Keiran's World

More than weather determines tree-line forest growth

05. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Information Forestry, Keiran's World, Science Scribe · Tags: Canadian Forest Service, Climate change, high-altitude forests, Natural Resources Canada

The fog closed in at Beechey Head. East Sooke Park, March 29 2013

Information Forestry, December 2012—

British Columbia is home to some of Canada’s highest-elevation forests. In the very highest of these—growing at treeline in or near the true alpine—evergreens hug the ground, twisted and bent by wind and snow pack, with vertical leaders repeatedly pruned by severe winter temperatures, ice, and wind. Many models that predict how changing climate will affect species distribution assume temperature limits both growth and spread of these forests. As global temperatures rise with climate change, these models forecast the forests will straighten, grow tall, and colonize ever-higher slopes.

However, a recent study by Natural Resources Canada Research Scientist Eliot McIntire suggests these assumptions need re-examination. McIntire and colleague Alex Fajardo, of the University of Montana, tracked growth at high-altitude treelines in the Chilean Andes and Montana’s Rocky Mountains. Basal tree cores at the sites show tree growth and colonization up the slopes improved for most of the past 200 to 300 years. This corresponds to a period when global temperatures were just beginning to climb to today’s levels out of the very coldest decades of the last millennium.

“Synchrony between temperature and growth and temperature and recruitment clearly occurred during that period in both regions,” says McIntire. “Then, during the past half-century, it was lost at all sites.”

In fact, any improvements in growth that had occurred have since disappeared or reversed.

This decoupling of temperature and high-altitude growth and recruitment rates may indicate that the world is entering a period in which temperature no longer drives growth and colonization at treelines, McIntire says. Other factors, such as availability of water, may now be the main constraints.

The findings suggest climate models may need to be modified to separate high-altitude growth and recruitment drivers if they are to capture what is really going on under British Columbia’s—and the world’s—highest forest canopies.

Step outside and take a deep, clean breath

02. March 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: CHILD study, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, flame retardants, hormones, PBDEs, PFCs, science, University of British Columbia, University of Sherbrooke, Victoria Times Colonist, World Health Organization

We live in a plastic world: terror at chemicals in breast milk. Photo by Kevin Dooley

We live in a plastic world: terror at chemicals in humans' blood stream and breast milk. Photo by Kevin Dooley

We live in a plastic world: dismay at chemicals in human blood stream and breast milk.
Photo by Kevin Dooley

Granny always sent us outside to play. She was right—being outside was good for us—but she was right for reasons she couldn’t have foreseen 40 years ago.

Numerous recent studies indicate our homes and offices have filled in recent decades with chemicals meant to benefit us, which instead might be harming us. These substances are called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, because of the way they interfere with our hormonal processes.

A recent report by the World Health Organization and the U.N. Environment Programme summarizes the latest in the ongoing science on these substances. Researchers in B.C. and Canada continue to contribute to our understanding of the complex issue, including how we are exposed to these compounds.

Sources include:

World Health Organization’s report on the State of the science of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, 2012.

Flame retardants in human breast milk

Indoor sources of PFCs in 152 Vancouver homes

Tracking daily exposures to toxins in Europe

CHILD study

Statistician determines actuarials of fire-fighting resource sharing

28. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Information Forestry, Keiran's World · Tags: Canadian Forest Service, estimating risk, forest fire, Natural Resources Canada, Steen Magnussen, Steve Taylor

Information Forestry, December 2012—The biggest challenge in forecasting fire-season resource needs in Canada, says Canadian Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis Research Scientist Steen Magnussen, is the variability in the country’s fire regimes.

“The environment, the size of Canada, the weather, the forest structure, larger climate patterns, the fire danger—all that combines to create the variability that we face year to year, location to location,” he says. “That’s why it is so difficult to predict how many resources are going to be needed anywhere and at any one time across the country.”

Borrowing methodologies from the insurance industry, Magnussen has developed a statistical framework that captures the variability and other key characteristics of Canada’s fire regimes on a weekly basis. The framework enabled him and Natural Resources Canada Fire Officer Steve Taylor to estimate how fire events in Canada are distributed in relation to one another across and between 48 regions and throughout a fire season.

