Today's NASA Earth Observatory image of the day is of a place that is near and dear to my heart, the Etosha Pan of Namibia:



In late 1996, my father and I took a trip to Namibia to study termite mound gas exchange as part of an Earthwatch expedition, and afterwards we rented a car and went off on a little safari. Up in Etosha National Park, the wildlife was pretty amazing. Here's a leopard that crossed the road in front of us, immediately followed by a second leopard:



An oryx (or gemsbok):


...And an elephant, drinking from one of the watering holes that fringe the main salt flats:


Namibia has been getting a lot of water lately, as evidenced in compare/contrast images like these, also from NASA's Earth Observatory:

June 2007:


Last week:


And that brings us back to the first image:


In this picture, you can see a new package of river water coming south into the Etosha Pan from the Oshigambo River of Angola. This is "fresh" water, but it has a dissolved load of sediments in it. As the water hits the hot, baking expanse of the Etosha Pan, it evaporates, but the dissolved ions within don't have that option. So they become more and more concentrated, and settle out in a chemical precipitate. This is where all the salt comes from: even freshwater is a little bit salty, and when you evaporate it repeatedly in an enclosed drainage basin, evaporite minerals accumulate there.

Labels: africa, critters, floods, mammals, namibia, national parks, salt, travel

I discovered Julie Zickefoose's blog today. She's on NPR from time to time, which is why her improbable name may sound familiar. She's got a cool blog. I really liked this post -- the tales of walking outside with friends, sharing nature and settling indoors with pets and hearth -- it just warmed me up inside!

Labels: blogs, critters

We now return you to our originally-scheduled photo-travelogue...

On the second day of our Andean mountain tour in Ecuador, Lily and I set out from Tambopaxi Lodge, our comfortable accomodation in Cotopaxi National Park:



We were going for a day-hike, checking out the scenery with our guide Diego while we acclimatized for some more serious mountain climbing in the days to come. The official goal of our hike was to check out two naturally-flowing cold springs, where the agua was pura, and safe to drink. Here's the first one, issuing from the base of a lava flow, with me awkwardly twisting around to raise a bottle of the good stuff:



Spring #2, of greater volume:


Some shots of the scenery:







The extinct volcano Sincholagua:


Me with Sincholagua (and lower cloud cover) in the distance:

A look back at Pasochoa, which we had climbed the day before:


And Cotopaxi itself, the charismatic, active volcano which draws most people to the park:


Critters:

A big insect, maybe a grylloblattid?


Feral horses:


We also saw some cool "primitive" plants (plants with ancient lineages):

Liverworts:


Sphenopsids:


Club mosses:


There was also some geology going on...

Here's a handful of loose lapilli (mixed in with some organics):


Stream deposits on the flanks of Cotopaxi Volcano, showing different water energy regimes. The coarsest layer in the middle represents the fastest moving water (capable of carrying larger particles of sediment):


And here's some flow-banding in andesite:


It started raining on our way back to the lodge, but that was okay, because hot showers and warm tea awaited there. Acclimatization, check! Next up, the peak known as Ruminahui...

Labels: arthropods, critters, ecuador, geology, mammals, plants, south america, travel, volcano

You know what feels really good when you're feeling sick? A hot bath.

And so, when it came to pass that over the winter break, I flew down to Ecuador with a recovering case of pneumonia, my friend Lily and I opted to put our mountain-climbing plans on hold, and go sit in some hot water instead.



From Quito, we took a public bus ($2) an hour east to a series of thermal pools at Papallacta ("papa yacht uh"). This is a lovely resort, nestled in a lovely valley:



Inside the resort (>$2), the architecture was fused with the landscaping in some interesting pseudo-natural ways. For instance, this is in the lounge, where the rocky wall rises up, but then stops some distance below where the wooden ceiling begins. The interval is filled with glass, but the illusion is that the building is open to nature.



They've got nice grounds, too. An organic garden is featured, and they have some neat sculptures. This one is clearly inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.



But there was a mystery... The local river, which carved the valley, was cold:



...So where did the hot water come from? We had noticed some steaming pools on the bus ride over the Andes, at higher elevation. Taking a walk on our second day there, we saw this aqueduct coming down the mountain into the valley:



Aha! It must be that they are pulling the hot water out of the actual hot springs up above, then piping it down to Papallacta for people to enjoy.

