The Earth Story

A Dune that Swallowed the Town

It's difficult to miss the large green Michigan historical marker set up in the middle of the bustling tourist town of Saugatuck. Most people aren't disappointed, since it tells the rather romantic tale of the town of Singapore, Michigan. Named for the island country in the hopes of luring boat traffic, Singapore was once a hub of industry; the town boasted three lumber mills at one time, and even had a wildcat bank (a bank chartered and regulated by the state and known for their nefarious practices). The great Chicago fire of 1871 created a seemingly limitless demand for lumber, which the Singapore mills were more than happy to oblige. At the time, Allegan county was covered in forests. But as the demand for lumber increased, many of the forests in the area were logged out. They removed any suitable tree they could find, including the trees on the dunes that acted as a soil stabalizing buffer between them and the rampaging western winds of Lake Michigan.

The town was abandoned shortly after the forest resources gave out; by 1877 the bank and the town were defunct and everyone moved out (although some didn't go very far - just upriver a 1/4 of a mile to Saugatuck). While some of the buildings were moved, many of them were simply covered up over the years by the migration of Michigan's denuded dunes, and Singapore started it's new life as one of the more famous Michigan ghost towns.

While the disappearance of Singapore by sand might haunt the imagination like a Stephen King novel, the real star of this show is the sand dune. It seems the town was nearly completely buried with sand in about 4 years (1), although some parts of the town could still be seen as late as 1883(2). The burial of Singapore is a classic example of sand dune movement by the wind, particularly after a dune denuding event.

Shortly after the town was abandoned, Henry Chandler Cowles discovered the importance of dune vegetation to the growth and ultimate stability of the dunes. Cowles is famous for his research in dune succession, or how dunes “grow up” and become larger dunes. He was able to identify groups of plants that were the first to colonize dunes. Ultimately he was able to find a suite of plants that accompanied every stage of dune succession.

Perhaps one of the more interesting discoveries he made was how cottonwood trees could be responsible for building giant dunes. As cottonwoods are covered in sand they are able to grow taller because they send out roots from the buried trunk. Taller trees allow more sand to accumulate. This continual growth and accumulation leads to large, stable dunes that harbor other forms of plant life.

There are many reasons for severe soil denudation, including, but not limited to, strong storm surges, the quick accumulation of sand leading to smothering, fire, and people. This last caused the sudden burial of Singapore and still accounts for shifts in dunes to this day; a walk along any of Michigan's sand dunes will reveal signs asking hikers to stay on paths so that vegetation is not killed and the dunes remain stable.

(1) http://bit.ly/1s59vPQ… (2) http://bit.ly/1wrOdO1 Photographs courtesy of the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Box 617, Douglas, MI 49406 Aritcle by Colter

Supertree grove

These structures aren’t exactly real trees. Instead, you’re looking at a unique project in the Gardens by the Bay, built in the last decade on reclaimed land on the island of Singapore. This is the Supertree Grove, containing 25 to 50 meter high “trees” constructed as a major park feature.

These structures are built on metal frames that overlie concrete cores, but they’re designed to integrate into the surrounding ecosystem and help regulate the environment of the park as well. Each of the supertrees is covered with planting panels that allowed for the growth of live plants on the structures. The plants chosen were a selection of native and imported plants capable of growing in an elevated/hanging position with no soil; over 162,000 separate plants were placed on the walls of these trees. Some of the Supertrees also have photovoltaic cells built into them; others are designed to help process air through the park as part of an integrated cooling system, contributing to the sustainability goals of the project.

At night, some of the power generated by the supertrees is pumped back out to light them up, turning the landscape into a nighttime light show, built on a backbone of sustainable and fascinating construction.

-JBB

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adforce1/8100691354/ (creative commons license)

Read more: http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/en/the-gardens/attractions/supertree-grove.html

Sunset over Singapore

Here we have a deep-red hued sunset over the city-state of Singapore. It was taken from the Sky Gardens at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

I can’t figure out how I feel about this photo. I can come up with every argument in the world for why it should bother me. The buildings and cranes in the foreground could easily be described as scars on the landscape. The redness of the sunset could easily be attributed to pollution in the air. Yet, this image is delighting my eyes. The sun is surrounded by a gorgeous halo of red as it dips behind the clouds. Light from the sun is bouncing off everything in the atmosphere to reach the camera and eventually my eyes. Every time I change the angle I look at my screen, I see something different. The hills and buildings and cranes, bathed in the red light, take on a different feel from just a normal city.

Urban landscapes are never an easy scene to describe…but this photo in particular has a quality I struggle to put into words. Beauty and harshness put together in one scene.

