crevices. Beneath shady hemlock groves growing in the acidic sandstone soil of steep slopes or clinging to crags and rocky bluffs in Black Hand Sandstone terrains, moist ravine cliffs and headwalls mingle groundwater with atmosphere, significantly modifying the microclimates of ravines year 'round. Moist sandstone ravines are special places, they are local biodiversity hotspots.

Honeycomb weathering.

Geologists describe this type of sandstone deposit as "massive" due to its tendency to form large uniform blocks of homogeneous sandstone. Narrow bands of pebbly sand called conglomerate, and cross-bedding of sand layers, and absence of marine fossils suggest the deposits originally collected in a sediment-choked braided stream environment.

Quartz sand forms the backbone of the stone, more than 90 percent of grains are composed of sturdy quartz, iron oxide cement holds most of the sand grains together forming the erosion resistant rock of the steep ravine walls and formations.

Geological weathering and erosion produced the scenery and rock features including the fine scale surface patterns of Black Hand Sandstone outcrops. Differential erosion; softer, poorly cemented lower levels of sandstone eroding more deeply than firmly cemented upper levels, caused formation of outcrop features, the overhangs and rock shelters and other large scale features of Black Hand Sandstone terrains. Weathering and grain by grain erosion of high angle surfaces of the sandstone outcrops forms intriguing honeycomb surface patterns. Both the large scale features and the honeycomb surface patterns result from properties inherent in the sandstone bedrock.

The Black Hand Sandstone is porous and permeable, groundwater moves through it: groundwater is key. Groundwater dissolves and moves minerals in solution through the matrix of the permeable bedrock toward lower crevices, seeps, and rock surfaces. Near open water where humidity is high condensation moistens rock surfaces. Abundant moisture from rain, groundwater, and condensation dissolves and carries away the bedrock's mineral cement ions, drop by drop, and where evaporation outpaces flow, it redeposits oxides and sulfides among the sand grains of exposed surfaces.

Evaporating water delivers much of the magic. Evaporation of mineral rich ground water, moved through the bedrock matrix by gravity and by capillarity, leaves behind surface precipitated mineral coatings on exposed surface grains. Ions leave solution as surface moisture evaporates and must recrystallize as precipitate between surface sand grains. The push of millions of ions drawn into crystal lattice positions around grains of sand is powerful. Collectively, this pressure of crystallization wedges sand grains outward loosening them from the rock surface, water and wind under gravity carry the dislodged grains away, one by one. Freezing water between sand grains obtains the same result during winter freeze-thaw events, though freeze-thaw processes are far less important at the small scales of sand grains. This grain by grain erosion process deflates stone faces and forms the intriguing honeycomb weathering patterns* common on steep rock surfaces in Black Hand Sandstone terrains. This unique grain by grain erosion process is called granular sapping. Constant sapping, aided by seasonal freeze-thaw loosening rock layers (called spalling) and blocks of stone (slump blocks), under gravity, carves the topography and unique features of Black Hand Sandstone terrains.

The characteristic U-shape, high walls and flat bottoms, of deep ravines of Black Hand Sandstone terrains is a result of differential erosion processes: the downward cutting by ravine streams is outpaced by the sapping and slumping of ravine walls once the ravine bottom becomes choked with sandy sediment. This pattern repeats in numerous ravines, a unique and interesting landscape phenomenon.

Evaporation does much more, evaporation at seeps and along surfaces of steep walls cools air and raises humidity in ravines during summertime. During winter, groundwater warmth ameliorates the chill in ravines. This microclimate influence supports uncommon biological diversity. More on the Black Hand Sandstone refugia in future posts...

More on sandstone terrains in GeoEcology
More on sandstone terrains at our blog Earth InsightCache

*Honeycomb weathering is commonly called tafoni. Tafoni results from weathering processes on steep to vertical surfaces of granular stone where humidity is sustained in splash zones or where surface and groundwater mingle. Tafoni is common in coastal areas where it forms as a result of salt weathering, recrystalization of salt from sea spray on surfaces of granular rock particles. Inland sandstone provinces form tafoni due to recrystalization processes supported by groundwater movement and by humidity-driven mobilization of mineral solutions on granular stone surfaces in microclimates of some outcrops.

Forged by fire, our Promethean origins

Prometheus by Jan Cossiers

Our relationship with fire is ancient and intimate. Early in our hominid prehistory we borrowed useful fire from natural causes. Later, like mythological Prometheus, we stole fire from the gods: We learned to create fire at will.  That essential primitive skill energized a cultural leap and much more. Our relationship with fire became reciprocal: Arguably, fire recreated us. We have been torch bearers, dependent upon fire, shaped by fire, from that early time.

Early humans obtained mastery of fire as they came to depend on fire for warmth, for light, for cooking, for hunting, for landscape management, and for defense. They obtained far reaching impacts through mastery of fire. Early humans manipulated local habitats and broad ecosystems in favor of human utility through broadcast fire, intentionally igniting landscapes of dry fuel for coordinated fire-hunting and to create favorable conditions for attracting and supporting desired game species, and to ease overland travel.

