Environmental Almanac

Equinox House a powerful example of conservation in Urbana

2012-02-02T16:45:00.001-06:00

Equinox House a powerful example of conservation in Urbana

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

How much fossil fuel does it take to operate a comfortable home for a couple of retired American baby-boomers?

None.

That’s the straight answer from Ty and Deb Newell of Urbana. And they hope the example of their home, the “Equinox House,” will awaken others to the opportunity of constructing a net-zero energy house in the Midwest using technology available today.

The Newells recently celebrated the first anniversary of life in the “Equinox House,” so there’s more than a year’s worth of data about how much electricity they used on day-to-day basis, as well as how much electricity their solar panels produced.

According to Ty Newell, who is professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at the UI, the Equinox House required about 12,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity to operate during the December 2010 through November 2011 period. That total includes everything from heating and air conditioning, to hot water heat, clothes washing and drying, and all other appliances. (No natural gas is used in the house.)

Newell noted that energy use in the Equinox House for the first year was approximately 20 percent greater than it will be in this and subsequent years. That’s because he was using the least efficient of three different heating systems that will be tested in the home.

During the first year, the solar panels that power the Equinox House produced approximately 11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This would have made the Newells purchasers of 1,000 kilowatt-hours, in net terms, had it not been for the fact that the solar panels were on line for some time before they moved into the house.

Thanks to the more efficient heating system now in place, the Equinox House will produce surplus electricity this year and in the future. That’s by design. The “extra” will be used to power an electric vehicle, which the Newells intend to purchase as one becomes available this year.

In conjunction with its solar panels, the Equinox House achieves net-zero energy use because it requires far less energy than even a well-built conventional home—about one-fifth as much. And it does so through the use of design and technology that did not add a significant burden to the cost of construction.

When he talks about the Equinox House, Ty Newell emphasizes how well it works from an economic perspective, since the couple’s average daily cost for energy is a mere $3.00. That’s based on a twenty-year life for the solar array, which cost a net of $20,000 installed.

In addition, Newell enjoys the fact that a significant part of their up-front expenditure supported job creation, the labor that went into the manufacture and installation of their solar panels. That’s in contrast to money they might have otherwise spent on fossil fuel.

You might think that the Newells must be sacrificing comfort for the sake of energy savings, but that’s not the case. Their house boasts 2,100 square feet of living space and all of the amenities you would expect in a contemporary suburban development.

On top of that, they enjoy much better indoor air quality than those of us who live in conventional homes, thanks to a constant flow of conditioned fresh air from the outside.

Snowy owl story extends to east central Illinois

2012-01-26T16:45:00.001-06:00

Snowy owl story extends to east central Illinois

Listen to the commentaryReal Audio : MP3 download

For most people in central Illinois, snowy owls are creatures of other places, belonging to the worlds of nature shows, or Harry Potter.

But in this unusual winter, snowy owls, which breed on the arctic tundra, have been relatively easy to come by here. You’re not likely to see one in your backyard, but if you’ve got access to the Web and you’re willing to drive a little, you might be able to add one to your life list without leaving your home county.

The first local report I know of concerned a snowy owl that was seen at Willard airport back in mid December.

Just before New Years, a second snowy owl was spotted on the ground in a cornfield east of Tolono. Observers became concerned when that bird stayed in the same place for too long, and on January 3rd it was captured and taken to the U of I Wildlife Medical Clinic.

The owl had suffered a broken wing and was badly dehydrated, but staffers were able to revive it, and surgery was performed to set the broken bone. Whether or not the bone will heal so the bird can be released is still an open question at this point, according to clinic director Julia Whittington.

[Photos: Youngsters enjoy a look at the Tolono snowy owl in the field. Others show the same bird on the mend in the care of Annie Rivas at the U of I Wildlife Medical Clinic.]

Taking into account the airport snowy owl and the one now at the Wildlife Medical Clinic, my friend Greg Lambeth, who tracks such things closely, estimates that there have been at least four, and as many as six different snowy owls observed in Champaign County in recent weeks.

Why are there snowy owls here now?

Their normal winter range extends as far south as Oklahoma, but they do not typically show up in any numbers below northern tier states.

National reports have suggested that a bumper crop of their primary prey, arctic lemmings, enabled them to successfully rear more young than usual this summer. But according to U of I avian ecologist Mike Ward, the evidence for this explanation is not all in yet. It could also be, he suggests, that raptors of the tundra are having particular difficulty finding food this winter.

In either case, Ward points out, the snowy owls we see are likely to be weaker birds that have been muscled out of better territory, so it’s important for people to appreciate them through binoculars and not to approach them.

In our area, birders typically locate snowy owls by driving county roads and scanning the surrounding fields for big blobs of white. Snowies, which are the heaviest of North American owls, stand about two feet tall, so they can often be seen at a distance, whether they’re perched on a post or hunkered down on the ground. (Unfortunately, wayward plastic grocery bags are just about the same size when they’re puffed up by the wind.)

If you would rather not spend your time and burn gas in such a search, which is fruitless more often than not, here’s an even better bet. Sign up to the Birdnotes listserv, which is managed by the Champaign County Audubon Society, and hosted by the Champaign County Forest Preserve District: http://lists.ccfpd.org/listinfo.cgi/birdnotes-ccfpd.org.With some luck, then, you can simply wait for someone who has spotted a snowy owl to post its location.

**** Upcoming Bird Events ****

At 7:00 pm on Monday, January 30, at the Large Animal Clinic Auditorium of the UI College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. LoraKim Joyner will speak on "Human Dimensions of Conservation." Joyner specializes in conservation of wild parrot populations and consults in conservation and the human dimensions of conservation throughout Latin America.

At 7:00 pm on Thursday, February 2, Greg Lambeth will show slides and discuss the spectacular birding of a 3-week trip to Ecuador at the monthly meeting of the Champaign County Audubon Society. Urbana Free Library Auditorium.

Anticipating Audubon Christmas Bird Count, Champaign County edition

2011-12-15T16:45:00.005-06:00

Anticipating Audubon Christmas Bird Count, Champaign County edition

Listen to the commentaryReal Audio : MP3 download

Recently I took some time to do a bit of scouting in the territory my group covers for the Champaign County edition of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, which will take place this Saturday, December 17. Our area includes Urbana’s Meadowbrook Park, as well as the University of Illinois Forestry Plantation on the other side of Race Street.

My first objective was to determine whether any owls have been roosting at Forestry, where there’s a small block of cedars they like. A great horned owl is a possibility there, but in winters past, long-eared owls, which come down from the north, have been found there, too.

The easiest way to locate roosting owls is to search for whitewash at the base of likely trees, so that’s what I did for starters. Finding none, I moved to strategy two--in this case, tipping my head back and scanning the densely growing upper branches of 25-foot tall trees spaced less than ten feet apart. Patient birders with sharp eyes sometimes find owls this way, but I never have, so after a short time I shifted gears.

I quietly made my way into a block of scrub, drawn by the calls of a loose flock of winter songbirds. Cardinals, robins, and juncos were there, as well as a single yellow-rumped warbler. They can be difficult to find on Christmas counts, so I was happy to locate this one.

The trunks of dying trees in the vicinity were alive with the tapping of woodpeckers, and all three of the species most common in our area were represented: downy, hairy, and red-bellied. White-breasted nuthatches probed the bark for insects, sometimes clinging sideways or upside down to access a choice crevice. Not so a tiny brown creeper, which picked its way directly from the bottom to the top of one tree, and then flitted to the base of another to begin ascending again.

A flash of color on a bird in flight provided a welcome surprise, and a yellow-bellied sapsucker landed on a nearby pine. Like yellow-rumped warblers, they can usually be found for local Christmas counts, but not always.

I moved next to edges of the prairie reconstruction at Meadowbrook Park, hoping to find an uncommon raptor, a red-shouldered hawk or a goshawk, perhaps, but that was not to be.

Little birds were there in abundance, though. Goldfinches in their drab winter feathers scattered before me, their undulating flight confirming identification even at a distance. The squeaky calls of goldfinches are unmistakable, too, but there other bird music in the air gave me pause.

American tree sparrows? Pine siskins?

First it seemed to be one, then the other. As it turned out it was both—a mixed flock feeding on the seeds of dormant prairie plants. At my approach, sentinels popped up from the ground to perch atop last summer’s growth of Indian grass and goldenrod. I took another step and the whole group was gone, leaving the scene so quiet I could hear the cold breeze sweeping in from the north.

I suppose there’s no point in hoping for warm weather on count day.

Are you interested in participating in an east-central Illinois Christmas Bird Count this year? Check out the Website of the Champaign County Audubon Society for dates and contact information: http://www.champaigncountyaudubon.org/

Symposium to showcase efforts supported by U of I Environmental Change Institute

2011-12-01T16:45:00.005-06:00

Symposium to showcase efforts supported by U of I Environmental Change Institute

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

When University of Illinois professor Bill Sullivan first offered a course called Environmental Sustainability in Fall of 2009, only 11 students were enrolled, and they came from just two departments.

The following year, 27 students signed up, representing a somewhat wider range of majors.

This fall, Environmental Sustainability was supposed to be opened to a maximum of 50 students, but, as Sullivan told me, somebody working at registration forgot to shut the gate. As a result, he’s teaching a group of 98 undergraduates from all across campus.

What is it that students taking Environmental Sustainability are so eager to learn? The first two-thirds of the course focus on some of the harsh realities of the world they stand to inherit: global warming, ecosystem and biodiversity loss, the threat of pandemics, pockets of persistent and severe poverty, the depletion of resources essential to human well-being.

Sullivan wants students to develop greater capacities for thinking critically about these issues, but he emphasizes that in order to do so, they must first gain a clear understanding of the facts.

The latter part of the semester is devoted to the study of how human creativity and innovation can enable people to create a more sustainable world.

Ultimately, Sullivan hopes that what his students learn in Environmental Sustainability will shape how they approach the work they do beyond school, whether they go on to design energy-efficient buildings, teach English, practice medicine or create art.

I tell this short story about the interest in and aims of Bill Sullivan’s Environmental Sustainability class for two reasons. First, to illustrate just one of the ways undergraduate education is thriving at the U of I. Second, to call attention to how much good can be accomplished with a little bit of extra support at the right time.

Sullivan received a grant to help develop his Environmental Sustainability course from the Environmental Change Institute, or ECI, which is the campus unit where I’ve held an appointment for the past couple of years.

ECI was created in 2008, thanks to a generous gift from the Alvin H. Baum Family fund and matching funds from three U of I colleges: Business, Law, and Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Its mission is to advance understanding of global environmental change and offer solutions that enable society to avoid, mitigate or adapt to its effects through the support of scholarly research, innovative teaching, and public outreach initiatives.

On Wednesday, December 7, ECI will host its third annual symposium, where members of the campus community and the general public are invited to learn more about the wide range of efforts it supports.

Speakers at the symposium will include Bill Sullivan, as well as others who have developed courses with help from ECI. In addition, there will be presentations on the wide range of other activities ECI has fostered.

For example, plant biologist and ECI fellow Andrew Leakey will describe his ongoing quest to identify the knowledge needed to adapt tropical rice to tolerate the range of warming predicted in the 21st century. And Karen Decker of ECI will give an overview of the Illinois Energy Dashboard project. This project, which involves collaboration between ECI, the Student Sustainability Committee and U of I Facilities & Services, will provide usable information about energy consumption to students and staff of chosen University buildings.

The Environmental Change Institute’s annual symposium will be held from 9:00 a.m. to noon at the Beckman Institute on the U of I campus. Further details follow:

9:00 am Coffee and Refreshments

9:15 am Welcome: Wesley Jarrell, Interim Director, ECI

Robert Easter: Interim Associate Chancellor

9:25 am Mr. Joel Friedman: Alvin H. Baum Family Fund

9:35 am Robert Hauser: Dean, College of ACES

Pradeep Khanna: Associate Chancellor

9:45 am ECI-Supported Courses

Bill Sullivan: Landscapes, Sustainability & Human Health

Bruce Litchfield & Katherine Halm: Grab-a-Bike @ Illinois

Scott Willenbrock: Science and Sustainability

Jesse Ribot & Poonam Jusrut: Democracy and Environment

Brian Deal: Sustainability and the Built Environment

10:15 am ECI-Partnerships

Emily Cross: Reflections from COP 16

Michelle Wander: Change and the Heartland

Karen Decker: Curriculum for Change and the Heartland

Willie Dong & Nick Glumac: Effects of Soil Water and Bulk Density on Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy of Soil Organic Carbon

Jonathan Tomkin: Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation

Karen Decker: Energy Dashboard

11:00 am ECI Fellows

Catherine Blake: Text Mining Environmental Change Literature

Andrew Leakey: Basic Research to Enable Adaptations of Rice Production to

Rising Temperature

11:20 am ECI Funded Research Reports

Andrew Leakey: Environmental Change-induced Alterations in Crop Rooting

Andrea Martens: The Impact of Gasoline Prices on Internet Purchases

Jennifer Fraterrigo: Terrestrial Carbon Loss to Aquatic Ecosystems

Courtney Flint: Agricultural Landscapes and Decision Making in the Context of Climate and Policy Change

11:50 am Closing Remarks: Wesley Jarrell

Join in for conversation and refreshments

Grand Prairie Friends works to protect precious woodland

2011-11-10T16:45:00.004-06:00

Grand Prairie Friends works to protect precious woodland

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

If you’re familiar with Fox Ridge State Park south of Charleston, you know there’s more to east central Illinois than mile after mile of flatland. Thanks to the influence of the Embarras River, forested ridges and lush valleys provide the area with a distinctive natural character.

This character is maintained through a chain of protected lands, including the Woodyard Memorial Conservation Area at the edge of Charleston, Warbler Woods Nature Preserve a little further to the south, and Fox Ridge State Park itself.

During the past year, an opportunity has arisen for adding a beautiful link to the chain, and the board of the local conservation group, Grand Prairie Friends, has been actively pursuing it. The “link” in question is a 140-acre tract of land adjacent to Warbler Woods that’s up for sale.

Known, for now, by the name of the current owner, the Dolan Woods tract is almost completely forested. On the ridges, where the soil tends to be dry, a mix of towering white oak trees forms a loose canopy, which allows some sunlight to reach the floor below. There, native shrubs, such as serviceberry, provide structure and food for wildlife.

In the ravines, where moisture is more abundant, red oaks and sugar maples dominate. Beneath them grow plants adapted to dampness and low light, a luxuriant blanket of ferns and wildflowers.

Scientific surveys of Dolan Woods have identified some real treasures among the plants there, including the relatively well-known yellow lady’s slipper orchid, along with two less common types of orchids as well. [Photos: Coles County naturalist David Mott (right) leads Jamie Ellis and other GPF board members on a tour of Dolan Woods this past June (Fred Delcomyn); yellow lady's slipper orchid (Michael R. Jeffords); worm-eating warbler (Greg Lambeth/ greglambethbirdphotos.smugmug.com)].

Better still, according to Jamie Ellis, who is a botanist and also board president for Grand Prairie Friends, further discoveries are very likely. He told me, “The plant list already includes more than 100 species, many of which are typical of high-quality woods—but it’s certainly not complete. We’re still adding species each time we take a walk there.”

Thanks to the diverse, intact habitat, a variety of wildlife thrives at Dolan Woods. The site is presumed to host the same birds as the adjoining Warbler Woods, where breeding bird surveys have identified 57 species, eleven of which are considered “species in greatest need of conservation” by the Illinois State Wildlife Action Plan. These are birds that rely on large blocks of forest to reproduce, and they include some that are familiar, such as the redheaded woodpecker, as well as others that are less common, like the worm-eating warbler.

Dolan Woods also offers ideal habitat for the mammals, frogs, salamanders and other animals typical of Illinois forests.

Since June, members of the Grand Prairie Friends board have been working to secure grants from major Illinois foundations to cover the lion's share of the cost for Dolan Woods. (NEWS FLASH: Approval for one of the two key grants came in just as I was submitting this column.) But they are also committed to raising a significant amount for the purchase—$50,000—in contributions from members and friends by the end of the year.

If you are interested and able to help, there are two easy ways to donate money. You can send a check made out to Grand Prairie Friends to P. O. Box 36, Urbana, IL 61803. Or click you can go to the Grand Prairie Friends Website at grandprairiefriends.org and click on the “Donate Now” button. To my way of thinking, this is an exciting opportunity to help protect a real gem in east central Illinois.

People wonder, what do crows think?

2011-11-03T16:45:00.005-05:00

People wonder, what do crows think?

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

At about this point in the fall a few years back, I noticed a curious phenomenon as I drove along Florida Avenue on the U of I campus. Dozens of crows—a “murder” if you will—were returning day after day to a row of majestic trees, for what looked to me like a great big crow party.

This wasn’t a roost, where crows gather at night for safety in numbers (and create misery for the unfortunate humans who live below.) It was a raucous, daytime affair, with lots of loud calling and hopping and flapping from branch to branch. [Photos by author: Row of pecan trees stretching south from Florida Avenue toward the round barn on St. Mary's Road; crow with pecan.]

What was the attraction of those trees? I stopped one morning to investigate. On the ground below the crow party were scattered the husks and shells of pecans, a nut I didn’t even know grew in Illinois.

So that little mystery was solved, and now I watch each November for the crows to congregate and feast on the pecans as they mature. (As a bonus, I now also know of a place where I can pick up one of my favorite foods from the ground.)

As I had spent time figuring out what crows were up to, I had inadvertently joined what turns out to be a very large and cosmopolitan group—people who are curious about crows.

If you’ve seen the episode of the PBS series, “Nature,” called “A Murder of Crows,” you know that scientific research on crows is illuminating new aspects of their intelligence and sociability on an ongoing basis.

For example, one group featured in the show, from the University of Washington at Seattle, designed a study to ascertain whether adult crows pass along specific knowledge about the world to their offspring.

The scientists knew from earlier work that crows recognize and remember masks worn by researchers who catch them, and that the crows’ dislike for people wearing those masks is communicated among adult birds. The question was whether such knowledge would be passed on from one generation to the next.

It was. A young crow that had learned from its parents to associate a particular mask with danger picked out a person wearing the same mask months later, in an entirely different setting, and gave the same alarm call.

Another area of research featured in “A Murder of Crows” is tool use among crows of New Caledonia, which appear to be the smartest of crows worldwide.

In the experiment, a New Caledonian crow is presented with a piece of food in a narrow box, which it can obtain only by reaching in with a long stick. But the long stick is inside a cage. To retrieve it, the crow has to reach in with a smaller stick, which is suspended from a nearby branch on a piece of string. In essence, it has to think up a three-step plan to achieve its goal.

You can almost hear the wheels turn as you watch the crow contemplate its options and then spring into action.

New Caledonian crows are also famous for the fact that they modify the tools available to them. In an earlier experiment, which you can view online, a New Caledonian crow named Betty crafts a hook from a straight piece of wire in order to pull food from an upright cylinder.

I don’t know whether the American crows we see in Illinois are as smart as all that. But having a better sense of what’s going on in their heads sure makes me want to watch them more closely in the future.

U of I Department of NRES students get a taste of field work at Allerton

2011-10-27T16:45:00.008-05:00

U of I Department of NRES students get a taste of field work at Allerton

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Would you know how to hold a cardinal safely to put a band on its leg? Do you know what to use for bait in a live-trap to catch raccoons or possums? Could you hold up your end of a minnow seine to sample for fish in a shallow river?

These are some of the skills that people who work in natural resources must possess. But they are not things young people typically pick up, either in school or out. And in the past, even students majoring in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) at the UI have been introduced to them only in upper-level courses, fairly late in their time as undergraduates.

Thinking that students would benefit from an earlier introduction to fieldwork, this year NRES professors Courtney Flint and Mark David collaborated to institute a field day as part of the large lecture course that serves as an introduction to the major.

The scene: A crisp October morning at Allerton Park near Monticello. Sixty-five students arrive in small buses. Awaiting them are twelve professors and eighteen graduate students and other student helpers.

As the students split up into smaller groups, I chose one to follow. It included a fairly typical mix of UI undergraduates—the majority of them were from Chicagoland, others were from downstate, and a few were from abroad, China and Malaysia, in this case.

At our first stop, avian ecologist Mike Ward demonstrated how scientists use the recorded call of a screech owl to draw in songbirds; the smaller birds converge to mob the predator and drive it away. Two of them that came in for our call, a white-breasted nuthatch and a cardinal, were caught in a mist net that had been set up nearby for the purpose. Ward and his colleagues used them to show how small birds are handled for scientific study (and then released them, annoyed but unharmed). [Photos by author: Antonio Celis Murillo, a PhD student in NRES, shows undergraduates how to handle a bird; Bob Schooley, professor in NRES, fields a question about the raccoon in the trap; a happy undergraduate transfers a fish from seine to bucket.]

At our next stop, wildlife ecologist Robert Schooley and student Adam Ahlers, explained how live-traps work for catching medium-size mammals, including where to place them and what to bait them with. (Peanut butter and apples work well.) We then checked traps that had been set out the night before, one of which contained a very large, mellow raccoon. There was no “hands on” in this case, given the risks of handling mammals.

Our mammal stop also included an introduction to radio telemetry, which is still widely used for tracking mammals to study their behavior. Ahlers explained it’s much more economical than satellite-based tracking, and can provide more precise data on animal movement. One student from the group then had the opportunity to lead the rest on a successful hunt to find a transmitter the instructors had hidden.

At our last stop of the morning, aquatics, “all in” and “hands on” were the rules, as students put on waders and stepped into the Sangamon River. Some helped collect fish that were stunned by electroshocking, while others worked minnow seines in shallower water. As the students gathered to examine their catch, professor Cory Suski encouraged them: “Don’t be afraid to touch things and pick them up—it’s okay to get your hands dirty!”

After a box lunch on the lawn near the Music Barn, the students spent the afternoon engaged in further hands-on activities. They measured and identified trees in the forest, evaluated water quality at the river and clambered into pits where they learned to “read” a soil profile.

To my way of thinking, there’s just one difficulty with this sort of education, and it affects students and teachers alike--returning to the lecture hall for the next class meeting.

Revitalized "Green Observer" promotes student engagement with environmental issues

2011-10-20T16:45:00.002-05:00

Revitalized "Green Observer" promotes student engagement with environmental issues

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

To be conscious of the environmental challenges people face as world population approaches seven billion is to grapple with the loss of hope now and again. If that’s where I left you with last week’s commentary, which focused on the IUCN "Red List of Threatened Species," this week, let me call your attention to a document with a more positive vibe.

It’s the just-published edition of “The Green Observer” magazine, which is available now at locations on and around the University of Illinois campus. If you’ve been around the U of I in recent years, you may remember seeing one or another of the earlier incarnations of the “Green Observer,” but the current model aims higher than any of those did.

The driving force behind the new “Green Observer” is editor-in-chief and designer Emily Cross, a third-year student pursuing majors in both Political Science and Earth, Society and Environment.

When we spoke recently, Cross said that one the goals of the magazine is to provide students with information that’s useful on a day-to-day basis. Toward that end, it contains a calendar of upcoming environmental events, for example, as well as articles with tips to help students reduce their own environmental impacts.

But Cross also emphasized that she hopes the “Green Observer” will help students to understand their roles on campus and in the world differently. “On a campus this size,” she said, “it’s easy to look around and think, ‘I can’t make a difference.’ But students have brought important changes to campus, and they continue to do that.”

Along those lines, one article in the current “Green Observer” tells the story of the eight-year effort by students to bring wind power to the U of I campus, which was finally cancelled this past spring. While the students involved did not achieve their ultimate goal, the story of their struggle provides an excellent reminder of just how much they brought to the table.

Other stories in the current issue encourage student engagement by reporting on activities few are even aware of. For example, one student writes about volunteering to help with a prairie burn at a University-owned natural area in northeast Urbana. In his words, “The smell of smoke and the sights and sounds of ten-foot high flames are simply unforgettable.”

I should emphasize that the “Green Observer” itself represents an opportunity for students to get involved. No fewer than 14 wrote articles for the current issue, and others provided artwork, photographs and more. Students involved with the “Green Observer” represent a wide range of disciplines, from earth systems, engineering and political science, to economics, business and a variety of others.

Cross reported that even in the short time since the current issue went into circulation, she has been contacted by a number of students who are eager to contribute to the next one.

Can the new “Green Observer” expand the cohort of students who are engaged with environmental concerns beyond the membership of existing green organizations? That’s a sincere hope of everyone involved, and it explains, in part, why the magazine is being distributed as a printed object, not just online.

The “Green Observer” is a program of the University YMCA, and you can pick up your own copy of it there. It’s also available at a number of campus businesses, or online at greenobservermagazine.com.

IUCN "Red List" documents continuing extinction crisis

2011-10-13T16:45:00.003-05:00

IUCN "Red List" documents continuing extinction crisis

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Lately my work on another project has meant spending time with one of the most depressing documents people have ever produced. It’s the “Red List of Threatened Species” published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which is an umbrella organization that coordinates scientific efforts to catalogue and preserve biodiversity worldwide.

Updates to the Red List are published every four years, and the version I’ve been looking at comes from 2008. Its authors point out that it contains glimmers of hope, but then they characterize the news it holds this way: “The overwhelming message is that the world is losing species and that the rate of loss is accelerating in many taxonomic groups.”

Scientists know much more about the state of vertebrates—especially mammals, birds, and amphibians—than they do about other forms of animal life. Every one of the 5,488 species of mammals that have been described, for example, has been evaluated for purposes of the Red List. Of them, 76 species have become extinct since the year 1500, and two, Pere David’s deer, which is native to Asia, and the scimitar oryx from Africa survive only in managed facilities. Another 29 of the mammal species listed as critically endangered are also tagged as “possibly extinct”; they are very likely gone, but the sort of exhaustive surveys required to confirm that fact have not been conducted. Overall, approximately 22% of mammal species worldwide are known to be threatened or extinct.

The Red List categorizes a smaller proportion of the world’s 9,990 bird species—14%—as threatened or extinct. But the raw number of bird species lost over the past five centuries is at least 134, and four more species persist only in zoos. Another 15 species of birds are considered possibly extinct. The fact that 86% of bird species are categorized as “not threatened” constitutes really good news in the context of the Red List.

Among the well-studied vertebrates, amphibians are faring especially poorly. Of the more than 6,000 known species of frogs, toads, salamanders and the like, 38 have become extinct worldwide since 1500, 11 of those in just the last three decades. [USFWS photo: The Monteverde golden toad is one of 11 species of amphibians to become extinct since 1980.] Another one, the Wyoming toad, survives only in a recovery program, and another 120 species are considered possibly extinct. Overall, about a third of the world’s amphibian species are known to be threatened or extinct.

