Blog 12

This may be somewhat of a repeat of what I said in the go-around last Friday in class, but I think it sums up my main thoughts of the class and what I will take from it. Our class consisted of people from a large array of majors in many different technical fields. It will be people such as ourselves who will be working in many of these companies that are working to find more appropriate methods to coexist with the environment. And after being in this class, we can bring the most important resource of all, knowledge. It is crucial to understand the underlying problems that damage our environment and what would not be an acceptable method to dealing with the problems. Companies are not just out there to scheme and destroy the environment, they are operating to pay their employees and provide jobs. But with a lack of knowledge about the cause and effect of environmental choices, they may not understand the effects they are having on the environment and the people living within the environment. It will have to be individuals such as ourselves with all different technical backgrounds to fully understand and create viable solutions for our growing world. I'm not saying we, ourselves are fully equipped to go out save the world tomorrow, but knowledge is power in helping to develop new methods and tactics to be adopted in the places we will work.

And on an end happy note, here is a picture I took last spring near our land

Stay in school kids!

Blog 11

Wanted:  Luna

a.k.a Bruno,  a.k.a. Tsuux'iit,  a.k.a. L98 

Wanted for ravenous cuteness, splashing too much, and the murder of countless fish and krill

• Known to have a white stomach, black back, and white patches near his murderous eyes
• Has dozens of large teeth designed for mashing human flesh
• Uses his blowhole to startle his prey and cause them to loose their balance and focus
• Will attempt to spin smaller boats around and force them back out into deeper water to attack them
• Uses stealth techniques and "friendliness" to put humans into a trance so they can be more easily consumed
• Main stomping grounds in Nootka Sound include:
• Boat docks in Gold River
• Logging camp
• Namu shuttle route
• Any other unsuspecting boat

• If you see this KILLER whale, stay as far away as possible. If you come within 200 feet of him, he will eat you immediately. 
• Contact the Department of Fisheries and Oceans if you see Luna so he can be brought into jurisdiction for prosecution of multiple crimes

Blog 10

This past week, the main discussion was directed at the book "Planet of Slums." For many of us, the idea of living in a slum is not something that we can fully understand. We have seen images and descriptions, but psychologically we cannot understand the idea of never being able to leave the slum, because that is our home. For many of us, not having air conditioning, a pool, cable TV, and a game system constitutes as being poor (all things I did not have growing up). Our idea of global poverty is usually based on what we see in our own country.

I was especially interested in the garbage city in Cairo, known as Manshiyat Naser. I was amazed at how this is the "normal way of life" to children born in this city. For those of you that have not seen specific images, I have two posted below.


http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/garbagecity-ed05.jpg



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ6yid1PUgBc2xJQemTGOrjkSI-dtMrFZ8uvROXOmhnerWer8tiLVVILmRVo0c0sFbTOfGgBRuJ9xjtB695N8lDO_76G938YpfPOJwXirEKfgnSverQ7Gu2YjLZzhnukOK41X6prR8VTo/s1600/zabaleen.jpg


Waterfront Condominiums 



High Rise Living

Blog 09

This past week we had The Nature Conservancy come in and give a presentation on their land acquisition and preservation organization. They have obtained many areas of land in the Keweenaw region to preserve from development. While I agree, a lot of the presentation was loaded down with the financial aspects of their struggles, I don't think that it was out of place. It's important to consider that many of their successes and struggles have been financially related as they try to pay and for these parcels of land. These financial successes have been a large part of their work, so it is very important to them. Personally I would have liked to have heard more about some of the actual areas of land that they had. She went into some brief descriptions, but I would have enjoyed hearing more about what specific things/trails there are at each park.

There was also a lot of discussion this past week on logging, logging methods, and new/old growth forest. A close family friend of ours works as a forest manager for Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin. This Saturday I called him with a few questions regarding some of these issues and ideas surrounding foresting techniques. I summarized the information he gave me:

Forest management isn't operated in the same way that is it was in the earlier logging days. It was partially that people didn't know how the forests responded to large scale clearing, but also clear cuts were done out of convenience often. Many logging companies were removing all trees, so everyone else felt the need to do the same thing to keep up and profitable. From a conservation standpoint, clear cuts are rarely done now in many of our areas. Because of clear cuts, the composition and make-up of many of our forest has changed, a lot of the topsoil is often lost, leaving a dryer clay soil. So select cuts are often performed to help give sunlight to undergrowth (young trees) so that they have more of a chance in the different soil.