“Resource sharing works because we don’t usually get major fires occurring in different regions at the same time,” Magnussen says. “We wanted to see if that pattern is stable enough that we could do estimates of likelihood: What is the probability of one, two, three provinces experiencing peaks in fire activity at one time?”

The resulting fire-event distribution revealed that, in recent decades, Ontario’s fire numbers tend to peak in spring, after snowmelt but before the forest greens up. British Columbia’s fire season usually peaks later in the summer—after drought sets in—as happened with the 2003 Kelowna fire.

“This lack of synchrony is essential,” Taylor says. “How many regions aren’t experiencing fire-occurrence peaks when other regions are? And which regions? Not all jurisdictions have the same amount of resources. For resource sharing to work, it’s important to track synchrony and asynchrony with regard to those resource-wealthy regions.”

The study is the first step in a project Taylor is leading to determine possible effects of climate change on future fire-resource sharing. “We needed to assess the current situation: What are the chances of peak overlap occurring between jurisdictions now?”

One of the questions Taylor and Magnussen wanted to answer was whether daily, weekly, or biweekly patterns in historical use of fire-fighting resources exist. The amount of data on resource use exists only for the last 25 years, and even that is inconsistent and in some places non-existent.

“Most fire-management agencies don’t track number of firefighters or number of person days,” Taylor says. “They can tell you what was used through a season, but not on a day-by-day basis. Even for a particular fire, it can be hard to find that information.”

With fire patterns and the statistical joint distribution of fire events now mapped and established in time and space, fire managers can use the system created by Magnussen to determine the likelihood of various fireevent scenarios across the country. And when resource-needs information for individual fires becomes available, the system will enable fire managers and researchers to quantify opportunities for and constraints on sharing resources across jurisdictions.

© Natural Resources Canada 2012

Owls all a-Twitter about B.C. Barred Owl cull to protect Spotted Owls

25. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe · Tags: Barred Owl, British Columbia, flying squirrels, humour, invasive species, species at risk, Spotted Owl

We’ve known for years that British Columbia’s Northern Spotted Owl, known to the pointy-headed science crowd as Strix occidentalis, is in trouble. Provincial wildlife officials estimate that as few as 10 of the birds remain in B.C.’s forestlands, down from about 500 individuals a century ago. The owl’s dire plight led the province to establish a captive-breeding program in Langley in 2007. The program has seen limited success to date.

The biggest threat to the owl’s existence is habitat loss. A century of logging has decimated the old-growth forests the owls depend on.

However, beginning a few decades ago, another threat to the reclusive, dark-eyed owl appeared.

Barred Owls, also known as Eight Hooters, Rain Owls, and Strix varia, arrived west of the Rockies in the 1940s. Aggressive and adaptable, the newcomers compete with Spotted Owls for food and territory. They also hunt and eat Spotted Owls. Occasionally, the two species mate, producing hybrid young called Sparred Owls.

In 2008, wildlife officials quietly began controlling Barred Owl populations near confirmed Spotted Owl sightings. Seventy-three Barred Owls have since been captured and relocated. The province also authorized the shooting of 39 owls that refused to stay relocated.

While this war in B.C.’s woods unfolded, we humans watched as new technologies transformed our own species’ struggles for social change and self-determination. While wildlife officers relocated Barred Owls, Facebook and Twitter enabled popular revolutions in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere.

Now, if owls could use Twitter, what might they be posting during this crisis in B.C.’s Birdland? Perhaps their tweets would read something like the following:

@Svaria What moral right, the featherless 2-legs? We only follow their example, colonizing and squashing indigenous populations, just as they did

@Soccidentalis Appreciate the efforts @Featherless2legs, but where are we to live? Suitable forests are disappearing, and caged enclosures lack appeal

@EightHooter Young couple looking to colonise forest near cutblock. Must have rodents and songbirds. Spotted Owl O.K., too #newintown

@Spotty Spotted Owl Hootenany tonight. Flying squirrel on menu. In the old forest by Chilliwack Lake. See U there #donttellthebarreds

@TrixieStrixoccidentalis @Featherless2legs Bigotted specists. My mate=Barred Owl: our chicks stronger, bolder and handsomer for it. Genetic variation=future survival

@Spotty Young couple looking for nest cavity or platform. Family-friendly + 200-year-old forest with flying squirrels only. NO Barred Owls!

