Signs From Earth

Map: McDonald's Golden Glow in the United States

Stephen Von Worley has produced a golden glowing map (no arches visible) of McDonald's restaurants in the lower 48 United States. He has called this "The Contiguous United States, Visualized by Distance to the Nearest McDonald's," and writes about his inspiration at his blog Weather Sealed, under the heading "Where the Buffalo Roamed." 

"To gauge the creep of cookie-cutter commercialism, there’s no better barometer than McDonald’s – ubiquitous fast food chain and inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide," he writes.

Based on numbers from aggdata, Von Worley says more than 13,000 McDonald's are spread across the land, and 107 miles is the greatest distance or "McFarthest Spot" to a McD's. (I guess that means somewhere in the west a pair of McDonald's is 214 miles apart?) If you live in central Nevada, southeast Oregon, Idaho's Salmon River Wilderness, or northwestern South Dakota it will be a long ride for that burger fix.

For a reality check, see the film Food, Inc. If it hasn't played your town yet, already has, or (likely) never will, this important film will be out on DVD Nov. 3. See it to understand how the American food and farm landscape has been transformed by more than the ubiquitous presence of hamburger shops. Show Food Inc. to your friends. You may want to find that spot 107 miles away and stay there.

Climate and Fire: The Blaze Last Time, and Next

Fires over southern California have burned before and will burn again. This wafting smoke over the Pacific Ocean came from 12 large fires burning in late October, 2007.  Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

Recent news reports about fires, whether in Greece or Los Angeles, have not explained their relationship to long-term climatic shifts underway. Why? Maybe the remaining reporters and editors aren't well-versed in the underlying science of climate change, or the science and environment writers have all been laid off to save money.

News stories reporting these disasters as isolated events, or caused by cigarette or lawnmowers, miss the point and do a disservice by failing to put them in context. Temperatures have been increasing in these regions, and rainfall has been declining long-term. Just as a lawnmower may be the flint, these underlying conditions provide the tinder, and explain the likelihood that as these fires have burned before, they will burn again.

These contextual links have been made for some time by scientists, but traditional news outlets apparently haven't been reading. When fires hit Athens a week or so ago, the only outlet that explicitly explained the link between fires and climate change was the new global trends reporting website GlobalPost. 

50 Years of Shrinking Glaciers in Alaska, Pacific Northwest

There Goes the Neighborhood: South Cascade Glacier in Washington State has shrunk considerably since observations began in 1928. Photos: USGS. 

The U.S. Geological Survey has released a half-century study of glaciers in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. To no one's surprise they are shrinking. 

The USGS report documents changes in the South Cascade Glacier in Washington, and the Gulkana and Wolverine Glaciers in Alaska. The report says the rate of ice loss, or mass balance, has increased in the last 15 years. The USGS calls these three glaciers "benchmark glaciers." 

Warm Winters Threaten California Tree Crops

Cold winter fogs that chill California fruit trees are disappearing. Photo: flickr/junmon603

Cold winter temperatures that fruit and nut trees need for proper spring flowering are disappearing from California's Central Valley. These warmer winters are beginning to adversely affect tree crops like walnuts that depend on this winter "chill" to reset themselves each year.

In a study published July 22 in PLoS One, researchers from the University of California-Davis report that the number of hours of "chill" temperatures have declined about 30 percent in the Central Valley since 1950. Apples, cherries, and pears used to grow in about half the valley's orchards but now only about four percent of the valley's orchard land is cool enough in winter to support these crops.

These rising winter temperatures will force California farmers to find new tree varieties that produce crops without this "winter chill," which trees need to trigger dormancy. 

Other studies already have shown that rising temperature and heat in California are causing changes in the type of wine grapes that can be grown there. Rising temperatures are driving a variety of changes in plant and animal behavior, and these trends for the United States are the focus of Ecological Impacts of Climate Change from the National Academy of Sciences.

Desert Dust Alters Mountain Meadows

 

More dust in Colorado mountains causes earlier spring snow melt. Photo: Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies

Following on an earlier post here on dust covering the snowpack of southwest Colorado mountains this year, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that the increased dust cover on snow is altering the behavior of mountain plants.  

According to the study, meadow plants typically time their flowering to rising temperatures and melting of snow, but the heat-absorbing dust causes snow to melt before ground temperatures are warm enough for plant growth. 

Dust levels in the mountains have increased about five times since the mid-1800s, mostly due to human activity in the deserts nearby, the study said. The researchers say the change in timing of snowmelt could change the composition of alpine plant communities as some species decline in abundance and others increase.

Dust on Colorado Snow Looms Over Mountainfilm

 

Dust-laden snow May 19 on Rocky Mountain peaks south of Montrose, Colorado. Photo: Dennis DImick (click to enlarge.)

I've been in Colorado the past few days, participating in a symposium on food at Mountainfilm Telluride. Last year we discussed water, and energy was our focus in in 2007. Among speakers this year were writer Bill McKibben, soil scientist Jerry Glover of the Land Institute, plant geneticist Pam Ronald of UC-Davis, and Roz Naylor, who heads the food security and environment program at Stanford. A report on the forum from the Telluride Daily Planet is here: The Future of Food: Daunting but Doable.