Early humans became hearth-centered. The hearth became the crucible of human evolution, both biological and cultural. Fire was the soul of the family hearth, whether a nuclear family or a clan. Even today, we gather 'round our occasional campfires and stare into flames as they stared long ago. Flickering flames connect us with past and present native peoples across time and space.

Few moderns possess primitive fire knowledge and fire skills. For most, fear of fire has replaced utility fire. Today, we ask our engineers to control fire, indoors and out. Most societies, even native societies, have surrendered their mastery of primitive fire methods in favor of technological dependence. Western societies have transitioned from manual open combustion to mechanical internal combustion. During our lifetimes the last of the ancient societies may give up their traditional skills in trade for purchased fire systems and other modern tools. Like loss of languages, loss of skills sets for primitive living is an ongoing tragedy unfolding today in forgotten corners around the world. For now, at least, we still can travel to remote tribes and see and learn of ancient technologies passed through hundreds of generations for as long as they remember their primitive life-ways and so long as they will allow us a peak.

Our ancient ancestors understood the different functions of tinder, kindling, fuels, portable fire carriers, and much later, fire starters. Today, we purchase fire and all of its functions.

Explore our Promethean origins. We recommend a couple good reads by Stephen Pyne, Fire: A Brief History, 2001 and Fire in America, A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, 1982 and 1997. We have gained essential insights from these works.

Your blogger met Stephen Pyne at a lonely outpost in Antarctica, Dome C, long ago, where Pyne developed insights and gathered materials for his book, The Ice, A Journey to Antarctica 1986 and I spent my days digging, coring and studying ice dynamics. Our few evening conversations left indelible insights that still enrich my thinking of human impacts on global ecosystems, today.

The nine lives of a Christmas tree

Should we harvest living trees for use as Christmas trees? Would it be more ecological, a better conservation practice, to go artificial?

The Sauter family Christmas tree. The third life of a Christmas tree, evergreens indoors.

We say yes! Harvest living trees if you wish. Populous modern societies depend on farmers, trees from tree farms are an alternative crop. Tree farming increases utility of marginal acreage and can be a restorative agricultural practice beneficial for depleted or eroded landscapes formerly used in row crop production or in grazing livestock.

We buy local: We do business with a local family tree farm gently laboring three generations on their own hillside fields. Annually, we walk their fields and select and cut our own tree, tie it to the top of the vehicle and take it home, no middle man. This close connection with our grower reveals farm practices we admire and support. We seek farms exhibiting what Aldo Leopold called a "land ethic." And, we pay less, they make more money. 

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... 

A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land...

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.-Aldo Leopold

If you choose to harvest living trees as we do (until recently, a family pine allergy has intervened), we suggest you get the most cultural and ecological utility from your trees, consider all nine lives of a Christmas Tree.

For example, our friends, John and Jen Sauter, choose tree farm grown Douglas fir trees to adorn their rural Ohio home. Jen Sauter, president of the Ohio Ornithological Society, a conservation leader, values all of the ecological benefits of her annual Christmas tree, all nine lives.
 
The nine lives of a Christmas tree begin with a germinating coneiferous seed tended by industrious hands on a local farm.

New life, the first life of a Christmas Tree*.

Life one: A growing seedling captures soil in its spreading root web while green boughs spread to gather sunshine, slow winds and soften rainfall, slowing runoff. The first years of a farm sapling see very rapid growth of woody tissues constructed of carbon pulled from the atmosphere. Most evergreens prove drought tolerant, a necessary quality on sandy-gravelly soils. The growing trees promise future high returns in dollars and continuing ecoservices; captured carbon, improved soil texture and soil chemistry, runoff inhibition, wind abatement, and so on...

A tree farm growing on a gravelly, hilly glacial landform in Pickaway County, Ohio.

Life two: A tree farm is a simple forest of small evergreens. This attractive woodscape has secured the soil and is shedding needles and twigs in quantity, organic litter that revitalizes depleted clayey or sandy-gravelly soils. Compared to row crops, a grassy field of evergreens supports greater biodiversity; food, shelter, and shade for insects, birds, and quadrupeds, habitat lasting at least a decade and more. Many small Midwestern tree farms support abundant rabbits and meadow voles, supporting predatory birds and quadrupeds!

Life three: Each year, a section of the tree farm is harvested, the larger habitat goes on. Stumps and root webs of harvested trees remain, modifying and holding soil in place. Harvested trees are essential elements of Christmas celebrations. Greening the indoors near the winter solstice has been a multicultural practice for thousands of years. Evergreens embody our hopes and expectations for the end of the cold season and renewal of abundance in the coming green season, the cycle of life.

Life four: Our indoor celebrations are brief, but they need not be the last life of our Christmas trees. Jen Sauter drags her drying tree to the family bird feeding station for the remaining cold season. The birds benefit, additional shelter for birds staging to feed at her feeders attracts more birds by offering more of them more of what they need. The twelve year old farm grown Douglas fir Christmas tree pictured stood nine feet tall indoors, now it provides nine feet of excellent cover for staging birds at the feeders.

