Water Wars Australian Style

Much of Australia has been in a more than decade old drought, and climate scientists fear that it is just a harbinger of a more profound drying coming as a result of human induced climate change.    This story from PRI's The World, describes some of the impact this drought has had on the Murray-Darling river basin. A very similar history and much of the same conflicts over water use have played out in the western U.S.  A number of great books describe this history including Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner.  Also, NPR had a nice multi-part series on water use in the west.

Wangari Maathai has died

Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Greenbelt movement, Wangari Maathai, has died.  You can read a brief obituary here.

A fist full of weeds

This video was posted today on Aliens-L, a list serve for those interested in invasive species (mostly land managers and scientists).  The poster was Pankaj Oudhia who described it this way:

Two days back I was in forest for Ethnobotanical surveys. I observed mother and son engaged in hand weeding in rice fields. The mother was wearing traditional saree with shirt in order to get protection from sharp weedy plants. The son was in modern dress not usually preferred in field by rice workers. The son's new bike was parked in nearby field bund. During interaction they informed that they will cook the uprooted weeds after returning back. It will serve as breakfast as well as curry for dinner. Major part of it will go to cattle as fodder, locally known as Kandi. Weeds like Commelina in dry form will be kept for year round use as medicine (Home remedy) for gout. Small part will be for the Traditional Healers. It will be given as gift and in return the Healers will take care of their health round the year.The weed species they were dealing with were obnoxious to dangerous as per dictionary used by Invasive species experts but I enjoyed (rather appreciated) the unique concept of weed management through utilization by these Indian farmers.    Hand weeding is still popular method of weed management in rice fields. Farmers collect the uprooted weeds and serve it as fodder to their cattle. These weeds are also used as potherbs and as source of medicine. Many times the Traditional Healers purchase it in bulk for round the year use. Rice fields are source of many medicinal herbs having regular and heavy demand in national and international drug markets.Tens of promising weedicides are available in Chhattisgarh but still most of the farmers believe in this unique Traditional approach i.e. “Management through utilization.” Weeds are managed without polluting the crop fields. This film is a part of report titled “Management through Utilization: Traditional Approach of Weed Management in India.” by Pankaj Oudhia. For details please visit http://www.pankajoudhia.com/index.html This Film is a part of plus 40,000 parts series. It is better to watch this film after reading the research documents in order to understand it in real sense.  

When I watched the video, my first impression was that it looked like back breaking drudgery.  Don Strong, Professor of Ecology at UC  Davis, must have had a similar reaction, because he responded with this post:

"The yield loss may vary from 10% to complete failure of the crop depending upon the situation. In general, the potential yield loss from weeds is less in wet-seeded rice than in dry-seeded rice (Fig. 1). In a survey of upland rice-producing countries covering 80% of the total production area, weeds were the most widely reported biological constraint to yield (Johnson 1996)."

from one of many, many publications on the threats of weeds in rice. Small holders are especially hard put by weeds because they cannot afford more labor to pull weeds and they cannot afford herbicides.

I wonder how much longer the son with his new dress shirt and bike will be around to help hand weed? With India and much of the rest of the developing world hurdling toward modern prosperity is this type of agriculture still viable?  Is it ethical?  With world population hurdling toward 10 billion can we afford to do agriculture this way?  Can we afford not to do agriculture in this way? Oh the questions that a simple video of folks pulling weeds can bring up!

P.S.  Note how the weeds they are pulling look very much like rice (at least to an untrained eye like myself).  Many rice weeds are marvel crop mimics that match their looks and life history to that of rice to avoid detection by weeders and to ensure efficient dispersal into another rice field.

The last cowboy....or is it fish?