I found this interesting how previous clear cuts have caused some forest to almost require maintenance select cuts for regrowth. He mentioned how they do not select cut in older forests that are already sustainable. He also mentioned that some foresting is also done to stop the spreading of diseases such as oak wilt.

Blog 08

Before spring break, Chad Norman came in and talked with us about his experiences of living in India in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. In this resourcefully rich region, water is such an important ingredient in its ecological life. There were many stories about unfair ways people were abusing the environment and indigenous cultures in those areas, but there was one part that I found particularly interesting. When trees were logged off the foothills of the mountains, rainfall could easily wash the dirt and ground away with no roots to hold the soil in place. This causes all of the nutrients to wash away from an area, become more dry as rain just washes over the dense earth and rock. When this happens, it makes it extremely difficult ans sometimes impossible for an ecosystem to return to its original state, and this presents many problems for an environment whose resources are becoming fewer and farther between.

The next two days of class were spent watching a movie regarding water wars that are shaping our environment, foreign and domestic. While many of the points brought up were alarming and very interesting, there were many aspects of how they went about their arguments that I disliked and found to be unprofessional. When depicting courtroom trials between the individuals and the companies, they made their own "courtroom artist" representations of the people and had all of the company's people look big, mean, and scary. That's a cute little tactic but it just looks unprofessional. Also, when the guy went to Nestle's seminar about some of their water projects and expected an answer right away about the letter he received  how would those individuals talking about the projects have any idea about that situation? It makes sense to try to talk about that at the end of the presentation when they can find out more about the situation, as the suggested. I'm not saying that Nestle as a company wasn't doing anything wrong, there is just no way to expect those presenters who were likely engineers and other technical employees to have any idea about that situation immediately. And the crowd didn't sound outraged as they suggested. 

I understand with a film like this where you have strong feelings about something, some points or arguments may be a little biased, and sometimes this is necessary to get across a point. But using unprofessional tactics and typical "political moves" leads me to disregard their arguments and thoughts.

Blog 07

Water was a common theme this week in the classes and presentations. With a growing global population and a shifts in the balance of water extraction, water is becoming the new oil. That is, clean fresh water safe enough for drinking and other uses. Many indigenous societies seem to be losing their water supply as others who have to means to extract the water are doing so. But it doesn't even seem like advanced societies have a sustainable water supply. Many of the largest U.S. cities are struggling to maintain levels in their aquifers and water sources.

Even more scary, some water sources could be gone in a second. For example, Los Angeles and its entire metro area population of almost 17 million people receive a lot of their water from Owen Valley, an aquifer north of Los Angeles. This underground lake lies directly over a fault line, and if a large enough earthquake were to occur, millions of tons of magma would mix with the lake water, rendering this entire water source useless. Los Angeles currently does not have another large scale alternative for their water sources.



http://www.centralbasin.org/slideshows/mapCaliforniaAqueduct.gif

Blog 06

This past week, Nancy Langston Skyped us from Sweden. There were a few things that I found particularly interesting with our talk with her. She went into detail regarding the effects of past and present chemicals on our environment, and our bodies. Her tone seemed consistent with her book, in that while we need to change how we do things, but we need to change things smartly. I did find some of the topics interesting, especially about how to get rid of chemicals that are in your system. Either getting liposuction or breastfeeding and passing it on to your infant don't seem like welcoming options. A lot of these types of problems are worse than we realize, we just haven't had enough lifespans to observe these types of problems.

Because of the time constraints of our conversation with her, i wasn't able to ask everything that I wanted to, specifically, what types of "green chemicals" that she talked about are they researching currently. We talk a lot in this class about trying to be more environmentally friendly, so I am especially interested in knowing about these new methods that are hoped to be less damaging to the environment. There also is the reoccurring thought that these new methods will have new unforeseen problems. It is the same idea of how medications are often later found to have negative effects on our body. For example, For some people that are low on iron in their body take medications for it, Indirectly it can also thin their blood making it hard for them to clot blood and stop bleeding when they get a cut or injury. Our environment works the same way; with so many factors and variables, it is nearly impossible to tell how things we put into it will change it in the long run.