Cover for birds waiting their turn at a feeding station, the fourth life of a Christmas tree.

Feeding stations attract concentrations of small birds, concentrations of small birds attract predatory birds, a natural process. Natural landscapes level the field for predator-prey interactions by offering escape cover. Cover at your feeding station helps level the field, giving small birds a fighting chance when they are over-concentrated at your super-abundant food source.

Habitat to soil; the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth lives of a Christmas tree.

Life five: A year ago, the Christmas tree pictured above served the Sauters indoors, then the feeder birds outdoors. By spring, the tree was repositioned along a field margin where it supports a grassy tangle that will last for several years and more ecological lives. This is "rabbitat" (rabbit + habitat). The fifth life of the Christmas tree offers new green cover for wildlife along an ecotone, a habitat boundary favoring biological diversity.

Life six: Clinging needles and small twigs finally release and collect under the tree, the sixth life of the Christmas tree begins. Natural litter builds under the tree where insects and fungus along with bacteria reduce the litter to organic duff, nature's mulch. Mulch supports yet more types of organisms.

Life seven: Eventually, after a few years as rabbitat, the tree branches collapse altogether, the bole of the tree resting and rotting on the ground, the seventh life of a Christmas tree. The rotting bole is substrate for fungus, the rotting wood is habitat for invertebrates. New plants take root in the deep duff formed by the decomposed tree.

Life eight: Dust to dust. The tree has passed to duff. Much of its carbon is in long term storage in organic soil supporting the next cycle of plant growth.

A Virginia pine cone releasing seed, commencing the ninth life of a Christmas Tree

Life nine: New life. The Douglas fir sapling pictured below grew from seed dropped by Christmas tree rabbitat years earlier, new life! The mulch of the decomposed tree supports the sapling.

New life, the first life of a Christmas Tree*.

Chipewyan creation myth, big bird and a dog

 ...at the first, the globe was one vast and entire ocean, inhabited by no living creature, except a mighty bird, whose eyes were fire, whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings were thunder.

 Creation of terra firma, origins of man, original sin, creation of living things, dogs, universal floods, oceans, rivers; these are repeating themes in myth and lore of diverse peoples. Birds and flight figure prominently in myth, lore and religion across cultures and through time. In poetry and myth, flight is the soul of birds. Flight may be symbolic of freedom from the burden of more than gravity, the next life is almost always upward!

Dogs have been our constant companions and partners, and creators too, according to the creation myth of the Chipewayan, a people of the barrens of northern Taiga and Tundra of Arctic Canada.

Alexander Mackenzie (1764-1820)

Alexander Mackenzie, first to cross the continent ten years before Lewis and Clark, described the Chipewyan creation myth in his published journal:

The notion which these people entertain of the creation, is of a very singular nature. They believe that, at the first, the globe was one vast and entire ocean, inhabited by no living creature, except a mighty bird, whose eyes were fire, whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings were thunder. On his descent to the ocean, and touching it, the earth instantly arose, and remained on the surface of the waters. This omnipotent bird then called forth all the variety of animals from the earth, except the Chepewyans, who were produced from a dog; and this circumstance occasions their aversion to the flesh of that animal, as well as the people who eat it. This extraordinary tradition proceeds to relate, that the great bird, having finished his work, made an arrow, which was to be preserved with great care, and to remain untouched; but that the Chepewyans were so devoid of understanding, as to carry it away; and the sacrilege so enraged the great bird, that he has never since appeared.

...had traversed a great lake, which was narrow, shallow, and full of islands, where they had suffered great misery, it being always winter, with ice and deep snow.

 Cultural memory of crossing the Bering Strait land bridge?

They have also a tradition amongst them, that they originally came from another country, inhabited by very wicked people, and had traversed a great lake, which was narrow, shallow, and full of islands, where they had suffered great misery, it being always winter, with ice and deep snow. At the Copper-Mine River, where they made the first land, the ground was covered with copper, over which a body of earth had since been collected, to the depth of a man's height. They believe, also, that in ancient times their ancestors lived till their feet were worn out with walking, and their throats with eating. They describe a deluge, when the waters spread over the whole earth, except the {clxxiv}highest mountains, on the tops of which they preserved themselves.

A new take on Elysium and the myth of Tantalus...

They believe, that immediately after their death, they pass into another world, where they arrive at a large river, on which they embark in a stone canoe, and that a gentle current bears them on to an extensive lake, in the centre of which is a most beautiful island; and that, in the view of this delightful abode, they receive that judgment for their conduct during life, which terminates their final state and unalterable allotment. If their good actions are declared to predominate, they are landed upon the island, where there is to be no end to-their happiness; which, however, according to their notions, consists in an eternal enjoyment of sensual pleasure, and carnal gratification. But if their bad actions weigh down the balance, the stone canoe sinks at once, and leaves them up to their chins in the water, to behold and regret the reward enjoyed by the good, and eternally struggling, but with unavailing endeavours, to reach the blissful island, from which they are excluded for ever.