-JBB Image credit: NEO (creative commons license) http://www.flickr.com/photos/w3i_yu/4852626590

Rapid rising ocean record

Over the last 200 years, humans have dramatically changed the composition of the atmosphere, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases to levels not seen in the past 2-million+ years. Changes in the atmosphere should produce equally rapid changes in the environment at the surface, including changes in weather and glacial ice cover that will increase sea level. A key question for humanity to understand related to these changes is – how fast will they happen? If it takes several hundred years for the planet to adapt to changes in the atmosphere, that gives us time either to develop ways to engineer the atmosphere back into balance or time to move cities and infrastructure that are at risk from flooding. On the other hand, the more rapidly the ocean responds to changes in the atmosphere, the more coastal communities and infrastructure are at risk for being flooded, damaged, and evacuated.

Specifically, the El Niño cycle has important implications for both sea level and weather patterns around the world. Changing El Niño patterns could lead to regular flooding of some tropical areas and failure of agriculture in others, again creating huge economic and personal costs.

Scientists have several tools they can use to figure out how the planet will respond to the changes in the atmosphere. They can research physical processes at ice sheets and create models of atmospheric processes, but these models still need to be compared to real-world data. That’s where geoscientists can come in.

Sea level has changed throughout Earth’s history in response to changes in the atmosphere. If scientists can find good records of sea level, they can figure out how fast sea level can change, and that can give information about how ice sheets and weather respond to atmosphere changes. That’s where the corals in these photos come in.

These are coral “microatolls”. They start off their life in shallow ocean waters growing outwards in a half-sphere. The colony rises upwards as a dome until the top of it reaches sea level, where it stops growing upwards and instead grows outwards into a disk shape.

These corals grow outwards one layer at a time, creating a single band per year. If sea level rises, the coral will get higher, while if sea level drops the coral at the top will die and the next years’ bands will be lower. The third image in this scene shows the type of ridge produced when these coral grow upwards and then sea level drops, pushing them back downward. Since the coral is rock, that record can be preserved for thousands of years.

Measuring the sea level recorded by these corals has been previously used to understand the Sumatran subduction zone. The corals grow on land that can be uplifted during earthquakes. Pulses of uplift recorded by these coral have recorded the times of major earthquakes. The large coral disk lifted out of the water was measured by the scientist standing behind it after the major Sumatra earthquake of 2005.

By measuring heights of fossil coral at one site in Indonesia and one site in China, Dr. Aron Meltzner from the Earth Observatory of Singapore and his colleagues produced a record of sea level change 6500 years ago. They measured the heights of the coral, checked for areas where the coral was growing upwards or pushed downwards, and counted annual bands to see how long it took the ocean height to change.

Their study showed that in a period of about 50 years, sea level in this part of the world changed by over half a meter. The sea level change happened over a very large area, from China to Indonesia so it could not be a local effect but was at least a major, regional shift. Their measurements are now the most precise measurement of sea level change in this part of the Earth.

There are several potential causes for the sea level shift. If the strength of El Niño or the East Asian Monsoon changed dramatically over a few decades, those weather shifts could alter ocean currents and drive major shifts in sea level. On the other hand, shifts in ice volume could contribute as well and scientists currently don’t have other records with enough precision to say how much of a role they could have played.

While the shifts 6500 years ago were likely driven by processes unrelated to human activity, humans today are causing the same sorts of changes to the atmosphere that would drive these sea level changes. Over the last 100 years, sea level on Earth has risen by about 15 centimeters, enough to begin causing damaging flooding along the coasts and enough to make storms such as Hurricane Sandy much more damaging. This study shows that it is possible for sea level changes to occur at rates much higher than what humans saw in the 20th century.

A rise of a half-meter in sea level, especially if associated with large changes in weather patterns, would be a major issue in this part of the world. Literally tens of millions of people live in areas at risk of flooding if sea level rises that much, and literally billions of people rely on the rains of the monsoon for food and economic opportunities.

Humans will survive these changes, but we’ve built our society under the assumption of a stable ocean level. Cities can’t just pick up and move. Farmers can’t just create arable land. We’ve seen minor changes in the past century and in some cases the costs have been enormous already. This record in coral is just one of many geologic records that say the planet can change at rates much more rapid than what we’ve seen so far. The geologic record should serve as a warning – rapid changes in the atmosphere don’t just stay confined to the atmosphere. That’s something humans need to be preparing for.

-JBB

Image credits: Aron Meltzner (Hi Aron!)