@EyeSpyAtNight Pleased to announce continued survival of our first chick in a large forested cage at Mountain View breeding facility #talonscrossed

@WhoCooks4U Barred Owl Hootenany tonight. Fresh Spotted Owl on menu. Next to the cutblock by Chilliwack Lake. Listen for the Spotties #canteatjustone

@Spotty Spotted Owl Hootenany tonight cancelled. Regrets #billybobgoteaten

@Spotty Missing: my one true and only love. He has dark eyes, a spotted breast, and appears bigger than he really is. If info, please reply

@WhoCooks4U @Spotty Have seen missing mate. Come to the cutblock by Chilliwack Lake tonight 11 p.m. for information. Bring friends.

@WhoCooks4U Barred Owl Hootenany tonight. Extra helpings extra-fresh Spotted Owl. No pellets this time, I promise

Owls and humans figure prominently in this affair, but other, overlooked creatures are also affected in the struggle to save Spotted Owls.

Imagine the following note, paw-delivered by air late at night:

Dear Furless Two-Leg Mammal-Comrades:

We applaud your decision to finally intervene in the senseless massacre of flying squirrels, deer mice, hares and other small mammals by the invasive Barred Owl, Strix varia.

While we celebrate your decision, we respectfully request that you broaden your intervention to include all owls in the area. These are the Great Horned, Northern Spotted, Northern Saw-whet, Western Screech, Short-eared, and Northern Pygmy owls.

Thousands of our children die daily at the talons of these killers. None of us are safe. We live in terror. What unknown potential among these countless lost generations disappears every year down the murderers’ gullets, with only regurgitated fur and bones providing clues to victims’ identities?

It is time for all mammals to unite in the furred cause: Freedom from fear of predation from above.

Respectfully Yours, in hope that you will hear our pleas and pity our plight,

Rocky G. sabrinus (Northern flying squirrel)

SEWP (Society for the Elimination of Winged Predators)

—30—

Thank you, Don Enright, for checking the Twitter syntax and providing hashtags.

Kids want robots for more than chores

23. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: bullying, Latitude Research, LEGO Learning Institute, Pink Shirt Day, robots, science, Shane Koyczan, social isolation, social support, Victoria Times Colonist

Homework, photo by Kate Hiscock, www.katehiscock.com

I’d like a robot.

I’d like a robot to do all my gardening. The robot of my dreams would clean out gutters and drains, paint the siding, sweep the patio, and tidy the garage. On a good day, said robot would also do all the housework. It would also be a treat if it could provide deep-tissue massages and yoga instruction, cook tasty and healthful meals, do the dishes and the shopping, and keep me organized.

Yes, I’d like a robot that is a gardener–housekeeper–chef–personal assistant. That way, I could concentrate on more satisfying, more creative activities.

It appears that the way I view technology is pretty typical for an adult. We adults usually think of technology as a tool to help us with tasks—in particular, with chores. We consider it separate from humanness.

Kids, apparently, see technology very differently. A survey of students aged 8 to 12 reveals young people expect future technology to fulfill functions much more essential to the human experience. Kids, it seems, tend to think of it as fundamentally human.

U.S.-based social/technology-research consultants Latitude Research conducted the study in collaboration with the LEGO Learning Institute and Australia’s Project Synthesis. They asked 348 youngsters from six Western countries to write stories about what their lives would be like if robots were a fixture in their learning environments—at school and beyond.

When the researchers applied a coding scheme to the stories, they found the under-13 respondents saw robots as supportive, nonjudgmental friends. The youngsters indicated they wanted their robots to provide comfort and company, encourage them to learn and grow, motivate and empower them, and, in some cases, fulfill emotional needs more reliably than humans do.

Suddenly my robot requirements seem paltry and…limited.

Yes, I can put my name down for a robot that prepares pancake breakfasts, German sausage breakfasts, sushi, shish kebab, or complete turkey dinners, or I can hanker for a truck-sized model that whips up entire Chinese dinners. I can also settle for an engineering marvel that folds tea towels perfectly. I can even finally learn to program the auto-cook setting on my 12-year-old oven.

