Sweet home Arizona

I know, I should never have quit updating my blog… I know, I should have written about my travels to Sweden and the Bay of Biskay, accompanied by many cool pictures. I know, I should have kept on giving my opinion on some remarkable news facts and news about my personal life, and so on and so on. But I didn’t, and for the sake of argument let’s say that I didn’t just because of lack of time. Nothing actually changed since, I still haven’t got the time, but I’m currently in a position where I just HAVE to write again Too many cool things are happening, and too many people want to know. So here goes.

Science is slow. It’s been 9 months since I first said on my blog that we were breeding on an idea to get geography into phylogeny, in other words to model the evolution of niches of certain seaweeds, in other words to calculate where certain algae can grow and where they have done so in the past and where species have evolved (in other words, where the diversity hotspots were). Interesting? I have to admit this is quite fundamental research, but in terms of future application this insight in previous speciation events may help us understand where diversification hotspots may be located in the light of climate change, and how significant they would be. Anyway, I’m not about to tell about all the science here.

9 months is exactly the time for an embryo to grow out and to come into the world as a viable baby. It’s exactly the same with our idea. Preliminary thinking and work has been done, and now we’re actually working on it. Starting with taking a course series, as I am familiar with the geographic techniques involved in it but not with the modelling process as a whole. So I googled “ecological niche modelling training course” and ended up with a course in Portal, Arizona, of all places. To cut a long story, I got accepted after writing a motivation (only 15 people were accepted worldwide!), and booked my tickets and a rental car. The irony is that only a week after, a new ecological niche modelling course in Poland was announced Anyway, Arizona was a lot more appealing to me (my first time to the US, Grand Canyon State!) and anyway the Arizona contents were slightly more useful to me.

I must admit that, although I was looking forward to being here, I hated the trip itself in advance. Righteously so. When I came to the airport, I was informed that my flight to Chicago had 2,5 hours delay, which was kind of problematic because I would miss my connection to Tucson. I was rebooked onto the next connection, but that meant 5,5 hours delay from the beginning, with a night-time 3 hours drive to the research station still to come! Honestly, when I heard the staff at the check-in desk discuss on what flight they could get me, I was hoping for a free upgrade to business of first Alace, that kind fortune is only meant for very few among us. Another misfortune was my place on the airplane. Right in the middle seat all the way to Chicago… No pictures of beautiful Greenland, Canada or the Chicago skyline at all, only a glimpse over the shoulder of a few rather obese American people. Same story for the connection to Tucson, where I was unable to photograph the most beautiful isolated yet violent heat thunderstorm over the desert by nighttime (seen from a safe distance). Anyway, it was good to finally arrive at Tucson. I finally met Andres from Australia and Susi from Denmark, who I previously only knew from e-mail. The easy and funny e-mail contact I had with them was completely representative of how they were in real: we immediately felt tuned. Arranging the rental car took a long administration car, but the midsize car turned out to be a huge hatchback Pontiac with cruise-control, so no complains from my part After a midnight visit to the supermarket, we went of all the way through the dark, based on the route description provided by the research station. Very challenging and captivating, I can tell you So we pitched our tent on a campground in the Chiricahua mountains around the research station at 3.30 a.m., at about 2°C. By the time that was done, we had a little breakfast and we chased a skunk a little to get some pictures (hoping it wouldn’t begin… stinking), it was 5 a.m. and we went to sleep, after a 32 hour long day. We had 4 hours of sleep Not that someone woke us up, the curiosity about the environments did. I’ve never had such an experience. Going to sleep in a completely unknown landscape, and then being completely surprised when you wake up and open the tent! Dramatic rock formations, colourful and unknown birds, ground squirrels, dear, cristal blue skies, 20 degrees… we ignored our jetlag broke up the tents and had breakfast again, and began a hike to the top of Silver Peak mountain, indicated as “4,5 miles”. And about a 1000m up… As you can guess, we had to give up about a kilometre from the top, after 3 hours of hiking… We were a bit frustrated, but we didn’t want to take any risk getting trapped in the dark. And anyway we were getting exhausted. But the views we had seen by then, the change in vegetation from Cactuses and flowering Agaves to oak and pine forest, the bear and mountain lion faeces (I know, I know, but one must be pleased with small things), and the sighting of a wild cat made us feel that we’d seen it all anyway. I took 1 GB of pictures and movies in 6 hours time! I am truly deeply sorry not to show any pictures yet, but anyway now that the courses are busy, we don’t have time to explore the surroundings anymore, so no that I’ve spent the time to tell what happened since Saturday, I’ll take time tomorrow to post the according pictures!