Papallacta is just south of the Equator:



At the Equator, Papallacta's elevation of ~10,000 feet (~3300 m) is quite pleasant. A tad chilly when it's dark or overcast, but the snow was at a higher elevation still:



Hiking around in between soaks in the lovely hot water, we saw hummingbirds galore, including the bizarre sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak longer than its body (Google it to see!) We also saw some cool critters, like this beetle:



...And also some cool plants. Lily's really into plants, but even I can appreciate their numerous and varied forms, especially in as biodiverse a place as Ecuador...



Flower-on-a-stem, within a leaf:



After soaking and resting and acclimatizing at Papallacta, I felt a lot better and we trooped back to Quito to meet up with our guide and start climbing mountains... More on that in posts to come.

Labels: art, arthropods, birdies, critters, ecuador, hot springs, plants, south america, travel

The day before Inauguration, I decided to celebrate George Bush's last day in charge of my country by taking a walk in the woods. Okay... that wasn't really my motivation. I was just procrastinating writing up my Structural Geology labs for the coming semester. Anyhow, for one reason or another, I took a stroll in the woods.

I brought my rootin' tootin' new camera with me, and took a few photos. I've got four things to show you: (1) some differential weathering, (2) some kink banding, (3) some cool effects in frozen soil, and (4) a critter.

(1) To start, check out this close-up photo of a stone bridge where the Klingle Valley merges with the Rock Creek Valley:


Several of the (local) stones used in the bridge are weathering at a faster rate than the mortar (cement) that holds them together. As a result of this differential erosion, the less-stable rocks are recessed into the face of the bridge:



Here's another one, where you can see that not all minerals are equally stable at Earth surface conditions. The large central quartz augen stands out in high relief as the micaceous & feldspathic schist around it weathers away.



Yet another: recessed about an inch into the bridge:



That's not all I saw. I also re-discovered the location of some kink bands along the Rock Creek Park bike path:



These kink bands are similar to the ones that Spring 2008 Honors student Victoria measured and analyzed in Broad Branch (also in Rock Creek Park), but these ones are in a different location, further south in the park.



What's worth noting about these kink bands is that they overprint the regional foliation of these schistose rocks. In order to do that, the force that generated the foliation must have been coming from one direction (call it east-west), causing the mineral grains to line up at right-angles to that stress. That allignment is what we call foliation. Later, a new generation of deformation came in from a different direction (call it north-south, approximately parallel to the foliation), kinking the pre-existing foliation. For more on kink bands in DC, see my "DC rocks" page.



(4) One of the disadvantages to hiking in Rock Creek Park in the winter is that it's pretty monochromatic. One of the advantages is that with all the leaves off the trees, it's a lot easier to see new stuff. It's great woodpecker-watching weather, for instance. I saw five woodpeckers of two species that day. Also, it makes it a lot easier to see where the trails are. I saw a new trail that I had never walked before, and so I decided to check it out. I'm glad I did. One thing that I saw that is pretty cool is this effect in frozen soil:



When water freezes, it expands in volume by about 9%, and that shows up here as the upper layer of wet soil froze, it expanded in all directions, pulling away uniformly from two large cobbles of quartzite. It almost makes it look like the quartzite cobbles shrunk in their "sockets," but really it's the "sockets" that got larger.

(4) Lastly, I was doubly glad to have taken the new trail because it was a "road less travelled" kind of deal. I was the only one there. As I trod along, suddenly I heard a scampering noise. It was a critter! It ran up a little gully and then paused as still as a stump, looking at me:



Can't see it? Try this zoomed-in shot:



It's a red fox! Vulpes vulpes, one of two wild canids we have in Rock Creek Park. Pretty good sighting -- only the fourth time I've seen one here (and I spend a lot of time in this park). And every one of those times was in the winter. Again, it's having those clean leaf-less views that allows hikers to see stuff like this.

Labels: critters, dc, ice, mammals, national parks, structure, weathering

Recently, Andrew Alden compiled a list of state minerals and state rocks. A quirky piece in today's Washington Post explores what Maryland is urging its citizens to do with their state fish: eat them. The story also, somewhat randomly, includes a limerick composed by Virginia's former governor and current senator, Mark Warner:

We have a state dog and a fish and a bird.
And of the fossil I'm sure you have heard.
So why not a bat?
What's wrong with that?
The state beverage is no more absurd.