The film Food,Inc., shown at the festival and scheduled for nationwide release in June, will get some attention here soon. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns also premiered his elegant new 12-hour film on the National Parks at Mountainfilm. The series will air on PBS this fall.

One scene repeatedly mentioned indoors was on colorful display outdoors in the mountains above this southwest Colorado town. The snowpack, or what remains of it, looks pink. The color comes from repeated dust storms this past winter and spring. 

Red-colored dust arrived as clouds from repeated blow-ups in the red rock areas of Utah and Arizona. The dust darkens snow and increases its melt rate. Early snowmelt and runoff from the mountains reduces the amount of water available in streams later in summer for irrigation and other uses.

The impact of dust on snow has gotten some attention in the scientific community. A study two years ago by the National Snow and Ice Data Center indicated that rising temperatures across the West are increasing the likelihood that dust storms will become more frequent, shorten the snowpack season, and affect timing of runoff in rivers and soil moisture in the mountains. The water will come off the mountains earier in the spring, and mountains soils will dry up sooner in the summer.

April 3, 2009 dust storm in northeast Arizona. From NASA Earth Observatory.

References:

Hot and Cold Winter in Color

Where was winter cool and warm? NASA Earth Observatory posted this image May 9 showing land surface temperature "anomalies" (variance from normal) across the globe during the winter of 2008-2009. Winter in this case is seen as December through February. Except if you live in the southern hemisphere.

Notable warm spots are shown in red: Greenland, Antarctica, and south central South America. Argentina suffered through a significant summer drought and heatwave (below). The western United States was warmer than normal. Shown in blue: northern and eastern North America and northern Australia were cooler than normal. 

Yukon River Ice Jam Slams Alaska Village

 

Remains of Eagle Village on the Yukon River in eastern Alaska after rapid ice breakup in early May 2009. Photos by Carl Stapler/National Park Service.

Amazing pictures and reports coming out of Eagle, Alaska, on the Canadian border after temperatures jumped into the 70's this week and caused dramatic and rapid breakup of ice on the Yukon River. (Eagle was prominent in the John McPhee book Coming into the Country.) 

Reports have it that much of the old town, Eagle Village, was destroyed by ice melt, that "house sized chunks of ice lifted houses off their foundations" and sent them down the river. 

The Anchorage Daily News: Find more photos, local blog reports and news stories.

NPR: 'Tsunami' Of Ice Wreaks Havoc On Alaskan Town

Water Shortages Threaten Food Supply

This map shows changes in river streamflow worldwide between 1948 and 2004. Bluish colors show more runoff, reddish colors show less. (Graphic courtesy of Journal of Climate, modified by UCAR.)

Several articles published recently discuss the potential impact of declining water supplies on food production as temperatures rise and rainfall declines. Agriculture uses far more freshwater than any other human endeavor, typically from 70 to 90 percent of freshwater supply. 

Irrigation water typically comes from rivers and lakes, but dependence on groundwater aquifers is increasing as surface water declines. Water tables in several places -- the Ogallala Aquifer in the U.S.,the Saudi aquifer and the China North Plain -- are all declining as groundwater pumping tries to compensate for loss or overuse of surface water in rivers and lakes.

This tight link between water supply and food supply becomes something to ponder in light of research results showing decline in runoff from several major river systems (graphic above), and a report published in April in PNAS on projected shrinkage of Colorado River water deliveries from decreased precipitation, rising temperatures, and more evaporation.

Lake Mead in March 2008 behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Levels then were down about 100 feet from full pool. Levels are now at 44-year lows. Photo: Neil McIntosh/flickr

Lester Brown discusses implications in the May issue of Scientific American. He describes the potential for food supply collapse caused by falling water tables, disappearing soils, and rising temperatures. Brown says the biggest threat for disruption comes from poor countries with fragile or non-existent infrastructure and governments.

These reports follow on a paper published in Science earlier this year detailing projected declines in food production across large areas of the sub-tropical and tropical regions because of heat waves and drought.

That paper by Battisti and Naylor projected that hot summers and declining crop yields will become common over a broad area where nearly half of the world's population lives. Most of the farmers in this region are subsistence farmers and incomes of less than $2 a day. They largely depend on rainfall for growing crops and do not have the capital, technology, or know-how to store water and irrigate.

References:

Quandary for Renewables: Energy Sprawl

A large solar thermal power plant in Spain. Renewable energy projects based on biomass, wind, and solar need a lot of land to generate and transmit electricity. Photo: afloresm, flickr

An article in the Washington Post, "Renewable Energy's Environmental Paradox," addresses the inherent conflict between land conservation and renewable energy. All the alternatives to fossil fuels -- biomass, wind, and solar -- require a lot of land to produce the electricity needed to keep civilization humming. 

The article includes a chart showing the square miles of land needed by biomass, wind, and solar to produce a terawatt-hour of electricity for a year. So as our own civilization keeps sprawling across the landscape, so do our energy needs. "Energy sprawl" becomes a term that will likely come into greater use as land-intensive alternative energy schemes are proposed and built.

