Monthly Archives: March 2014

Is a plug in the St. Clair River really going to fix low water levels?

You may have got the impression from something you read or heard recently that the U.S. government has decided to proceed with a fix for the Michigan-Huron-Georgian Bay low water levels problem, but you might want to hold your applause. The United States Army Corps of Engineers has set aside a small amount in its 2014 budget, $50,000—lunch money—for some preliminary work leading up to a General Reevaluation Report on compensating works in the St. Clair River. This is a very narrow look at the water levels problem and Canada and the U.S. have not signed on to it.

Back in 2009, the scientific arm of the IJC, the International Upper Great Lakes Study Board, the authors of the $17 million report on water levels, had advised against such an approach. It “recommended that remedial measures not be undertaken at this time and that…the need for mitigative measures in the St. Clair River be examined as part of the comprehensive assessment of the future effects of climate change.”

This comment was contained in an interim report written before the IJC told the Study Board politely in future to keep its opinions to itself. Instead, the IJC advised the Board that it should “provide Governments and the public with extremely valuable information and insight to help form the basis for rational and scientifically-based decision making.” With that, the way was clear for the Commission to make its plug-in-the-St-Clair-River recommendation without contravening its own experts.

And so, last April, the Commission advised the U.S. and Canadian governments to investigate possibly restoring 10 inches of water to the middle Great Lakes by way of a structure in the St. Clair River. This was such slap in the face to the Study Board’s work that the U.S. section chair of the Commission, declined to sign on to the Advice document, the creature of her own agency.

“The Advice in my view places insufficient emphasis on climate change and the need for governments to pursue adaptive management,” wrote Lana Pollack. “The Advice may also raise false hopes that structures in the St. Clair River would be sufficient to resolve the suffering from low water levels in Michigan-Huron, while at the same time causing possible disruption downstream in Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.”

The IJC sans Lana Pollack, wanted to finally put the dredging problem behind them—now made infinitely worse by record low water levels—a problem the general public seemed to think was responsible, and a problem that had been dragging on despite innumerable studies, plans, designs and approvals for more than half a century.

It would have been infinitely easier to have slowed down the river back in the ’60s when the major digging took place—before a new ecological and hydrological world had formed around the wound. But now in 2014, the big water-level agent is climate change and there are many stakeholders with legitimate interests in the status quo.

Besides being spooked by all the uncertainties association with climate change, the Study Board looked at the various scenarios for water restoration and saw big winners and losers: shipping and recreational boating in the middle Great Lakes would love it but there would possibly be flooding and erosion in the Chicago area; bureaucratic entanglements (the necessity for a bi-national entity comparable to the one for the St. Lawrence Seaway); and a diminished hydro-electric generation capacity but improved fish spawning habitat in the St. Mary’s River at the mouth of Lake Superior.

But the really tragic tradeoffs concerned the environment. Georgian Bay wetlands would benefit but “restoration structures would have significant adverse environmental impacts on the St. Clair River system, home to five listed species-at-risk (endangered or threatened) including lake sturgeon. Environmental laws of both Canada and the United States require that this unique habitat be protected.”

But here’s the crusher: relief for Georgian Bay wetlands would only be fleeting. Georgian Bay is being steadily drained drip-by-drip, 10 inches a century, by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA), the gradual rebounding of the earth’s crust following the melting of glacial ice that weighed down the Great Lakes during the Ice Age.

“Restoration would temporarily help to counteract the effects of GIA and lowered water levels in Georgian Bay,” said the Study Board. “However, restoration of Lake Michigan-Huron levels would compound the effects of GIA in much of the densely populated southern portion of the upper Great Lakes. ”

GIA really comes into play when you consider the length of time an engineering project would take to get off the ground. The Study Board identified 20 years for planning, environmental reviews, regulatory approvals and design steps; plus 30 more years for a staged construction, which would allow the coastal areas to ease in gently to a rise in water levels. The Army Corps estimates the completion of its General Reevaluation Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement alone would take until 2025.