Of course, this information about familiar, terrestrial creatures is just a small part of what the Red List covers. It also documents disturbing facts about marine life, from plummeting fish stocks to large-scale declines among reef-building corals, and more.

I should emphasize that even taken as a whole, the Red List does not provide a comprehensive picture of life on earth. Scientists have described fewer than 2 million of the 8-9 million species of organisms thought to exist, most of which are insects, and only a fraction of those described species have been evaluated for purposes of the Red List.

The threats that put species at risk vary from one to another, but most of them result from human activity. People convert wild land to agriculture. We strip it to get at minerals. We build roads and cities. We cut down trees and kill animals at unsustainable rates, and we wreck ecosystems by introducing invasive species.

None of this is to say people are not capable of altering their behavior to prevent the extinction of other species. But on the whole, it’s difficult to spend time with the Red List and come away with a lot of hope.

An invitation to enjoy Vermilion County's Forest Glen Preserve

2011-10-06T16:45:00.003-05:00

An invitation to enjoy Vermilion County's Forest Glen Preserve

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

I suppose with the weather we’ve had of late, few people need encouragement to get outdoors. But on the chance you’re casting about for what to do, here’s a suggestion. Explore Forest Glen Preserve in Vermilion County. Getting there from Champaign-Urbana takes about an hour. It’s longer than the drive to Kickapoo State Park, but the extra time invested in the journey pays off in the different experience to be had there.

I visited Forest Glen recently with my son’s Boy Scout troop. It was the first overnight backpacking trip for the scouts, a step toward the ultimate goal of a backcountry outing in the Great Smokey Mountains next summer. The 11-mile backpacking loop at Forest Glen, which includes options for camping, is ideal for such a purpose.

The preserve is fairly large for east central Illinois at 1,800 hundred acres. What’s more, it encompasses an impressive variety of ecosystems, including a 40-acre tallgrass prairie restoration, a smaller savanna restoration, large tracts of mature forest and two seeps that are designated Illinois Nature Preserves. The eastern border of Forest Glen is marked by the Vermilion River, which is a point of interest itself.

If you go, you’ll definitely want to make time for a hike. As long-time Vermilion County naturalist Gary Wilford says, “If you’ve just driven through it, you really haven’t seen Forest Glen.” Among the things to look for on the trail are the magnificent beech trees, which are especially prominent on the uplands and steep slopes. You’ll know them by their smooth, silvery grey bark—they’re the trees people carve their initials into. Vermilion County marks the western edge of beech-maple forest at our latitude, so these are trees you won’t see in Busey Woods or at Allerton Park.

In the low-lying areas at Forest Glen we encountered large stands of scouring rush, a plant that grows up in two-foot tall stems from rhizomes that spread underground. The hollow, segmented stems of scouring rush resemble bamboo, but it’s really a more ancient plant, one whose relatives shared the stage with ferns and other spore-producing plants long before flowering plants evolved. Scouring rush incorporates silica into its fibers as it grows, which you can feel if you rub it between your fingers. American Indians and early settlers are said to have used it for scrubbing, hence its common name.

A unique point of interest at Forest Glen is a 72-foot observation tower, which is open to the public. If you’re able and willing to climb the stairs, you’re rewarded with a spectacular view of the Vermilion River valley from above the treetops. We were there a little early for fall color, but I can’t imagine a better spot for leaf-peeping in the weeks to come. [Photo by author. View from the tower just as leaves are beginning to change.]

As a bonus, at this time of year the tower is also an excellent vantage point for raptor watching. On a recent visit there, Bob Schifo of the Middlefork Audubon Society reported seeing two bald eagles, two red-tailed hawks, a red-shouldered hawk, a Cooper’s hawk and an osprey.

By the time Troop 107 descended the tower and finished lunch on the second day of our trip, we had neither the time nor the energy to complete the entire backpacking loop. Fortunately for us, there’s a whole network of trails at Forest Glen, and we took the short way back to our starting point.

U of I research incorporates farmer perspectives on water quality

2011-09-22T16:45:00.004-05:00

U of I research incorporates farmer perspectives on water quality

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Recently, I spoke about the technical aspect of a current U of I research project designed to address nitrate loss from farming in the Salt Fork River watershed.

This week, a report on the other main component of that project. It focuses on farm landowners and operators, especially their perceptions about water quality and their thinking on issues that might affect willingness to adopt new water management techniques. This part of the effort is led by U of I professor Courtney Flint, with important collaboration from George Czapar at the Illinois State Water Survey and others at the Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Flint is a sociologist whose research focuses on rural community and regional responses to environmental disturbance or change. When we spoke, she emphasized that the development of new technology is only one step toward the goal of reducing nitrate loss, and she referred me to a favorite quote to explain what motivates her work: “All the good intentions of science and technology are meaningless unless the farmer actually uses the practices.”

Flint and her colleagues employed two instruments to document the perspectives of farmers in the Upper Salt Fork Watershed during spring and summer of 2010. They sat down for personal interviews with 40 farm operators and landowners, and they conducted a broader survey by mail.

The researchers found that most respondents felt that local water quality, which they generally associated with drinking water, is good. They were more concerned about getting water off of fields quickly than what water might be carrying as it runs off. Among the relatively small percentage of respondents who had concerns about surface water quality, most ranked sediment and municipal discharge above fertilizers as sources of problems.

The great majority of respondents reported they already employ conservation measures to reduce soil erosion and protect water quality. Topping the list of these measures were reduced or no-till planting, which together are employed by a whopping 87 percent. More than half said they have established grassed waterways to filter water that runs off the top of their fields, and many have also planted filter strips as a buffer between fields and streams. Farmers who responded also report managing nutrient applications with an eye toward preventing loss.

What factors influenced decisions about actions that might improve water quality? You might expect “bottom line” to top the list, but it actually ranked below concern with improving the farm—for its own sake, for the benefit of future generations and for the sake of good relations with neighbors. About three-fourths of those responding also cited concern for the quality of water downstream and promoting conservation of natural resources as factors in water quality management decisions.

Flint found that farmers would be most likely to modify their practices to improve water quality if they learned those practices would increase the productivity and effectiveness of their operations. They were concerned about the costs of making changes, and the possibility that changes would limit their flexibility to adapt to new conditions in the field.

Flint and her colleagues anticipate that exposure to field demonstrations of mechanisms for reducing nitrate loss (such as the one described in last week’s column) will increase the willingness of farmers to adopt them. To test that hypothesis, they will repeat their interviews and surveys late next year.

An abundance of enviro activities next week

2011-09-15T16:45:00.004-05:00

An abundance of enviro activities next week

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Have you ever enjoyed a walk at Heritage Park in Champaign? Do you value the natural areas at Meadowbrook Park in Urbana? If so, you might be interested to know of an upcoming opportunity to deepen your connection to such places.

It’s an event called National Public Lands Day, which is intended to help people learn about environmental and natural resources issues, and to provide volunteers with opportunities to improve public lands for outdoor recreation.

National Public Lands Day takes place next Saturday, September 24. It is being promoted locally by the U of I Extension’s East Central Illinois Master Naturalist program, in cooperation with the agencies that manage participating sites.

The National Public Lands Day event at Meadowbrook Park is designed with families in mind. It begins with a program of hands-on work from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. Taking advantage of the season, Urbana Park District personnel will lead some volunteers in an expedition to collect seeds from native plants in the Meadowbrook prairie restoration. These seeds will be used to establish prairie at other sites next year. Other participants will remove invasive plants, improve trails and pick up litter. [Photo by Kim Horbas. Volunteers collect seed at Buffalo Trace Prairie near Mahomet.]

After the work wraps up, park district educators will conduct a free program that includes a guided hike with activities about invasive species and how to take care of parks. Children under 16 who are accompanied by an adult are welcome to participate in both the work and the educational program at Meadowbrook.

The National Public Lands Day event at Heritage Park in Champaign is geared more for adult volunteers. Participants there will cooperate with park district workers to remove invasive plants and do general clean up from 8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Other events associated with National Public Lands Day will take place at a number of area sites, including the Buffalo Trace Prairie near Mahomet, the Pollinatarium on the UI campus and the Illinois Demonstration Prairie on Country Fair Drive near I-72 in Champaign.

Further details about all of the events associated with National Public Lands Day are available www.publiclandsday.org/.

You can gear up for National Public Lands Day with two special-event film screenings next week.

On Tuesday evening, the Art Theater in Champaign will host a screening of the documentary Bag It, sponsored Champaign Surplus, the Common Ground Food Coop and Prairie Rivers Network. According to promotional materials, the film “started as a documentary about plastic bags [and] evolved into a wholesale investigation into plastics and their effect on our waterways, oceans, and even our bodies.” A panel discussion following the screening will focus on how personal choices and social policy could reduce some of the negative impacts of plastics.

Tickets for Bag It are $10 and are available through all three sponsors or at the door. The film starts at 7:00 p.m.

On Thursday evening, the Champaign County Forest Preserve District and the Forest Preserve Friends Foundation will present the film Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time at the Virginia Theatre. This is the first full-length film to treat the life and thought of Aldo Leopold, the legendary conservationist whose vision continues to inspire the modern environmental movement. After the film, UI law professor Eric Freyfogle will host a discussion about the conservation ethic Leopold articulated and the impact it has had locally.

Tickets for Green Fire are $10 general admission/$7 students and seniors, available through http://www.thevirginia.org/index2.html or at the door. Proceeds from the screening will be directed to the Champaign County Forest Preserve District’s land acquisition and preservation efforts.

U of I Researchers cooperate with local farmers on new device to improve water quality

2011-09-08T16:45:00.001-05:00

U of I Researchers cooperate with local farmers on new device to improve water quality

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

You’ve probably heard of the phenomenon known as the “Dead Zone” that occurs each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. It forms when the concentration of dissolved oxygen in a defined area falls below the threshold that will support animal life. Highly mobile organisms, such as fish, can flee as it develops, but others, including mussels and crabs, die as it overtakes them.

In August, scientists with the group that has monitored the Dead Zone since 1985 found that this year it covered an area of almost 6,800 square miles. That’s just smaller than all of Lake Ontario, and about average for recent years.

The Dead Zone is caused by an explosive summertime growth and decay of algae, which is fueled by nutrients that enter the Gulf by way of the Mississippi River. Those nutrients, primarily nitrate and phosphorous, can be traced back to a number of sources, including urban runoff and treated wastewater. But agriculture in the Midwest is far and away the largest contributor of nitrate, and tile-drained agriculture of the sort that dominates east central Illinois leaks the largest amounts.

Over the past three years, a team of researchers from the U of I led by professor Mark David has been working with local farmers to address this problem, in cooperation with a number of other agencies, including American Farmland Trust, the Champaign County Soil and Water Conservation District and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

One part of their effort has been an experiment to test whether managing the flow of drainage water from fields can reduce nitrate loss. A modern tile drain is really just a buried plastic pipe with slits in it that speeds the movement of water from the soil into an adjacent waterway. Without such drainage, many fields in Illinois would remain too saturated to work in the spring and early summer. It’s generally not important to farming, however, that fields be drained year round.

The researchers have been testing a simple structure that allows a farmer to block the flow of water at the discharge end of the tile during the winter and early spring. They have found that the amount of water coming out of these tiles once they were opened was reduced by 50–75 percent, with a corresponding reduction in the amount of nitrate discharged.

What makes this method of reducing nitrate loss exciting is that the mechanism is simple and relatively cheap. It’s essentially a small, belowground reservoir with a frame where boards can be stacked to back up water to a specific level. It occupies only a very small space and doesn’t interfere with farming in any other way.

There are aspects of the system that bear further investigation—chief among them, the question of what happens to the water and nitrates that do not flow out through the tile. The researchers don’t yet know for sure whether that all just winds up in the waterway via some other route, but they’re conducting further tests to see. If this method of controlling nitrate loss proves to be as effective as it seems, it would add to a growing list of practices that have been shown to work under a variety of conditions.

What do farmers think about when deciding whether to adopt these practices? That’s another key question being investigated as part of the current project. Next week I’ll check in with U of I professor Courtney Flint to report on what she has found so far.

U of I Researchers collaborate on seismic monitoring in southern Illinois

2011-09-01T16:45:00.006-05:00

U of I Researchers collaborate on seismic monitoring in southern Illinois

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Would it surprise you to know there’s a slope that rivals the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains here in the Midwest?

It begins at the bottom of a geological structure called the Illinois Basin, four miles below sea level underneath southern Illinois. It tops out on a structure in Missouri called the Ozark Dome, half a mile above sea level.

Unfortunately, this impressive Prairie State slope isn’t open for climbing. That’s because the Illinois Basin isn’t empty, but rather, filled with sedimentary layers that have accumulated during the past 500 million years as the floor of the basin has sunk. In effect, the surface of the ground today is the top of the stuff that fills up the bowl.

What are the contours of this formation? How did it come to be? These are questions U of I geology professor Stephen Marshak, Tim Larson of the Illinois State Geological Survey, and colleagues at Purdue and Indiana University are keenly interested to answer. They hope to do so with information gathered by a sophisticated earthquake monitoring system they began installing this summer.

In June and July, teams of students and technicians traversed the farmlands and hills of southern Illinois and adjacent Missouri to find suitable spots to place instruments—quite spaces without traffic noise or swaying trees. One of the biggest challenges came in finding landowners willing to have a three-foot hole dug in their property to place an instrument, all in the name of science.

When complete, the system will include 120 stations arrayed over a 200-mile long, 60-mile wide swath that stretches from central Missouri across southern Illinois and into Kentucky.

This intensive monitoring effort, which should be fully in place by next summer, is scheduled to run for two years. It’s part of a much broader project funded by the National Science Foundation called EarthScope, which involves a less-dense array of earthquake monitoring equipment that is gradually being moved across the entire continental U.S.

At each of the monitoring stations, the researchers are installing a seismometer, an instrument that measures movement in the ground from earthquake waves—not just the ones from once-in-a-great-while earthquakes people can feel, but also the ones from very small events that occur many times a year, even in the Midwest. According to Marshak, a better understanding of these minor earthquakes might help detect small, local faults in the Earth’s crust that have been overlooked before. [Photo by Michael Hamburger. Seismologists Gary Pavlis of Indiana University (left) and Hersh Gilbert of Purdue University use irrigation tile to create a temporary seismometer vault at an Earthscope site in southern Illinois.]

The seismometers involved are also sensitive enough to record seismic waves from larger earthquakes that happen elsewhere around the world—from events in Japan or South America, for example—even though those waves lose much of their energy as they pass through the Earth. That’s exciting because measurements of vibrations that pass through the Earth’s interior can be used to create a more refined three-dimensional image of the planet than those now available. (In an unexpected twist, the first waves from a significant quake came from Virginia, not the west coast.)

Marshak likens the anticipated product of this monitoring to a CAT scan of the Earth’s crust beneath the Midwest. Just as a medical CAT scan can detect unusual features inside a human body, a seismic CAT scan can detect unusual features underground, such as regions of light or dense rock. Recognition of such features may explain why the Illinois Basin and the Ozark Plateau exist, and may even help to explain how our continent formed in the first place, over a billion years ago.

Appreciating Hummingbirds in Illinois

2011-08-25T16:45:00.004-05:00

Appreciating Hummingbirds in Illinois

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

More often than not, when I try to point out hummingbirds to my wife and children, I wind up gesturing toward air. “Hey, guys,” I call, “come see the hummingbird at the . . . oh, never mind.”

That said, the months of August and September provide some of the year’s best opportunities for observing hummingbirds in Illinois. That’s because individuals that have been farther north during the breeding season collect here on their way south.

When I say, “hummingbird,” here I mean “ruby-throated hummingbird,” which is the only species from this family of birds that breeds east of the Mississippi, and the only one commonly seen in Illinois.

All ruby-throats are an iridescent green on the back, and whitish in front, with only adult males sporting the ruby red throat that gives the species its name.

Hummingbirds are perhaps most remarkable for how small they are compared to other birds. Ruby throats are shorter than 4 inches from bill to tail tip, and weigh just three and a half grams. That’s comparable to three and a half grapes, or about midway between the weights of a penny and a nickel.

Despite their small size, many hummingbirds migrate over long distances. Ruby throats heading south may travel 2000 miles to reach their winter territory in southern Mexico and Central America, including a 500-mile nonstop leg of the trip over the Gulf of Mexico.

Hummingbirds are also remarkable for their agility in flight. With wings that beat 53 times a second, they can hold themselves perfectly still in front of a flower, then zip off in any direction—up, down, sideways, or even backwards.

Most people are aware that hummingbirds feed on nectar, which they obtain with their elongated bills. But nectar represents only half of the ruby throat’s diet. The other half is insects. Ruby throats most often catch bugs by “hawking” them, which is to say they wait on an open perch for prey to come by then fly out to grab it from the air. Ruby throats also pick insects and spiders off of trees and flowers, a behavior known as “gleaning.”

People who observe hummingbirds are often struck by how combative they are, despite their delicate appearance. Even where there are multiple sources of food and plenty of perches, hummingbirds chase each other off like lions at a kill.

The easiest way to attract hummingbirds to your yard is to provide food for them. In the long term, you can do this by planting native perennials such as columbine and bee balm, or, better still, trumpet vine, which is a hummingbird favorite with its 3-inch long scarlet flowers. For a quicker fix you can simply put up a hummingbird feeder filled with either commercial imitation nectar or a 20-percent solution of sugar water, for which recipes are widely available in birding books and on the world wide web. [For directions at Hummingbirds Forever click here.

An update on efforts to promote cycling on and around U of I campus

2011-08-18T16:45:00.005-05:00

An update on efforts to promote cycling on and around U of I campus

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

As the University of Illinois again bustles with students, I thought it would be a good time to look over efforts to facilitate bicycling on campus. Toward that end, I spoke recently with Morgan Johnston, who is both Sustainability Coordinator and Transportation Demand Management Coordinator with Facilities & Services.

Johnston was happy to announce the completion of a Campus Bicycle Plan to be released soon, which was crafted by a task force that included representatives from the cities of Champaign and Urbana, the C-U Mass Transit District and the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission. I should add that among all of the people and entities associated with local efforts to promote bicycling, Johnston called attention to the citizen group, ChampaignCountyBikes.org. The aim of the plan is to bring cycling infrastructure on campus up to current national standards.

Johnston emphasized that while the plan is important for connecting campus efforts with efforts that have been developing in Urbana and Champaign in recent years, much has already been accomplished in the University District.

For example, Illinois Street has become a heavily preferred route for cycling between Urbana and central campus, thanks to the traffic light that facilitates crossing Lincoln Avenue, and the on-street bike lanes that run from that intersection to Goodwin.

Goodwin Avenue itself has been converted into what planners term a “complete street,” which means it was reconfigured to better accommodate not just cars, but all users. In this particular case that means the addition of curb bump-outs to reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians at intersections; enhanced stops for the loading and unloading of mass transit buses; and dedicated on-street bike lanes for cyclists.

Similar changes are currently nearing completion on Fourth Street in Champaign.

In addition to pointing out changes in infrastructure, Johnston reminded me that the Campus Bike Project is now in its second year of operation. Located in garage space provided by the Prairie Research Institute and operated with funding from the Student Sustainability Committee and Facilities & Services, the Campus Bike Project is a nonprofit, membership-based repair space. It’s a place where students, faculty and staff who join can drop by to do all sorts of work on their bikes, from putting air in the tires to a complete overhaul. The Campus Bike Project also sells refurbished bikes (which come with a one-year membership), and offers a build-a-bike program, which allows members to create their own ride from a salvaged bike at very little cost.

The Student Sustainability Committee has also funded the purchase of two permanent kiosks for bike repairs to be installed on campus, one to be located near the Illini Union, and the other near the Campus Bike Project. These ingenious repair stands, called “Fixits,” provide easy access to an air pump and the basic tools needed to keep bikes rolling 24-7.

Anyone who has searched in vain for an open spot to lock a bike on campus will be interested to know that more bike parking is on the horizon. A survey was conducted last May to help determine where the needs are most critical, and the Student Sustainability Committee has provided funding for design. Installation of the first new parking stands associated with this effort will begin at the Law Building within the next month.

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels (not chipmunks, not gophers)

2011-08-11T16:45:00.002-05:00

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels (not chipmunks, not gophers)

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

My encounters with ground squirrels in the west this summer reminded there’s a common, yet fascinating animal closer to home I’ve been meaning to profile, the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Do you know the one I mean?

If you’ve had a small squirrel dash in front of you as you drove on a country road bordered by crops, or you’ve seen a chipmunk-looking critter darting about in a cemetery, you’ve probably encountered a thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Some people call thirteen-liners gophers because they live in the ground, but in scientific terms, they’re members of the squirrel family.

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels are among those animals that have benefited from human development because they thrive in the close-cropped landscapes we create, from roadsides and pastures, to cemeteries, golf courses, parks and other lawns. Their geographic range, which encompasses much of the central U.S. and Canada, has actually expanded over the past two centuries.

If you were to draw a thirteen-lined ground squirrel based on its name, you would produce a picture that left out a notable characteristic of the original. Yes, they are marked by about thirteen alternating stripes of dark brown and light tan fur that run from neck to tail. But what’s equally striking is that the wider, dark lines are decorated along their entire length with evenly spaced light dots, giving them a star-spangled appearance. There’s a golden tinge to some of the lighter fur on thirteen-liners, and they’re the creature on which the University of Minnesota’s Golden Gopher mascot is based.

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels eat just about anything they can get their little paws on, from insects of all sorts to the occasional small vertebrate (including carrion), to grasses, flowers, seeds and crops. They have pouches in their cheeks that they use to transport food to their burrows for eating later. (If you have trouble with thirteen-lined ground squirrels eating from your garden, University of Illinois Extension’s “Living with Wildlife” Website provides suggestions for dealing with them: http://web.extension.illinois.edu/wildlife/directory_show.cfm?species=groundsquirrel.)

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels are, in turn, food for a wide range of other animals, including coyotes, foxes, weasels, dogs, cats, hawks, owls and snakes.

One way thirteen-liners avoid being eaten is by excavating short, shallow escape burrows throughout their territories, so they’re never far from a hole to dive into. They also create deeper, longer burrows for nesting and hibernating.

And thirteen-lined ground squirrels hibernate like champions. After fattening up in the Fall, they retreat to a chamber that’s below the frost line, plug the entrance with soil, and curl up for about four months. During hibernation—which begins in late October or early November and lasts until late March or April—their body temperature nearly matches the temperature of the burrow, dropping as low as 37 degrees F. By the time thirteen-liners awaken, they have lost up to half of their body mass.

During the months thirteen-lined ground squirrels are active, you need not get up early to see them, nor do you need to brave inclement weather. They are most active on warm, sunny days, and they don’t even bother coming out of their burrows in the rain.

To learn more about thirteen-lined ground squirrels, or any of the other mammals you might see when you’re out and about in the Prairie State, let me refer you to the source for much of the information in today’s commentary, the Field Manual of Illinois Mammals by Joyce E. Hofmann. It’s published by and available through the Illinois Natural History Survey, which is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the U of I in Champaign.

Freshwater mussels: overlooked, under appreciated residents of Illinois streams

2011-08-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

Freshwater mussels: overlooked, under appreciated residents of Illinois streams

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

If you’ve spent time canoeing or kayaking on rivers in the Midwest, you’ve probably come across the shells of freshwater mussels from time to time. On the outside, mussel shells are seldom pretty, but the pearly shine of the interior surfaces often prompts people to pick them up.

Scientists distinguish among different species of mussels by focusing on the shape of certain parts of the shell. Here, for example, is how the Field Guide to Freshwater Mussels of the Midwest (Illinois Natural History Survey: click here to see free online version) describes the appearance of a species that goes by the scientific name Quadrula quadrula: “Shell quadrate to rounded, and somewhat inflated. Anterior end rounded, posterior end squared or truncated.”

Now, if that doesn’t bring to mind a very clear picture for you, try the common name for the same species: it’s “mapleleaf.” [Photo of Quadrula quadrula by Kevin Cummings, from the field guide. It reminds me of a maple leaf, anyway.]

Other Illinois mussels carry similarly evocative common names, which tell both what the creatures look like and what objects were familiar to the people who named them. Among them some of my favorites are washboard, pistolgrip, wartyback, heelsplitter, deertoe, spectaclecase, and pocketbook.

According to Kevin Cummings, a mussel expert at the Illinois Natural History Survey on the U of I campus, North America is home to a greater diversity of freshwater mussels than any other continent, with nearly three hundred species and subspecies. Some eighty of these are or were once found in Illinois. Many mussels have become locally extinct in former habitats, and only about forty species are regularly found in the state now.

Freshwater mussels live a low-key life for the most part. They pass their days hunkered down in the sand or gravel, usually in flowing water. They feed on microscopic plant and animal life, as well as other tiny bits of organic matter, which they filter from water they take in through one siphon and eject from another. Mussels are fed upon by a variety of fish and birds, as well as muskrats, otters, and minks. Minks leave the cleaned shells of mussels they’ve eaten in a pile near the water’s edge called a midden, which can be a great place to find and identify shells.

The early development of mussels is a bit more complex and dramatic. Mussel eggs are fertilized within the female, with sperm that has been released into the water by nearby males. Inside the female, the fertilized eggs develop into larvae, which scientists call “glochidia.” To grow further, these glochidia must be expelled and attach themselves to the gills or fins of a fish for some weeks, where they will take on their adult form, in miniature, before dropping off to live at the bottom of the stream again. By sending forth their young attached to fish, mussels are able to disperse much farther than they would under their own power.

Over time, freshwater mussels have served a variety of human purposes. Native Americans ate their flesh and used their shells for utensils, tools, and jewelry. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—before the advent of plastics—mussel shells were used on an industrial scale to make buttons. Since the 1950s, mussel shells have been exploited commercially for use in the production of cultured pearls in Japan.

It is unfortunate for mussels that they are not more cute and cuddly, because as a group they are among our most endangered animals, suffering from overexploitation, the pollution and physical degradation of waterways, and the introduction of exotic species to their habitats. Perhaps our best hope for preserving them comes from the growing awareness that the health of our rivers and streams is really a component of our own health.

Highlights from a trip west

2011-07-28T16:45:00.008-05:00

Highlights from a trip west

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

If you’re familiar with Environmental Almanac, you know I can get pretty charged up about being outdoors, especially exploring places with plants and animals that are new to me. Well. Earlier this month, my family and I made a two-week excursion to Yellowstone National Park, with stops along the way at Badlands National Park and the Black Hills in South Dakota, as well as the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming.

It’s difficult for me to write about such a trip and not slip into a moment-by-moment retelling; the days were filled with so much that was new to us. But I’ll try.

