Urban Garden Projects - Berlin

Speaking Gardens - The Berlin urban gardening movement (TRAILER - english version) from ReneResi on Vimeo

DamNation

Harrison Ford: still a bad ass.

At age 71 Harrison Ford is still shooting first. Grist reports Ford has been threatened with deportation from Indonesia because of his stern questioning of the forestry minister there about illegal logging activity and climate change. 

April Iris in Decatur, GA

Cultivating my phenological inclination here in Decatur, GA as I walk Benny Lava.

Glowing Plant Update

Last week I told you about a new Kickstarter Project that promises seeds for a glowing plant in the mail. As a PostDoc in an Arabidopsis lab, of course I funded it. So watch out, I will be blogging the process of growing these glowing seedlings as soon as the embryos arrive (sometime in 2014).

I was not the only one to show this project love. In three days the project creators reached their goal of $65,000. Now they have 39 days left to let the money keep on rolling in. This Kickstarter is so noteworthy because it appears to be the first serious Synthetic Biology project made possible by crowd-funding. Check out the video to get up to date on the status of the project.

The Bee's Knees!

The Rise of the Hipster Hunter

By Emma Marris

Hunting is undeniably in vogue among the bearded, bicycle-riding, locavore set. The new trend might even be partly behind a recent 9 percent increase from 2006 to 2011 in the number of hunters in the United States after years of decline. Many of these new hunters are taking up the activity for ethical and environmental reasons.

“It feels more responsible and ecologically sound to eat an animal that was raised wild and natural in my local habitat than to eat a cow that was fattened up on grain or even hay, which is inevitably harvested with fuel-hungry machines,” writes Christie Aschwanden, a self-described “tree-hugging former vegetarian.”

A recent spate of books with titles like The Mindful Carnivore and Call of the Mild chronicles the exploits of these first-time hunters as they wrestle with their consciences and learn to sight in their rifles.

The expansion of hunting into liberal, urban circles is the latest development in an evolving and increasingly snug coexistence between humans and beasts in North America. Jim Sterba’s new book, Nature Wars, examines the paradox of the rebound of many wild species, particularly in the densely populated East Coast of the United States. Whitetail deer, turkeys, Canada geese, black bears, and trees are all doing wonderfully in 2012, thanks to conservation measures in the past and vagaries of history and cultural change. The problem, Sterba says, is that most modern North Americans have no idea what to do with these species. We gawk and gape; we feed them doughnuts; we run into them with our cars; we are surprised and alarmed by their messy habits and occasional aggressiveness; we manage them all wrong; we want them gone from our neighborhoods, but we abhor the idea of killing them.

Read the entire article in Slate.

What is Phenology?

Have you ever heard of PHENOLOGY? 

Phenology is the study of seasonal changes in plant and animal life. For example keeping a notebook of the date and location of daffodils blooming, or robins returning in the spring.

As I walked through the woods today I wished I could have uploaded photos taken with my iphone to some online database where they would be mapped to a model of earth.  I envisioned a website where one could upload time-stamped geo-tagged photos of living things and people all over the world could see these photos and use them to watch temporal fluctuations in animal migrations and plants flowering or going to seed. 

July, 12th, 2012, 12:30 PM EDT,
Latitude: 42.06873434, Longitute:79.3502757

My attempt at phenological data collection is pictured at the right. Brownie points if you can identify the butterfly species.

There have been attempts at creating a global phenological network. Project BudBurst is probably the best example. Citizen scientists are invited to log when and where they see certain flowers blooming. It is great to see this but I want more! I want to see more plants an animals recorded by a larger group of citizen scientists in a totally open access setting. The other online data base of species is E.O. Wilson's brainchild - The Encyclopedia of Life. But that database is more about cataloging all life forms on earth. A noble and useful goal but not phenology.

When looking at Google Maps you can click on buttons in the upper right corner and add photos or Wikipedia articles as pieces of meta-information overlaid on the satellite images. Is it far-fetched to expect one day there will be an additional button to add phenological data including photos, dates, and precise coordinates? If people can visualize science I think they are more likely to accept it. If we can show the world how flowers are blooming earlier and earlier due to climate change maybe they will be more likely to accept bland graphs of temperature and CO2 levels.

I had not heard of phenology until I heard Nina Leopold (daughter of naturalist and author Aldo Leopold) mention it while talking about her father (see below).

 
Phenology | Climate Wisconsin from ECB on Vimeo.

Evolution on Manhattan

Here is the first video I've seen from a new branch of the TED talks called TED-Ed. The idea of these videos is to animate lessons making them widely available to any curious person with an internet connection. I applaud the advocacy of creativity and transparency.

The contemporary illustration of accidental evolution at the hand of human development is particularly poignant.

Permaculture

I posted this interview with Mark Shepard of Forest Agriculture Enterprises a few months ago. With today's feature in the New York Times on the rise of "Permaculture" I thought it appropriate to revisit. I can not emphasize enough how empowering this video is for me. After watching in-depth I have been turned on to several new ideas, like producing food energy by planting perennial rather than annual crops. I am inspired to plant forest gardens filled with hazelnut trees! I highly encourage my readers to take the time to watch. And for those of you of the skeptical mindset I am right there with you. When something sounds to good to be true, it usually is. If you have counter arguments to Mark Shepard's philosophy please share.

106 Acre Profitable Permaculture Farm - Interview with Owner Mark Shepard from The Socio Capitalist on Vimeo.

Date. Interrupted.

Greatness on Parade

Nature's Cosmopolitan

Snapped this magnificent specimen Saturday afternoon.

Distribution map from Wikipedia.

The sun reflecting off Sheldon lake lit his underbelly well in this one.