There is perhaps nothing more iconic about the west than a cowboy.  But there is also perhaps no bigger myth.  In fact much of the history of the west is about the inexorable decline of this economic system and way of life.  Barbed wire, farming, and eventually an industrialized food system long ago made the cowboy as profession an obsolete anachronism, even as the cowboy as symbol became the fundamental narrative that defines much of the culture of the west.  But we still have lots of cows, and a few actual cowboys that run some of them on the open range. This range is largely owned in trust by the people of the United States via the federal government .  The government ended up owning the land largely because (with the exception of cattleman looking for summer forage and the native Americans who were forcibly evicted from it), not many people cared about  it.  Most of it is unsuitable for more intensive forms of agriculture, is a long way from anywhere, and lacks reliable sources of water.  However, these lands are some of the most beautiful parts of our country, and they  have also become a refuge for many plant and animal species that have been crowded out from more urbanized and farmed places.  These lands have also increasingly become a cherished place for urbanites to hunt, fish, and otherwise enjoy the outdoors.  In some cases cows and these other uses are incompatible.  Negotiating these conflicts is tricky and is usually far more about sociology and culture than about ecology or even economics.  The history of cattle and the open western range is a long and fascinating one.  The latest flare up of this long simmering conflict is described in  this recent LA Times story..  There have probably been thousands of similar stories written over the last 200 years.  What largely caught my eye about this one was that it is about a place that I spent some time in and love.  But it also got me thinking  that these types of resource conflicts are probably only going to become more frequent and more bitter as the world's resources become increasingly coveted by different folks with different goals and aspirations.

Backyard conservation

The British passion for plants is legendary.  Nowadays this passion mostly is manifest in the ubiquity of well tended gardens and one of the biggest and most famous flower shows in the world.  But at the height of the British Empire, it also took the form of a massive army of global plant collectors that fed unique and potentially useful plants into a vast network of botanical gardens and plant improvement stations.  This was in a very practical sense another arm of Imperial power that among other things helped facilitate colonial expansion and the slave trade.

But a recent study reports that another legacy of this history is that UK gardens are now home to many Japanese species (such as Magnolia stellata pictured above) which are under threat in their native land.  It's sort of  like finding a lost Picasso in your attic.  I have often thought that home gardens could be utilized as a sort of decentralized repository of rare plants.  But of course, this brings up a whole host of questions related to the goal and purpose of plant conservation...

Bye-bye, peeing fly

The LA times had an interesting story today about the search for biocontrol agents to use against non-native pests.  It's a nice profile of Mark and Christina Hoddle, Entomologists at UC Riverside who have built a career searching the world for biocontrol agents.  It's also a nice summary of the problem of introduced pests (particularly for an intensively agricultural state like CA), the concept of classical biocontrol, and some of the concerns that people have with it. 

Who left the lights on?

We keep using more energy.  The Energy Information Administration has a new estimate out that predicts world energy use to jump 53% by 2035...fueled so to speak...by the burgeoning energy demand in developing countries.  Note that most of this energy is still expected to come from non-renewable sources that contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.  Cutting back on our energy craving seems to be as hard as deflating that muffin top or finding those long lost abs. 

The view from here

We may not be as unique as we think.  Although we can't directly see them, Astronomers have recently discovered a number of rocky planets outside of our solar system (the closest is only 20 light years away!) that seem to have just the right environmental conditions to potentially support liquid water.  So strong is the connection between life and water on our own planet that astronomers call the sweet spot around a star where conditions are potentially conducive to the formation of liquid water the "habitable zone".  Of course, for all we know there are perfectly living intelligent beings based on silicon or some other inconceivable combination of exotic elements bouncing around the universe who couldn't give a fig about water.  But there is still something  romantic about the idea that there might be another big blue marble out there somewhere.

On their way to the moon, the astronauts of Apollo 11 snapped this picture of earth sitting small, vulnerable and deeply alone in the vast void of space.  It had a profound effect on people, galvanizing many to join movements to protect the ecology of the planet.  I wonder what kind of effect a snapshot of an earth-like exoplanet would have?  Would we devalue our own planet if it seems we are just a dime a dozen?  Perhaps its even better than ours!   Or similar to the reaction to the Apollo 11 image would seeing a planet so beautifully similar to ours invoke a sense of deep gratitude for the one we call home?