We expected to see bison, of course, and we did. Long before we got to Yellowstone we saw bison raised as livestock and bison in free-living herds in the Badlands and at Custer State Park. But Yellowstone is the place to see bison, because it is the only place in the world where they have lived continuously since prehistoric times. And there we saw them everywhere: near boiling springs, where they wallowed in the warm dust to rub off the final remnants of their thick winter coats; on the road through a mountain pass, where traffic backed up for miles while three bulls moseyed along; right outside the cabins we stayed in, where they grazed and loafed through the day. [Photos by author: bison, pronghorn, yellow-bellied marmot young, burrowing owl, mountain wildflowers, bitterroot.]

We were also fortunate to see nearly all of the other charismatic animals that wildlife watchers from around the world look for in the American west, including black bears, mule deer, pronghorn (a.k.a. antelope) and elk. We watched bighorn sheep graze on the upper slopes of a 10,000-foot mountain peak, only to learn later from another hiker that we had failed to observe a grizzly bear feeding nearby.

Most exciting of all, we saw wolves. One was far off, speeding across a sage meadow to meet her pack in the forest, her movement so fluid we might have been watching a dream. The other was much closer—just across the Yellowstone River from where we parked to see him. He stood there on a high bank watching a bull elk clamber from the water. We learned from others on the scene that his pack had chased the elk into the river upstream, but whether they continued the pursuit we never knew, since darkness fell as the elk regained the forest.

Much as we valued our sightings of animals on the A-list, we found many of the pleasures of our western tour in unlooked for encounters. Who knew there were so many different kinds of ground squirrels out there? Or that yellow-bellied marmots would respond to calls meant to attract birds? In the Badlands, we could only laugh about the lark sparrows that surrounded our tent and woke us before dawn with their manic singing. And we were delighted to discover that prairie dog towns can also be home to burrowing owls, which were one of more than a dozen species of birds we added to our life lists.

Spring came late to the Bighorns and to Yellowstone this year, which meant our arrival there coincided with an explosion of color, as wildflowers dominated every unforested landscape. We found bitterroot in bloom at the top of a rocky outcrop, the pale pink petals of its flowers tattered by the unrelenting wind. Further down the slopes were the delicate white bells of twinflower, and the vivid red of Indian paintbrush. In the meadows, mountain bluebells mixed with green gentian and ladies tresses orchids, and everywhere there were the blue spikes of lupin flowers.

Do you get a sense that I’m not ready to be back just yet? Maybe I’m not.

Celebrate Pollinator Appreciation Week

2011-06-23T16:45:00.006-05:00

Celebrate Pollinator Appreciation Week

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Insect lovers unite! We’re in the midst of National Pollinator week, which was established by the U.S. Senate in 2007 in response to dramatic declines in pollinator populations. Over the past five years, Pollinator Week has become an international celebration of the bees, butterflies, moths, flies—and even noninsect pollinators, such as birds and bats—that make life as we know it possible.

In recognition of Pollinator Week, I checked in with Michelle Duennes, a Ph.D. student in Sydney Cameron’s lab in the U of I Department of Entomology. Duennes, who is working with others to coordinate Pollinator Week events around town and on campus, supplied the following report.

While they go generally unnoticed in our daily lives, pollinators are integral to human agriculture. Many flowering plants would not produce fruit were it not for pollinators. For instance, the cacao tree could not produce those delicious beans that are processed and turned into the chocolate we all know and love were it not for the tiny flies that pollinate them. Without the hard work of commercial honey bee hives, we would be without many other favorite foods including apples, almonds, blueberries, cranberries, kiwis, melons and squash. We would even have to go without cotton. The USDA estimates that bee pollination is responsible for nearly $15 billion in crop value. [Photo by author: a bumble bee on foxglove beardtongue.]

Over the past few years, many studies have reported significant declines in insect pollinators. This year the Cameron lab at the U of I published a three-year study reporting declines of up to 96% in four native species of bumble bees, which are important wild and commercial pollinators. This study also found higher rates of infection by a fungus called Nosema and lower genetic diversity in the declining populations. While these factors cannot yet be considered the ultimate cause of astounding declines in bumble bees, they are currently the subject of further investigation at the U of I. Another important study of bee and fly pollinators in Britain and the Netherlands in 2006 also found evidence of long term declines among these species, as well as the plants they pollinate, which illustrates how essential the bond is between plant and pollinator.

Of course, many people have heard of the recent precipitous declines in commercial honey bee populations in the U.S., which have been attributed to “Colony Collapse Disorder.” While scientists are still uncertain about the cause, many different factors have been implicated in this complex phenomenon. They include viruses, a fungus, mites, the stress of overcrowded beeyards, and the pollination of large crops with low nutritional value.

The organized celebration of National Pollinator Week in Champaign-Urbana will take place on Sunday, June 26, with Pollinator Discovery Day. Discover Day events will include a guided nature walk and a photography workshop, both of which will be conducted at Meadowbrook Park in Urbana. In addition, a number of other activities will take place at the U of I Pollinatarium, the first freestanding science center in the nation devoted to flowering plants and their pollinators. Among them will be a bee identification workshop and an evening performance by The Duke of Uke and His Novelty Orchestra.

Further details about National Pollinator Week and Pollinator Discovery Day can be at http://www.life.illinois.edu/entomology/pollinators/

INHS scientist and colleague describe giant new crayfish species

2011-06-09T16:45:00.004-05:00

INHS scientist and colleague describe giant new crayfish species

Real Audio : MP3 download

Last year, Illinois Natural History Survey scientist Chris Taylor and his colleague Guenter Schuster of Eastern Kentucky University did something no one else had done since 1884. They described a new species of crayfish in the genus Barbicambarus, which, up until that point, had included only the single species described 126 years before.

Now, you may be thinking, a new species of crayfish, what’s the big deal? Let me tell you. The crayfish Taylor and Schuster described, Barbicambarus simmonsi, is a whopper—at least for a crayfish. In contrast to most of its relatives, which are only a few inches long, this one can stretch eight inches from the tip of its claws to the tip of its tail. Rest one on a dollar bill and it will hang off in every direction. [The new species, Barbicambarus simmonsi (left) is more than twice the size of a typical crayfish found in the same creek. Photo and caption by L. Brian Stauffer.]

Aside from being big, the new species is distinguished by the fact that its antennae are covered with hair-like bristles, or “setae.” Of the more than 600 species of crayfish known from around the world, only the two members of Babicambarus possess bristly antennae, and nrobody knows yet what function the setae serve. The appearance of its antennae accounts, in part, for the common name Taylor and Schuster have proposed for the new species, “Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish.” The “Tennessee” in that name refers to the river drainage in which it occurs, and that’s another fascinating aspect of the story.

The Tennessee bottlebrush was discovered in Shoal Creek, which originates in south central Tennessee and flows into northern Alabama, where it empties into the Tennessee River. In a funny kind of twist, that drainage is one of the last places in the U. S. where biologists would expect to find a large new species of stream creature. That’s because it contains such a rich assemblage of aquatic organisms—especially fish, mussels and crayfish—and it is so accessible that it has been surveyed extensively over the past century and a half.

Taylor and Shuster were motivated to go to Shoal Creek looking for a large crayfish with hairy antennae by photographs of one a colleague forwarded them in summer 2009. At about the same time, they also learned such a creature had been collected by Jeffrey W. Simmons, an aquatic biologist with the Tennessee Valley Authority (which is why the scientific name, “simmonsi,” honors him.)

They arrived at Shoal Creek on October 12, 2009, accompanied by two other biologists. They searched hard for two hours at their first survey site but found nothing unusual, and were ready to move on when they decided to flip one last, large, flat boulder. Beneath it they found a crayfish twice the size of any others they had found that day, with hairy antennae—exactly what they were looking for.

Until they had specimens in hand, Taylor and Schuster had worked on the assumption that the big crayfish in Shoal Creek were the same species described back in 1884, Barbicambarus cornutus. Cornutus had been found only in the drainage of Kentucky’s Green River, 130 miles away, but might easily have been transported to Shoal Creek, perhaps by an angler.

In the lab, though, Schuster found that the creature they collected differed significantly in certain important physical characteristics, and Taylor’s analysis of the DNA of the new crayfish provided further confirmation they were the first scientists to describe it.

An extensive search of crayfish collections turned up no previous specimens of Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish that had been overlooked or mislabeled, and further collecting expeditions in the area where it was first found have yielded only a handful of more specimens, so it is presumed to be rare.

But still, it was right there, waiting to be discovered.

Chris Taylor hopes the discovery of the Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish will help awaken people to the need for continuing biological investigation within the United States, and inspire them to support it. Beyond that, he hopes it will encourage people to spend time exploring streams themselves. In his words, “You never know what you might find.”

Accidental wetlands a boon for wildlife

2011-06-02T04:45:00.006-05:00

Accidental wetlands a boon for wildlife

Real Audio : MP3 download

When people contemplate the Illinois landscape as it might have been prior to the advent of industrial agriculture and urban development, their thoughts naturally turn to prairie—after all, we live in the Prairie State. But as the planting delays and basement flooding of this spring remind us, many low spots in east central Illinois were once wetlands of one sort or another. And when our drainage systems fail, or we disrupt them on purpose, wetlands of one sort or another are quick to come back.

If you drive the mile of Curtis Road between Staley and Rising in southwest Champaign you can see what I mean. The farm fields there have drained poorly in recent years, so wet Aprils, like the ones in 2009 and this year leave widespread, shallow pools that persist for weeks after the rains end.

For the farmer who’s hoping to grow corn there, I imagine those pools are, in restrained terms, objects of great resentment. But for wildlife and wildlife watchers, they are something else. (Indeed, some people who post on the local birders listserv jokingly designate the area the “Curtis Road National Wildlife Refuge.”)

Among the more unusual birds those pools have attracted are black-necked stilts, whose uniquely long, pinkish-red legs lift their bodies above the shallow water as they forage for food. A pair of stilts even bred and raised four chicks near Curtis Road in 2009. [Photos by author taken at locations mentioned in text: Black-necked stilts, pectoral sandpiper, white-faced ibis.]

Of course, birds that are just passing through constitute the great majority of those observed at temporary “wetlands,” beginning with ducks and geese in late winter and continuing with more than a dozen species of waders and shorebirds into early summer.

Get this. A pectoral sandpiper that stops to feed in Champaign County during spring migration likely began its journey in South America, and will continue on from here to the arctic tundra of far northern Canada, Alaska or even Siberia. And what does it take to get that bird to layover here? Just a small part of a field that stays flooded long enough for insect larvae to develop, a temporary, unintended fragment of the historical landscape.

An undrained field behind the UI’s dairy barns on South Lincoln Avenue in Urbana demonstrates the same principle on an even smaller scale. There, earlier this month, another birder and I discovered more than 50 solitary sandpipers feeding in a wet area no larger than a couple of city lots. And on the day following, a friend’s daughter discovered at the same place a true rarity for Illinois, a white-faced ibis, while her father was scanning the sandpiper flock through his binoculars.

While I privilege here these unintended wetlands, it’s not because I prefer them to the natural areas where wetlands are being preserved or restored, it’s just that they are nearer where I live and work, so easier to visit often.

I’ve also enjoyed recent trips to the Urbana Park District’s marsh restoration at Weaver Park, and the Champaign County Forest Preserve District’s Stidham Marsh at Lake of the Woods. And that’s not to mention wetland restoration projects elsewhere in the county. Perhaps a column surveying area wetland projects is called for.

Re_home designed to provide more than shelter in wake of disaster

2011-05-26T16:45:00.001-05:00

Re_home designed to provide more than shelter in wake of disaster

Real Audio : MP3 download

Just as the dust settled from the departure of students last week, there was an exciting and much anticipated arrival on the University of Illinois campus. On Tuesday morning, the shell for the University’s entry in this year’s Solar Decathlon was delivered to a site near the ACES Library.

The Solar Decathlon, you may remember, is a biannual competition among entrants from 20 universities from around the world, sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy. The competing teams, which are selected from a much larger pool based on the quality of their initial proposals, strive “to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.”

The structure delivered last Tuesday will become the third entry in the competition for the U of I, which captured 2nd place overall in 2009, after placing 9th with its first entry in 2007.

For this year’s model, the U of I team adopted the task of creating a home that would be useful in the wake of a natural disaster, so it is designed for rapid assembly as well as sustainability. The home’s two modules are sized for easy transport by truck, and the structure will incorporate extra outdoor space by means of decks and awnings. In the words of Mark Taylor, one of the faculty members who guides the project, “We wanted to create a house with large, open spaces, a place where people can come together and look ahead, not simply a shelter for them to retreat to.”

On the inside, the home will provide about 900 square feet of living space. It will be ADA-compliant, with wide doorways, level thresholds and space in the bathroom to turn a wheelchair around. The windows will be oriented to take full advantage of the sun for lighting year round, and for passive heating in the winter. Of course, the materials used to finish the home were selected with sustainability in mind.

“Net-zero” energy use is a must for entries in the solar decathlon, so the engineering students who participated in the design of the home were charged with ensuring it will use no more power than the solar panels on its roof produce. It will require only minimal heating and cooling, thanks to meticulous weather sealing, super insulated walls and triple-pane glass. What heating and cooling are needed will be provided by an intelligent, nimble system developed especially for ultra efficient homes by Newell Instruments in Urbana. The electrical appliances to be used in the home were chosen for their efficiency, but all of them are also affordable, off-the-shelf products.

The shell of the home that was delivered last week was constructed by a commercial maker of modular buildings, Homeway Homes of Bloomington, Illinois, according to designs developed by U of I students. In a nutshell, Homeway’s part was to put together the insulated stud framing, install the windows and doors and put in the subfloor.

Over the course of the summer, U of I students from architecture and engineering will complete the construction. They will install insulated panels to finish the exterior walls, assemble the photovoltaic array on the roof, build the exterior decking, put down flooring inside, and more.

Come September, the home will be trucked to the National Mall in Washington D. C., where the U of I team hopes to unseat two-time reigning champions, Team Germany.

You can learn more and follow progress on the Re_home at

http://www.solardecathlon.illinois.edu/

How life copes with floods in streams and floodplains

2011-05-20T11:44:00.002-05:00

How life copes with floods in streams and floodplains

Real Audio : MP3 download

[Please note: this piece ran originally on June, 12, 2008, when flooding was more severe in the Midwest, but we pulled it out as an archive spot for the radio in light of this year's flooding in the South.]

This spring’s heavy rains in the Midwest have resulted in all manner of difficulties for people, from the tragedy of lost lives to the pain and hardship of flooded homes and farm fields. This is where humans need to come together and help one another out.

The other forms of life that inhabit streams and stream corridors are also coping with the high waters, some more easily than others.

At the bottom of freshwater streams, unusually strong flows may deposit large amounts of sediment on top of mussels, which live hunkered down in sand and gravel. Mussels cannot survive if they stay buried completely, so they must make their way up to the new surface of the streambed in order to survive. Where the streambed is scoured away in flooding, some light-shelled mussel species may be swept up in the current, and then left high and dry when floodwaters recede. After the Mississippi River flood of 1993, scientists from the Illinois Natural History Survey found stranded mussels at densities of up to 1 per meter in farm fields more than a mile from the river. Individual mussels stranded on dry land can’t survive, but the problem of stranding doesn’t seem to have a long-term impact on the overall health of mussel populations

Creatures that live on and near the streambed--including crayfish, insect larvae, and other invertebrates--need access to stable refuges in order to ride out flood pulses. Such refuges may include rocks or logs that remain in place, as well as undercut banks and other streambed irregularities that create pockets of reduced current.

Farther up in the water column, fish use their mobility to cope with rising waters, and they even benefit from floods in some circumstances. Fish may ride out a short-term flood by seeking pockets of water that are protected from strong currents, or moving up into smaller tributary streams. In more extensive, long term floods fish take advantage of the opportunity to move out into areas that are not normally submerged. Slow moving water on a floodplain quickly becomes rich in microscopic life, which attracts minnows and other small fish. And where small fish go, the larger fish that feed on them follow. The rich soup of flood waters also offers a variety of seeds from trees and other plants, as well as drowned insects, and more. If water persists in the floodplain long enough, some fish will even take advantage of the opportunity to spawn there.

The trees common to floodplains are also adapted to occasional high water in fascinating ways. Willows, for example, are extremely flexible, so that they bend in strong currents rather than breaking. A willow that’s bent over far enough to be buried with sediment can even send up branches that then emerge from the ground like new trees. So when you see a straight line of little willows on a gravel bar, you may actually be looking at shoots coming up from the trunk of a tree laid down by a flood.

While flooding in the Midwest was once an entirely natural occurrence, it isn’t anymore. Our streams now rise higher and faster than they used to because we are so good at moving rainwater off of the land quickly, with drainage for agriculture and paving and building in cities and suburbs. The real challenge to us now is developing landscapes that will once again hold some water back.

Emergence of the “Great Southern Brood” coming to Illinois

2011-05-12T10:46:00.002-05:00

Emergence of the “Great Southern Brood” coming to Illinois

Real Audio : MP3 download

Whether you anticipate it with pleasure or dread, there’s a large-scale natural phenomenon headed our way in the weeks to come, an emergence of 13-year periodical cicadas.

The insects in question are part of a group designated Brood XIX (19), or “The Great Southern Brood.” It occurs over a greater geographical range than any of the other 13- or 17-year cicada broods, with activity in 14 states anticipated. Like other year-classes of periodical cicadas, which, for the record, occur only in eastern North America, Brood XIX is composed of individuals representing three or four closely related cicada species.

Individuals from Brood XIX first began emerging in South Carolina in the third week of April, and they have now been reported aboveground in at least eight other states across the South and as far west as Oklahoma. The emergence of periodical cicadas seems to depend on soil temperatures reaching 64 ˚F, so it progresses from south to north with the season.

The current generation of the Great Southern Brood hatched from eggs laid in tree branches in the summer of 1998. As tiny nymphs, no bigger than small ants, they dropped to the ground and burrowed in. There they have been feeding on tree roots, and undergoing a five-stage development in anticipation of their turn at life on the wing. When the time is right, they will travel to the surface by way of a self-excavated tunnel and crawl up a tree, or whatever other vertical object happens to be nearby. There they will shed a nymphal skin one last time. [Photo: An adult periodical cicada newly emerged from its nymphal shell. John H. Ghent, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org.]

Periodical cicadas live as adults for only a few weeks, during which time they are interested in two things: feeding and reproduction.

Cicadas feed on the watery part of plant sap from trees and shrubs, which they extract by means of piercing-sucking mouth parts. Their feeding does not normally damage plants, since they remove only very small quantities of fluid and they do no significant damage to get at it. Since cicada mouths are designed to extract liquid from plants, you can rest assured they won’t bite people or other animals.

Of course, people and other animals will bite cicadas. The long list of creatures that eats them includes spiders, snakes, birds, dogs and more. If you stop to think about it, what small- to medium-sized animal that’s not strictly a plant eater would pass up such a bounty? As for people eating periodical cicadas, well. Historically, some groups of American Indians are reported to have eaten them (I haven’t been able to find whether they still do), and every emergence brings out recipes for them in newspapers and on the Web. I’ve never tried them, but I have to admit I’m intrigued—maybe this year.

Whether I eat them, you eat them or we and all the other predators eat them, enormous numbers from this year’s Brood XIX emergence will survive to accomplish the primary task of adult cicadas, reproduction. (And that’s precisely the point of their highly synchronized life cycle; scientists call it “predator satiation.”)

The males will entice mates with their long, loud song, often singing together in great congregations for an amplified effect. The females, once they have mated, will create a small slit in a branch, where they will lay their eggs, 400 to 600 of them. Egg-laying is really the only aspect of cicada behavior people might want to take precautions against, and only where cicadas turn out to be concentrated, since very young trees and shrubs may not tolerate the damage to small branches it involves. In such cases, cloth netting can be used to exclude cicadas.

Otherwise, the emergence of Brood XIX should be a great occasion for engaging the weird beauty of the life that surrounds us.

For more about Brood XIX and other periodical cicadas, check out http://www.magicicada.org/

Let spring migration awaken your inner birder

2011-05-05T16:45:00.006-05:00

Let spring migration awaken your inner birder

Real Audio : MP3 download

The weather last Wednesday morning argued against outdoor activity, with heavy clouds threatening to unleash a downpour at any moment. But Wednesday morning was the time a birding jaunt best fit among the other demands of the week, so that’s when I went. I set out with some hope, too, because I’ve found that opportunities sometimes open up even when the forecast is dire; it seldom actually rains all day, right? Plus, migrating birds often travel with weather fronts, so people who are willing to cope with a little rain are usually the first to see what has blown in with a storm.

I headed for Crystal Lake Park in Urbana, which is for local birders the place to be at this time of year, when songbird migration is kicking into high gear. There’s a special combination of habitat components there—ancient oaks, open space, water with brushy margins—that attracts remarkable concentrations of birds.

I saw no other birders when I arrived at the Lake House, but a car belonging to my friend, Greg Lambeth, was there. Greg is a clinical psychologist at the UI and a passionate birder, who makes time to get out for a couple of hours before work whenever possible at this time of year.

A light rain was falling--enough to make rain pants worth the effort, but not to make me leave my camera behind. Even as I pulled myself together, I was energized by sounds from the branches above, the quiet “chips” of yellow-rumped warblers and the buzzy calls of blue-gray gnatcatchers.

I caught up with Greg as he scanned a flock of warblers flitting among the trees along the Saline Branch, the stream that runs through the park. He pointed out that the flock extended some distance upstream and downstream from where we stood, as well as into the woods on the other side. I was stunned by the abundance. There were so many birds bouncing around it was difficult to keep track of which we had identified and which we hadn’t. [Upper photo of prothonotary warbler by author; lower of scarlet tanager by Greg Lambeth.]

The greatest numbers of them by far were yellow-rumped warblers, which, as you might expect, are named for the colorful patch above their tail. But we spotted 12 other species of warblers that morning, too, among them my favorite, a prothonotary warbler. This is a bird whose yellow head and chest are so bright he appears to be lit from within.

And warblers were only one part of the picture on Wednesday. were scarlet tanagers, whose brilliant red body feathers are accented by jet-black of wings, and Baltimore orioles, whose striking combination of orange and black may be more familiar to you. There were indigo buntings, there were two kinds of vireos, there were . . . well, more birds than you would probably care to hear me describe.

So take this as encouragement to get out and see spring migration for yourself. A great place to start is with the Champaign County Audubon Society’s weekly bird walks, which Greg Lambeth usually leads. Novices and experienced birders alike are welcome at these walks, which set out from the Urbana Park District’s Anita Purves Nature Center at 7:30 on Sunday mornings through the month of May.

See more bird photographs by Greg Lambeth, many from Crystal Lake Park and Busey Woods at

http://greglambethbirdphotos.smugmug.com

Further details about Sunday morning bird walks at

http://www.champaigncountyaudubon.org/index.htm

Researcher with U of I Energy Biosciences Institute seeks help to locate escaped Miscanthus

2011-04-28T16:45:00.004-05:00

Researcher with U of I Energy Biosciences Institute seeks help to locate escaped Miscanthus

Real Audio : MP3 download

If you live in east central Illinois, you may know the name “Miscanthus” as it applies to a hybrid species of this Asian grass, which is the subject of long-term research as a biofuel at the University of Illinois. But if you have ever laid eyes on Miscanthus, you are likely to have seen one of the two parent species of that hybrid, both of which have long been used as ornamentals in the United States.

As an ornamental, Miscanthus may seem like a landscaper’s dream. It thrives without supplemental water and tolerates a wide range of other growing conditions. Its long, flowing leaves, which emerge directly from the ground, give the impression of a fountain, and its feathery seed heads provide an added attraction by the end of summer.

Unfortunately, where ornamental varieties of Miscanthus escape cultivation, the landscaper’s dream can morph into the land manager’s nightmare. Naturalized populations of Miscanthus can crowd out native vegetation, and they serve North American wildlife poorly. They can also be expensive and time-consuming to eradicate. [Photo: US Forest Service wildlife biologist Mike Brod surveying a Miscanthus invasion in a rare and sensitive mountain bog habitat in northern Georgia. Courtesy of Lauren Quinn.]

How widespread are populations of naturalized Miscanthus in the United States? That’s a good question, to which there is no good answer at present. But Lauren Quinn is working on it.

Quinn, a researcher with the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of Illinois, is an invasive plant ecologist. She studies how nonnative plants affect the native plants, animals and other components of ecosystems where they become established. Currently, she is collaborating with UI faculty members Tom Voigt and Bryan Endres, along with a colleague from Virginia Tech, Jacob Barney, to describe the distribution of naturalized Miscanthus populations in the state and around the country.

Here’s where you come in. If you’re conservation minded and competent at plant identification, or you’re capable of taking identifiable digital photographs of plants, Quinn wants you to notify her if you come across Miscanthus growing outside of cultivation.

Of course, unless you’re more familiar with perennial grasses than most people, you’ll need to study up on the subject a bit to become involved with this project. For that purpose, let me direct you to the resources at the Website Quinn has put together: https://sites.google.com/site/laurendquinn/miscanthus-sightings.

Quinn says she is looking for Miscanthus in “natural areas,” but she defines that very broadly to include just about anyplace outside of intentional cultivation, from roadsides and pastures, to forest openings and stream corridors. She emphasizes that she is looking for plants that have established themselves at a distance from intentional plantings and become self-sustaining. (So one or two volunteer plants growing on the same property where their parent plants are cultivated wouldn’t count.)

If you should locate Miscanthus established in a natural area, following are the things Quinn would most like to have: a photo (or photos), for purposes of identification and population size estimate; location, with GPS coordinates if possible, but otherwise a road name with reference to nearby cross roads or landmarks; and a description of the habitat—for example, roadside, pasture, etc.

Quinn would also be happy for other information where it is known, including contact information for property owners if the Miscanthus is on private property, the age of the population, possible sources for it, and even the age of those plantings.

Over the course of the next two summers, Quinn and her colleagues will be visiting populations of escaped Miscanthus to collect data on them. Ultimately, they hope to answer the question of which types of Miscanthus pose the greatest risk of escape, and under what environmental conditions.

U of I student fees support wide range of sustainability initiatives

2011-04-21T16:45:00.002-05:00

U of I student fees support wide range of sustainability initiatives

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In recognition of Earth Week, let me call your attention to the progress toward a greener campus being made possible by the sustainability fees University of Illinois students assess themselves. These fees, which have been enacted with overwhelming support in three separate student votes dating back to 2003, now generate roughly a million dollars a year to fund projects.

I spoke recently with Suhail Barot, a graduate student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, to get the scoop on how those funds are being used. Barot is chair of the Student Sustainability Committee, which, in cooperation with administrators from the Office of Sustainability and U of I Facilities & Services, allocates the funds.