The IJC’s Advice to Government saw a greatly reduced timeline. “It is important to note that the full effects of these structures would not be immediate, but rather could take up to a decade to achieve the desired outcome, depending on hydrological conditions.” Ten years: another case of false hopes?

The good people of Georgian Bay sounded the alarm about low water levels years ago, committing considerable political capital and treasure to the problem. Georgian Bay wetlands are some of the most pristine and complex fresh water ecosystems in the world. But saving them, the little it is still possible to save, is going to take the hard incremental ongoing work of adaptive management. (See my October blog “Water Levels and a Major Report from UNESCO” for an explanation for what this means.) Waiting for the hydrological engineers to come up with a contraption probably isn’t going to deliver what we want.

The International Joint Commission’s Advice to Governments on the Recommendations of the International Upper Great Lakes Study, April 15^th, 2013 http://www.ijc.org/files/publications/IUGLS-IJC-Report-Feb-12-2013-15-April-20132.pdf

Upper Great Lakes Study: Final Report to the International Joint Commission, March 2012 http://www.iugls.org/Final_Reports

Decision Document Review Plan: St Clair River Compensating Works, St. Calir River (Michigan and Canada) General Reevaluation Report, May 2013 www.lre.usace.army.mil/Portals/69/docs/PPPM/PlanningandStudies/ApprovedReviewPlans/StClairComp.pdf

Two Stories about Wolves that Say a Lot about Us

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We never seem to let up on wolves. They’ve been a wet nurse for Romulus and Remus, a sexual predator in Little Red Riding hood, but more often just cattle-rustling thieves. We’re still into mythmaking but now we’re spinning our tales from stuff we pick up from biology and ecology, stuff we find psychologically affirming. Where once we saw demons, now we see critters in need of rescuing. Two wolf stories recently in the news illustrate this point.

This past February in the depths of one of the harshest winters in 20 odd years, Isabelle, a lone female left her enfeebled wolf pack on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and set off across an ice bridge for the mainland in search of a mate, maybe food. And there she died on the shores of Minnesota leaving behind on the island a pack comprised of six or seven adults, including possibly only one potential breeding-age female plus three pups, all that remains of a peak population of 50 wolves.

Seventeen years earlier, a solitary alpha-male had made the reverse journey from the mainland to the island where he took over a pack, drove another to extinction and eventually came to dominate the gene pool, resulting in debilitating back deformities affecting virtually all his descendents.

There is an operatic symmetry—especially when you consider the death—to these to and fro journeys across the ice, both in search of a mate. These are odysseys undertaken across a forbidding landscape, Canis lupus versions of a polar expedition. The alpha male succinctly delivers a story of male over-reach, genetic domination that comes at a terrible cost, aggression gone too far. Isabelle could be painted as a mate-desperate, getting-on-in-years female or maybe as a plucky girl not willing to settle for the same-old, damaged goods on her home turf.

The other prominent story, somewhat more familiar, has to do with the wolves of Yellowstone Park that has been recently revived with a highly engaging YouTube video “How Wolves Change Rivers” with 3,300,000 views. You really must see this.

Using time-lapse photography, the video paints a picture of a miraculous “terrestrial trophic cascade.” It tells the tale of the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone Park in 1990s, which has kept the elk population in check, which has allowed the vegetation to be recover from over grazing, which has corrected the erosion problems on the river banks, which has led to different, more satisfactory river courses.

This is a powerful story about redemption. A creature once thought to be a killing-for-killing’s-sake psychopath is reconstituted as keystone species masterminding the return to health of an entire ecosystem. And because we humans made this happened, we also have been redeemed.

But a fall from grace quickly followed. A fulsome article in Nature with the requisite scientific bells and whistles, an editorial in the New York Times, which rarely steps out of the world of people to discuss animals, and a blogger writing for the Ecological Society of America, all debunked the assertion that the reintroduction of wolves to the Park has delivered the benefits claimed for it. Our keystone/alpha species has been cast into ecological irrelevance—or maybe not.