For some reason, I hear this limerick in my head in Carl Kasell's voice...

Labels: birdies, critters, fish, fossils, mammals, maryland, politics, virginia

An article posted last hour on washingtonpost.com by Joel Achenbach examines an upcoming paper in Science that explores the idea of an impact triggering the Younger Dryas glacial advance as well as ending the Clovis culture and triggering the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. The evidence is nanodiamonds in sedimentary deposits from 12,900 years ago. Read the article, and wonder how Joel Achenbach finds out about this stuff a day before it's published. How does he get his hands on this article with enough time to compose a newspaper piece about it, but the rest of us have to wait until tomorrow to read the original paper?

Labels: anthropology, climate change, critters, diamonds, ice, news, sediment

There's more than rocks in Hawai'i. Another thing that might catch the naturalist's eye is the diverse suite of interesting animals and plants. Today, I'd like to share some images of neat lifeforms I encountered on my Thanksgiving trip to the big island. I'll start with sea turtles, then move on to jellyfish, crayfish, endemic freshwater fish, chameleons, wooden tiki carvings (not technically alive), and plants.

Let's start with the turtles. These are green sea turtles, and they're pretty common in Hawai'i. They have certain beaches they frequent, where they haul themselves up and out onto the beach to rest. Here's one at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park:


Here's one feeding on algae at Punaluu Harbor:




Video of the same foraging turtle:


A short distance further along the shore, a snoozer:




But there's more in the sea than turtles... On a hike to the Polulo Valley, we found half a dozen small "Portuguese Man O' War" jellyfish on the beach:




A few valleys down, we spied these native crayfish and freshwater fish in a stream:


One of the real charmers is an invasive species, the Jackson's chameleon, native to Africa:




Look at those hands! Three "thumbs" and two "fingers."


Males have three prominent horns on their heads:


Video:




Baby Jackson's:


Do these count as "critters"? Not sure where else to put them... Tikis outside the chief's house at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park:


And lastly, a couple of botanical images:

Labels: anthropology, critters, hawaii, plants, travel

There's a new study out I read about today in New Scientist which took squid and put them in a tank of ocean water that was equilibrated to simulated atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide predicted for the year 2100. The oceans were also warmer in temperature, again simulating predicted future conditions. In these acidic oceans, the squid's metabolic levels dropped by 31%, and the time they spent contracting their muscles dropped by 45%. I didn't get to read the full study, which is behind a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paywall, but the abstract online hints that these mini-oceans were about 0.3 pH units lower than modern ocean values. The abstract doesn't say how much warmer the experimental tanks were, but notes that water's ability to hold oxygen decreases with warmer temperatures. The lack of oxygen may be the prime reason for the squid's diminished activity.
______________________
Journal reference: DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806886105

Labels: CO2, critters, mollusks, news, ocean acidfication, oceans

CNN reports on cougar sightings in the town of Blackstone, Virginia, a bit southwest of Richmond. The official line goes that since mountain lions (Felis concolor) were wiped out along the eastern seaboard in the early 1900s, they haven't been found anywhere except for a relict population in the Florida Everglades (where they are called "panthers"). But this one little town in the Virginia Piedmont has had more than the average number of sightings. I think it would be great if mountain lions reestablished themselves in the hills of the Old Dominion. Our deer population is out of control, and while it's unsettling to not be at the top of the food chain, ecosystem coherence takes a higher priority in my mind. Along similar lines, in 2004 it was reported that coyotes had moved back into Rock Creek Park, the large national park that runs through the heart of northwest Washington, DC. Park officials have suggested they wouldn't be surprised if black bears moved back in too.

Labels: critters, dc, florida, mammals, virginia

Over the past couple of weeks, I've watched a number of videos that readers of this blog may be interested in. Yesterday, I blogged about A Private Universe and Minds of Our Own. Let me mention a few others today.

The Life of Mammals is a BBC production by the great David Attenborough, who also made Life of Birds, Life in the Freezer, Trials of Life, etc. etc. etc. (Attenborough has been making nature documentaries for the BBC since the late Miocene.) If you're into geology as part of a larger natural system, or if you happen to be a mammal yourself, this is a series well worth watching. Attenborough has a signature style involving showing up in different corners of the Earth, and carrying on a continuous narration the whole time. One moment he's in Tasmania, the next in Brazil, but his thought process is uninterrupted. The discussion is of the highest quality, without being too technical. He's got a real gift for this business. Five stars.