He emphasized that the committee aims to foster innovation by awarding funds to cutting edge projects rather than routine conservation efforts, which, he said, the University ought to take care of as a matter of course. But he also noted that many of the projects that are awarded funds would help the University make progress on the goals articulated in the Climate Action Plan it adopted last year.

Many projects made possible with student sustainability funds have already begun to pay off, either in energy dollars saved or other conservation values achieved. These range from energy-saving retrofits in the Illini Union, to the sustainable rehabilition of an underused building as rehearsal space for dance students, to the prairie plantings established near the president’s house on Florida Avenue and at the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Other efforts, which have been awarded sustainability funds more recently, are just getting off the ground. Barot was very enthusiastic about the Student Weatherization Project, which will be implemented when the new school year begins in August. With guidance from Facilities & Services staff, students participating in this project will learn how to assess the performance of existing buildings, with attention to building envelope, heating and insulation, lighting, water and waste. They will then put their knowledge to use in audits of campus buildings that will help F & S set priorities and implement upgrades.

In the early stage of this program, student auditors will focus on the residential units that have been converted to house campus programs, buildings that are too small to merit attention from the campus retrocommissioning team, but where easily identified improvements could significantly decrease energy consumption.

Barot was also excited about the Committee’s support for an initiative by the School of Earth, Society and Environment to establish a Sustainability Living and Learning Center. Like other living-learning centers, this one will house students with a shared interest together in an existing facility, which will serve as a hub for them to connect with faculty and staff who share their common interest. Through the Sustainability Living and Learning Center, students will participate in the process of making the university more sustainable, and, as they move on, become leaders in the effort to address issues of sustainability in the wider world.

As you probably already know, given the difficulties that have arisen with student efforts to bring wind power to campus, renewable energy is a priority for the Student Sustainability Committee. In addition to their continuing support for a wind turbine, they are also funding the Illinois Student Solar Initiative, which aims to install photovoltaic arrays on 20 campus buildings over the next five years. Barot anticipates these arrays will generate between five and ten percent of the electricity used by the buildings involved, depending on how big they are and what they are used for.

If you are interested in learning more about projects that receive funds through the Student Sustainability Committee, you can find them online at http://sustainability.illinois.edu/ssc/index.html

Now is the time to catch woodland wildflower show in Illinois

2011-04-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

Now is the time to catch woodland wildflower show in Illinois

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

The beauty of a single Virginia bluebell would be enough to draw me out to Allerton Park this month. But I am all the more compelled to go when I think of bluebells in context of the extended wildflower show that takes place each spring in the woodlands of Illinois.

It begins with a prelude in February, when skunk cabbage takes the stage. An unconventional beauty, perhaps best appreciated by botanists and the carrion flies that pollinate it, skunk cabbage generates its own heat, enabling it to grow right through the frosty soil of late winter.

The show gains momentum in March, as two prettier flowers make their entrance: Snow trillium, named for the fact it sometimes appears through the snow, and sharp-lobed hepatica, whose other name, liverleaf, calls attention to the deep reddish brown color taken on by its leaves as they persist through the winter. [Upper photo, sharp-lobed hepatica; lower, bloodroot. Both taken by author at U of I Allerton Park near Monticello.]

Over the course of April, another ten or more players fill the scene. Among them are bloodroot, whose inch-and-a-half wide white flowers bloom only for a day; Dutchman’s breeches, whose flowers resemble, well, you know; and spring beauty, a flower that makes up for being tiny by being numerous, and tolerating a wide range of growing conditions.

The show reaches its climax in early May, at which time an observer might count more than a dozen species flowering at once. These include idiosyncratic stars who may be more widely recognized by name than appearance, Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, and blue-eyed Mary among them. In May, the woodland flower show retains none of its earlier subtlety, and the hiker who didn’t think to look for skunk cabbage or who overlooked hepatica blooming cannot help but pause at the sight of a bottomland forest carpeted in Virginia bluebells.

The Illinois woodland wildflower show winds down in June, as the trees above leaf out completely to claim the sun’s energy for themselves, and most of the players quietly disappear from the stage once the work of producing seeds is done. Although they are out of sight, they persist underground as bulbs or other structures, awaiting their cues the following year.

For me, the beauty of woodland wildflowers exceeds that of flowers “improved” for gardens by human art precisely because it developed without regard for our tastes, and because it is out there free for people to enjoy wherever they have access to intact wooded areas.

Of course, how Illinois’ woodland flowers fare in the future depends largely on how well we treat our woodlands. Few woodland flowers can be restored to an area once they have been eliminated by intentive logging, grazing or other development, so it is crucial to protect habitats where they still thrive. It is equally important that people maintain the existing quality of woodlands by helping to keep in check the exotic invasive plants that might otherwise overrun them.

Where to look

In Piatt County, the trails at Allerton Park and Lodge Park offer excellent opportunities for finding woodland flowers, but residents of Champaign-Urbana need go no further than Busey Woods to get a taste of what’s out there. In Vermilion County, try the Forest Glen Preserve, or any of mature woodlands within the state and county natural areas along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River.

How to help

Join up with volunteers from UI Extension’s Master Naturalist and Master Gardener programs for “The Great Garlic Mustard Hunt” being conducted this between now and early May. Participants meet at scheduled times and locations to pull garlic mustard, an exotic, invasive plant that crowds out native woodland flowers. For details and registration see http://web.extension.illinois.edu/champaign/mn/1184.html

Illinois Senate Bill 664 would protect public interest should “fracking” come to state

2011-04-08T14:46:00.003-05:00

Illinois Senate Bill 664 would protect public interest should “fracking” come to state

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In the face of the massive disruptions promised by global warming, and the current, ongoing environmental degradation associated with coal-fired power, many environmental advocates have found themselves supporting natural gas as a bridge to a clean energy future.

Among such advocates, count Brian Sauder, who is Central Illinois Outreach and Policy Coordinator for the statewide organization, “Faith in Place,” which seeks “to give religious people the tools to become good stewards of the earth.” Burning natural gas, he point outs, releases only half the carbon dioxide per unit of electricity that coal does, and it produces far less other pollution, too.

But even as Sauder and others at Faith in Place have favored natural gas over coal, they have some misgivings about that position. According to Sauder, “It’s more difficult to prefer gas as an alternative when you look at the wreckage that can be caused by the current method of extracting it.” If you’ve seen the film “Gasland,” or kept up with national reporting on the issue, you know what he means.

The extraction method Sauder refers to is high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking.” This method of extraction involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into deep layers of shale to break them up and release the gas they hold.

On the plus side, fracking allows energy companies access to vast stores of natural gas that would otherwise remain locked underground. On the minus side, it uses enormous quantities of water, it can contaminate groundwater if the fracking solution reaches an aquifer, and it leaves companies with large quantities of toxin-laden recovered fracking solution to dispose of.

High-pressure hydrofracking has not yet—and may never—come to Illinois, because the shale that underlies parts of the state holds less natural gas than the shale currently being tapped elsewhere. For now, it’s not economically viable. But a significant rise in the price of natural gas could change that.

Given the pollution problems that have arisen with fracking in other states, and the difficulty of addressing those problems after the fact, Sauder and others at Faith in Place sought help from State Senator Michael Frerichs to ensure that if it is done here, it is done safely.

Toward that end, Senator Frerichs has recently introduced a bill (SB 664) that requires oversight and regulation of fracking by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR). Under the framework established by the bill, companies would be required to disclose the components of fracking solutions to IDNR, which would then make that information available to the public. The bill would also limit the use of certain hazardous chemicals, and require companies to report on the reuse and disposal of fracking solutions.

In a phone conversation about the bill, Senator Frerichs emphasized to me that it was not intended to deter development of Illinois’ natural gas resources. “The point,” he said, “is to ensure transparency and public access to information.”

Sauder and other advocates appreciate Frerichs’ leadership in safeguarding the public interest in the case of fracking. But their ultimate goal, he reminded me, is renewable energy, not just use of “cleaner” fossil fuels.

Red-tailed hawk seen on U of I campus subject of O'Hare study

2011-03-17T16:45:00.003-05:00

Red-tailed hawk seen on U of I campus subject of O'Hare study

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Back on the morning of January 21st, I was dutifully pecking away at my keyboard when I got a phone call from a coworker one floor below. “Quick,” she gasped, “look outside, there’s a huge bird!” I was at the window in a flash, and there, perched atop the nearest streetlight, was a first-year red-tailed hawk.

Now, a red-tailed hawk is an everyday bird in Illinois, and I wouldn’t mention this one had it not been for something I noticed as I photographed it; it was wearing on its wings great big tags, marked with the number 80.[ Photos: 080 on streetlight on Dorner Drive in January; pursuing grey squirrel in Illini Grove earlier this week.]

Thinking Red-tail number 80 must be involved in a local study, I contacted U of I avian ecologist Mike Ward to get the story, but neither he nor any of his colleagues knew anything about it. A query to birdnotes, the Champaign-Urbana birders listserv, brought a more unexpected answer. Red-tail number 80 was tagged by researchers at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Schedules being what they are, it took some time for me to connect with investigators, but last week I spoke by phone with one of them, Craig Pullins. He is part of a team of biologists and technicians employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division and based at O’Hare. In general, the mission of Wildlife Services is to resolve conflicts between people and wildlife. At airports, this means deterring animals from taking up residence or hanging around, because of the dangers they pose to aircraft.

So Pullins and his colleagues manage the airport landscape to make it inhospitable to wildlife, and that greatly reduces there the numbers of larger animals, such as Canada geese, white-tailed deer and coyotes. But what’s poor habitat for one animal is often good for another, and the airport’s expanses of short, well drained grass support healthy populations of small mammals, such as voles, and these, in turn, attract birds of prey.

Since 1992, Wildlife Services has worked to keep down the number of owls, hawks and falcons at O’Hare by trapping and relocating them. And that brings us back to Red-tail number 80. It is part of a study begun by Pullins and company last year to determine how the rate of birds returning to the airport is affected by the distance they are moved from it.

Red-tail number 080 was trapped at O’Hare on September 21, 2010, and was among the birds in the study released 120 miles to the west, just five miles short of the Mississippi River. Other hawks in the study are being moved shorter distances--50, 75 and 100 miles.

Why 080 showed up in Urbana nobody can say for sure, although it is common for red-tails to migrate some ways south during winter. Some red-tails tagged for the study have been reported elsewhere around the state, from downtown Chicago to Springfield, Rockford, Decatur and Albany. Others have shown up further away, from Madison, Wisconsin, to Iowa, Alabama, and even Florida.

Of course, the real question with regard to these birds is not how far away from the airport they go, but whether or not they return. And it will be some time before Pullins and his colleagues learn much about how relocation distance affects rates of return. As of this week, Red-tail number 80 is still on campus. I, for one, would be happy to have it stay.

"Elephant Rock" brought to attention of Illinois State Geological Survey

2011-03-10T16:45:00.003-06:00

"Elephant Rock" brought to attention of Illinois State Geological Survey

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In some parts of the world, a 100-ton boulder composed of pink granite is an unremarkable thing, but that’s not the case in the Prairie State. So when scientists with the Illinois State Geological Survey in Champaign were contacted last year by Mike Waite of Jefferson County with photographs of such a beast, they made a point of going to see it when another job brought them to the area.

The boulder Waite showed them now rests in a creek bottom, about half a mile’s walk from the house where he and his wife, Sarah, live, on property that has been in her family since 1918. It measures approximately 22 feet x 10 feet x 11 feet, which makes it the biggest rock of its kind in the state, at least as far as anyone concerned knows. [Photo by David Grimley depicts ISGS geologist Dick Berg atop the Elephant Rock, with Mike and Sarah Waite alongside it. The segment of the rock above the dark band is the part that was visible above ground before the movement of the creek exposed the rest.]

Its kind is “glacial erratic:” “Erratic” because it is unlike any rock that occurs near the Earth’s surface where it lies, and “glacial” because a glacier is the only force powerful enough to have put it there.

Sarah Waite’s family has enjoyed Illinois’ largest glacial erratic as a curiosity for as long as anyone can remember; her mother, who was born in 1926, recalled being taken to it as a child. They name it the “Elephant Rock” because up until recent years only a part of it protruded from the ground, and that part reminded them of an elephant lying on its side. Since the 1930s they have gathered at Elephant Rock for family photos, in a group that now includes up to 35 people.

The full size of the “Elephant Rock” became clear only when the meandering of the nearby creek scoured away the soil around it, allowing it to roll down into its present position.

Where did the Elephant Rock originate? Probably somewhere in northeastern Ontario, according to David Grimley, one of the geologists who went to look at it. That area is part of what’s known as the Canadian Shield, a vast region of igneous and metamorphic rock around Hudson Bay, an area where granite like that comprising the Elephant Rock may be found at the surface.

Imagine that. A 100-ton boulder riding as much as a thousand miles on top of or inside a vast sheet of ice, passing right by us on its way to the southern part of the state. The farthest south any glacier ever advanced in the Northern Hemisphere was only 50 miles beyond where the Elephant Rock landed, so it traveled just about as far as it possibly could have.

Grimley pointed out that geologists understand something about the timing of the Elephant Rock’s journey, too, since the last glaciers that could have moved it extended into southern Illinois some 150,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, the Elephant Rock is not situated where people can go see it for themselves, but Sarah Waite pointed out to me there is an accessible natural attraction nearby. It is the state’s largest flowering dogwood tree, certified by the Illinois Big Tree Registry, which grows in the Union Chapel Cemetery, about seven miles east of the town of Dix.

Closer to home, the University of Illinois Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability, of which the ISGS is a division, will host its annual expo, Naturally Illinois, on Friday and Saturday of this week. The expo will feature more than 50 science-based exhibits, activities and demonstrations for all ages. Further details available at http://www.inrs.illinois.edu/expo/.

U of I faculty collaborate on paradigm changing effort to understand winter storms

2011-03-03T16:45:00.007-06:00

U of I faculty collaborate on paradigm changing effort to understand winter storms

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Just last month, the haunting images of stranded vehicles on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and the harrowing accounts of the people who were trapped there provided Illinoisans with an emphatic demonstration of the power of winter storms to disrupt human life, even in cities, where the forces of nature are normally kept at bay so effectively.

And disruption from winter storms is not an anomaly, notes Bob Rauber, who is head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois. He points out that adverse road weather, mostly in winter, plays a role in nearly 7,000 deaths, six million injuries and 1.4 million accidents per year in the United States. Beyond that, as we have seen this winter, the costs associated with a single blizzard can strain even the most carefully crafted state and municipal budgets.

For the record, Rauber does not see a future in which people can manipulate winter storms to mitigate their effects. He is, however, confident that atmospheric scientists can come to a much better understanding than they now possess of how winter storms work. Toward that end, he and two colleagues are conducting a multi-year research project called “Profiling of Winter Storms,” or PLOWS.

The first stage of the project, a massive data collection effort, was conducted during the two winters preceding this one. This effort involved both undergraduate and graduate students from the U of I, as well as cooperation with scientists and students from the University of Alabama-Huntsville, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Missouri and the National Weather Service.

Much of the data for PLOWS was collected by teams using mobile, ground-based equipment, whose job it was to set up in the projected path of a storm and take measurements as it passed over them. The ground teams operated on standby, and aimed to be in place ten to twelve hours before a storm hit. They collected all of the standard weather data, such as temperature, air pressure and wind velocity. But they also deployed an array of specialized instruments, including a vertically oriented RADAR unit to gauge the speed of updrafts, and a video imager that makes it possible to see the structure of snow particles.

The PLOWS group also collected data from within storm clouds, thanks to use of a specially equipped C-130 aircraft, supplied by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Unlike the ground-based teams, which had to count on storms moving over them, the team in the air was able to move through storms and target the components of greatest interest. (Of course, this also meant they were collecting data at 250 miles per hour.)

Analysis of the data collected during the two field seasons of the PLOWS project is still in the early stages, and likely to continue for years. But already meteorologists who have seen it have labeled it paradigm-changing for the insight it provides.

Ultimately, the understanding of winter storms developed through the PLOWS project will enable meteorologists to more accurately interpret what’s happening within storms as they occur, so that they can provide the public with useful information, such as where and when the heaviest snow in a storm will fall. Such information could one day be transmitted to commuters via a phone alert, enabling them to avoid a route that’s about to be pummeled by a storm.

Killer wasps are coming! (to the 28th annual Insect Fear Film Festival)

2011-02-24T16:45:00.004-06:00

Killer wasps are coming! (to the 28th annual Insect Fear Film Festival)

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In anticipation of the 28th Annual Insect Fear Film Festival, which they will host Saturday on the U of I campus, this week’s Environmental Almanac is written and narrated by four members of the Entomology Graduate Student Association: Michelle Duennes, Rob Mitchell, Laura Steele and Katherine Noble.

[Katherine] This year's festival, Killer Wasps, plays on our almost primal fears of these stinging insects. However, the majority of wasps can't sting people, and actually don't care much about us at all. Most wasps are parasitoids, which means their larvae live inside other insects. Many others are herbivores and feed on plant material. Only a small subset of social wasps have evolved to be the stinging predators with which we're most familiar. [The wasp pictured here, Isodontia mexicana, is native to Illinois. It may look fierce, but its sharp ovipositor is used to lay eggs in the larvae of other insects, not to sting people. Photo by Alex Wild, http://www.alexanderwild.com/]

[Rob M.] The first wasps were almost certainly herbivores that fed on leaves or inside the wood of trees. Many of these species are still around today, and you might know them as sawflies or wood wasps. They appear quite different from other wasps: the larvae look almost exactly like caterpillars, and the adults lack the characteristic "wasp waist." Though most are small and unremarkable, a local species called the horntail can reach lengths of up to an inch and half. Horntails are so named from the stiff, powerful spine extending from their abdomen called an ovipositor, which they use to chisel into wood and lay eggs. Even if you have never seen a horntail, you may come across its horn embedded in a tree after the luckless insect was snatched by a bird while laying eggs.

[Laura] The majority of wasps are parasites or parasitoids. Parasites exploit a host for reproduction or development purposes without killing the it, while parasitoids ultimately kill the organism that hosts their larval development.

The unlucky insect host of a parasitoid often remains alive, either paralyzed or unable to remove the invading larva, while it is essentially eaten from the inside. While this may be a living nightmare for the host insect, it can be a miracle for farmers, who often use parasitoids to help control insect pests of crops.

The smallest known insect, the fairy fly, is actually a tiny parasitoid wasp that has a wingspan of about 3 millimeters or less. On the other extreme is the large Cicada Killer wasp, which can be one-and-a-half inches in length. Here in Illinois, you are likely to see one of these wasps dragging a paralyzed cicada into its underground burrow where it will then lay an egg on the immobile insect.

[Michelle] At some point, most of us have been stung by some sort of wasp or bee. Stingers are modified ovipositors, which means that only female bees and wasps are capable of stinging. Like bees, some wasps possess a form of sociality, which is when individuals of the same species live together, share resources and divide labor and reproduction among the individuals in the group. Unlike the honey bee, wasp colonies can have multiple egg-laying females, called gynes.

The social wasps include the insects most people know as hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps. One of the more infamous stinging wasps is the velvet ant or cow killer. Its sting is incredibly painful, but it can’t actually kill cows.

The Insect Fear Film Festival will take place at the Foellinger Auditorium on the UI campus, with festivities beginning at 6:00 p.m. and films beginning at 7:00. Further details are available at www.life.illinois.edu/entomology/egsa/ifff.html.

Waning of winter brings change, opportunities for engaging the natural world

2011-02-17T16:45:00.010-06:00

Waning of winter brings change, opportunities for engaging the natural world

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Last week, we had low temperatures below zero; today, a high in he 60s. Here we are in February.

You might scarcely believe it, but great horned owls in our area are already sitting on eggs. This timing enables their young, which will hatch later this month or early in March, to fledge when the young of mammals they prey on become abundant, and it gives them extra time to mature before next winter. [Photos by author.] Within the next couple of weeks some of our early bird migrants will also be returning. Keep an eye on places where cattails grow for the year’s first red-winged blackbirds, the true harbingers of Spring in east central Illinois.

Birders who are itching for activity have some good opportunities this month. The Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, runs from February 18th through the 21st. This event encourages people to record their observations of birds over the three-day period according to a simple set of guidelines, and then submit them via the Web.

You can participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count at home or in the company of other people. The Champaign County Audubon Society will be counting birds at the Anita Purves Nature Center in Urbana on Saturday, February 19th, from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

If you’re feeling more adventurous, you might also be interested in an “Owl Prowl,” an evening program led by educators with the Champaign County Forest Preserve District that includes a chance to see wild owls. One is taking place this evening at Lake of the Woods in Mahomet, but at this point you might have better luck with the one set for next Thursday, February 24, at Homer Lake.

Absent truly unusual weather, the next four weeks will see the ice that still covers our ponds and wetlands retreat. As it does, amphibians will congregate to breed—more salamanders, toads and frogs than you would ever imagine if you’ve not gone out on a rainy March night to see and hear for yourself.

People who are interested in such creatures can participate in an ongoing local effort to conserve them, the frog call monitoring program conducted cooperatively by the Champaign County Forest Preserve District and the Urbana Park District. After completing required training, volunteer frog call monitors keep records of which frogs they hear at assigned sites between the beginning of March and the end of July. They then submit their observations to the sponsoring agencies, which use the collected information to make decisions about how sites are managed. The two required training dates for frog call monitoring are March 8th and March 15th, with registration open until February 25.

Whether or not the current thaw continues, the first flower of spring, skunk cabbage, will emerge in woodland seeps by the end of the month, thanks to its capacity to generate heat and grow through frozen soil. Few people will go out of their way to see it, but doesn’t it do you good just to know that something will be growing soon?

If you’re dreaming up plans for your own garden this year, check out the one–evening program, “Eco-conscious Gardening and Landscaping,” that will be offered at the Champaign County Extension auditorium on Monday, February 21st. There, local experts will share advice on how people can help prevent ecological problems and promote biodiversity by the choices they make in designing home landscapes.

Great Backyard Bird Count

www.birdsource.org/gbbc/

www.champaigncountyaudubon.org/calendar.htm

CCFPD Owl Prowls

www.ccfpd.org/Calendar.html

Frog Call Survey Training

www.ccfpd.org/NaturalResources/FrogCallSurvey.html

Eco-conscious Gardening and Landscaping

http://web.extension.illinois.edu/champaign/

Returning a bit of prairie to the Prairie State

2011-02-10T16:45:00.002-06:00

Returning a bit of prairie to the Prairie State

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

A week ago last Friday morning, I joined up with a group of eight other people to sow seed. Not in a greenhouse. Not in a dream. We were planting prairie at the Loda Cemetery Prairie Nature Preserve just 30 miles north of Champaign in Iroquois County.

The focal point of the Loda preserve is a 3-acre parcel of land adjoining Pine Ridge Cemetery, which was preserved from plowing or grazing since the time of European settlement in anticipation of burials there. When this parcel was recognized as one of the very few intact remnants of tallgrass prairie in Illinois in the 1980s, it was purchased by the Nature Conservancy and dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve. Since 1983, the preserve has been maintained by the Urbana-based conservation group, Grand Prairie Friends, which took ownership of it in 2004.

Of course, the intact prairie at the preserve, which includes an astonishing diversity of plant life, more than 130 species in all, does not require seeding. We were planting an expansion of the prairie. This land, which was bought by Grand Prairie Friends in 2007, surrounds the prairie remnant on three sides and includes an area of 9 acres.

According to Mary Kay Solecki, who is a field representative for the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, the expansion is crucial to the long-term health of the preserve. In her words, “We’ve come to understand that these tiny prairie remnants are subject to a lot of stress because they are so small. The things that degrade them, especially invasive plants and animals and herbicide drift, are worst at the edges, and there’s little that’s not “edge” on a one or two or three-acre site.”

Solecki continued, “It’s very fortunate that the local steward at Loda was able to communicate this to the owner of the surrounding property, and that he was willing to sell some land to help alleviate the problem.”

The seeding that I helped with, and all work on the Loda expansion, adheres to a formal plan, the goal of which is to maintain the unique character of the remnant prairie by replicating it as nearly as possible in the expansion.

So the seed we scattered came not from a nursery or a mail-order company, but right from local plants, gathered especially for the purpose in the heat of last year’s summer by an assortment of scientists and enthusiastic volunteers. In the mix were big bluestem and other tall grasses from the Loda remnant itself; pale purple coneflower from the Prospect Cemetery Nature Preserve, just up the road; compass plant from the Short Line Railroad prairie near Gifford, and the seed thirty-some other flowering plants.

The process of planting was every bit as enjoyable as you might expect. We began by using our hands to combine the seeds of all the plants in a large plastic bin. Then, carrying it in buckets or bags, we simply walked the area and scattered it. A thin layer of snow covered the ground, and the air temperature was just warm enough to soften the top of it, so the seed sank in slightly rather than blowing around. To further ensure that it stayed in place, a tractor pulled a roller over the ground as we finished.

Unlike the seeds of crops and annual garden flowers, the seeds of native prairie plants benefit from exposure to winter, so the timing of our planting in advance of last week’s storm was just right. If all else goes well, there will be a little bit more prairie in the Prairie State come Spring.

U.S. and Canada took a step toward healthier waters in 2010--did you notice?

2011-02-03T16:45:00.001-06:00

U.S. and Canada took a step toward healthier waters in 2010--did you notice?

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Last summer, something good happened for the waters of the United States. You can be excused for not having noticed, since this small step forward took place at the same time the Deepwater Horizon was spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The major manufacturers of automatic dishwasher detergents started selling only products that are nearly phosphate-free.

The elimination of phosphates from dishwasher detergents brought them into line with other household products, such as laundry detergent, that have been required to work without phosphates for years.

The big manufacturers made the change in grudging response to strict limits on phosphates in dishwasher detergents enacted simultaneously by sixteen states, including Illinois. The choice faced by the manufacturers was whether to maintain different product lines for different states, or just meet the higher standard across the board.

While the switch to phosphate-free dishwasher detergents occurred without most people noticing (and plenty of people have been consciously choosing phosphate-free dishwashing products for years), others, especially people with hard water, have had trouble adjusting.

In fact, I learned of this story by way of an uncharacteristically bad report on National Public Radio, which focused on the complaints of two people whose dishes weren’t coming out at clean as they used to. This story neglected entirely the benefit to our waterways of reducing phosphorus pollution. It even included without comment the absurd statement from a woman in Texas who said, “I'm angry at the people who decided that phosphate was growing algae. I'm not sure that I believe that.” (If you're among people still looking for a no-phosphate solution, the September 2010 issue of Consumer Reports provides good options.)