..."One of the biggest challenges renewable-energy projects pose is that they often take up much more land than conventional sources, such as coal-fired power plants. A team of scientists, several of whom work for the Nature Conservancy, has written a paper that will appear in the journal PLoS One showing that it can take 300 times as much land to produce a given amount of energy from soy biodiesel as from a nuclear power plant. Regardless of the climate policy the nation adopts, the paper predicts that by 2030, energy production will occupy an additional 79,537 square miles of land.

"The impact will be "substantial," said Jimmie Powell, the Nature Conservancy's national energy leader and one of the paper's co-authors. "It's important to know where the footprint is going to be..."

Mount St. Helens from Space

A recently released image from the International Space Station Crew shows Mount St. Helens in the Washington State Cascades in October 2008. When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the top and northwest face of the peak disintegrated. About 230 square miles of nearby forest were blown down or buried under volcanic deposits. 

The mountain and surrounding areas are now a national monument. Mount St. Helens Volcano Cams

Western Water Worries Intensify

Map for period Jan. through April 2009 (click to enlarge): From National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center - United States Season Drought Outlook

On January 12 at an infrastructure forum hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., discussions focused on how revitalization of the nation's roads, highways, bridges, sewers and the like will help a national economic recovery. 

Panelist Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, warned that while improving infrastructure is benefical, the bigger concern for the Western United States  is understanding the effects of changing climate on water supplies. Little research has been done so far on how the region will adapt.

Mulroy's comments from the event transcript: ...”We have not spent any time in this country investing in the science of climate change in any kind of a concerted fashion.  

“We need to understand where the floods are going to occur, we need to understand  where the drought conditions are going to become protracted.  

“And before we start making long term investments in future major infrastructure, after  we have paid that which we’ve neglected for so long, we need to look at it through a 21st century lens, in a very different climate, and not take a 19th century climate and assume that that is going to be the norm.

 

“These issues have the possibility of shutting down whole economies in the United States, cutting off food supplies for this country. The time to begin to look at this country’s water resources in a more global fashion and begin to talk about outrageous solutions or things we’ve never  ventured or had the courage to talk about before, that time is rapidly  approaching...” 

Water vs. Oil Shale in Arid U.S. West

Julie Cart of The Los Angeles Times examines the emerging conflict between water needs and oil shale energy interests in the arid Rocky Mountain Region. 

Some estimates have the equivalent of 800 billion barrels of oil - three times the amount of oil in Saudi Arabia - locked up in shale rock under the Rocky Mountains.

Unlocking the oil in shale will require lots of money, energy, and water. 

The region already is short of water, and more water supply declines are expected as rising temperatures reduce snowpacks and surface runoff. 

So where will the water come from to meet the needs energy development?

Los Angeles Times: Energy Dispute Over Rockies Riches

"...The conflict between oil and water interests has now come to a head. On Oct. 31, Congress allowed a moratorium on oil shale leasing to expire. That paved the way for the Bush administration to finalize leasing rules last month that opened 2 million acres of federal land to exploration.

"...Oil shale companies acknowledge that the technology required to superheat shale to extract oil is unproven. They also acknowledge that they are uncertain how much water would be needed in the process, although some experts calculate it would take 10 barrels of water to get one barrel of oil from shale.

"That water-to-oil equation has inflamed officials in the upper Rockies, who are raising the alarm about the cumulative effect of energy projects on the region's water supplies, which ultimately feed Southern California reservoirs via the Colorado River.

"There are estimates that oil shale could use all of the remaining water in upper Colorado River Basin," said Susan Daggett, a commissioner on the Denver Water Board. "That essentially pits oil shale against people's needs..."

Resources:

ProPublica and San Diego Union-Tribune: How the West’s Energy Boom Could Threaten Drinking Water for 1 in 12 Americans

Congressional Research Service: Water Rights Related to Oil Shale Development in the Upper Colorado Basin

Full Size Map: Oil Shale Deposits in the Three-State Area

ProPublica and Politico: Bush Rule on Oil Shale Highlights Partisan Divide in West

Colo. Sen. Ken Salazar in Washington Post: Heedless Rush to Oil Shale

Western U.S. Water Shortages Loom

Scientists: Climate change, population increases will slow flows, add strain to Colorado River

SALT LAKE CITY (Mike Stark, AP) — Seven Western states will face more water shortages in the years ahead as climate change exacerbates the strains drought and a growing population have put on the Colorado River, scientists say.

"Clearly we're on a collision course between supply and demand," said Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado.

Sierra Fires More Frequent, Severe

Tom Knudson of the Sacramento Bee, who has reported for years on ecological issues in the Sierra Nevada range, describes the longer and more intense forest fires seen in the region now, and cites recent research (links below) documenting the trend:

Sierra Nevada climate changes feed monster, forest-devouring fires

"...Wildfire has marched across the West for centuries. But no longer are major conflagrations fueled simply by heavy brush and timber. Now climate change is stoking the flames higher and hotter, too.

"That view, common among firefighters, is reflected in new studies that tie changing patterns of heat and moisture in the western United States to an unprecedented rash of costly and destructive wildfires.