So yesterday night we arrived at the research station. People declared us officially fools after hearing about our slightly twisted travel schedule, but it was definitely worth it. But is good fun at the course at well. Americans are, although barbaric when it comes to food, definitely very social. The computer room provides completely silent dual core desktops with DVD writer and all desirable software and 19” screen for everyone, including open web access and the possibility to plug in laptops. It surely looks like space flight control centre: everyone sitting at a giant desktop flatscreen with a laptop aside, creating colourful distribution maps on every screen. The main teacher is maybe five years older than I am, with an unbelievable publication record, yet a great sense to make difficult models crystal clear to everyone. And he’s British, which is a great relief among all the Texas and NY-style American accents

I’ll leave it to that right now… Really I promise to post pictures tomorrow And I’ll try to keep you all updated on what happens here

Trial and terror (2)

Let’s hope at least one student picks out my proposed subject for his Bachelor dissertation… I just heard that the various research groups together handed in over 500 topics! I can’t really imagine how they will distribute these subjects to the students: each description is about half a printed page, so they need to print a 250 page catalogue! It’s totally insane, if you ask me… Sure, students need to be able to choose, but where’s the point in offering a choice between way too many subjects to even look at, let alone to read… It makes no sense at all. Educational Committee: do your job and cut the number of subjects to two per supervisor! That’ll leave the truly interesting subjects easier to notice Anyway, in the meantime, I designed my experiments, and once I get the equipment I’m ready to start testing the feasibility.

Trial and terror

If someone would like to get rid of an old, even coarse-resolution digital (whether or not SLR) camera, no matter in what condition as long as it’s still capable of taking pictures, I’m interested! That is, only at bottom prices, because it’s meant to be demolished by me to replace the hotmirror inside, to experiment with high quality ground or kite based NIR pictures. I’d reward you additionally by personally sending you the nicest resulting pictures in full resolution :-p

School playtime

Who said school playtime is exclusively for children? Think again – especially when a hobby is half your job.
As a teaching assistant, I needed to come up with some research topics for students with their Bachelor dissertation… Deadline: tomorrow! And as always with me: the first 10% of a task takes 90% of the time, and vice versa. I’ve got a serious problem with getting started, and so I keep on delaying everything until the deadline. Just by chatting about photography last night in a cafe, I suddenly had a great flash of inspiration: a feasibility study on in situ NIR photography (near-infrared photography) of intertidal seaweeds, to quantify stress (in casu: salinity and drought stress) based on changing photosynthetic pigment concentrations (well in this case, specifically chlorophyll). The general idea is old wine: I’ve been using NIR reflection with (marine) vegetation for a long time now, but always based on satellite imagery. However, a huge disadvantage of satellite imagery still is the coarse spatial resolution: it is useless when it comes to studying intertidal areas (at least with affordable imagery). So the new bottle (to me, at least), is an ordinary digital compact camera, provided with a NIR-pass filter (NPF) mounted on a filter adapter.
The school playtime really is to determine the feasibility of the feasibility study So again, long live Google, I came across some brilliant stuff! For a start, IR photography has widely been used in art, so photographic art blogs are a major source of information (see the high reflection, and hence the white color, on a gray scale, of the vegetation? This is what I want to study in seaweeds). Also, already the first hit in Google returned a personal website of a remote sensing specialist as an interesting starting point in the scientific field.
I also found out that I have the odds a bit against me, as my Canon Powershot A640 seems to be one of the types with a very strong internal IR cut filter, virtually unreachably placed just before the otherwise very IR sensitive sensor. I need to verify this tonight by aiming a remote control in action to my camera and determining whether or not I can see a light from the remote control in a dark room. I’ll also go and ask for the opinion of some professional photographers in a photo shop. Anyway, expect a more detailed technical post on how this turns out later on, as I think this may prove valuable information to others as well. It’s just exciting: playing with some fancy tools in a “scientific” context If this yields good results, I might start using it more often :-p

Talking about photography, in the end I did bring my camera to my desk to photograph some nice sunsets, but now I cursed myself because of the missed opportunity to photograph some amazing scenes of the quay at home in the fog last night, and some pictures of the snow at the waterside this morning… damn…

Practical course birdwatching

	Distinguishing the Tureluur, Kievit, Smient, Wintertaling and Brandgans from the brand-new birdwatching cabin in the Bourgoyen.
	Trying to understand avifaunal behaviour through imitation.
	Birdwatching is tiring… *Sigh*