For the record, Mark David, a professor in the UI Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences who specializes in nutrient cycling, explained for me the effects of phosphorus pollution: “Phosphorus is usually the limiting nutrient for the growth of algae in streams and lakes. Even at low concentrations, it can lead to large amounts of algal growth, which can reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in water and harm aquatic organisms, including fish.”

If you’ve ever looked down from a bridge and observed long strings of plants waving in the current of a stream, or seen a pond that’s bright green, you’ve seen the effects of excess phosphorus in fresh water.

David acknowledges a fact that the big manufacturers of dishwasher detergent like to point out, which is that removing phosphates from their products will not by itself solve the problem of phosphorus pollution. That’s because most phosphorus in streams and rivers comes from agricultural fields and what people eat, with the phosphorus entering the environment in sewage effluent. But, he says, removing phosphates from dishwasher detergents is a step in the right direction, especially when you consider that sewage treatment facilities are likely to face restrictions on how much phosphorus they discharge in the future.

In Spokane County, Washington, which enacted its own tight restrictions on phosphates in dishwasher detergent in 2009, a year’s worth of data showed that water entering the sewage treatment plant contained 10.7 percent less phosphorus than it had on average in the preceding three years.

Ultimately, much of the phosphorus pollution that enters streams in Illinois reaches the Gulf of Mexico, where it contributes to the creation of the dead zone. So while the Deepwater Horizon has been capped, this spill of nutrient pollution, which begins in the Midwest, continues. Ultimately, it will have to stop here.

Two opportunities for engaging environmental issues (and one activity, just for fun)

2011-01-27T16:45:00.000-06:00

Two opportunities for engaging environmental issues

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

This week, let me call your attention to a couple of very interesting upcoming opportunities for engaging environmental issues.

The first is a ten-week series of seminars on scholarship relating to sustainability titled, “The Human Place in Nature.” Sponsored by the University of Illinois Office of Sustainability and coordinated by professor of law Eric Freyfogle, this series is open to students, faculty, staff and the public alike.

In the words of organizers, the series “will explore the big-picture issues of humans and nature, the foundational issues that frame our environmental plight, morally and intellectually.” It will then also provide a quick survey of the most significant challenges humanity faces today, along with some assessment of the mechanisms available for meeting them.

Even though participants in the Scholarship of Sustainability series need not be enrolled as students, they will be asked to do their homework, which will consist of readings on the day’s topic from a variety of sources. Some of these are simply short articles from newspapers and magazines, but there are other pieces you’ll want to read at a desk, pencil in hand (or whatever the equivalent of that is, if you’re looking at the electronic version). All readings are available in electronic form, or in a spiral bound book that will be sold at the first session.

Sessions will begin with remarks from a small panel of UI faculty with expertise in the day’s subject, and then be opened up for questions and discussion.
The Scholarship of Sustainability sessions will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Thursdays in room 103, Mumford Hall on the U of I campus, The first session meets next Thursday, February 3rd.

Even if you’re not up for the kind of engagement the Scholarship of Sustainability series offers, you might be interested in a one-day workshop that will be conducted at the University YMCA on February 6. It is designed to help citizens prepare to take part in the annual environmental lobby day at the state capitol in Springfield later in the Spring.

The workshop is being conducted by the organization “Faith in Place,” whose mission is “to help people of faith understand that issues of ecology and economy—of care for Creation—are at the forefront of social justice.”

The workshop will include an overview of the legislative agenda being pursued this year by a statewide coalition of environmental groups, along with some nuts-and-bolts training in how to lobby, and some discussion of policy opportunities at the federal level.

Noting that the scale of our current ecological problems requires action beyond individual and community stewardship, Faith in Place coordinator Brian Sauder said, “I cannot overstate the importance of this public advocacy work to promote renewable energy, increase access to local food, and ensure the safety of our drinking water.”

The Faith in Place Environmental Policy Workshop will take place from 2:15 – 4:15 p.m., which means you can attend and not have to miss the kickoff for the Super Bowl.

******
On the Web

Scholarship of Sustainability

http://sustainability.illinois.edu/scholarship.html

Faith in Place workshop

http://www.faithinplace.org/events.php?ID=335

******
Just for fun

In anticipation of Groundhog Day next week, the creative folks at the Illinois Natural History Survey have designed a make-your-own paper groundhog that you can use to predict how much winter we have left. A great project for kids, and the young at heart.

http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/outreach/groundhog.html

American robins harbingers of Spring? No more.

2011-01-20T16:45:00.004-06:00

American robins harbingers of Spring? No more.

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

American robins have long been known as harbingers of Spring, at least among northerners. But to be a harbinger of Spring, you have to go south for the winter, right?

There was a time when nearly all robins did. Records from the earliest Audubon Christmas Bird Counts in Illinois, for example, which go back to 1940, show very few wintering robins in the state until 1951. After that, robins observed on the Christmas counts increase gradually through the 1980s, and then really surge over the most recent two decades. Robins can now be found in all but the northernmost parts of Illinois through most winters.

Why the change? I checked in recently to discuss reasons for it with Mike Ward, an avian ecologist who holds appointments with the UI Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Ward pointed out that, like other birds, robins have good reason to avoid migrating if they can. In part that’s because it is so risky. He said, “Migrating birds are forced to look for food in unfamiliar territory and figure out how to avoid unknown predators. It’s a very dangerous time for them.” In addition, individuals that don’t migrate, especially males, are able to occupy breeding territories first in the Spring, which gives them a reproductive advantage.

Ward noted that the northward expansion of the robin’s winter range might be facilitated by the long-term trend toward warmer winters and the availability of secure habitat in developed areas. But the most important factor by far is the availability of new sources of winter food.

“Contrary to popular perception, birds don’t need to migrate to avoid cold,” he explained. “They just need to be able to eat enough to maintain their high metabolism.”

Robins have been able to spend winters farther north in recent decades because an enormous new source of food has become available to them, the berries of exotic, invasive shrubs, especially varieties of buckthorn and bush honeysuckle. These prolific, fast growing, hard-to-kill shrubs degrade natural areas by displacing native plants, and, thereby, disrupting entire ecosystems. But they are a boon to wintering robins because their hyper-abundant berries persist on the branch right through the coldest part of the year.

Unfortunately, robins are also a boon to these invasive plants, since for each berry they ingest they deposit a seed somewhere.

The northward expansion of the robin’s wintering range in Illinois has occurred in concert with a steady increase in their overall abundance in the state as evidenced by the Breeding Bird Survey, an annual census conducted at the height of the breeding season. In the early years of the survey, which was begun in 1966, robins were observed at an average rate of fewer than 40 birds per survey route. That rate has grown steadily over time, and since the year 2000, an average of more than 100 robins per route have been observed, a two-and-a-half fold increase.

This population growth is also attributable to changes we’ve made in the landscape. “Robins love suburbanization,” said Ward. “Manicured, irrigated lawns make extremely poor habitat for most forms of wildlife, but they provide a perfect place for robins to hunt their favorite nesting-season food, which is earthworms.”

At least in this regard, robins do still behave according to script.

University of Illinois team working to save the planet two buildings at a time

2011-01-13T16:45:00.004-06:00

University of Illinois team working to save the planet two buildings at a time

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Let’s face it, most people find energy conservation about as sexy as the cardigan sweater worn by Jimmy Carter when he exhorted Americans to turn down their thermostats back in 1977. But thirty-four years later, conservation still offers some of the greatest opportunities for decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels and fighting climate change.

At the University of Illinois, enormous gains in energy conservation are being made through the work of a group within the Utility and Energy Services division at Facilities & Services called the Retrocommissioning Team.

The purpose of the Retrocommissioning Team is to restore optimal operating conditions for the heating, cooling, and ventilation systems of campus buildings, and to make or facilitate upgrades to components of those systems where that is feasible.

The team has grown from a single, 5-member unit when it was first formed in 2007 (slogan then, “Saving the planet one building at a time”) to a current staff of sixteen people who work in two teams (slogan now, “Saving the planet two buildings at a time”). Both teams include engineers, field technicians, tradesmen and student interns.

The teams typically spend about two months on a building, and they employ a highly systematic approach. Their work entails a thorough analysis of available documentation on mechanical systems by engineers, and a comprehensive investigation of operating conditions, equipment, and more by field technicians and tradesmen. The Retrocommissioning Teams also depend on clear and open communications with the people who use the buildings they work on, since their intent is to best serve the needs of building users, not to restrict them.

One straightforward thing the Retrocommissioning Teams do is identify the maintenance issues that tend to multiply in overlooked places as facilities age—things like clogged ducts, stuck dampers, damaged coils and worn out sensors. Beyond attending to such issues, the Retrocommissioning Teams also focus on ensuring that mechanical systems operate only as they are needed, rather than around the clock.

Some of the greatest reductions in energy use enabled by the Retrocommissioning Team have been achieved in relatively new facilities, shiny buildings a casual observer might have presumed to be models of efficiency.

At the ACES Library, Information and Alumni Center, for example, energy use in the year following retrocommissioning was an astonishing 42.7 percent lower than it had been the year before. The greatest part of this reduction was accomplished by using the available programmable controls to cut back ventilation and exhaust fans.

A similarly large reduction in energy use (42 percent) was achieved at the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science through extensive work on temperature control programming.

While decreases in energy use at the other 20 buildings that have been retrocommissioned are somewhat less dramatic, the average reduction of 28 percent is still quite impressive. In terms of spending on utilities, the University has saved a whopping $4.5 million thanks to the work of the Retrocommissioning Team.

The work of retrocommissioning has also played a large role in enabling the University to attain the 5-year goal articulated in its Climate Action Plan of reducing overall energy use by 17 percent a full two years ahead of schedule.

You might wonder whether there will come a time for the Retrocommissioning Team to ride off into the sunset, leaving behind a campus whose facilities are all tuned to operate as efficiently as possible. But their work is naturally recursive. They constantly monitor the meters for the buildings they have worked on, and return to diagnose and resolve problems when losses in efficiency are detected. Beyond that, notes Karl Helmink, who with Damon McFall leads the retrocommissioning effort, it will likely be necessary to revisit facilities in a more comprehensive way as the years go by. “After we finish with the last building, we’ll go back to the first.”

For further details about retrocommissioning at the U of I, see

http://www.fs.illinois.edu/retro/index.htm

Don't let cold weather keep you off the trails

2010-12-16T16:45:00.006-06:00

Don't let cold weather keep you off the trails

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Winter arrived with such force this month it feels as though we’ve spun forward right into January. Such a transition brings on a lot of changes in the natural world, so I headed out to the Homer Lake Forest Preserve one day last week to investigate, and see if I could get some photographs.

As I left the U of I campus I spied a red-tailed hawk atop a power pole on Windsor Road, and was reminded what an excellent time of year it is for raptor watching. Winter brings us an influx of hunting birds from the north, and the lines of sight are wide open so you can see birds of prey from a long way off, even in urban and forested areas.

Driving east through farm country, I slowed now and then to look at flocks of smaller birds along the roadside where the snowplow had exposed patches of gravel and soil. I saw only common birds, juncos and horned larks, but at this time of year arctic-breeding birds such as snow buntings and Lapland longspurs are not uncommon in the fields of east central Illinois.

Stopping at the north end of Homer Lake to check ice conditions, I was reminded that birds aren’t the only things that become especially visible in winter. In plain view there hung a Baltimore oriole nest that would have been entirely obscured by leaves in summer when it was occupied. In a nearby tree, a bulky gray hornet's nest is equally plain to see.

At the Champaign County Forest Preserve District’s Environmental Education Center, I stopped to ask for tips from the friendly, knowledgeable staff. They suggested that people take advantage of the snow to investigate tracks and other evidence of animal activity, or to get kids out on the sledding hill. “And remind people,“ they added with emphasis, “dress for the weather!”

I set out on the Flicker Woods Trail, happy to hear ahead of me the calling of a pair of pileated woodpeckers. They’re crow-sized, black birds with sturdy, chisel-shaped bills and brilliant red crests, wonderful targets for a guy out with his camera. Each time I closed in on them, however, they moved away another fifty yards into the woods.

In a mature stand of oaks and hickories, I changed tactics, and hid myself in the shadow of a large tree to see if they’d come back. Soon they did, announced by an emphatic knocking as they whacked away at dead wood in search of beetles and ants. If only they would have come around a little farther, I wouldn’t have had to photograph them against the bright sky.

Tracks along a bluff overlooking the Salt Fork River showed a coyote had traveled the path ahead of me. I paused where he had stopped to dig under the trunk of a fallen tree. Leaf litter and soil were strewn atop the snow, but whether or not he had caught a meal I couldn’t tell. Following his track took me down through a dry ravine and into the river bottom, where I lost him among the maze of deer trails.

Too soon, it was time to head back, but as I made for the wide path that would take me to the car, I was arrested by a frantic scrambling in the brush ahead. It was the coyote, driven from his sheltered spot under a log by my approach. I was ready with my camera, and took advantage of his curiosity to get a shot—he just couldn’t’ run off without a look back to see who had disturbed his rest.

Retelling tales of the famously extinct passenger pigeon

2010-12-09T16:45:00.004-06:00

Retelling tales of the famously extinct passenger pigeon

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

[Author's note: this post is a follow up to "The case of the louse and the passenger pigeon" from November 18, 2010.]

For me, the retelling of stories about passenger pigeons, which were extinguished as a species after having been one the most abundant birds on Earth, is like the rehearsal of tales about a loved one at a memorial service: necessary, pleasurable and painful at the same time.

By all accounts individual passenger pigeons were striking birds. Males, which were slightly larger and more colorful than females, measured about 16 inches from beak to tail tip. They were blue-gray on the back, with scattered black markings and iridescent neck feathers that could flash pink, violet, gold and metallic green. Underneath, their throats and chests were colored with mixed shades of orange, red and tan, which faded to dull white on their bellies. An orange-red iris gave their eyes an arresting quality. [Illustration depicting female, above, and male, below, is plate by John J. Audubon.]

But passenger pigeons were even more remarkable en masse. They occurred in hard-to-comprehend numbers; somewhere between three and five billion are estimated to have lived in eastern and central North America when Europeans first arrived here. According to Arlie W. Schorger, who wrote the definitive book on them, passenger pigeons once constituted one-fourth of all birds on the continent.

Passenger pigeons flocked in staggering numbers, too. In an often cited passage from his pioneering work, American Ornithology, Alexander Wilson described a flight near Frankfort, Kentucky in 1806 in these terms: “from right to left as far as the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extended; seemingly everywhere equally crowded.” He estimated the column of birds flying over to be at least a mile wide and, since it passed by at nearly 60mph for more than four hours, a stunning 240 miles long. By Wilson’s calculation the flock would have included nearly two and a quarter billion birds.

Passenger pigeon flocks could be so dense they eclipsed the sun as they passed, and the roar of their wings was likened to thunder, or the approach of a tornado.

In fall, winter, and spring, passenger pigeons fed on the nuts of forest trees, known collectively as mast: primarily beechnuts, acorns and chestnuts. The movement of a feeding flock of passenger pigeons across the ground was like a rolling wave, with the birds at the rear continually flying up and over to take a place along the front of the line.

Mast-producing trees overcome the problem of having their seeds eaten up by producing a superabundance of them at intervals, so there are leftovers to sprout even after consumers have had their fill. The survival strategy of passenger pigeons was similar; individuals were, in many circumstances, easy prey. But flocks were so large that local predators could be sated without diminishing passenger pigeon populations over time.

Passenger pigeons nested in enormous colonies, which were often be measured in square miles. The largest nesting ever recorded, which took place in central Wisconsin in 1871, occupied most of the southern two-thirds of the state.
Scientists still contend over the relative importance of factors that caused the extinction of passenger pigeons. But at the top of the list are market hunting, which intensified to shocking degrees after the mid-nineteenth century, and the wholesale destruction of the eastern forest.

The pain in contemplating passenger pigeons comes from the fact that we will never know them directly. As the great Aldo Leopold wrote, “There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights . . . They live forever by not living at all.”

From my perspective, whether people living today can transform their concern for “book-pigeons” into effective action on behalf of the plants and animals remaining to us is the most important question we face.

Champaign 8th Graders team up with UI students to raise awareness about aquatic invasive species

2010-12-02T14:45:00.004-06:00

Champaign 8th Graders team up with UI students to raise awareness about aquatic invasive species

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Today’s Environmental Almanac comes to you courtesy of students from Whitney Stewart’s class at Franklin Middle School in Champaign. This Fall, some of Stewart’s eighth graders have been working with University of Illinois students enrolled in a service learning program called Community Stewardship through Environmental Education, which is offered cooperatively by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Program, the UI Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Through this program, the university students have taught the school children about some of the invasive species that are disrupting aquatic ecosystems in Illinois, and collaborated with them on stewardship projects designed to create public awareness about these creatures.

Some of the students from Franklin chose to communicate their messages in songs, which were recorded for radio thanks to WILL audio producer Jason Croft. First up, a Zebra Mussel rap:

Clogging up my drain,
nothing up my brain,
they keep reproducing,
they all look the same.

They clogging up the shower,
reproducing to the tenth power.

Killing all the natives, this is an invasion,
they're unstoppable like terminator salvation

Black and white stripes looking like a clam,
Can we get rid of them? Like Obama, “yes we can.”

Sitting on the beach, razor sharp and thin,
Step on me and imma cut yo skin.

Make sure to clean your boat,
Hose them down make them drown in the moat.

Next, a Zebra Mussel song to the tune of "Single Ladies."

All the Zebra Mussels (all the Zebra Mussels)
All the Zebra Mussels (all the Zebra Mussels)
All the Zebra Mussels (all the Zebra Mussels)
All the Zebra Mussels (Now put your clams up!)

Jump on the boat, clog up them pipes then
turn off them lights. Acting up, salt in my cup,
something that I like. Even though we small,
we can clog them all, and you can't get rid of us.

Chorus: We came from Eastern Europe, and now we're in America!
And you can't even STOP us & if you don't like us wash your boat.
HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! (Wash your boat)

So how do you stop us? You may ask. For there are many ways.
Wash your boat with hot water, 104 degrees and let it dry 5 days and nights,
it will kill us all.

- Chorus –

Other Franklin students involved in the Community Stewardship program crafted visual messages to raise awareness about aquatic invasive species, including the four-panel cartoon and the illustration of a sea lamprey reprinted here.

Pat Weatherhead the lead instructor for the course in which the UI students are enrolled, has been pleased with the results of the partnership with local schools. "I'm delighted that the kids incorporated the science content they learned from the UI students and developed such creative and innovative approaches to educate the public about this important issue."

The case of the louse and the passenger pigeon

2010-11-18T16:45:00.010-06:00

The case of the louse and the passenger pigeon

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

According to convention, detective stories begin with a dead body. But this one begins with a louse—a live louse. The trouble with this live louse? It was supposed to be dead, and not just sorry-he-just-couldn’t-pull-through, individual dead. This louse was supposed to be kaput as a species, absent from the face of the earth for nearly a hundred years.

The louse in question—whose status was even highlighted by his scientific name, Columbicola extinctus—was thought to have lived on only one host animal, the passenger pigeon. And the passenger pigeon’s time on earth ended with the demise of a bird named Martha at the Cincinnati Zoo, all the way back in 1914.

So what was Columbicola extinctus doing—very much alive—on another species of bird, the band-tailed pigeon, which occupies territory from Alaska to South America, on the eve of the twenty-first century?

That’s what Kevin Johnson wanted to know.

Johnson (pictured with museum specimen of a passenger pigeon, by L. Brian Stauffer) is currently an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois who studies the relationships between parasites, such as lice, and their bird hosts. But back at the time Columbicola extinctus was brought back from the dead, so to speak, he was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah with one of the scientists who made the discovery.

The natural way to answer the question of why a louse that’s thought to be specific to one host is unexpectedly found on another is to look at how closely those host animals are related.

Previously, passenger pigeons had been thought to be most closely related to mourning doves, which are the doves you’re likely to know from seeing them in your yard. [Photo by author.] This association was based on shared physical characteristics, similarities in the coloring of their feathers and the length of their tails.

What Johnson set out to do, in cooperation with three colleagues from around the country, was establish how passenger pigeons were related to other species of pigeons and doves in terms of their genetic makeup.

I’d like to be able to portray the lab work and analysis they did as sexy and exciting, the way it is on CSI, but that’s beyond me as a writer. So I’ll give you the short version. Johnson and his colleagues compared genetic material from a museum specimen of a passenger pigeon with genetic material from 78 other species of pigeons and doves, a representative selection of the more than 300 species that occur worldwide today.

Using what they learned by comparing that genetic material, they constructed a revised evolutionary family tree for pigeons and doves, published as a scientific paper this year, which shows how far back you have to look to find ancestors that are shared by modern species.

On this tree, the now-extinct passenger pigeon occupies a branch much closer to the band-tailed pigeon than the mourning dove. So the louse, Columbicola extinctus, had gone on living after the demise of the passenger pigeon because the passenger pigeon was survived by an evolutionary cousin, the band-tailed pigeon. [USFWS photo by Gary Kramer.] And that cousin is also a suitable host for extinctus.

As we close the case of the louse that turned out not to be extinct, I realize I’ve said almost nothing about the life and death of the passenger pigeon as a species. So tune in next week for that story.

Campus composting: A step toward an integrated sustainable farm

2010-11-05T16:00:00.002-05:00

campus composting: A step toward an integrated sustainable farm

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

This week’s Environmental Almanac is a story in two parts.

Part one is the nitty-gritty tale of what happens to the vegetable scraps generated in the kitchen at Ikenberry Commons, the new, very green, student residence on the U of I campus.

To begin with, those vegetable scraps, which include all of the stuff you might expect, from lettuce stems to pineapple tops, are placed by Dining Services staff into bags that are kept separate from other trash, since they’re not headed for the landfill. Those bags, which are themselves biodegradable, accumulate in two large, rolling carts, which hold up to about 600 pounds each.

Those carts are picked up twice a week, on Monday and Thursday afternoons, by Matt Luedtke, who is with the U of I Environmental Change Institute. Luedtke retrieves the vegetable scraps from the kitchens at Ikenberry Commons to compost them, and I joined him for a run earlier this week.

He has been fortunate this semester to have help from undergraduate students in the College of Engineering who are part of a group called “Engineering in Service to Society.” On the day I met up with him, two of them came to help, Jason Kenyon, from Muscatine, Iowa, and Ryan Chan, from Hong Kong.

From the dining hall, Matt and his helpers drove the compostable material by pickup truck to a site on the U of I South Farms near the intersection of First Street and Windsor Road. There they loaded it with an equal volume of dry leaves into a manure spreader, which is essentially a small wagon with a rotating bar at the rear. [Photo: Matt Luedtke, left, and helpers Ryan Chan and Jason Kenyon, right, running the manure spreader to mix compost.] When the bar is engaged, a staggered line of paddles attached to it simultaneously mixes the vegetable scrap with the landscape material and flings off the back.

So far this Fall, the campus compost operation has generated two substantial mounds about twelve feet in diameter, with another having just been started. For now, when this material is ready to be used on a field, it will be transported a mile east to nourish the soil at the student farm, which, in turn, supplies fresh produce to Dining Services.

In the future, however, some on the U of I campus anticipate using the compost to nourish the soil on site, as part of a development known as the Integrated Sustainable Homestead.

This brings us to part two of today’s story, which is a vision for the future of the site at First and Windsor, which promises to become an important gateway to the U of I as Curtis Road is developed in Champaign.

Wes Jarrell, who is interim director of the Environmental Change Institute, sees today’s composting effort as a first step toward an operation that will demonstrate how food and energy can be produced sustainably at a local scale in Illinois. At the Integrated Sustainable Homestead, students would learn about where food comes from, how energy can be conserved and produced on a local scale, and how water can be used efficiently and sustainably, all through hands-on experience.

Picture, for example, a dormitory topped with solar panels, set among fields of a bioenergy crop, such as switchgrass, with forage plots for livestock and organic vegetable gardens filling out the scene.

You can get an even better idea of what the Integrated Sustainable Homestead might look like in a presentation by Matt Luedtke at the Environmental Change Institute’s annual symposium next Monday, November 8. The symposium, which is free and open to all, will take place from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. at the iHotel and Conference Center. Details are available on the Web at www.eci.illinois.edu.

A comeback for gray wolves in Illinois?

2010-10-28T16:45:00.006-05:00

A comeback for gray wolves in Illinois?

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

As I drove with a car full of Boy Scouts on the way to a camp out in western Indiana recently, we talked about what parts of the trip we were looking forward to. Most of this discussion was devoted to plans for fishing the next day. But in my turn, I mentioned the hope that we would hear coyotes overnight, since the sound of their yips and howls makes me feel like I’m in a wild place, even when my tent is pitched in a county park.

The prospect of hearing coyotes at night was anticipated with much less pleasure by other members of the party, and before long one scout asked with some urgency in his voice that we not mention the “c” word again.

We obliged. But the scout’s discomfort with the idea of toothy creatures later got me wondering about another, more formidable wild canine that once inhabited the Prairie State, the gray wolf. You may or may not have seen the accounts, but some wolves have begun to show up here again in recent years. [Photo: gray wolf, Gary Kramer/USFWS.]

Gray wolves were extirpated from Illinois before the Civil War, thanks to government sponsored predator control programs and reductions in the prey and habitat available to them. And “extirpated” is still their official status in the state. But since 2002, there have been at least six wolves killed here, five of them by hunters and another one by a vehicle.

In Illinois, it’s illegal to shoot gray wolves, which are protected federally under the Endangered Species Act, but hunters have done so mistaking them for coyotes, which can be killed legally.

If you’re not accustomed to the difficulties of quickly identifying wild animals at a distance, you might wonder how people make such a blunder. At five to six-and-a-half feet long from nose to tail tip, and weighing 70-100 pounds, an average wolf in the Midwest is nearly double the size of an average coyote. But size is notoriously difficult to gauge in the field, and the differences in color and shape that help separate coyotes from wolves are also fairly subtle.

So far, four of the wolves killed in Illinois have been confirmed as wild immigrants from Wisconsin, where the wolf population has risen from zero to nearly 700 over the past thirty years.

The wolves of Wisconsin are part of a larger population that includes nearly 3,000 individuals in Minnesota and another 600 or so in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In its robust growth, this western Great Lakes wolf population has exceeded the goals established for it under the Recovery Plan developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when they were listed as an endangered species. As a result, there has been legal wrangling over whether or not to delist them in the recent years, including a review of evidence for delisting currently under way. (For more on delisting and all kinds of other cool information see http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wolf/.)