Kristin Marshall, an ecologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle Washington told Nature that, “the predator was gone for at least 70 years. Removing it has changed the ecosystem in fundamental ways. Wolves did meaningfully structure the Yellowstone ecosystem a century ago, but that reintroducing them cannot restore the old arrangement.”

Recent research suggests that willow shrubs did not do well whether they were protected from elk grazing or not. Where the plants have done well is attributed to beavers, another keystone species, having raised the water table to counteract the effects of drought. And to the extent that the elk population has declined, the debunkers question whether this can be attributed entirely to wolves. Grizzly bears and hunting have also been thinning out the herds.

Two things are being questioned here: one, the facts on the ground in the case of the impact on particular plant species; and two, the “terrestrial trophic cascade”, that predators have a crucial impact on the behaviour of an ecosystem. This top-down theory replaced an earlier notion of a bottoms-up cascade, that the health of plants determines the entire food chain. And not to be left out, some researchers favour the guys in the middle, grasshoppers, herbivores, and beavers, all of which integrate influences from the top and the bottom.

Despite the holes punched in it, the top-down theory is still viable, at least some people think. As quoted in Nature, “James Estes, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and one of the fathers of the trophic-cascade idea, says that the evidence for cascades mediated by changes in animal behaviour rather than by changes in animal number is ‘thin’, at the moment — and that many of the effects that have been documented are spotty and badly need to be rigorously mapped out. Still, he adds, ‘When all is said and done, and everyone is dead 100 years from now, [the trophic cascade] will be closer to right.’”

So the Yellowstone wolf may not have been relegated to some ecological trash heap, quite. He has been caught up in a turf war among ecologists who have learned to resist the anthropomorphic projections the rest of us happily wallow in every time we watch some spectacular National Geographic or Planet Earth extravaganza, porn for nature lovers.

Animals just used to be there. Now as a result of our actions we are put in the position of saving them, especially clever, team players like wolves, who make other species strong by preying on the weak among them. However, it goes without saying, don’t try this at home.

Ecological Society of America: Wolves Take a Blow to Their Rep, March 11, 2014 http://www.esa.org/esablog/ecology-in-the-news/yellowstone-wolves-take-a-blow-to-their-rep/

Detroit Free Press: Lone Female Wolf Found Dead after Crossing Ice Bridge, February 26, 2014, http://www.freep.com/article/20140226/NEWS06/302260064/Michigan-wolf-population-Isle-Royale

YouTube Video: How Wolves Changes Rivers, by Sustainable Man, February 13, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

New York Times: Is the Wolf a Real American Hero? March 10, 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-real-american-hero.html?_r=0

Nature: Rethinking Predators: Legend of the Wolf, March 7, 2014 http://www.nature.com/news/rethinking-predators-legend-of-the-wolf-1.14841

Photography: Doug McKenzie

Oceans & Fisheries loses out to another agency again, an environmental journalist gets sacked, and PostMedia does something truly outrageous.

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Since my Feb 19^th blog about the National Energy Board being poised to assume responsibilities for fish and fish habitat, I’ve learned that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is doing much the same thing, that is, it has signalled its intention to take over the protection of fish from the Federal Department of Oceans and Fisheries (DFO).

If this were an isolated event in an otherwise healthy approach to the environment, one might be tempted to chalk it up to rational planning, but environmental protections are involved in a multi-vehicle car crash right now, and this is yet another insidious example of how deep and wide Harper’s assault on science really is.

Other dismaying events, this one involving the private sector: PostMedia cut loose Mike de Souza, one of Canada’s outstanding environmental reporters, when the media company took a truncheon to its Ottawa Bureau. This quickly followed a devastating article by Jenny Uechi and Matthew Millar in the Vancouver Observer on a cozy deal PostMedia had struck with the petroleum industry to promote the primacy of energy (read fossil fuels) through all its media outlets. So count that as two dismaying events.