But what are pancakes, Chinese dinners and perfectly folded tea towels next to, well, friendship?

With Pink Shirt Day coming up next Wednesday and the tragedies of Amanda Todd and targets of bullying this past year, what an indictment about our society that kids see machines of the future providing the most basic aspects of what friends, parents and family represent.

I’m not talking about the homework part, although of course good friends and family provide support with that, too. I’m talking about encouragement, acceptance, tolerance, trust, respect, comfort, approval, reassurance….

This is the kind of support that might have made a big difference—a vital difference—to Todd and other casualties of social isolation and bullying.

The goal of the Robots@School study were to determine how technology facilitates learning, play and creativity, what relationships children hope to develop with and through robots, and how robots and other technologies might ignite and encourage children’s learning and creativity. The researchers state in their report, “Robots are a useful proxy for understanding kids’ social, creative and learning aspirations in ways that might be more illuminating than if we engaged them directly on such issues. Robots allow kids to project their weaknesses, strengths and ambitions.”

In the report, kids see robots as better versions of teachers and parents, offering limitless time and patience, encouraging confidence and self-direction, and allowing kids to make mistakes without self-consciousness. The kids believed robots’ supportiveness would lessen kids’ fear of failure and empower them to take more creative risks without fear of being ostracized.

In other words, the kind of support that B.C.-raised slam poet Shane Koyczan could have used during his grade-school Pork Chop incident. Koyczan describes the incident that led to years of being bullied in his animated poem, To This Day, published this week.

As he says in the poem, “If a kid breaks in a school and no one chooses to hear, do they make a sound?”

I’ll forgo putting in the order for the robot and go make friends with some kids instead.

Sources include:

Latitude Research’s Robots @ School

Chinese cook robot

Kebab-cooking robot

German sausage-breakfast robot

Dinner-cooking robot

Towel-folding robot

Invasive species are in the eye of the beholder

16. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: American bullfrog, Barred Owl, Eastern grey squirrel, invasive species, Pulling Together, red squirrel, Saanich, science, snakehead fish, Spotted Owl, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist

Eastern grey squirrel, photo by TexasDarkHorse, flickr

When Nature Boy took down the backyard thicket of Himalayan blackberries, he gave little thought to what would come after.

Thousands of broom and Daphne laureola seeds that had lain dormant for decades sprouted. Ivy and periwinkle quickly spread into the gap.

These plants have no place in the ready-made Garry oak meadow Nature Boy envisioned. Quick to grow and become established, these species handily outcompete native sea blush, camas and ocean spray.

That’s what invasive species do. They reproduce easily and spread in new environments. They alter ecosystems within the new territories in unpredictable ways, often causing harm.

Sources for this post include:

Saanich invasive species strategy process

Saanich Pulling Together program

Capital Region Invasive Species Partnership

B.C. Barred Owl cull

B.C. Spotted Owl info

Victoria key player in telescope development

09. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Folio, Science Scribe, Vancouver Island, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: astronomy, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Giant Magellan Telescope, history, Hooker Telescope, John Stanley Plaskett, Mountain Wilson Observatory, Plaskett Telescope, science, telescopes, Thirty-Metre Telescope, Victoria Times Colonist

1.73-m Plaskett Telescope mirror, photo by "Scratch" @ Scratchley.org

Two developments occurred recently to advance large telescopes and the study of the universe around us. Scientists in the U.S. completed the first of seven 8.4-metre mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope, under construction in Chile. Six of the mirrors will be arranged petal-like around the seventh, central mirror.

When construction is finished, the telescope will have four times the light-gathering capacity of instruments used today.

An event closer to the hearts of Victoria astronomers involves the Thirty-Metre Telescope. In November, state officials in Hawai’i recommended construction of the telescope on the state’s highest peak, Mauna Kea, be approved. The recommendation is a key step in the long, complicated process required to build atop Hawaii’s volcanoes.

The Thirty-Metre Telescope will feature a light-collecting mirror that is—surprise!—30 metres across. When it begins operation in 2020, it will be one of the world’s most powerful optical and infrared telescopes.

With telescopes, size matters.

More info:

Thirty-Metre Telescope

Giant Magellan Telescope

Plaskett Telescope

John Stanley Plaskett

Hooker Telescope