How inconvenient

Last night, I tried to organize a “green initiative” by showing An Inconvenient Truth in my electrically-heated-to-25°C apartment with wooden floor and furniture originating from irreplaceable woods. The intention also was to provide drinks for which a lot of CO2 was emitted during distillation, and fatty snacks causing an increase in body weight to the extent that public transport would double its CO2 emissions if it was to transport the victi… er, my guests. Of course, coming by car was absolutely out of the question.
Due to my late notification, I ended up with one guest who, naturally, came by car. Not a bad thing, in the end, as I had the DVD on loan from a kind American phycologist visiting our lab, and the country code caused a lot of trouble reading the DVD. It wasn’t possible at all on the PlayStation 2 console, and as we played it on my laptop computer, the DVD player stopped suddenly (even twice) virtually for no reason at all.
Anyway, apart from the melodramatic scenes in between with rather soft reflections on key moments in Gore’s life (of no interest to the story at all, and typically American, if you ask me), he gives a really neat and convincing presentation on the undoubtedly anthropogenic rise in atmospheric CO2 beyond all natural limits, and the suspected link with a significant temperature rise including severe consequences for crowded coastal areas.

Yes, suspected link, in that it is still unclear what combination of factors explains global warming. This question has not yet been resolved qualitatively, let alone quantitatively. But IT IS BEYOND ANY DOUBT that CO2 is one of the factors, is strongly correlated with temperature, and that at least part of this correlation is of a causal nature. A 650000-year record of (ice-core) CO2 and oxygen isotope temperature measurements proves that. Atmospheric CO2 has already risen well above any historical peak, and is about to double that increase in 50 years, but the temperature hasn’t yet risen proportionally. Yes, it will rise, it is already rising, but no-one knows for sure to what extent it will continue. The thing is, by the time we will know for sure, it will be too late. So for now, the only thing we can do is to strongly limit the emission of the only demonstrable factor we can control: CO2. And a professor still doubting human influence and, most of all, looking at a geological timescale while human lives are involved, somewhat bothers me…

Sailing for peace?

Sail Training International (known from the Tall Ships races, now supported by Antwerp) is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, because it unites youngsters across all (virtual) borders through sailing – an activity requiring insight in and respect for nature as well as each other.

Ironically, by the third day of our last sailing course together, my brother Jan and I were forbidden to share a boat, as our cursing, swearing and raging was to be heard from nautical miles away. On a two-manned sailing dinghy, we just couldn’t cope with either one of us being the pilot in absolute control. Hence our characteristic zigzag trajectories when one tried to convince the other in a hard-handed way This didn’t prevent us from winning all the club races, though. I guess we just wanted to cross the finish as soon as possible to get rid of each other, or at least to have decent ground under our feet to “take it outside” :-p So on second thoughts, indeed, sailing does promote overture amongst enemies!

Let’s talk about… methane

Seriously, what’s all the fuzz about carbon dioxide (CO2)? Sure, it is a greenhouse gas causing global warming, and true, mainly humans are to be blamed for its massive emission and the resulting temperature rise, and consequently, especially humans should be able to do something about it. But this narrow-minded focus on nothing but carbon dioxide is dangerous. It draws all our attention away from another, yet far more aggressive greenhouse gas also mentioned in the Kyoto protocols, although no-one actually cares about it: methane (CH4). On the short run, it is over 60 times as effective when it comes to causing global warming. Over centuries(!), its effectiveness decreases to about 7 times that of CO2, but only because chemical reactions in the atmosphere transform CH4 into, among others, CO2! (btw, the Wikipedia page on greenhouse gasses provides a wealth of information on this topic)
How does CH4 get into the atmosphere? By several semi-anthropogenic ways, as I call them – natural ways enhanced by humans. For instance, permafrost soils (frozen mud, basically) in the Siberian tundra contained huge quantities of CH4. Contained, in the past tense, as it appears now that, together with the melting ice in the permafrost due to mild global warming until now, the CH4 is released into the atmosphere (visible as bubbles in the swamp). This could trigger a massive warming event far beyond any human control, especially far beyond half-hearted Kyoto efforts. Just like a nuclear explosion is far beyond human control after a potentially controllable melt-down reached a certain threshold. This is probably also the process explaining rapid warming following the latest ice ages, although the initial warming was of course purely natural back then. Also, anaerobic fermentation in flooded rice fields accounts for a major proportion of methane in the atmosphere. Yet a perfectly natural process, the increased demand for rice by an increasing world population might be disastrous when it comes to global warming – especially when the rice is subsequently transported overseas by airplane.