Now for the details.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has signaled its intention to assume powers under the Fisheries Act according to a CNSC and DFO Memorandum: Arrangements of this kind used to be described as conflicts of interest. But this one is touted as adding “clarity and consistency to decision-making” and “improving the efficiency and effectiveness of regulatory reviews” for nuclear facilities, uranium mines and mills.

This conflation of environment/industry processes means fish have lost an advocate. Any clarity arising from this arrangement (but not transparency obviously) comes from burying protections for fish in inter-office memos. And this handover is only one step away: DFO only retains its authority “until such time as CNSC is prescribed the person or entity who would be authorized to issue Fisheries Act authorizations.”

PostMedia, the Petroleum Industry and Mike de Souza: No one would position PostMedia in the left/liberal-leaning side of the spectrum, nonetheless its reporting on the environment has included the breaking of important stories, and leading the pack of responsible reporters was Mike de Souza.

De Souza’s employment ended abruptly on February 4^th, when PostMedia announced the downsizing of its Ottawa Bureau and the melding of its remaining operations with that of the Ottawa Citizen. Reporters Andrea Hill and Tobi Cohen were also let go.

These firings happened to coincide with the Vancouver Observer publishing a stunning story about a collaboration between PostMedia and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to “bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation.” Was this timing a coincidence?

According to a power point presentation explaining the deal, the National Post’s publisher Douglas Kelly promises his paper will “undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”

How can any reasonable person be expected to not see this deal as contaminating the independence of the paper’s and PostMedia’s editorial content? It goes well beyond the usual project placement/advertising/marketing agreement that a party might strike with the advertising department of a newspaper.

We need more journalists and fewer media hacks. We need real journalists, whatever the political stripe of their employers.

Speaking of political stripes, pushing the environment, the economy and science through the funnel of resource-based development isn’t necessarily a natural for conservatives. Those great looming right-wing figures, Margaret Thatcher and Newt Gingrich were both strong believers in supporting basic science and lots of it. This, plus other well–argued insights can be found in “The Harper Approach to Science is Holding Us Back,” an excellent article by Dak T. de Kerckhove in ipolitics.

“In the global context, it certainly appears that Canada was better positioned for innovation before the arrival of the Harper government. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports measure a country’s ability to provide a fertile ground for innovation. Canada was in the top ten of most categories in 2001 — and in third place in the overall measure of ‘Growth Competitive Index’. In the past few years we’ve slid out of the top ten and, in specific categories like ‘Quality of Scientific Research Institutions’, have seen a freefall from fourth place in 2008 to 16th in 2013. To make matters worse, last year we were ranked 27th for our ‘Capacity for Innovation’. By international standards, we’re increasingly failing to foster that fertile environment for innovation.”

De Kerchove’s point is that even within traditional, conservative, economy-minded terms of reference, Harper is not handling the science and environment files very well. These are keystone sectors, that would spawn wealth and well-being given some consistent support. If we took care of them, they would take care of us.

Memorandum of Understanding: Fisheries and Oceans and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Dec 16, 2013 http://www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/acts-and-regulations/memorandums-of-understanding/mou-cnsc-fisheries-oceans.cfm

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, PostMedia 2012 Energy Channel Sponsorship: Positioning Canada at the Forefront of EnergyCopy of CAPP- PostMedia Board Presentationhttp://prezi.com/8zap67vqchv5/copy-of-capp-postmedia-board-presentation-highlights/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Vancouver Observer: February 4^th, 2014, Presentation Suggests Intimate Relationship between PostMedia and Oil Industry Jenny Uechi and Matthew Millar http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/postmedia-prezi-reveals-intimate-relationship-oil-industry-lays-de-souza

Harper Approach to Science is Holding Us Back http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/02/25/the-harper-approach-to-science-is-holding-us-back/

Blow-Your-Mind Citizen Science Projects versus Keeping a Cottage Diary

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The brave new world of citizen scientists is one of the more extraordinary outgrowths of web-based, app-based communications. The data flow generated by smart phones, webcams, telescopes, drones, robotic rovers, remotely operated submersibles and satellites is more than the scientists—those who still have jobs—can handle, and so they’ve gone trolling for enthusiasts to bring some rudimentary order to the gobs of stuff flowing out of their devices.

