Maps of Puerto Rico

Bankfull Flood on the Haw River, North Carolina

There is abundant evidence of a bankfull flood event on the Haw River, upstream of Bynum, North Carolina.

Let's see what the USGS Gauge at Bynum says.

 A gauge height over 11 feet counts as a flood...and it is more than 7 feet above current flow.  Note that this is a very wide river, so the actual volume was much more than 7 times...according to the USGS calculation, the flow was near 20,000 CFS, over 30 times the current flow of 600 CFS.

How does the compare to previous floods?

This January flood appears to be a bankfull event that was surpassed in 2008 (the first year of record for Bynum), 2009, and 2010, (but not in 2011 or 2012).  Many of these large floods happen in the early spring, perhaps when the heavy rains fall on an already-saturated watershed.

This is what happened the week of January 13th.  On top of the previous week's rain, there was significant rain on Monday the 14th and Wednesday the 16th.  The storm continued into Thursday, bringing more than an inch of thunderstorm rain (and snow) on top of the saturated landscape.  The Haw river flow peaked soon thereafter, in the early morning hours of January 18th.

Two views on global warming "standstill"

A flash animation from wattsupwiththat:

The view from from Skeptical Science:

February Blocking Pattern

This computer model (GFS) of near-surface temperature (actually, just above the boundary layer) and atmospheric pressure shows an interesting pattern of high and low pressure areas.  A high pressure region over the Azores is predicted to hold steady for the next several weeks, in effect blocking the normal flow of the jet stream and Eastward-migrating low pressure regions.  These lows are forced to travel (clockwise) all the way around the high pressure region.  The consequence appears to be a trough in the jet stream over Eastern  North America, leading to large incursions of Arctic air, and very, very cold temperatures (see graph).

Do endemic taxa correlate?

One of the main assumptions of many biodiversity assessments and conservation efforts is that biodiversity correlates across taxa. In other words, an ecosystem with high plant diversity might be expected to also harbor high lichen diversity, high arthropod diversity, and a great many birds, bees, and bloomin' confusion. 

If this assumption is true, than scientists could study one taxa, say lichen, and use the results as a surrogate for studying all of the other possible taxa. But a new study by Dr. Che-Castaldo questions this "surrogacy" assumption:

"Testing Surrogacy Assumptions: Can Threatened and Endangered Plants Be 
Grouped by Biological Similarity and Abundances?"

Abstract:

"There is renewed interest in implementing surrogate species approaches in 
conservation planning due to the large number of species in need of 
management but limited resources and data. One type of surrogate approach 
involves selection of one or a few species to represent a larger group of 
species requiring similar management actions, so that protection and 
persistence of the selected species would result in conservation of the 
group of species. However, among the criticisms of surrogate approaches is 
the need to test underlying assumptions, which remain rarely examined. In 
this study, we tested one of the fundamental assumptions underlying use of 
surrogate species in recovery planning: that there exist groups of 
threatened and endangered species that are sufficiently similar to warrant 
similar management or recovery criteria. Using a comprehensive database of 
all plant species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and 
tree-based random forest analysis, we found no evidence of species groups 
based on a set of distributional and biological traits or by abundances 
and patterns of decline. Our results suggested that application of 
surrogate approaches for endangered species recovery would be unjustified. 
Thus, conservation planning focused on individual species and their 
patterns of decline will likely be required to recover listed species."

Similar conclusions have been reached by a other studies. For example, Erhlich et. al. 2002 found that in subalpine meadows in Colorado, indicator taxa show no skill in predicting diversity of other taxa, even among phylogenetically related species (in this case, butterflies and moths).

Forest Fires versus Forest Restoration

At ESA this year, one discussion turned to the elephant in the room of forest restoration thinning projects: the certainty that thinning will have some deleterious effects versus the probability that a thinned area would actually encounter a forest fire during the approximately 25-year window of restoration effectiveness.  Forest restoration typically involves thinning forests to lower stand densities to discourage the spread of stand-replacement crown fires in historically low-intensity fire regimes.  Yet,  absent the return to presettlement semi-annual burn patterns (i.e. an end to the total suppression paradigm), tree seedlings will recruit and form high density stands within a couple decades.  

What are the odds that a given patch of forest will encounter a mega-fire over a 25-year time span?  According to some participants in the discussion, the odds are quite low.  But that may depend on the forest.  Take, for example, the fire-prone semi-arid mountains of the southwest:

Representative map of burned areas in SE Arizona and SW New Mexico over the last decade.  The Wallow Fire (538,000 acres in the White Mtns) and the Horseshoe Two (223,000 acres in the Chiricahua Mtns) fire, are visible as large yellow areas.

Shaded areas indicate official MTBS 2000-2009 burned area polygons.  Yellow areas are provisional "fire detection" areas from MODIS.  This map was generated using the U.S. Forest Change Assessment Viewer (FCAV), which can map a large number of forest disturbance types, utilizing historical to contemporary GIS layers and current satellite imagery.

Perhaps the ESA discussion participants should read:


Rhodes, J.J. and Baker, W.L., 2008. Fire probability, fuel treatment effectiveness and ecological
tradeoffs in western U.S. public forests. Open Forest Science Journal, 1: 1-7.

Current data shows biosphere carbon uptake holding steady

One of the biggest questions for ecosystem scientists is the degree to which terrestrial and marine ecosystems  can continue to sequester carbon in the face of continuing human emissions of CO2 and accompanying global climate change.

This is one of the best (i.e. easiest to interpret) graphs to show that the fraction of emitted CO2 remaining in the atmosphere (i.e. not sequestered) has held steady at around 50% for the last 40+ years (purple line, "Airborne Fraction").  Data Sources: Fossil fuel CO2 emissions - Land use CO2 emissions -  Airborne CO2 levels Graph by Willis Eschenbach.

Similar conclusions were reached by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado last year.

Best Map of Tucson and Mexico

Check out species lists and maps for flora and fauna.  Data portal is powered by Symbiota, which also has fungi and South American biota.

Piedmont Streams

Typical NC stream, fresh off the Piedmont, meandering through Triassic basin sediments.  These finer sediments build good point bars, and will hold a slope; geomorphologic indicators for bankfull, are not hard to find.  Relatively recent erosion is undercutting veg on the outside of the meanderbend.  The point bar is under-sized for the depth of the undercut, meaning that this is a gully.  The fine substrate can support tighter bends then if the substrate were sand.

Regolith

from Regolith Geology and Regolith Geomorphology by Taylor and Eggleton:

Saprock indicates some color change, but no volume/texture/hardness, while saprolite retains original rock volume but is more "rotten" and may flake off easily (reduced strength).

Mottled zone is splotches of red and white showing variable iron movement.
Pallid zone may indicate leaching of iron.
Plasmic zone indicates accumulation of clay particles from the dissolution of feldspar and recrystalization of various clays.  Shrink/swell clay particles like may displace grains of quartz, causing accumulations.

Dark reduced zones around plant roots contrast with light oxidized zones along cracks and channels that communicate with above-ground atmosphere.

 In the French literature, saprock is the zone where the fabric of the parent rock is conserved, contrasted to the zone above where the fabric has been lost (pedolith).