I also watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, from the Discovery Channel. It's about past creatures; Cenozoic mammals and birds. Because the animals it describes are extinct, it can't have footage of the narrator (Kenneth Branagh) strolling amongst the entelodonts or Andrewsarchus. Instead, they've used puppets and lots of computer generated animation to depict their subject. They're pretty clever about this, using "film" techniques that give it the flavor or an actual nature documentary: They mimic night-vision footage, for instance, as well as "handheld" camera shakiness, herds fleeing an overhead "helicopter" perspective, and the subjects nosing up to the "camera lens." While the animals they describe are quite interesting, I found the production to be a bit on the bombastic side, with pounding music intended to raise the viewers' adrenaline levels during a hunt scene, and so on. All told, the content wasn't as good as Life of Mammals, but I appreciated the way they handled the production, so I'd give it 3.5 stars.

Labels: critters, fossils, mammals, movies, teaching, tv

A new study in Current Biology looks at mitochondrial DNA evidence from 160 woolly mammoth fossils on both sides of the Bering Land Bridge, and finds that the beasts trooped east from Asia into North America, and then marched back again 40,000 years ago, at which point the Asian mammoths slid into decline and extinction. The interpretation by the study's authors is that the North American prodigal mammoths returned to the mother country and possibly wiped out their Asian cousins.

The original article on the Current Biology* site. *Link wasn't working quite right this morning...
Scientific American's treatment of the story.
An article in the New York Times reviewing the study.

Labels: alaska, critters, fossils, mammals, pleistocene, russia

I swear, this is from Reuters, not the Onion:

Putin saves TV crew from Siberian tiger

Crazy! Putin guns down a wild tiger! WTF?

Labels: critters, news, russia

I used to do a lot of woodcuts. Woodcuts are a kind of block printing, where you start with wood (usually basswood, or something else of medium hardness) and then carve away everything that you want to be white in the final print, leaving behind everything you want to appear black. Once the carving is done, ink your print and press it to a piece of paper, and you get a cool looking block print. The same thing can be done with linoleum, styrofoam, or potatoes.

Based on Googling my personal website, a design firm in Seattle recently contacted me to do a new series of woodcuts. Their client, a housing development in Washington state, wanted a squirrel mascot. So over the course of the past week, in addition to preparing for the fall semester, I busted out the chisels and ink roller. Here's the squirrel that I prepared for them:

But carving the squirrel reawakened this particular creative urge in me. I like doing woodcuts! And I like thinking up my own material to carve. So in my spare time, I started this fellow, finishing him up yesterday afternoon as the sun dipped low in the western sky:

He's sort of a juvenile, freaked-out, overweight, embryonic, stressy tyrannosaur. With an overbite. I like him because, artistically, he combines my interest in cartoons with my interest in block printing. (And of course, my interest in geology!)

Labels: art, critters, dinosaurs

Now that I'm back in DC, I can actually start downloading the photos I took all summer. Here's some from the first two days of my summer's travels, in Kentucky at Mammoth Cave.

There was a big cicada emergence happening there. This insect is 17 years old!


Cicadas weren't the only wildlife. I also saw a Tyrannosaurus rex in the trees near Cave City.


On the Wild Cave tour, we entered Mammoth Cave in a roomy passage, but were soon crawling through very small tunnels...


Caving attire: tres chic.


Fossil coral weathering out of the roof of the cave...


"Snowball" concretions on the ceiling of the Snowball Room, where there is a subterranean cafe. I had a bowl of soup and a Snickers bar from their extensive menu.


The Snowball Cafe featured a bathroom, too. I was struck by the contrast between the modern tile and ceramic fixtures and the looming limestone ceiling...


The group of folks (not one of whom I knew) after we got out of the cave and back into the sultry Kentucky summer air.

Labels: caves, critters, dinosaurs, kentucky, travel

Whoa! Check out this minuscule snake! Really small vertebrates catch my attention -- think of all those itty-bitty ribs and vertebrae in something this small. How big is its heart? How many red blood cells can fit through its arteries at a time? How incredible is it that vertebrates can be as small as this guy, or as large as an Apatosaurus or a fin whale?
It's from Barbados. Check out more details here.