Anyway, the other semi-anthropogenic way is the one I wanted to raise awareness about: decomposing manure and (excusez le mot) livestock farts and burps (some bacteria produce methane during digestion, and this is then released through relevant body openings). Ever wondered why you somehow (maybe subconsciously) associate Flanders’ Fields with a nasty odor? Ever wondered why the air always seems so pure when you’re abroad on a holiday, no matter where? I found the answer while searching the Global Ecosystems Database for environmental background GIS data in our “phylogenetic niche modeling” project: a map depicting global methane emission through animals. Guess what, it turns out that no-one is worse off than we are (except for Bangladesh, although if you live in Bangladesh, you probably have a lot more to worry about than methane). I sincerely wonder if Verhofstadt takes livestock methane emission into account when calculating marketable emission rights… or how Leterme would react if Flemish farmers would not only be obliged to control nitrogen release, but also methane emission…

Perpetual knowledge

As I was emptying my bedroom in my parental home yesterday, I came across neat stuff like the class photo when I was in 3rd grade of primary education, with our teacher (miss Lieve) and a whole bunch of wildlife and ethnic pictures pinned to the bulletin board on the background. Couldn’t be more typical, for she’s the special someone who determined me to study biology (when I was barely 8!), taking us on convincing trips outside the classroom, and telling us about the beauties and concerns related to the environment. She succeeded in stressing the importance of knowledge and appreciation of the environment far beyond the limits of the “world education” courses.

Although no-one in our family had studied biology before, I was lucky enough to have a speech therapist as a mum who offered us a wealth of adapted books to jump-start our reading skills already from kindergarten, and many of those were of an earth-exploring or even “scientific” nature. We literally cherished and devoured these books, and I couldn’t resist thumbing through some of them again yesterday. One book concerning extreme values of physical properties (designed for 7-year olds, mind you) mentioned this particular phrase, catching my interest: while in deserts summer temperatures may rise well above 50, winter temperatures at the pole vary between -40 and -80°C. I suddenly wondered if I could still read this book (convinced of its truth) to, for instance, my godchild over 7 years, considering the global warming. So I took a swift test on the Internet. I assumed the book meant “[south]” pole temperatures, as north pole temperatures do rise well above -40 due to the tempering effect of the ocean, absent on the continent of Antarctica. I downloaded monthly averaged winter (June – September) temperatures from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station from 1981 until 2005, and I applied a rough regression analysis extending until 2015. Actually, given the wide range of the premise, I wasn’t really surprised by its correctness. Moreover, temperatures are all between -50 and -70. But surprisingly, the average winter temperature at the South Pole has been decreasing during the last 25 years with 0.75°C, and so when Witse will be 7 years old, average winter temperature at the South Pole will be 60°C and hence this particular book will be more correct as it has ever been. In the meantime, the sleeping bag I bought him will be very convenient for him to go out camping on Antarctica to experimentally verify my hypothesis. Another great scientist is born!

Maiken

Just found this great sailing blog by Fredrik Fransson and Håkan Larsson (listed under “links” as their blog has been inactive since their arrival) – no, not by simply randomly surfing the internet during working hours
I was browsing to the NASA’s OceanColor Web in search for information about their “.out” file type to import processed MODIS satellite imagery in a GIS (for those who care, apparently it’s just the same as HDF, or at least it works just fine with Idrisi’s HDF-Eos import tool). It’s been a long time since I last visited the OceanColor homepage, so I don’t know how long this particular topic has been online, but satellite imagery of a South Pacific volcano eruption was highlighted for general interest. A rarely seen phenomenon was mentioned in the caption: the plume of ash and pumice carried downstream at the sea surface. Already very well visible from space, and completely otherworldly when seen from a lonesome yacht in the pacific, as showed by the link to this blog. The post with the pictures ultimately received 259 comments!
However rare, this kind of experience is exactly what makes wandering the seas on a sailing yacht worth it. Seeing things that you wouldn’t if you’d stay at home or walk on the trails (or, in this case, take the crowded ferry lines from point a to point b in a fast, straight line). I’m sure there is plenty of other interesting stuff and pictures on their blog (for instance, swimming with the whales), of course I haven’t read it all yet, but I will. But for now, it is an excellent bit of publicity for those planning a sailing holiday. A bit more elaborate than my previous sailing experiences (see “unjealousing” and “blue“).