Posts

February 01, 2013

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8:34 AM | A Survivor’s Tale: “Half the mountain exploding over our heads”

One thing I love about blogging is hearing from readers, especially readers who have intriguing tales to tell. A bit ago, Timo5150 left a tantalizing clue that one such tale might prove extra-intriguing: I was living just outside Randle Washington when it erupted, 20.2 miles from it. From there it was more of a low [...]

January 30, 2013

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8:28 PM | Beijing Takes Emergency Steps to Fight Smog

Edward Wong, reporting for the New York Times: The Beijing government put in place emergency measures on Wednesday to try to combat thick smog that has encased the city, which the Communist Party has hailed as a showcase capital, in brown and gray soot. The measures include temporarily shutting down more than 100 factories and [...]∞

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7:14 PM | China ♥ coal

Bryan Walsh, writing for Time: China is now burning almost as much coal as the rest of the world — combined. ∞∞

January 29, 2013

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7:03 PM | Dolphin That Died in Canal Was ‘Chronically Ill’

Andy Newman, reporting for the New York Times: The polluted water “didn’t help,” said Ms. Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation. But she added, “I think the fate of this animal would have happened regardless or whether it was in the canal or anywhere else.” Regardless of what ultimately doomed the dolphin, images [...]∞

January 28, 2013

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8:05 PM | What Does It Mean to Be Comfortable?

Maggie Koerth-Baker, writing for the New York Times Magazine: By shifting work from the sweltering afternoon into cooler evening hours, the siesta provided a kind of de facto air-conditioning, says Elizabeth Shove, a professor of sociology at Lancaster University in England. Getting rid of siestas makes people more dependent, during the hottest part of the [...]∞

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7:40 PM | Milestone Looms for Farm-Raised Fish

Craig Leisher, reporting for the New York Times: In the last 20 years, the production of fish through aquaculture has grown exponentially, while marine fish catches have leveled off. Unless it’s an extraordinary year for marine fishing, in 2013 the lines will cross, and the majority of the fish we eat will come from aquaculture [...]∞

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7:17 PM | Engaging with Ecological Complexity

As I’ve talked about previously, I’m a hydroecologist. I love water, snow and ice, mountain environments – you get the picture. But I’m also an environmental scientist in the broad [...]

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6:25 PM | How urban design affects our health

Behavioral psychologist James Sallis, being interviewed by Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail: Throughout our whole history, people have walked for transportation. We’ve deleted that. We’ve designed that feature out of the world for many, many people and we now have the evidence that our planning and community design decisions and our transportation decisions [...]∞

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5:15 PM | Anthropocene good for arachnids

Bridie Smith, reporting for The Age: After comparing 222 spiders – including measuring size, weight and body fat – Miss Lowe found city spiders were bigger than those from the bush. She also established that within urban environments, spiders were bigger when they were found closer to man-made objects. ∞∞

January 25, 2013

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9:34 PM | Google Street Scene

Stills from movies done up to look like Google Street View images. Great fun. I think this one is my favorite. ∞∞

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6:38 PM | Why Talking Cars Will Be Good for Buses

Emily Badger, reporting for the Atlantic Cities: Cities around the world are increasingly turning to the relatively affordable transit solution to move more passengers on dedicated bus lanes without the unpredictability of traffic congestion or the cost of constructing railways. One problem with BRT, though, is that plenty of drivers aren’t eager to see whole [...]∞

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5:01 PM | Amazon vs. Amazon.com

XKCD: ∞∞

January 24, 2013

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8:02 PM | “Friendly neighborhood serial killers”

Gerry Mullany, reporting for the International Herald Tribune: Gareth Morgan, an economist and environmentalist, says that the cat is actually a “friendly neighborhood serial killer” when it comes to birds, and his Web site suggests that New Zealanders should gradually reduce the local feline population by having all cats neutered, and that when cats die, [...]∞

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5:48 PM | The Five Types of Territorial Morphology

Frank Jacobs: Do Norwegians feel curiously at home in Chile, and vice versa? Do South Africans have a strange affinity with Italians? And Filipinos with Maldivians? They should, at least if they’re map nerds: each lives in a country with a territorial morphology that closely resembles the other’s. ∞∞

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9:15 AM | The Cataclysm: “I Was Just Instantly Buried”

A falling tent heralded catastrophe. Until the summer dry season comes, things in the Pacific Northwest are perpetually wet. Edward Smith and his companions, camped 18 kilometers (11 miles) north of Mount St. Helens, had set their tent on its side to dry out. At 8:32 am, an unusually strong wind gusted, again, and again: [...]