So if you’re yearning for more face time with your laptop, try out some of the classy citizen science websites out there complete with fancy graphics, National Geographic-quality photographs, tutorials, blogs, discussion groups and professional ad copy, but don’t be fooled. They’re advertising the Joe jobs of every science project—observing, transcribing, measuring, making lists and counting—nothing wrong with that!

Check into http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/projects.html: definitely one of more awe-inspiring sites and read about Galaxy Zoo Quench where 1600 people peered back in time to when the Universe was less than half its present age and applied their “pattern-recognition skills” to complete 120,000 classifications of 3002 post-quenched (snuffed out) galaxies plus 3002 control galaxies as captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Hubble Space Telescope and United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. Phase Two is now underway.

But do heights make you giddy? How about joining a mid-ocean, mapping expedition via webcam videos? Mapping Seafloor Geology at Endeavour Ridge is compiling bathymetric data sets (underwater maps) to better understand the area’s dynamic geological history. By correlating geological features with select animals, you will contribute to an understanding of species distribution in one of the most extreme habitats on earth.

How about digging into climate change? Transcribe Arctic and worldwide weather observations recorded in ships’ logs going back to the mid-19^th century. These will establish some useful baselines on which scientists can build their climate model projections to improve our understanding of past and future environmental conditions.

If history is your thing, you can dive into the Ancient Lives Project and transcribe and interpret thousand-year-old texts using an ancient alphabet keyboard. Your digital transcriptions will then be crunched together with other computer and human touches to turn them into intelligible scripts and later published in the Egypt Exploration Society’s Greco-Roman Memoirs series.

These sorts of project might provide a break from Monopoly and gin rummy at the cottage when it is too buggy to go outside.

If you want to collect your own data, check out some new apps being developed, some of which are mentioned in this Scientific American article at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/8-apps-that-turn-citizens-into-scientists/ There’s a secchi dish app that enables mariners to participate in a global study of phytoplankton. This sort of data could throw some light on climate change impacts on the bottom of the food chain.

If you want to turn your kids into science bugs, try out mobile and web-based tools for data collection, for example the Marine Debris Tracker (self explanatory) and Project NOAH, www.mindleaptech.com/apps/science/project-noah/ a resource for nature exploration and documentation, for sharing sightings and helping to identify plants and animals and their locations. This could be useful for any number of (your choice of) missions.

Say you want to plant milkweed for the decimated monarch butterflies. Assuming you could find a nursery to supply you with seeds, you could get a movement going and record your plots using NOAH’s GPS coordinates.

The danger is you will end up poking at and being disappointed by the less-than-adequate intuitive functions of your app. Come to think of it, you don’t actually need a hand-held recording device to plant milkweed, you need a shovel. Just do it, in the company of someone you know in the real world in place on a member of online community or an avatar.

If you want to be a citizen of the great outdoors, think local. Take a look at http://www.citizenscientists.ca/Citizen_Scientists.html a volunteer, not-for-profit group that focuses on ecological monitoring, environmental training and education. They follow a government certified protocol to monitor stream health at various sites. SOLEC, State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference recognized their strong commitment to improving the environment within the Great Lakes Basin with an award in 2011.

One of the oldest and most well-established citizen science projects is the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Now in its 113^th year, with over 500 local chapters, it is committed to grassroots conservation action.

The really big NASA-type citizen science projects look fascinating but Darwin got by with a notebook, a magnifying glass, a ruler and a pencil or two, the real tools of engagement. And if you thinking legacies, who’s to say your coffee-stained, yellowed science diary left on a cottage shelf under some old bird books won’t outlive the huge datasets captured in some time-sensitive software?

The act of observing makes you observant. Taking notes anchors you in a time and space. Writing a diary leaves a trail of engagements that give a person a life meaning and shape. If it was good enough for Darwin…

The Bufflehead

Nature, Politics, and Science in the Great Lakes and Georgian Bay