Could wolves become reestablished in Illinois? The ones that have been confirmed here to date are all males, which tend to disperse over far greater distances than females, and they alone can’t accomplish the job. (The current Midwestern record for distance—600 miles—was set by an individual that was trapped in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and subsequently killed in north central Missouri.) But there’s food enough for wolves in our now-overabundant herds of white-tailed deer, and probably sufficient habitat, too. In the long run, the real question may be whether the human population of the state can make the psychic space to accommodate them.

***********

Upcoming presentations on sustainable environment sponsored by Illinois Sustainable Technology Center

November 3, 2010: “Save the Plants; Save the Planet.” Kay Havens, Director, Division of Plant Science and Conservation and Senior Scientist from the Chicago Botanic Garden.

November 17, 2010: “Animal Conservation and Habitat Preservation.” Norah Fletchall, Vice President of Conservation from the Indianapolis Zoo.

Both talks will be from noon - 1 p.m. at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, One E. Hazelwood Dr. in Champaign. Further details at
http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm#upcoming

All welcome at Environmental Change Institute events

2010-10-21T16:45:00.004-05:00

All welcome at Environmental Change Institute events

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Are you interested to know how environmental change is being addressed in research and teaching at the University of Illinois? Do you have a stake in the way agriculture confronts climate change in the years to come? If your answer to either question is yes, let me invite you to a couple of events slated to take place early next month. Both will be hosted by the unit that provides a home for Environmental Almanac on campus, the UI Environmental Change Institute.

The Environmental Change Institute, or ECI, was created in 2008, thanks to a generous gift from the Alvin H. Baum Family fund and matching funds from three UI colleges: Business, Law, and Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Its mission is to enable society to avoid, mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change through the support of scholarly research, innovative teaching, and public outreach initiatives.

On the afternoon of Monday, November 8, ECI will host its annual research symposium. At this event, members of the campus and wider communities are invited to hear firsthand accounts of the activities ECI sponsors, in the form of brief presentations by faculty members and graduate assistants.

The range of inquiry enabled by ECI funding is indicated by the diversity of the research questions symposium presenters are addressing, among them: How do land the values of land managers affect response to climate change threats? How much carbon is lost from forests into streams? Do consumers shop more on the Internet when fuel prices increase? How effective are small-scale solutions in enhancing food production, energy, and water management?

The symposium will also offer the opportunity to hear from faculty who are developing new courses that address environmental change. These include a course that explores the two-way relation between environment and democracy; a course that teaches students to think about buildings first in terms of energy use and sustainability; one that seeks to educate citizens and future leaders in the science topics define our world; and even one that will involve students in the very practical business of developing the world’s first solar-powered, cost-efficient bike sharing system.

Presentations at the research symposium will be brief because there many of them, but a reception following will allow for audience members and presenters to mingle.

On the day following the symposium, Tuesday, November 9, the Environmental Change Institute will host its second annual summit, an all-day colloquium on the topic, “Climate Change: Agricultural Solutions, Adaptation and Mitigation.” This event will bring together research scholars, business leaders, and policymakers to discuss the causes, effects and consequences of agricultural practices on earth’s changing climate patterns. Speakers at the summit will address topics that range from chemical management and soil fertility to the potentials of organic and sustainable farming.

In the opening address at the summit, climatologist and meteorologist Mark Seeley of the University of Minnesota will outline the changes climate science anticipates in the next 50 years and discuss some of the implications of those changes for land use, landscape and infrastructure.

Both the summit and the research symposium will take place at the iHotel and Conference Center on South First Street in Champaign. You can find further details and register for the summit at the Website of the Environmental Change Institute at http://eci.illinois.edu.

***********************

Next Monday evening, October 25, on the UI campus journalist Jeff Biggers will speak on the subject of his current book, “Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland,” which explodes the idea that coal is clean or cheap. Biggers’ talk, which is part of 2010 Illinois Sustainability Week, will take place at 6:30 p.m. in room 100, Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St. You can find a full listing of Sustainability Week activities at http://sustainability.illinois.edu/2010SustainabilityWeek.html/.

A look ahead at the climate for agriculture in the Midwest

2010-10-14T16:45:00.003-05:00

A look ahead at the climate for agriculture in the Midwest

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Coming up in early November, the Environmental Change Institute at the U of I will hosts its annual summit, a one-day colloquium on the topic, “Climate Change: Agricultural Solutions, Adaptation and Mitigation.” Next week I’ll provide a sampling of what attendees at that summit can look forward to. (Of course, if you're reading the electronic version of this segment, you can easily look ahead for yourself: http://eci.illinois.edu/news-events/eci-summit/.) But this week, I want to set the stage for the summit by providing a quick look at the climate picture for agriculture in the Midwest in the century to come.

This picture is drawn from a recent (soon to be published) report co-written by U of I professor of atmospheric sciences Don Wuebbles (who is a sharer in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), his colleague at Texas Tech, Katharine Hayhoe, and U of I student, Ben Garrett.

The report focuses on impacts from climate change that will require farmers to change how they operate, impacts that will vary according to whether or not people act effectively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The higher emissions scenario used to make projections in the report assumes a combination of fossil fuel use and population change that results in an atmosphere with greenhouse gases at more than triple pre-industrial levels. The lower emissions scenario assumes a shift away from fossil fuels, with atmospheric greenhouse gas levels at the end of the century only double those of preindustrial times.

Under either scenario, summers in the Midwest are projected to be hotter. Over the next thirty years, somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of summers will be characterized by median temperatures that equal or exceed the hottest summer of the historical reference period of 1961-1990. By midcentury, according to the report, nearly all summers will be hotter than that, even under the lower emissions scenario.

Heat waves, which can negatively affect crop development and stress livestock, are also projected to increase in number and intensity. In this case, the difference between high emissions scenario and low emissions scenario is pronounced. Under the high emissions scenario, for example, even Wisconsin and Minnesota would be expected to experience weeklong stretches of 95-degree days every other year by the end of the century. Under the low emissions scenario, such weeks would more likely occur in only one year out of four.

The report also projects warmer winters for the Midwest, and anticipates how that will affect agriculture in two ways. It projects a decline in “accumulated chilling hours,” which results in the northward migration of corn pests that are limited by periods of pronounced cold. It also projects a decrease in productivity for fruit crops that depend on a prolonged winter chilling period to flower, including things like apples, grapes and blueberries.

The report points out that warmer winters will also mean the continued northward migration of plant hardiness zones, which are defined by the coldest temperatures of the year. Already plants that used to be typical of southern Illinois can be grown in the Chicago area and much of Michigan. By the end of the century, the report projects, conditions once associated with the Southeast are likely to take hold in much of the Midwest.

Warmer conditions in spring and fall are also anticipated to extend the growing season in the Midwest. The degree to which that is a benefit will depend largely on whether precipitation patterns allow farmers to get into the fields earlier in the spring.

Are you interested to know more about the implications of climate change for agriculture? Check back next week for a preview of the Environmental Change Institute’s annual summit.

UI undergraduates involved in cutting edge global change research

2010-10-07T16:45:00.002-05:00

UI undergraduates involved in cutting edge global change research

Real Audio : MP3 download

Over the past summer, Bartlett, Illinois native Brianna Usdrowski got a taste of what it means to be a twenty-first century plant biologist. She monitored the development of soybean plants grown under varying environmental conditions by carefully counting leaf nodes and tracking pod development. She also collected images of corn roots underground by means a special camera slipped down into a clear plastic tube, and she worked long hours in the lab processing and analyzing those many images. She coped with sun, extreme heat, mosquitoes and biting flies.

At the same time, she learned what it means to work as part of a University of Illinois team that’s addressing one of the great challenges of the century, how to ensure an adequate food supply for a fast-growing human population in the context of a changing climate. [Photo: Usdrowski with post-doctoral associate Jeff Skoneczka sampling soybean leaves in the field at SoyFACE. By Amy Betzelberger.]

Usdrowski was one of five undergraduate students who were selected this year to participate in a program called Student Ambassadors for Global Change Research, which is sponsored by the U of I Environmental Change Institute.

The Student Ambassadors program is a collaborative effort run by Lisa Ainsworth, who is a USDA Agriculture Research Service scientist and assistant professor of plant biology, and four faculty colleagues: Carl Bernacchi, Evan DeLucia, Andrew Leakey and Don Ort. All of them work with a long-running experiment called Soy Free Air Concentration Enrichment, or SoyFACE. In SoyFACE, conditions for crop growth are modified in the field, to allow for research on how agricultural plants will respond to the changes projected for the climate of the Midwest in the years to come--increased levels of carbon dioxide and ozone, higher temperatures and decreased water availability.

While much of the work performed by the student ambassadors is tied to specific investigations, they also participate in the general efforts that keep SoyFACE running. They weed plots, maintain paths and help set up the ingenious devices that experimenters use to alter growing conditions in the field. They also pitch in with efforts that require many hands: for example, dawn-to-dusk measurements of photosynthesis that call for a team of sixteen people.

The students who participate in the Ambassadors program also learn how to communicate with diverse audiences about their research. In part, they do so by collaborating with their professors on scientific papers, and creating posters to explain their work in academic settings. But they also learn to explain what they do and why for the various interest groups that visit SoyFACE, including everyone from touring South American farmers, to 4-H groups, to the Illinois Soybean Association. That’s crucial, according to Ainsworth, given the charged nature of discussions involving climate change.

The first two cohorts of Student Ambassadors for Global Change Research have included five students from the U of I and five students from other colleges and universities in Iowa, Missouri and Pennsylvania. In the years to come, Ainsworth and her colleagues hope to expand the program, perhaps to include cross-disciplinary training in agriculture and climate science.

As you might imagine, undergraduate students who participate directly in scientific work like the SoyFACE experiment are enthusiastic about the opportunity. As Brianna Usdrowski put it to me, “It opened my eyes to things I wouldn’t even have known to look for.”

Rain gardens grow from campus-community collaboration

2010-09-23T16:45:00.002-05:00

Rain gardens grow from campus-community collaboration

Real Audio : MP3 download

Last Saturday morning, the home of Anna Barnes and David Riecks on West Washington Street in Champaign was a scene of intense activity. A group of friends, neighbors, and other volunteers—27 people in all—gathered to transform the parkway in front of the house from a nondescript, mostly bare strip of land into a beautiful, functional rain garden.

Working from a design by U of I professor of Landscape Architecture, Gale Fulton, participants first removed some of soil from the site, a job made easier by the fact that it was begun with a small excavator earlier in week. With that finished, we loosened the soil that remained with a tiller, and then used shovels and rakes to create a neatly contoured basin, about fifty feet long and ten feet wide, with its lowest point midway between the sidewalk and the street.

Then we put in plants, lots of them, some 200 in all. The plants used in the project were selected by Fulton for their ability to thrive in a garden that, by design, fills with water during big storms, but which remains as dry as the rest of the landscape at other times. They include a mix of grasses, sedges and more showy flowering plants, such as cardinal flower and Siberian iris. (Some of us involved who value the potential for home landscapes to provide a food base for wildlife are encouraging Fulton to employ native plants more exclusively in future projects.)

Fulton’s involvement with this project stems from a course he developed with and U of I professor Tony Endress this past spring, which focused on sustainable approaches to storm water management in Champaign's John Street watershed. That course provided the foundation for an ongoing collaboration among students, faculty, U of I Facilities and Services, City of Champaign staff, and city residents who live in areas that flood regularly.

The sustainable approaches put forward by the class include the development of “green infrastructure,” including rain gardens, to complement conventional ways of handling rainwater.

According to Eliana Brown, an environmental engineer who coordinates the U of I’s storm water compliance efforts and was part of Fulton's class, the rain garden that went in last week should detain more than 1,200 gallons of water during a storm, or the equivalent of 23 rain barrels. [Photo: The finished garden after Wednesday morning's rain. It had filled up to the level of the curb before I got there to take a picture, but the water had then all soaked into the ground.] That would be all of the water from the roof that drains there during even a big rain event, one of the sort that floods local viaducts.

Brown acknowledges that rain gardens won’t eliminate the need for big pipes and large-scale detention basins. But she emphasizes that they reduce the burden on those parts of the system, and they provide the added benefit of filtering pollutants from the water that passes through them.

Funding for the rain garden at the Barnes-Riecks home was provided by the Illinois-American Water Corporation in the form of a grant that was secured by Prairie Rivers Network this past Spring. That grant is also being used to establish two other rain gardens, one in the John Street watershed, which was created earlier this summer, and another in the Washington Street watershed, which will be installed this Saturday, September 25.

Does the idea of a rain garden intrigue you? You could help out with the installation Saturday to get a sense of what’s involved. At the same time you will be helping to create a thing of lasting beauty and real utility. For more information or to volunteer, contact Stacy James at Prairie Rivers Network, (217) 344-2371, or sjames@prairierivers.org

You can see a map with links to photos of some rain gardens around Champaign at http://tinyurl.com/CUraingardens

Citizens, public interest groups push for safeguards against coal ash pollution

2010-09-09T16:45:00.002-05:00

Citizens, public interest groups push for safeguards against coal ash pollution

If the phrase “coal ash” brings to mind no specific image for you, think back to December 2008. That’s when the most massive coal ash spill in U.S. history inundated homes, buried farmland and fouled rivers near a power plant outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. The photos and video of that disaster made plain for all to see the inadequacy of the safeguards that were supposed to protect people and wildlife from coal ash pollution. (Click here to see pictures.)

While the Tennessee spill was the biggest to date, it was not an isolated incident—significant failures of coal ash impoundments have also occurred in Georgia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania in recent years. And it represents only the most obvious way hazardous materials from coal ash contaminate the environment.

In less dramatic fashion, pollutants from coal ash stored at dump sites around the country contaminate the environment on a daily basis as they are carried away to neighboring land by the wind, migrate into groundwater or flow off directly into lakes and streams. Most significant among these are chemicals that can sicken or kill people when they occur in drinking water--arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, etc.

How big a problem is this? Very big. The waste produced by burning coal—primarily at power plants—is second only to household garbage as a component of the American waste stream—131 million tons per year.

Illinois is currently the eighth largest generator of coal ash, but our state enjoys the dubious distinction of having more sites than any other, twelve, where contamination from coal ash has been documented in nearby water. I should add that these twelve sites have been identified through a hit-or-miss process rather than a coordinated effort, so there are likely more to be found. Our state is also home to two ash ponds ranked as “high hazard potential” facilities using criteria developed for the National Dam Safety Program, which means there is potential for dams to fail and unleash coal ash on downstream communities.

According to Traci Barkley, watershed resources scientist with the Champaign-based conservation group, Prairie Rivers Network, the current system of regulating coal ash on a state-by-state basis has enabled polluters to avoid the cost of handling this material as the hazardous waste that it is. She points out there is no statewide requirement to track or monitor where it is generated or where it is disposed of. Further, she adds, if coal ash is disposed of onsite at a power plant or in a coal mine or a quarry, no permit is required and a limited review of threats to water is conducted.

Change is in the offing, though.

After years of effort from citizens and public interest groups to document and publicize the threats posed by coal ash pollution, the U.S. EPA is poised to adopt one of two new policy options. One of these, which is backed by the coal and electric utility lobbies, would essentially allow for a continuation of the current system. The other, which has been promoted in Illinois by a coalition including Prairie Rivers Network, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, would effectively regulate coal ash as hazardous waste, with the associated safeguards for storage, handling, transport and disposal.

There are two ways to let U.S. EPA know where you stand on this question. One is to join citizens from all over the Midwest to speak out at a public hearing that will be conducted on Thursday, September 16, at the Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue. If you are in the Champaign-Urbana area you can arrange for carpooling to the hearing by contacting Traci Barkley (tbarkley@prairierivers.org or 344-2371). You can guarantee yourself time to speak there by pre-registering at http://www.epa.gov/wastes/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/ccr-rule/ccr-form.htm. The other is to submit written comments to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson through Sierra Club at http://www.sierraclub.org/coalash.

Enjoying a wildlife friendly home landscape

2010-09-02T16:45:00.003-05:00

Enjoying a wildlife friendly home landscape

Real Audio : MP3 download

Over the years, Beth Chato has traveled to see birds all over the globe, and she has a life list of some 2,000 species to prove it. But she also takes great pleasure in watching birds and other wildlife at home.

Here, for example, is how she described the activity in her yard in a post to birdnotes, the email discussion list of Champaign County birders, back on August 7th: My cardinal flower and my nectar feeder are buzzing with hummingbirds. A gang of young cardinals is sunbathing and snacking on my sunflower seed. A very tame catbird keeps an eye on me if I am outside. At least three pair of goldfinch go through a lot of niger seed. A busy family of house wrens and one of Carolina wrens patrol the bushes for insects. Mourning doves, house sparrows, and house finches clean up below the feeder. Yesterday I had my first fall warbler, an American redstart. I almost forgot the resident robins.

If you didn’t know better, you might think Chato was describing the activity on a roomy spread somewhere out in the country. But she and her husband, John, have lived in the same home on a standard city lot in west Urbana for forty years. The richness of activity in their yard demonstrates what’s possible when people maintain landscapes with wildlife in mind.

Chato provides food for birds via all of the usual methods. She puts out a nectar feeder for hummingbirds in late April, when the ruby-throats return, and keeps it filled into November, on the chance a western species rare to our area might find it during migration. She also maintains the seed feeders alluded to in her email, including a tube filled with niger for the finches, and a squirrel-proof hanging feeder with a standard blend of seed for cardinals, sparrows and the like. During the winter she brings downy woodpeckers and nuthatches into view with a suet feeder.

These food sources complement the food Chato provides by means of the plants she grows in her yard, where only a portion in the center—about a third of the total area—is kept in turf grass. Cardinal flower and other native perennials, mist flower, brown-eyed Susan, and woodland phlox among them, are sources of nectar and pollen that help sustain insects, and they flourish without the use of fertilizers or pesticides. A rich mix of taller vegetation, including shrubs, such as grey dogwood, and a black cherry tree provide further food for wildlife, as well as places for birds to perch and nest.

When Chato wants to bring hard-to-see songbirds down from the treetops for a closer look, she attaches her garden hose to a mister, which creates a fine spray they can’t seem to resist, especially during dry spells.Two other fixtures in the yard provide wildlife more constant access to water, a repurposed concrete laundry sink, which is set in the ground to make a small pond, a decorative fountain powered by a solar panel on the roof of the garage.

A human visitor at the Chatos might wonder why they leave a small dead tree standing near their patio, or why they keep a heap of sticks in a corner obscured by shrubs. But the purpose is obvious to hummingbirds, which like a bare branch to rest on, and to white-throated sparrows, which in winter take refuge from the weather and predators in the brush pile.

If you are interested in tips on improving your own yard as wildlife habitat, check out the “Garden for Wildlife” pages at the National Wildlife Federation’s Web site. The Chato’s yard is certified through the program—maybe yours could be, too.

Campus Bike Project promotes sustainable transportation

2010-08-26T16:45:00.002-05:00

Campus Bike Project promotes sustainable transportation

Listen to the commentary

Real Audio : MP3 download

As he drove home from the grocery last weekend, Don Keefer of Urbana noticed a bike near the street, set out by a neighbor hoping someone would take it away. Keefer obliged. He saw in that red ten-speed an economical replacement for the bike his 11-year-old daughter had outgrown. But he also saw that it needed work—a new back tire, at least—and he was told by the former owner there was some problem with the pedals.

Keefer realized that he probably didn’t have all of the knowledge or tools needed to make the bike roadworthy. But he had seen a little place near his office on the U of I campus where he thought he might find those things.

The Campus Bike Project, which opened this past spring, occupies garage space off of Pennsylvania Avenue that was donated by the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability and converted with a grant from UI student sustainability funds. It’s a collaboration between the University and the Urbana Bike Project, which operates as a non-profit membership-based bicycle repair shop.

So, before going in to work on Monday morning, Keefer wheeled into the Campus Bike Project with his find and bought a family membership. That gave him instant access to lots of cool stuff, including specialized bicycle repair tools, collections of free spare parts, and space and a bike stand to work at. Beyond that, membership gave him access to expertise, in the person of Carl Stewart, the Campus Bike Project manager.

Over the next few hours, Stewart provided Keefer with advice and an occasional extra hand as he installed new tires, replaced crank bearings, and adjusted the brakes and derailleurs on his daughter’s new bike. Most of these operations were new to him, and the process took longer than expected (a partial day’s leave, it turned out), but in the end the red bike was fully restored. [Photo: Keefer at work (right) with Stewart lending a hand.]

I was visiting at the shop while Keefer was working, and during that time other people dropped by with various projects of their own. Among them were two sisters from the Chicago suburbs. The older one, a U of I Junior, needed to replace a leaking inner tube, which she did herself with a little coaching. The younger, a freshman, needed to buy a bike to get around campus, and she picked up a hybrid that had been refurbished by Bike Project staff for only $75. A worker with campus building services, who bikes recreationally, came in for advice on how to switch cleats from an old pair of cycling shoes to a new pair, and a student who was riding by on her way to class took time to put air in her tires and align her front wheel.

It should be understood that the Campus Bike Project is not intended to compete with full service bicycle stores, such as Durst and Champaign Cycle, which play such an important role in our community. It is, rather, to facilitate the reuse of bikes and bike parts, and to provide tools, guidance, and a convenient space and for people who wish to do some maintenance and repairs on their own.

You can learn more about the Campus Bike Project on the Web at http://thebikeproject.org/campus.html.

Annual cicadas enliven dog days with love song

2010-08-12T15:54:00.005-05:00

Annual cicadas enliven dog days with love song

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Even if the heat and humidity of recent weeks have limited your time outdoors, I bet you’ve been hearing a familiar insect song. It’s the mating call of dog day cicadas, loud enough to rise above the drone of air conditioners and so persistent and widespread that people who hear can hardly miss it.

I say, “dog day cicada” I mean the insect (pictured right) that goes by the two-part scientific name, “Tibicen canicularis,” which is the most common species of forest dwelling cicada that occurs in the eastern U.S. and Canada, one that has also adapted well to life in urban and suburban settings where enough trees grow to support it. These cicadas have bulky, bodies about an inch and a half long that are dark on top with green and white markings, and entirely white below. At rest their clear, heavily veined wings close over the back like a pitched roof and add another half inch to their length.

Some people call these and other cicadas locusts, a name that was first applied to them by settlers of European extraction for whom the emergence of large broods called to mind the plagues of the Bible. But the name locust is more properly applied to certain grasshoppers. Other people know cicadas by the name “harvestfly,” which derives from the fact that they emerge as adults at the same time crops are maturing.

The singing of dog day cicadas is one of the loudest insect noises on earth, sometimes exceeding 110 decibels up close. This means the song of a cicada perched your shoulder would be plenty loud to damage your hearing. The song is often compared to the whirring of a circular saw, although I think that comparison ought to be reversed, since cicadas have been around far longer than power tools. The earliest fossil record of a cicada dates back 65 million years.

The fact that dog day cicadas are also called annual cicadas sometimes generates confusion about their life cycle, but do they live for more than a year. They start out as tiny nymphs, which hatch from eggs laid in tree branches. These nymphs drop to the ground and burrow down to find a root they can latch onto for nourishment, and there they remain, probably for something like two to five years. (Scientists aren’t sure exactly how long, and the span probably varies according to conditions affecting the cicada’s development.) Some annual cicadas emerge as adults each year because their generations are staggered, which sets them apart from periodical cicadas, generations of which mature in synch, on 13- and 17-year cycles.

It is a common misperception that adult cicadas do not feed, but the fact is they have all the mouthparts needed to extract liquid from plants, and they’re not afraid to use them. Dog day cicadas do no damage to trees as they feed, and no measures to control them are warranted.

The only warm-blooded predators that pose a significant threat to cicadas are birds, but there’s another insect that specializes in them, the cicada killer wasp. A female cicada killer stings a cicada to paralyze it, then carries it back to her burrow still alive. There she seals the unlucky creature in a chamber with one of her eggs, to become nourishment for the grub that hatches.

But that’s not where I want to leave you. Let’s get back to cicadas singing their love song in trees, and appreciate how that enriches our summer.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant promotes proper disposal of unwanted medicine to benefit wildlife, people

2010-08-05T16:45:00.003-05:00

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant promotes proper disposal of unwanted medicine to benefit wildlife, people

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In a recent column I noted that for all the good they do, sewage treatment facilities are not designed to remove human medications from wastewater, but that the presence of medications in lakes and streams is a growing cause for concern.

To follow up on that, I checked in recently with Susan Boehme, a scientist who has been working on this issue in cooperation with many colleagues at the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Program, which is headquartered on the U of I campus in Urbana.

Boehme pointed out that the use of pharmaceuticals has grown remarkably in recent years. In 2009, for example, Americans spent more than $300 billion on prescriptions, which represents a 5.1 percent increase from the year before. Boehme also cited a United Nations study that projects a 3-fold increase in prescription use worldwide over the next 25 years.

As many people are already aware, pharmaceuticals are now found regularly in waterways. A widely-cited 2002 study by the U.S. Geological Survey found 95 different pharmaceutical chemicals in streams that were tested, and 80 percent of those streams contained one-third or more of the chemicals in question. Further studies have begun to show the impacts of those chemicals on aquatic creatures, including such disturbing things as the widespread development of female sex characteristics in male fish.

It’s not just wildlife that’s exposed to medications in streams and lakes, either. Studies commissioned by the Associated Press in 2008 found a variety of pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, mood stabilizers, and hormones in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

Pharmaceuticals enter the environment by a variety of paths. Some chemicals are released at the plants where drugs are manufactured, and others through the waste we excrete after taking them. Still more are released into the environment when people dispose of unwanted medications improperly, especially by flushing them down the toilet. (I know, I know that really was what you were supposed to do, but it’s not anymore.)

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant educators have been working around the state to promote the proper disposal of medications by informing people about this problem and giving them the tools to address it. They have done so by providing high school teachers, 4-H leaders and others, with a compilation of multidisciplinary, standards-based classroom lessons, sample stewardship activities, and background information. Young people who have taken to heart the message of these lessons have been instrumental in establishing programs that allow individuals to dispose of unwanted medications properly—everything form one-day collection events to permanent collection sites at pharmacies and police stations.

The most important thing people can do individually to help reduce the amount of pharmaceuticals in the environment is to dispose of unwanted medications properly. This means not flushing them down the toilet, and not putting them into the trash, but instead getting them to a designated collection center. In east central Illinois Carle Rx Express currently provides drop boxes for this purpose at locations in Champaign, Urbana and Danville (information at http://www.carlerxexpress.com/Disposal.aspx)

Individuals and communities not served by these locations might be interested in a toolkit developed by Sea Grant that provides guidance for establishing unwanted medicine collection programs at http://www.iisgcp.org/education/gros_educ.html.