January 23, 2013

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9:13 PM | DNA, the computer storage of the future

John Timmer, writing for Ars Technica: In general, though, the DNA was very robust. The authors simply dried it out before shipping it to a lab in Germany (with a layover in the UK), where it was decoded. Careful storage in a cold, dry location could keep it viable for much, much longer. The authors [...]∞

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7:08 PM | Fish Detectives – Long Term Changes in Salmon Populations

claimtoken-5104142facc4a On 31 October, 2012, the Cohen Commission on Fraser River sockeye stocks released its final report1. Initiated in 2009 by the federal government, the purpose of the Commission was [...]

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5:59 PM | Architecture to Watch in 2013

Jimmy Stamp rounds up four projects of note at Design Decoded. ∞∞

January 22, 2013

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7:51 PM | Fracking, as seen from space

Robert Krulwich: It’s a little to the left, high up near the Canadian border. Just run your eye up that line of lights at the center of the country, look over to the upper left: There’s a patch that looks like a big city — but there is no big city in that part of [...]∞

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7:02 PM | Time to Embrace Exotic Species? (Or at Least Some of Them)

Matt Palmer, writing for The Nature of Cities: Family narratives and history books are full of stories about about the hard times that waves of human immigrants found in their new homes. Non-human immigrants – often referred to as exotic, introduced, or non-native species – have received a similarly cold welcome in most places. But [...]∞

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5:14 PM | ■ Eric Fischer’s personal geography of 2012

Eric Fischer mapped his movements in and around his hometown over the past year: In general, black is walking, red is bicycling, blue is cars or buses, and green is above-ground rapid transit or freeways. (Color is from speed, not from an actual record of transportation mode.) Not shown: tunnels and subways. How big is [...]

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5:14 PM | Eric Fischer’s personal geography of 2012

Eric Fischer mapped his movements in and around his hometown over the past year: In general, black is walking, red is bicycling, blue is cars or buses, and green is above-ground rapid transit or freeways. (Color is from speed, not from an actual record of transportation mode.) Not shown: tunnels and subways. How big is [...]∞

January 21, 2013

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10:13 AM | In Which I Am Interviewed, and Mutual Fandom is Revealed

It’s no secret that Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous is one of my favorite geobloggers of all time, so it’s rather a pleasant surprise to discover that the fandom is mutual. Also, he asks some great questions which I answer to the best of my ability. I do hope you enjoy! Any deficiencies are entirely [...]

January 17, 2013

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7:01 PM | ■ Against invasive plants, underdog natives hang on

One of the scourges of our globalized economy is invasive species. In California, annual Mediterranean interlopers have upended the state’s once perennial grasslands. The Australian outback has been blanketed with prickly pear cacti from the American Southwest. And wattles from Down Under are a scourge in South Africa. But as widespread as invaders are, we’re [...]

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5:14 PM | 1000 Simple Words

This is an impromptu blog post as part of the discussion going on over at Highly Allochthonous. Researchers are using this easy online text editor to describe their research in [...]

January 16, 2013

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7:47 PM | When Pittsburgh was like Beijing

Alexis Madrigal As America became an industrial power during the 19th century, Pittsburgh emerged as the seat of metalworking, iron and then steel. This was a city powered by coal. Soot and smoke covered the city. There was no blue sky. Travelers from around the world visited Pittsburgh to see the wonder of American capitalism. [...]∞

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6:17 PM | Mapping climate change

Peter Aldhous of New Scientist and developer/journalist Chris Amico have developed a fantastic web app that lets you see how climate change has affected your locality. Click on the map or enter a city and you’ll see temperature trends for the last 130-plus years for that exact location. Sobering. ∞∞

January 15, 2013

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11:54 PM | Semantics: Ecohydrology vs. Hydroecology

In a recent Easternblot post by Eva, she played around with Google nGrams. I though it would be fun to use the same tool to look at the use of [...]

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10:00 PM | Shorts: The Bitter End

We turn to doctors to save our lives -- to heal us, repair us, and keep us healthy. But when it comes to the critical question of what to do when death is at hand, there seems to be a gap between what we want doctors to do for us, and what doctors want done for themselves.

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8:54 PM | Beijing’s Air Quality Catastrophe

If you haven’t been following the horrendous air quality Beijing that’s blanketed Beijing, take a look at this post by James Fallows at The Atlantic. Visibility is almost nil, readings are literally off the charts, and I’m certain it’s acutely hazardous to people’s health if they step outside. As Fallows notes, such environmental disasters could [...]∞