Labels: critters, news

Back in Bozeman again after a great four day stint in Yellowstone National Park. I was up in the Lamar Valley ("Serengeti of North America"), checking out megafauna as part of my "Wildlife Ecology of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem" course. The hyper-enthusiastic course instructor, Dave Willey, took us to see this amazing ecosystem, using the wolf-elk relationship as a platform for understanding ecological connections. Dave knows a lot about wolves, and showed us plenty. We mainly observed the Slough Creek Pack, but we also saw one of the Druid Pack (the 'original' pack that was reintroduced to Yellowstone in the late 1990s). We also got to observe black bears, elk, bison, grizzly bears, coyotes, bighorn sheep, and a bunch of birds-of-prey.

One bear encounter is worth recounting here: We had hiked from the Lamar Valley out to Cache Creek, where rumor had it the Druid Pack had holed up. We spent the morning "glassing the slopes" (searching with binoculars), but didn't locate any of the wolves. No one had seen them in three days, and we were having the same luck. We began hiking back to the Lamar and our van. At one point, our group separated into two groups. I was at the tail end of the front group, and stopped to answer the call of nature before dropping down to the flat Lamar Valley floor. This short break to take a pee ended up preventing a major bear encounter, as it turned out. Why? It gave the front group time to get down ahead of me, so instead of staring at their backs, I was looking out over the valley. And there I saw two grizzlies heading through the sagebrush, on a direct line towards my colleagues! I called out to warn them (they couldn't see because they were on the same level as the bears, not elevated like I was). We all moved up onto the hill, so we could see the bears and the bears could see us. The tail end of our group caught up, and Dave shouted at them to get up to the high ground. Then we noticed another group of hikers, heading in on the trail. Through the binoculars, we could see that they were oblivious of the bears. We shouted to them too, and they moved up towards us. At that point, the lead bear huffed up and started galloping! "Oh shit," Dave said, "Who's got the bear spray?" When your wildlife ecology professor says "Oh shit," it's time to start worrying. Fortunately the bear's gallop lasted only twenty feet or so (a mock charge?) and then the pair resumed their amble through the sage. They crossed the trail a few feet from where the other group of hikers had been, and headed up a small wooded valley.

We all breathed a sigh of relief, and ventured down off the hill and onto the trail again, keeping a wary eye on the wooded valley. Safely past it, we relaxed and began hiking normally again, at which point we got a great look at a big black wolf trying to cross the Lamar River to our left! It was definitely the closest we had been to a wolf all week! The wolf got spooked by some fishermen, however, and retreated up the hillside on the other side of the road. Pretty cool stuff to see. The Yellowstone Ecosystem appears to be alive and well, even with wolves being "delisted" as threatened species in March, and then reinstated as "endangered" yesterday.

Also, while we were there, a man was attacked by a (probable) grizzly in his tent two campsites up the road. Pretty scary stuff, no longer being at the top of the food chain. These animals will eat you! For me, it was really insightful to get to experience some of that firsthand. This trip was the first time I had camped in the park (in spite of numerous visits over the years), and I really enjoyed the early morning and late evening wildlife viewing: that's the time to be out there!

Labels: critters, fossils, msse, national parks, yellowstone

Yesterday, I went up to Delaware Bay to help the Nature Conservancy count spawning horseshoe crabs. I carpooled with my student Efrain and his friend Dennis. We did some birding at Cape Henlopen State Park, then had dinner and a few crafty craft beers at the Dogfish Head Brewpub in Rehoboth Beach (I had crabcake, natch.), and then headed out to Big Stone Beach for the main event: the spring tide and the new moon mean spawning horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) by the thousands. We were helping the Nature Conservancy tally up the numbers of male and female crabs. You can learn more about horseshoe crabs at this excellent website. Or you can just look at these images:



























...You get the idea. Other images on the Flickr photostream. Joining a couple of medical doctors from Delaware (well, originally from Virginia, but stationed in Delaware), we surveyed the beach using TNC's rope and square-meter protocol. The weather turned cold and rainy, but we kept it up, and saw a lot of crabs. I estimate that altogether, we saw somewhere around 5,000 crabs. Pretty cool: one of the great wildlife concentrations in the world, and it's only 2.5 hours from DC. Next up: sandhill cranes on the Platte River in Nebraska, or maybe polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba...

Labels: critters, delaware, environmental, field trips, travel