Getting the scoop on Illinois mussels

2010-07-29T16:45:00.004-05:00

Getting the scoop on Illinois mussels

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

The freshwater mussels that inhabit the streams of Illinois spend most of their lives buried in the substrate, exposing only the parts they use to take in and expel a steady flow of water, from which they filter their food. This mode of living poses certain challenges for the scientists whose work it is to monitor mussel populations. As Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) field biologist Alison Price explained to me, it is sometimes possible to sample for mussels visually, but only in waters that are shallow and clear enough to afford a good view of the streambed—a rare case in the Prairie State. More often, she and her colleagues sample for mussels by “grubbing.” “It is what it sounds like,” she quipped. “You reach down and rake your fingers through the sand and gravel until you feel a shell.” [Photo: Price grubbing for mussels in the Mackinaw.]

Recently, I spent some time in the field with Price and her colleagues, to learn about their work and even do a little grubbing myself.

Our day began at a site on the Mackinaw River northeast of Bloomington, with a “maximum effort survey,” which was performed in part to collect data for a UI graduate student who is studying the efficiency of current sampling methods. In conducting this survey, members of a crew that included biologists and technicians from both the Natural History Survey and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources collected all of the mussels they could find from a predetermined stretch of river in a set amount of time. Then, without returning any of the mussels previously collected, they covered the same territory again three more times.

What they turned up was amazing to me, although about what they expected. One-hundred-fifty-one live mussels were collected, with representatives from 10 different species, most numerous among them fatmuckets, plain pocketbooks and round pigtoes (and which, I admit, I list here just because I find the colorful common names of mussels enjoyable). After these were all sorted and measured they were returned to the river, where, presumably, they hunkered right back into the substrate and resumed filtering the water for food.

By analyzing data collected through this and other “maximum effort” surveys, the UI student is seeking to answer the question of whether current sampling protocols provide information that is reliable enough to accurately assess populations of rare mussel species. The question arises since rare species are more likely to be missed altogether or underrepresented using current techniques.[Photo: UI graduate student Jain Huang and INHS field biologist Diane Shasteen sorting mussels collected from the Mackinaw.]

More importantly, data from the Mackinaw River survey I observed will be combined with data gathered by Price and others at approximately 800 sites around the state as part of a three-year project. This project will ultimately provide state agencies with the information needed to manage and protect populations of mussels, which are among the most endangered groups of animals that occur in Illinois.

My day in the field with Price and her crew also included a second stop, to rescue mussels from a drainage ditch beneath a county road bridge that is slated for demolition. This effort was mandated by the known presence there of slippershell mussels, which are listed as threatened in the state. Our inelegant, yet highly effective method of finding mussels for removal there was to form a shoulder-to-shoulder line across the stream and crawl through the target area, grubbing as we went.

From this small stretch of unpromising looking stream, we retrieved 359 live mussels, including 11 slippershells. All of these were moved to reaches of the stream that would not be affected by the bridge work.

Illinois has already lost 20 of the 80 species of mussels that once occurred here, and our streams have become poorer as a result. Wouldn’t it be a great accomplishment if we could use the knowledge generated by today’s scientists to prevent further declines?

To learn more about mussels on the Web, you might want to start with the following:

Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society
http://molluskconservation.org/

Illinois Natural History Survey Mussels:
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/animals_plants/mollusk/

Effective wastewater treatment benefits wildlife, human health

2010-07-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

Effective wastewater treatment benefits wildlife, human health

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In recent years my morning run has often included a pause to observe the wildlife of the Copper Slough, where it runs under Rising Road in southwest Champaign. Great blue herons and mallards are regulars there, as is a pair of belted kingfishers, which nest in the bank nearby and noisily patrol the stream corridor. In the pool below the bridge live masses of some fish that tolerate fairly degraded waters, especially common carp and suckers. But there are fish with higher standards there, too, among them some decent sized largemouth bass, as well as an occasional snapping turtle.

What makes the variety of life at this site remarkable is that less than a hundred feet upstream from my vantage point, the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District’s southwest treatment plant, which serves roughly 40,000 people, discharges some 6 million gallons per day of treated wastewater into the stream. [Photo: Discharge from the UCSD plant entering the Copper Slough from the left, just upstream from where Rising Road crosses the stream.]

I recently had the opportunity see for myself what happens to wastewater at the plant that renders the effluent capable of supporting life, thanks to a tour with Mike Guthrie. In his current life, Guthrie is an East Central Illinois Master Naturalist, but before his retirement in 2006 he had been supervisor of operations for the Sanitary District.

Guthrie emphasized that contrary to whate many people expect, most of the processes that take place at the plant do not rely on chemicals. Rather, they replicate processes that occur in nature, only they are managed to occur very efficiently.

In the first stage of wastewater treatment re the sewage that comes into the plant is screened to remove paper. This process takes place inside a building, the only place on the tour where we really had to hold our noses. The material removed in this process is the only byproduct of the plant that goes to a landfill, and the quantity of that is surprisingly small, on the order of one dumpster a week.

In the next stage of treatment, wastewater is channeled through a series of open-air basins where bacteria and other microorganisms are introduced to remove phosphorous and other pollutants. [Photo: Secondary treatment basins, left, and clarifiers, right, seen from the top of the nitrification tower.]

From this secondary treatment, water flows into clarifying tanks where the microorganisms introduced before settle out, to be cycled back into the previous process. From this point the water is pumped to the top of nitrification towers, the tallest structures at the plant. Here it is sprayed over stacked layers of honeycomb-like plastic that fill the inside of the tower. As it runs down through them, another group of microorganisms converts toxic ammonia into nontoxic nitrates.

After passing through a filter that removes any solids that might have been introduced in the nitrification process, the water from the Southwest Plant is released into the Copper Slough.

We have effective federal law—the Clean Water Act—to thank for the current high standard of wastewater treatment in the United States. And when I spoke with Glynnis Collins, executive director of Champaign-based Prairie Rivers Network, which seeks to ensure the consistent application of that law in Illinois, she shared my enthusiasm about how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.

But Collins also noted there is still work to be done. She pointed out, for example, that the Illinois EPA, which administers permits for discharge into streams, sometimes exempts wastewater plants from the final step of disinfection, making them unsuitable for human contact for some distance downstream. In addition, she explained, we’re still just beginning to understand how pollutants that are not treated by current systems, especially some of the human medications that are showing up in water all over the world, impact people and wildlife.

Volunteers key in effort to restore endangered Illinois orchid

2010-07-08T16:45:00.002-05:00

Volunteers key in effort to restore endangered Illinois orchid

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Among the more than 130 species of native plants that make up the flora of the Loda Cemetery Prairie Nature Preserve in Iroquois County, the eastern prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera leucophaea) can be difficult to pick out, and the beauty of its flowers is best appreciated up close. They’re only about an inch long, and they grow in a cluster on a single, upright stem. Each has a lower lip divided into three parts, which branch toward the tip like tiny antlers. From any distance, the prairie fringed orchid tends to be obscured from view by its taller neighbors.

What sets the prairie fringed orchid apart is its rarity. Prior to European settlement, it was widespread across the upper Midwest, with the largest and most extensive populations occurring in Illinois, where it was found in 33 counties. Loss of habitat due to agriculture and urban development has eliminated it from all but nine counties, and only three of those are outside the Chicago metropolitan area.

The fringed prairie orchid is currently listed as “threatened” federally and “endangered” in the state.

Because it is listed, the prairie fringed orchid is the subject of a recovery plan developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This plan, which was crafted and approved in the 1990s, involves a great deal of cooperation among scientists, landowners, and conservation organizations, and it relies heavily on the efforts of citizen-scientist volunteers.

At Loda Prairie Nature Preserve, which is owned and protected by the conservation group, Grand Prairie Friends, the role of citizen-scientist is filled by Jackie Roy, who came to it as an active participant in the East Central Illinois Master Naturalist program. Before spring of 2008, she had never heard of the prairie fringed orchid, but she answered the call for a volunteer monitor because lives just down the road in Paxton.

As a fringed prairie orchid monitor, Roy visits her site three or four times in June and early July, when the orchids are typically blooming. [Photos: above, close-up of eastern prairie fringed orchid flowers; left, Jackie Roy making notes on her observations at Loda in June.] While there, she locates as many orchids as she can, beginning where plants have been found in previous years. When she finds one, she marks its location, measures its height, counts its leaves and blossoms, and makes notes about its general condition--whether, for example, it has been browsed by deer, etc.

If Roy finds more than one prairie orchid in bloom at the same time, she takes the further step of transferring pollen between the flowers on one plant and another. Prairie orchid flowers that are cross pollinated produce more viable seed than those that are not, and among small populations, the odds of cross pollination occurring without human intervention are fairly slim. That’s because fringed prairie orchids are pollinated by only a few species of night flying hawkmoths, which simply may or may not find them at the right time.

Is there any reason to think the eastern prairie fringed orchid will come off the lists of threatened and endangered species in the years to come? That’s a question I put to Cathy Pollack, who is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and coordinator of the recovery effort. She expressed hope that it would. “We’ve got a great team of researchers, scientists and partners helping us,” she said, “and right now that’s about all I can ask for.”

“Net-zero energy” home nearing completion in Urbana

2010-06-24T16:45:00.002-05:00

“Net-zero energy” home nearing completion in Urbana

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Last September, on the Fall equinox, Debra and Ty Newell began construction of a new home in northeast Urbana. Barring any unforeseen hang-ups, they will move into it this July. In some ways, the house is like other 1-story homes in Beringer Commons, where it is located. It features about one-fourth an acre of usable yard, approximately 2,100 square feet of living space and a two-car attached garage. The Newell’s home differs from others nearby in that it will generate as much energy as it uses in a year, making it a net-zero energy house.

How is that possible? There’s nothing futuristic about it.

The Equinox house will achieve net-zero in part by using far less energy than even a well-built conventional home—about one-fifth as much.

The walls and roof of the Equinox House are constructed with twelve-inch thick structural insulated panels, which are four to five times more effective at preventing thermal transfer than the walls of a typical house. Great care has also been taken to minimize any leakage of air through envelope of the house

The Equinox House uses high performance, triple-pane windows, which also help to prevent thermal transfer. Beyond that, the windows are oriented to allow direct sunlight into living space for the heat it provides during the cooler half of the year—beginning on the Fall equinox—and to exclude direct sunlight during the warmer half of the year—beginning on the Spring equinox—when it would increase the load on the cooling system.

The demands of the Equinox House for heating, cooling, ventilation, and humidity control will all be met by a single, heat-pump based system, developed by Ty Newell and his son Ben through their company, Newell Instruments. Aside from the fact that it maintains a comfortable temperature and level of humidity in the house, this system also delivers a constant flow of fresh air from the outside, and it does that without the loss of conditioned air that occurs in a drafty house.

Of course the Equinox House will be fitted out in other ways that emphasize conservation, including LED lighting, low-flow plumbing fixtures, etc. It even features a system for collecting rainwater that is designed to meet 80 percent of the annual water needs for a family of four.

Although the Equinox House is designed from top to bottom to conserve energy, it will still require electricity to operate. So to be “net-zero energy,” it will produce some, by means of a ground-mounted array of solar panels. The solar array has been in service since February of this year and already produced enough electricity to offset all of the power used in construction of the house.

In addition to providing the energy required to run the Equinox House, the Newell’s solar array will also generate enough electricity to power an electric car (c’mon Chevy Volt, go Nissan Leaf!) for something like six to nine thousand miles worth of driving every year.

Does the idea of a net-zero energy home intrigue you? The Newells hope so. That’s partly why they chose to build where they did—so people could see their house in the context of a conventional development, and understand building it as a natural step for conservation-minded baby boomers preparing for retirement.

You can learn more about the Newell's home at the Equinox House Construction Blog at
http://newellinstruments.com/equinoxblog.html

A quest for wild animals close to home

2010-06-22T13:04:00.007-05:00

A quest for wild animals close to home

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

This past week the Boy Scout at my house was busy finishing up a few last requirements to earn the rank of Second Class before heading off to Camp Drake with his troop. It took only a little creativity for me to figure out how I could help him, and at the same time accomplish some of my own work.

Rank Requirement #5 for Second Class Scout reads as follows:

Identify or show evidence of at least ten kinds of wild animals (birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, mollusks) found in your community.

Together, the scout and I decide he could fulfill this requirement by an outing in our own neighborhood in southwest Champaign, with bikes for transportation. We wear river sandals on the chance we might need to wade, and carry just a few tools for making and recording observations: binoculars, a camera, a pencil and a 3 X 5 notebook.

We ride first to a nearby retention pond, where we had come across the remains of a crayfish (1) on the sidewalk the evening before. They are still there: a claw, the hard exoskeleton of the head and thorax, and a bit of tail. Identifying crayfish to species can be quite complex, and requires body parts we didn’t have, so we just leave this one at “crayfish.” [Photos by Will Kanter: Crayfish parts, toad underwater, northern water snake.] Nearby a Canada goose (2) honks, so we count it, too. (As you might imagine, we see much evidence of Canada geese on the sidewalk.)

As we continue riding, we hear the high pitched trill of an American toad (3) and head in its direction. To my ears it sounds a long way off, but the scout suggests we check a nearby fountain. enough, the toad calls again as we approach, and we are able to find it by moving a few rocks around.

Our next and saddest find is the upside down body of a painted turtle (4) that has been killed by a car in the street. Painted turtles are adaptable enough to live in highly developed landscapes, but they have no defense against drivers who are too distracted or too mean to avoid running over them.

The scout wonders if we can count some of the insects we observe—a sulphur butterfly, a lightning bug, and others--toward our total, but I point out they are not “wildlife” according to the common use of the term, or the scout manual. That said, I can’t resist the urge to lecture him about how crucial insects are in most food webs, but I’ll spare you.

At our next stop, a couple of ponds where willows and other vegetation have been allowed to grow up, red-winged blackbirds (5) dominate the scene. They’re disturbed because we’re close to their nests, and keep up a steady racket until we move on.

Just over an embankment, the Copper Slough is running high and muddy from the rains of the night before, so there will be no fish or mollusks observed on this day. But three mallard (6) bachelors loaf on the opposite bank, and a green heron (7) stalking the edge of the stream takes flight as we approach.

On the wire-bound rock used to stabilize the creek bank, we see a northern water snake (8) sunning, our first live reptile. Better still, after a pause we realize we’re seeing two snakes, partly intertwined, both of them 18-24 inches long.
The most exciting moment of our excursion occurs when the scout turns and spots a great blue heron (9) flying behind us. The enthusiasm in his shout tells me our quest has been a success far beyond our tally of species.

Wild animal number ten is an American robin. We have passed many since starting out, but it counts only after the scout makes a note of one as we head home.
If you need extra motivation for a wildlife excursion of your own, you should know that June is “Leave No Child Inside Month,” by proclamation of Governor Pat Quinn. For a list of associated events visit dnr.state.il.us/youthprograms.

Cultivating an appreciation for toads in Illinois

2010-06-10T16:45:00.003-05:00

Cultivating an appreciation for toads in Illinois

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Two species of toads inhabit Illinois, and neither one of them is threatened or endangered. It seems the factors that are contributing to the decline of other amphibians in the state and around the world—habitat loss, fungal infection, chemical contamination, etc.—pose no insurmountable obstacles to the continued health of toad populations here.

So, why give toads a second thought? They are common and approachable. [Pictured is a Fowler's toad I came across on a gravel bar along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River.] For me, encounters with such creatures hold their own pleasures, and they reinforce the natural inclination to value other forms of life, even animals I’ll probably never see for myself.

At a glance, most people would not notice a difference between adult American toads and Fowler’s toads. Both are about two to three inches long, and they are similarly marked. Their skin is a light shade of gray or brown, dotted with darker spots. One way to distinguish between the two toad species found in Illinois is to observe the number of warts per dark spot on the back: the dark spots on American toads contain only one or two large warts, while the dark spots on Fowler’s toads have three or more smaller warts.

Toads have thicker skin than frogs, which enables them to inhabit drier environments. They thrive in forests, prairies, and wetlands, along the margins of lakes and streams, and even at the edges of highways. Toads can live in the midst agricultural fields and in urban settings, too, as long as they have access to bodies of water for reproduction.

Even when it comes to the choice of where to breed, toads are not very discriminating. If the nearby body of water is a pristine vernal pool, toads will get together there. If it’s a ditch or a flooded field, toads will use that as well (although toad offspring will survive only if the water persists for at least the 40 days it takes them to develop from tadpoles into terrestrial creatures). My family once received a gift of toad tadpoles from the water that had collected on top of a friend’s swimming pool cover.

You might well recognize the mating call of American toads even if you don’t realize you have heard it before. It is a sustained, high pitched trill that carries a very long way. Near ponds and other places where they breed, it is the background sound of evening in April and May.

Do I need to say people don’t get warts from handling toads? People don’t get warts from handling toads.

Under extreme stress toads secrete a toxin from the oblong glands behind their eyes, which irritates the mucous membranes of other animals that would eat them. (For this reason it’s a good idea to wash your hands thoroughly after handling a toad.) This defense works well in many cases, as you know if you’ve ever seen the reaction of a dog that picked up a toad in its mouth, but not all. Some snakes are not bothered by the toxins toads release, and other animals, including skunks and raccoons, get around the problem by eating them from the underside.

If you’re interested in a wildlife experience close to home this summer, you might start by looking for toads in nearby window wells, since they have a knack for falling into them. You can then increase the odds of survival for toads you find in window wells by releasing them a little ways off.

Loss of manager a setback for natural areas at Allerton

2010-06-03T16:45:00.003-05:00

Loss of manager a setback for natural areas at Allerton

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

By late May the grass pathway adjacent to the prairie restoration at Allerton Park has usually been mowed a couple of times already, but that’s not the case this year. When I was there last week the vegetation on the path was thigh high in places. Why? Budget cuts. The position of the person who would have mowed the path has been discontinued.

That position, Natural Areas Manager, was held most recently by Drew Becker, a native of Watseka, Illinois, who grew into the job at Allerton as he completed a Master’s degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the UI.

(There’s no need to worry for Becker about the loss of his job. In June he will begin work as a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service at Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui, which represents a step up professionally, and a golden opportunity to experience a different part of the world.)

I was at Allerton with Becker last week to get his perspective of the impact on the park of not having a natural areas manager there anymore.

He pointed out that some routine work, such as mowing trails and clearing them of fallen trees, will likely get done on a delayed basis, or not at all. That will make the natural areas of the park less hospitable to visitors, but probably won’t result in any lasting damage.

Other work, especially long term projects aimed at restoring and protecting the ecological integrity of Allerton’s natural areas, is more likely to be neglected altogether, resulting in losses that will be difficult to make up.

To illustrate this point, Becker took me to a section of woods where intensive efforts over the past five years have drastically reduced populations of invasive plants, especially garlic mustard and bush honeysuckle, and thereby promoted a resurgence of native woodland flowers-- spring beauty, Dutchman’s breeches and Jack-in-the-pulpit among them.

The current, desirable state of affairs in this section of woods could be maintained with a minimal amount of effort in the years to come, provided that effort is consistent, since invasive plants are easier to manage before they become established. Without that effort—if it is nobody’s job anymore—invasive plants will come to dominate again in just a couple of years—far less time than it took to get them in check in the first place.

In a similar vein, Becker pointed out that without a natural areas manager at Allerton it will not be possible to maintain the special character of the deer management and research program that has been developed there over the past six years. That program has greatly benefited the natural vegetation and ornamental plantings at the park, both of which were being destroyed by unsustainably high numbers of deer in the years prior to its implementation. In addition, the deer program has provided important research opportunities for UI scientists, and allowed park management to cultivate a skilled and motivated cadre of volunteers, since each person who hunts at the park has also been required to contribute time toward its upkeep.

I should emphasize that I do not mean to suggest that somehow some way someone should have managed to keep Drew Becker on the job at Allerton. If the money’s not there, it’s not there. But I do mean to call attention to the real losses we, the public, will experience there as the jobs of a natural areas manager are left undone.

“River Discovery Day” to put people in touch with aquatic life

2010-05-13T16:45:00.002-05:00

“River Discovery Day” to put people in touch with aquatic life

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

A male rainbow darter is a jewel of a fish, especially during the spawning season, when he is at his most colorful. On top he sports a row of small, dark saddles. On the sides he is marked by alternating bars of vibrant blue and orange, which are also the colors of his fins. Below he may be yellow, green or red, and there’s another splash of bright orange around his gills. This handsome creature is one of 27 species of darters that occur in Illinois, and it’s not uncommon in suitable habitat. [Photo by Lance Merry.]

But I bet you’ve never seen one, even if you fish the waters where they live.

Rainbow darters occupy the zone right along the bottom of the stream, and they grow to a maximum length of only about three inches. Like many of the other highly varied organisms that inhabit Illinois waterways, they go unappreciated because they are not easy to observe.

Of course, I mention this as a way of introducing an opportunity. This Saturday, the Illinois Natural History Survey and Prairie Rivers Network will co-host a river discovery program on the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River at Kickapoo State Park near Danville. The purpose of the program is to put people directly in touch with the life of the river, enabling them to better understand what makes it so special.

Headquarters for River Discovery Day will be the Natural History Survey’s Traveling Science Center. With support from Prairie Rivers Network, this facility has recently been outfitted with new displays and hands-on educational materials dedicated to the biodiversity of rivers.

Weather permitting, much of the activity of River Discovery Day will take place outdoors, and focus on the creatures that inhabit the Middle Fork.

One group of scientists from the Natural History Survey will use seines to catch darters, minnows and other small fish, which will be held in tanks for people to see, and then released. Other scientists will set up a temporary display of turtles from the river. This will likely include painted turtles and red-eared sliders, with the possibility of map turtles, softshell turtles and snapping turtles, too. A display of mussels will give people a chance to observe firsthand the characteristics that give rise to the quirky common names of these creatures: pocketbook, pistolgrip, pigtoe, and wartyback.

Having led you on with a sexy description of the rainbow darter and the promise of seeing an assortment of turtles and mussels up close, I have to admit that there will also be a lot of attention paid to insects at River Discovery Day.

But that’s not a bad thing.

Insects play a key role in the life of streams, and they possess their own set of attractions for people who come to understand them. Toward that end, stream biologist Edward DeWalt of the Natural History Survey will conduct two hands-on workshops to promote understanding of aquatic insects as part of River Discovery Day.

River Discovery Day is scheduled to run from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., and will be based at the parking area adjacent to the bridge over the Middle Fork near Kickapoo Landing. To register for an aquatic insect workshop (at 11:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m.) please email Jen Mui at jmui@inhs.illinois.edu. For more information call (224) 234-0199.

The 'why' and 'how' of gardening with native plants

2010-05-07T08:15:00.002-05:00

The 'why' and 'how' of gardening with native plants

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

As the green of spring replaces the gray and brown of winter in the Illinois landscape I imagine that even people who don’t consider themselves gardeners feel the itch to plant something. For me the impulse is to transform a little bit more lawn into garden, using plants that are native to east central Illinois.

Why garden with native plants?

Aesthetics are part of it. I anticipate with great pleasure the colors of prairie flowers in summer—the bright yellow of black-eyed susan, the subdued lavender of our native bee balm, the vibrant orange of butterfly milkweed, the plant that also guarantees I’ll have monarch butterflies in my yard. Interspersed with these, I see in my mind’s eye the slender, flowing leaves of my favorite native grass, prairie dropseed, as well as sturdier stands of little bluestem.

I’m also prompted to landscape with native plants by the value I place on conservation. I know that my new prairie garden will require the use of no pesticides or fertilizer, and that once it is established, I won’t even have to water it. Nor will I have to spend time mowing it.

Of course, I could achieve these goals of conservation by using perennial plants that originate elsewhere in the world. But it is only by landscaping with plants native to our region that I can accomplish an even more important purpose, which is to help sustain populations of native insects. [Photos: an adult pearl crescent butterfly and a monarch butterfly caterpillar both spent time on my butterfly milkweed last summer.]

“Insects,” you say, “why would anyone want to help insects—aren’t they the enemy?”

Well, yes and no.

The ones that eat your garden vegetables don’t make for very good neighbors. But other insects, the ones that are adapted to feeding on native plants and trees (which are, in turn, adapted to tolerate them) are worth our attention for their own sake, and they are the key to sustaining diverse populations of birds and other wildlife.

Indeed, remaking urban and suburban landscapes with native plants is crucial if we are to slow the continuing wave of animal extinctions that began with the arrival of Europeans in North America.

In basic terms, the land we set aside from development is not itself sufficient to maintain a healthy level of biodiversity. We can compensate for that to a degree, however, by increasing the value of urban and suburban landscapes for wildlife. That starts with native plants, which are the food for native insects, which are, ultimately, the food for so many other creatures up the food chain.

If you’re interested in learning more about the ecological importance of landscaping with native plants, let me recommend the book “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants” by Douglas W. Tallamy, who is an entomologist at the University of Delaware.

If you’re ready to start landscaping with native plants, let me recommend two local resources. The first is a book published by University of Illinois Extension, called “Native Plants in the Home Landscape for the Upper Midwest.” This book describes a wide variety of native wildflowers, grasses, trees, and shrubs that work well in home landscapes, and it provides specific plans for installing them in gardens that look great, too.

The second local resource you should be aware of is a conservation group, Grand Prairie Friends. Each Spring they grow and sell native plants to raise funds for efforts to conserve land and promote biodiversity in our area. This year’s Grand Prairie Friends Native Prairie Plant sale will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 8th, at Lincoln Square Village in Urbana.

There you can get advice from members of the group about how and what to plant, and you can buy a wide variety of native plants at very reasonable prices.

Westville Schools a model of Integrated Pest Management

2010-04-29T16:45:00.003-05:00

Westville Schools a model of Integrated Pest Management

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

As director of operations at Westville Community Schools, Seth Miller bears a wide range of responsibilities, among them, pest control. For years, this meant maintaining a contract with a commercial pest control company, which would come in on a routine basis to spray, while the custodial staff worked to control rodents.

Like others around the state in his position, Miller was aware that Westville was required to implement a new approach called “Integrated Pest Management,” or IPM, but as of last April, he was just beginning to figure out how to do it.

That’s when he met Susan Ratcliffe, director of the North Central Integrated Pest Management Center. At a school IPM training meeting Miller attended, Ratcliffe announced she was looking for a school district to serve as a model for verifiable IPM in Illinois—and that she had substantial resources to help implement it. Miller leapt at the opportunity.

What Ratcliffe was offering was the collaborative help of University of Illinois Extension, the Illinois Department of Public health, and other national experts in school IPM, a package worth $25,000.

According to Ratcliffe, there are compelling reasons for retiring the current routine of spraying for insects that occurs in most schools in favor of IPM, chief among them the links between pesticide exposure, asthma and increased absences. She also points out that there’s much we don’t know the long-term health effects of exposure to pesticides in schools.

The goal of IPM is not to eliminate the use of pesticides entirely, but to greatly reduce their use by making human environments less conducive to pests in the first place. This includes eliminating access to food, removing habitat and closing off travel corridors.

Some of the greatest challenges the IPM team identified in Westville’s schools were where you might expect them, in the cafeterias, the teacher’s lounges and in classrooms where food is stored and prepared. [Photo: Susan Ratcliffe and Seth Miller check the sticky trap at an IPM monitoring station in the cafeteria kitchen at Westville high school.] Teachers, other staff and students have all helped to resolve these challenges by changing their practices, moving all food into plastic containers with tight-fitting lids, and not leaving dishes with food residue to sit on counters or in sinks.

Teachers were also important agents in the project of eliminating habitat. They removed clutter and items attractive to pests from classrooms and they exchanged cardboard boxes for plastic tubs to store materials they wanted to keep.

Members of the custodial staff at Westville schools, led by Tyrone Atwood, have been especially enthusiastic and effective in helping to implement IPM. They are the ones who maintain the high level a sanitation that is key to successful pest management and they work with the IPM team to seal out pests and eliminate pest conducive conditions.

The effectiveness of the steps implemented to control pests through the IPM program is gauged at monitoring stations throughout the schools. At each of these there is a sticky trap on the floor to catch pests, and a notebook for recording what’s found there. When something is caught, the team makes a management decision based on pest type and its location within the schools.

The institution of the IPM program at Westville schools has not caused Seth Miller to sever ties with the commercial pest control technician who had done the spraying there in the past, but it has changed what the district asks of him. He is now called in to help diagnose and treat specific problems rather than to spray as a routine, and pesticide applications have been reduced by 87 percent.

When I asked Miller to comment on why he had adopted IPM with such enthusiasm he replied, “Number one, it’s the law. But beyond that, it’s the health of your kids, and the health of your community.”

For more information about school IPM and training contact Susan Ratcliffe at 217-333-9656.

U of I student efforts reach far beyond Earth Day

2010-04-22T16:45:00.001-05:00

U of I student efforts reach far beyond Earth Day

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

As we celebrate the 40th Earth Day, let me call your attention to one of the most effective ways University of Illinois students are working to promote the health of the planet. That is by assessing themselves fees to invest in initiatives that make campus more sustainable.

This spring, they approved by a three to one margin an increase that will bring the total amount of fees supporting sustainability to $14 per semester, so that they now will have roughly a million dollars a year to fund projects.

I spoke recently with Suhail Barot, who is chair of the Student Sustainability Committee, which allocates these funds, to get the story on how they are used.

Barot emphasized that even with the recently approved increase, the funds generated by student fees are nowhere near sufficient to cover the costs of routine conservation efforts for an entity as large as the university. As he put it, “[Students] can have the greatest impact when they fund pioneering projects, not things the institution should be doing anyway.”

He cited as an example the $450,000 loan students made to help upgrade lighting in the lobby at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, a project that was completed this past winter. Without the use of student funds, that upgrade would have been limited to replacement of incandescent lights with fluorescents. With the student money, the project was able to use state-of-the-art LED lighting. LED lights costs more up front, but they pay back more in energy savings over time. In the years to come, that money will be used first to repay the SSC loan, and then accrue to the university. On top of this, support from student fees enabled the Krannert Center lighting project to secure a grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, substantially reducing the cost of the project for the university.

In addition to loans for extraordinary energy conservation projects, student sustainability funds have been allocated as grants for a variety of other efforts. Among them are the Sustainable Student Farm, the “green” renovation of an underutilized older building used by the Department of Dance and the School of Architecture, the prairie plantings at the School of Veterinary Medicine and the newly established Campus Bike Project. [Photo: Suhail Barot working with other student volunteers to erect greenhouse-like structures at the U of I Sustainable Student Farm last fall.]

Barot was especially enthusiastic to report there is renewed hope student clean energy funds will soon be used to accomplish the purpose for which they were originally established in 2003, and for which students have continued to fight--to bring wind energy to the UI campus. (You may remember that this effort was put on hold when the university was unable to meet its commitment to the project in the face of mounting budget concerns in late 2008.) The current plan would use a combination of funds from student sustainability fees, the university and the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation to erect a one megawatt turbine, which would supply roughly 1 percent of electricity used on campus.

In these times, wouldn’t that be a breath of fresh air?

Catching up with the rarest bird in Illinois

2010-04-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

Catching up with the rarest bird in Illinois

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

A week ago Saturday, just before dawn, I was ensconced in a plywood-sided blind with my friend Greg Lambeth at the Prairie Ridge State Natural Area, southeast of Effingham. Over the rat-a-tat noise of rain on the tin roof, and through the fog of a nap, I was awakened by a clipped whisper, “They’re here!”

“They” were greater prairie chickens, and despite the rain and gusting wind they had begun to congregate on the communal breeding ground, or “lek,” our blind looked onto.

Greater prairie chickens, which belong to the grouse family, are not striking to look at under most circumstances. They’re about the size shape of a small barnyard chicken, marked by beige and brown barring. But on mornings in March and April when males congregate on the lek, they strut their stuff in a show that fully justifies the effort required to observe it.

After pausing to survey the field a prairie chicken bows, and stretches his neck forward, creating a horizontal line from tail to head. Suddenly, his tail flips up into a fan and on either side of his throat out flashes a round expanse of featherless skin the size and color of a navel orange. The inflation of these air sacs produces a low, otherworldly call, known as booming, that may be heard a mile or more away. Raising long feathers on the back of his neck into a headdress, he completes the performance by dancing, a hyper-fast stutter step that may propel him in partial circles.

Male prairie chickens on the lek also vie for choice territories in brief, but surprisingly violent battles. It’s like watching a ballet where occasionally one dancer crosses the stage to butt heads with another, or even attack him with a flying kick.

Prior to European settlement, prairie chickens thrived in the grasslands of Illinois, and their numbers even increased during the middle years of the nineteenth century, thanks to the introduction of high-energy grain fields into their favored habitats. The hunting of prairie chickens for sale as food and the intensification of agriculture in the years following the Civil War brought on a long decline that would have ended with their extirpation from the state were it not for creation of refuges at Prairie Ridge in the 1960s.

And habitat preservation alone was not enough to save them. The population of prairie chickens surviving in Illinois was so small and so isolated from remaining populations in other states that by the late 1980s it had lost the genetic diversity needed for successful reproduction. What scientists call a “population bottleneck” had been reached.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources resolved this problem during the 1990s by translocating prairie chickens to Prairie Ridge from healthier populations in Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska.

The prairie chickens my friend and I observed are part of a population that has remained relatively stable over the past decade. According to Scott Simpson, long-time manager at Prairie Ridge, the total number of prairie chickens there currently includes about 180 birds.

You can link to video of prairie chickens booming here.

Better still, you can see them for yourself, either from the roadside or from your own spot in a blind at the Prairie Ridge State Natural Area.

Boneyard Creek Community Day, Clean Water Restoration Act both promote healthy streams

2010-04-08T16:45:00.004-05:00

Boneyard Creek Community Day, Clean Water Restoration Act both promote healthy streams

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

This Saturday, April 10, you are invited to join hundreds of other people from Champaign-Urbana and surrounding communities to participate in the annual Boneyard Creek Community Day.

This event, which boasts a list of sponsors and organizers as long as your arm, encourages people to appreciate local streams with a clean-up, storm drain marking and a variety of stream naturalization efforts. On top of that, it includes a free lunch and t-shirt for people who volunteer. Boneyard Creek Community Day will be headquartered at Scott Park in Champaign, but will also include activities at two satellite locations, Parkland College in Champaign, and the Anita Purves Nature Center in Urbana.

According to Eliana Brown, stormwater coordinator with UI Facilities & Services, Boneyard Creek Community Day provides a unique, hands-on opportunity for people to learn how their everyday behavior affects local waterways. [Photo: Participants from the 2009 BCCD celebrate what they accomplished.] As she puts it, “When people realize that litter from Campustown sidewalks winds up in the creek, they begin to understand just how thoroughly our lives are connected with streams.”

If the spirit and energy people put into events such as the Boneyard Creek Community Day were sufficient to keep the waters of the United States healthy, I think Americans would enjoy the cleanest streams, lakes and coastal waters in the world. But they’re not.

Most of the waters of the United States are much cleaner today than they were three or four decades ago. But that change for the better owes more to our adoption of effective federal environmental law—the Clean Water Act of 1972—than our willingness to participate in clean-ups.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of the Clean Water Act has been curtailed in recent years. Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and subsequent administrative activities by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have served to exclude certain wetlands and smaller streams from the protections of the law. The signal to polluters has been that it may again be profitable to treat certain water bodies as sewers.

In a March 1, 2010 story for the New York Times Charles Duhigg and Janet Roberts write, “Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.”

Measured in terms of miles, more than half of Illinois’ streams are small enough to be at risk of losing Clean Water Act protections. Also vulnerable are some 150,000 acres of Illinois wetlands, which could now be considered “isolated” and thereby outside of Clean Water Act safeguards.

Legislation titled the “Clean Water Restoration Act,” which would remedy this situation, has been kicking around in Congress for more than two years now, but it has yet to gain much traction. For that to happen, those of us who value waterways enough to pick up litter must also make time to pick up the phone and let legislators know where we stand.

You can sign up to volunteer at the Boneyard Creek Community Day at http://www.boneyardcreek.org/. You can learn more about the Clean Water Restoration Act through the National Wildlife Federation at http://online.nwf.org/site/PageNavigator/Campaign%20Sites/CWRA_MainPage.

Tambora Project reconstructs past climate cataclysm with eye toward future

2010-03-25T16:45:00.003-05:00

Tambora Project reconstructs past climate cataclysm with eye toward future

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In 1815 Earth experienced an event worthy of today’s most extreme disaster movies, the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia. The April eruption turned the whole mountain into what one observer characterized as a “flowing mass of liquid fire.” Ten thousand people were killed directly by the eruption, and another 90,000 people in the region died from starvation or ingesting water poisoned by volcanic material.

The consequences of the enormous eruption were felt around the world, too, because it released into the atmosphere a weather-altering cloud of sulfate gas the size of Texas and Illinois combined. In India the monsoons were disrupted, creating conditions that gave rise to a new, epidemic form of cholera that would eventually cross the globe, killing millions. Crop failure and famine crippled regions from China to Western Europe, Canada and New England, Food riots sprung up, environmental refugees swarmed across borders, while governments everywhere feared popular rebellion in what became known as “The Year Without a Summer.”

Perhaps Hollywood has been slow to pick up on this story because the true extent of the worldwide climate disruption involved has come to light only in recent years, as scientists have gathered information through the study of glacial ice cores and tree rings. A group of faculty members at the U of I has picked it up, though, with an eye toward what it might mean for people living today. According to professor of English Gillen Wood and collaborators from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, the Tambora eruption provides an historical case study for the human impacts of rapid climate change. They are collaborating on the Tambora Project, which reconstructs the social, environmental and economic impacts of the eruption on a global scale.

One of the principal components of the Tambora Project is a sophisticated computer model simulation now being developed by Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Don Wuebbles and his students. The model will fill gaps in the historical record of the global climatological impacts of Tambora, and be used to create detailed time-lapse visualizations that enable us to see the dramatic effects of the eruption, including the dispersal of weather-altering aerosols, and changes in temperature and precipitation.

Another component of the Tambora Project is a risk estimate of the economic devastation that would result from a climate change event equivalent to the Tambora eruption today.

The Tambora team also plans a video documentary that will retrace Tambora’s volcanic cloud through the regions most impacted: Indonesia, China, Western Europe and New England. The goal of the documentary is both to reconstruct the global climate shock of 1815-1818, and to understand how governments in these regions are prepared, or not, for the climate crises of the 21st century.

Gillen Wood’s book, The Tambora Revolution: How Climate Change Changed the World, 1815-18, written for the general reader, will reconstruct the immediate impacts of the Tambora eruption from a global perspective and at the same time tell the story of the Tambora Project itself.

On Thursday, April 1st, Wood will give the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture, “Climate Denial and the Philosopher King of Java.” In his lecture, Wood will introduce the Tambora Project, as well as make the case for humanists to become more engaged with the climate change issue. The Humanities Lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m. and take place in the Knight Auditorium at the Spurlock Museum, 600 South Gregory Street, Urbana.

RSVP through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at
http://www.las.illinois.edu/news/2010/java/

Environmental lobbying in Springfield with Faith in Place

2010-03-18T16:45:00.001-05:00

Environmental lobbying in Springfield with Faith in Place

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

Things were hopping at the state capitol in Springfield last Wednesday morning as the legislature anticipated the Governor’s budget address. But I was in town on a different errand. I had accepted an invitation from Brian Sauder of Urbana to accompany him and others as they lobbied state legislators on a suite of environmental priorities.

Sauder is a graduate of the U of I Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences who is in the process of completing a Master’s degree in Religion at the Urbana Theological Seminary. He also recently began work for an organization called “Faith in Place,” which seeks “to give religious people the tools to become good stewards of the earth.”

Sauder and his group from Faith in Place were in Springfield as part of a lobbying day organized by the Illinois Environmental Council that included more than 100 other people. Among them were representatives from the Sierra Club, Environment Illinois, Openlands, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Protestants for the Common Good and even some Girl Scouts.

Together these groups were seeking support for two legislative packages. One is a collection of bills designed to promote wind and solar power. The other is a measure that would ban use of the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastic food containers.

The environmental groups were also asking legislators to oppose two measures currently alive in both chambers in some form. One of those would provide financing support for development in floodplains, and the other would lift the current moratorium on construction of nuclear power plants in Illinois.

Given the hectic schedules of lawmakers in session, I learned lobbying is a very hit or miss activity. The team I was with did much of its talking with staff from the offices of various legislators, who listened courteously and accepted our written materials to pass along.

We did manage to catch up with a few legislators in person, though. Among them was State Senator Michael Frerichs, who we sat down with for a 15-minute chat. He was highly favorable toward the renewable energy bills, and is in fact chief sponsor of one. But he pressed my teammates on their opposition to the development of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuel, and indicated he would withhold support for a ban on BPA until he felt the question of its toxicity to humans was more settled.

We also touched base directly with Representative Naomi Jakobsson, for whom environmental legislation is a priority and who voiced across-the-board support for the lobbying day positions.

I suppose the participation of a group like the Sierra Club at an environmental lobby day requires no explanation. But I asked Brian Sauder to articulate what brought him and others from Faith in Place there. This was his answer: “As a person of faith I feel responsible to work for social and environmental justice. That means accounting for the way our treatment of the earth—as individuals and as a society—impacts others. In that light it’s important to help individuals change their behavior, but it is equally important to work for change on a larger scale, too.”

You can learn more about the environmental work of Faith in Place through its Website http://www.faithinplace.org/ or contact Brian Sauder at 217.649.1898 / brian@faithinplace.org

Illinois State Geological Survey 3-D maps enable sound environmental decisions

2010-03-12T08:50:00.008-06:00

Illinois State Geological Survey 3-D maps enable sound environmental decisions

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

In recent years the Village of Antioch in Lake County has grown so rapidly that the population sign on the road into town might as well be fitted with rolling numbers, like an odometer. Aware that such growth might overtax the shallow sand and gravel aquifer Antioch currently relies on for its water supply, village leaders undertook a serious investigation of their options in 2008. The question they sought to answer was whether the Village could continue to rely on its system of wells for water, or it should apply for a share of the state’s allocation of water from Lake Michigan.

To answer this question, Antioch’s leaders needed to understand how much water the aquifer holds, and for that they needed information about its depth, shape and horizontal extent. Conveniently for them, scientists with the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS) were able to provide that information, since Antioch’s aquifer fell within the boundaries of a larger project, already underway, to create three-dimensional geologic maps of the Great Lakes region.

As you might imagine, developing a three dimensional picture that begins at land surface and extends down to bedrock is a complex task just about anywhere. But it is especially so in northeastern Illinois, where the advance and retreat of glaciers repeatedly added to and reshuffled the geologic materials that constitute the earth’s surface there.

Scientists from the ISGS employ data from a variety of sources to create such a picture. Their best data comes from continuous, three-inch diameter core samples they obtain by boring down to bedrock themselves. [Photo: ISGS scientists with a newly extracted core sample in Lake County. By Joel Dexter.] These samples provide an actual record of the types and order of materials present below the surface. Constraints on time and budgets limit the number of core samples scientists can obtain, however, so they learn what they can from other sources, too.

From the data they gather, ISGS scientists produce various depictions of geological features, including two-dimensional cross sections, three-dimensional block models, and even more complex visualizations.

Thanks to the information that the ISGS was able to provide them, village leaders in Antioch were able to see clearly that their aquifer was not as extensive as they had hoped, and that only obtaining a share of water from Lake Michigan would enable the village to grow without worries about the limits of its water supply.

Although I’ve given Antioch’s concern about its aquifer as an example of how three-dimensional geologic mapping is useful, I should emphasize that the information such mapping provides is important in numerous other ways, too. From zoning decisions that protect wetlands, to siting requirements for landfills, to understanding the potential impact an earthquake might have in a given area, it is valuable to know what’s down below our feet.

The University of Illinois Institute for Natural Resource Sustainability, of which the ISGS is part, will hold its second annual “Naturally Illinois” expo on March 12-13. Among the things to see and do there will be baby Illinois turtles, a 30-ft. wind turbine powering scientific instruments, fossils to dig, and biodiesel made from waste. This is a super event for introducing young people to the world of science and a great reminder to all of how Illinois benefits from the work of its state scientific surveys. Details at http://www.inrs.illinois.edu/expo/

On the hunt for first flower of spring

2010-03-04T16:45:00.005-06:00

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

On the hunt for first flower of spring

The weather last Wednesday morning was hostile. The air temperature had sunk to 16 degrees overnight, and the wind was blowing from the northwest at 15 miles an hour. What a day to go looking for wildflowers. But that’s exactly what I did.

See, if you wait until April, when showy beauties like Virginia bluebells carpet the woodland floor, you’ve missed the emergence of spring’s first wildflowers by more than a month already.

Thanks to guidance from Rick Larimore, who is a wetland plant ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, I found my quarry at the Middle Fork State Fish and Wildlife Area, north of Kickapoo State Park in Vermilion County. It was growing thickly in a large swath along the base of a hill, where water from the adjoining upland seeps to the surface and keeps the ground saturated through much of the year.

I have to admit that the flower of the plant in question, which goes by the scientific name Symplocarpus foetidus, is not attractive in conventional terms. It’s a small, spongy, egg-shaped affair that grows up hidden within a specialized leaf that forms a hood around it, in botanical terms, a “spathe.”

Unlike the flower it contains, however, this spathe is a work of art. Bulbous at the base, which you could encircle with your thumb and index finger, it extends upward in a twisting, tapering spiral three to six inches tall. In color, this spathe may be as nondescript as the winter ground from which it grows, dullest brown or gray. But it may also be quite dramatic. Some I saw were wine-red, marked with lighter shades the color of brick and speckles of pink.

Aside from the beauty of its spathe, Symplocarpus foetidus distinguishes itself from all other plants native to Illinois by the fact that it generates heat--enough so that its flower can remain 36 degrees F warmer than the surrounding air for a period of about two weeks. This capacity allows it to grow in frozen soil, and also provides an inducement for early emerging insects, by which it is pollinated, to hang around.

I’ve been coy about calling Symplocarpus foetidus by its common name because to do so is to draw attention to aspects of its personality that people may find unappealing. That’s “skunk cabbage,” and this is definitely a plant that lives down to its name.

As the flower of skunk cabbage matures it gives off a distinct, skunk-like odor, an odor that can also be produced by crushing any part of the plant. That’s unattractive to people, but a turn-on for carrion-eating insects, and, hey, a plant needs to please its pollinators.

Something cool about skunk cabbage that you can’t know by observing its above-ground components is that it grows deeper into the earth every year, pulled downward by a massive root system that alternately extends and then gradually contracts. On account of that, it is said to be impossible to dig an old one out of the ground.

If you are not inclined to seek out the wet areas where skunk cabbage grows in the next few weeks, you might look for it later in the season as its giant leaves unfurl, some to lengths of more than two feet. But don’t wait too long. As summer begins to wear, the leaves of skunk cabbage die back in their own unpleasant way, dissolving into a smelly black slime rather than drying out.

Prehistoric insects theme for 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival at U of I

2010-02-25T16:45:00.004-06:00

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

The theme of this year’s Insect Fear Film Festival may be prehistoric insects, but you can rest assured you won’t learn anything about insects, prehistoric or otherwise, in the evening’s feature films, which depict people doing battle with monster-sized scorpions (not insects) and killer trilobites (not insects and long extinct).

In that light, the members of the UI Entomology Graduate Student Association I checked in with recently thought listeners might be interested to take a quick trip back through time, for a more realistic glimpse of where today’s insects come from.

Rob Mitchell, Laura Steele, Scott Shreve and Nils Cordes collaborated on this report.

[Rob M.] Insects are everywhere, and so common we barely give them a second thought when they aren’t intruding in our homes. Few people would guess that these diminutive critters have been dominating the planet since before the dinosaurs. Together with other animals like crabs, scorpions, and centipedes, insects have been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years, and they were the first pioneers to crawl onto land and fly in the air. Scientists call this group of hard-bodied animals “arthropods,” and over the eons they have taken some amazing forms, from familiar but dog-sized dragonflies to shuffling, spiny creatures whose true shapes are only the vaguest hints of fossils.

[Laura] Some insects that occur today may seem enormous, such as the giant walking sticks that reach 13 inches in length. But such creatures pale in comparison to their ancient relatives. Approximately 300 million years ago there lived a dragonfly-like insect called Meganeura, whose wingspan measured close to 30 inches. [Among the fossils on display at the IFFF will be this beautifully preserved fossil dragonfly from the Cretaceous Period of Brazil. Photo by Sam W. Heads.] Like dragonflies of today, Meganeura were predatory, and they may have even fed on small amphibians. What enabled some prehistoric insects to grow to such large sizes? Scientists think it was likely the higher levels of oxygen present in the atmosphere during that time period.

[Scott] Fossil evidence suggests that the first insects likely appeared late in the Silurian geological period, about 425 million years ago. These earliest insects probably looked most like the silverfish and springtails we see today. Insects didn’t have any wings and couldn’t fly until about 390 million years ago. Some of the first flying insects, similar in appearance to mayflies and dragonflies, had what look like a third pair of smaller wings in addition to the four wings we see today. These were called “paranotal lobes,” and they couldn’t flap or move like the normal wings.

[Nils] But even before the earliest insects, there lived a highly diverse, widely dispersed class of related creatures that must be seen to be believed, the trilobites. While trilobites were not insects at all, they were very similar to them in appearance. [Ph.D. student Scott Shreve displays a trilobite fossil from the UI Department of Entomology teaching collection that will be on display at the IFFF.] Like insects, they had a rigid outer shell and had to molt several times to grow. Trilobites had three lengthwise body segments, or lobes, which gave them their name: Tri-lob-ite. They lived under water but came in all shapes and sizes. The smallest trilobite was less than a millimeter in size, but the biggest one grew to be over two feet long. Many had hundreds of impressive-looking spikes on their backs.

While trilobites became extinct about 250 million years ago, they can still be found in the form of fossils today. Fossils of trilobites are common in the Northern U.S., and Mazon Creek, near Morris, Illinois, is a great place to start looking.

Or just come to the Insect Fear Film Festival on Saturday, where fossils of trilobites and a variety of prehistoric insects will be on display. The festival will take place at the Foellinger Auditorium on the UI campus, with festivities beginning at 6:00 p.m. and films beginning at 7:00. Further details are available on the Web at http://www.life.illinois.edu/entomology/egsa/ifff.html.

UI sustainability initiative update and invitation to "Advancing the Illinois Sustainability Vision" conference

2010-02-18T16:45:00.003-06:00

UI sustainability initiative update

Listen to the commentary
Real Audio : MP3 download

What is a sustainable society? According to the simple, most widely circulated definition, it’s one that meets the needs of the present without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. How do societies achieve sustainability? That’s more complicated. But the sustainability initiative at the University of Illinois is intended to position our campus as a local partner and global leader in helping societies meet such a standard.

Two structures were put in place in 2008 to bring focus and leadership to this initiative. The Sustainability Council, now chaired by Interim Chancellor and Provost Robert Easter, was formed to provide strategic direction and oversight for sustainability efforts on campus. The Office of Sustainability was established to provide leadership for campus sustainability efforts and enhance communication and coordination across the entire campus.

Since 2008, Richard Warner, who is Director of the Office of Sustainability, and Barbara Minsker, a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Associate Provost Fellow, have collaborated with students, faculty, campus leaders, and members of the community to generate a vision of how Illinois can become a world leader in sustainability. Included in this vision are all aspects of the University’s work: education, research, engagement and operations.

Of the visioning process Warner noted, “Students, faculty, staff and members of our communities brought to the table an enormous amount of expertise, creativity and enthusiasm. We can’t say enough about how much we appreciate their active participation.”

The document articulating a vision for sustainability at Illinois was completed in November 2009. It addresses the issue of sustainability as a response to two “grand challenges,” which are “1) to maintain or restore natural ecosystem function while providing essential human services; and 2) to sustainably raise the quality of life for the world’s poor to acceptable levels.”

(If the reason for the U of I’s interest in the quality of human life around the world isn’t immediately clear to you, contemplate a future in which ever greater numbers of the poor, who account for most of the world’s population, achieve a higher standard of living without significant changes in transportation systems, power generation, manufacturing, and the like.)

The vision for sustainability at Illinois focuses on the fact that our campus possesses a unique combination of strengths in food, water, and energy systems, as well as the cutting edge information technology to measure, predict, and manage the complex interconnections among the various aspects of sustainability.

In more concrete terms, that means the U of I is a great place for people to work out answers to questions such as, “How can critical ecosystem functions be provided while maintaining or improving agricultural productivity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions?” And, “What cultural, cognitive, and institutional factors have prevented individuals and organizations from making sustainable decisions in the past?” In addressing these questions, Barbara Minsker points out, “our primary contribution to sustainability will ultimately be our students, since they are the future leaders who will need to address these grand challenges.”

You can learn more about the sustainability initiative at the U of I, including how you might participate, by attending all or part of a one-day conference on campus tomorrow, Friday, February 19.. “Advancing the Illinois Sustainability Vision” will take place in the Illini Union, beginning at 8:30 a.m. More information about the conference is available through the University of Illinois Office of Sustainability Web site: http://sustainability.illinois.edu/.