Original paper: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14387

Press release version and other references: http://bit.ly/2kxtVi4 http://bit.ly/2kPax14 http://bit.ly/2kUrJ5r http://bit.ly/2lCC9Xk

Using Landsat to track fires

We’ve done a number of recent posts highlighting images taken of burning fires from orbiting spacecraft, including a few in the last few days (see links at the bottom). One post highlighted terrible breathing conditions in Singapore due to fires in Indonesia. Here I’d like to show how these satellite images aren’t just useful in showing where fires are burning, they also can be put to use to make the situation better.

The fires in Indonesia in June weren’t supposed to happen. There are a number of plantations established in the areas that burned, some of which you can see in this zoomed-in and edited image from the Operational Land Imager on the new Landsat 8 satellite. Areas of vegetation that burned in June are shown in violet and reddish colors, vegetation that didn’t burn remains green in these filters.

As you can see in this sample image, the locations and intensity of the fires do correlate with plantation ownership boundaries.

Using this type of Landsat orbital data, researchers investigating the fires have found a number of details which can help in setting policy to improve or even prevent outbreaks of fire like the one in June.

Many of the plantations in this area are producing palm oil and acacia wood. There are agreements established amongst international exporters requiring “no-burn” production of these products precisely to avoid these air pollution issues. But analysis of the Landsat data shows, about 25% of the areas that burned were on locations classified as industrial plantations, and most of the others were on smaller plantations nearby.

Despite no-burn agreements, fire still appears to be the quickest and cheapest way to clear the land for production.

Only 4% of the fires consumed fresh forest, while over 50% of the fires were on land that was forested in 2008. These fires were being used, mostly, to re-clear land that had been recently deforested for production.

These details from the new Landsat satellite clearly indicate that the fires are being set to clear land and can identify some of the worst violators right down to the plantation door. The fires literally cannot hide from Landsat.

The next step might well be identifying some of the worst violations and attempting to put a stop to it. One more step is necessary though; making sure that the records of plantation ownership are up to date. In Indonesia currently this isn’t the case; even though Landsat can take an image of a burned plantation, the image can only be used as evidence if there are solid records of landownership.

Consequently, the governments of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei, locations impacted by the smoke clouds from Indonesia, are now pressing the Indonesian government to update their maps and ownership records rapidly so that fires next year can be tracked to the source.

Investigations on the ground will be necessary to determine exactly who on these plantations is setting the fires, what they’re trying to clear, and how to put a stop to it. Having data from Landsat, the world’s eye in the sky, available to both governments and researchers has already helped put together a large part of the story of this fire event and is leading to international pressure that could limit or even prevent future outbreaks such as this one.

-JBB

Image credit and full details/full maps of the area available here: http://blog.cifor.org/18218/research-nearly-a-quarter-of-june-fires-in-indonesia-occurred-in-industrial-plantations

Fire in Washington: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=547540721973643&set=a.352867368107647.80532.352857924775258&type=1

Fire in Russia: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=547968785264170

Smoke engulfs Singapore: https://www.facebook.com/TheEarthStory/posts/530276833700032

Smoke from Sumatra fires engulfs Singapore.

This photo captures smoke from Sumatra as it drifts east, over Singapore. Every year, illegal fires are set in this part of the world to clear fields for agriculture and the end result can be substantial air pollution hazards downwind.

Loz

Image credit: NASA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/21/singapore-air-pollution-record-high

The sweet scent of rotting corpse

While these flowers from the genus Rafflesia (named after Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore and leader of the expedition in Indonesia that found the first species in 1818) are beautiful, you don't want to bring your nose too close since they imitate the smell of old dead meat in order to attract flies to transfer pollen between flowers. There are 28 species in the genus, some of which are amongst the world's largest flowers at over a metre across and 10kg in weight. They are parasitic, meaning that they suck their nourishment out of another life form while conferring no benefit in return. They have no stem, root or leaves, living off the life force of vines, infiltrating them with their tissue with only the flower sticking out of the vine to signal its presence.

They are so parasitic that they have even lost the gene to make chlorophyll (the only land plant known to have done so), meaning that they cannot photosynthesize their own sugars like other plants. The local names in South East Asia are all variants on corpse or meat flower, and it is the state flower of Indonesia and of Sabah in Malaysia and Surat Thani in Thailand.

Loz

Image credit: 1 ma_suska 2: Klaus Polak 3: 80cm flower, Steve Cornish http://www.rafflesiaflower.com/ http://www.arkive.org/rafflesia/rafflesia-spp/ http://bit.ly/1LVFtlY http://bit.ly/1LVFtlY

Magnificent roiling, developing thunderstorm over the Supertree Grove in Singapore. 

Plankton bloom causes mass fish deaths in Singapore

On March 1st, thousands of fish and other sea creatures, such as seahorses and squid, washed up onto beaches and into mangroves along the Johor Strait in Singapore. Beaches that were cleaned up were inundated with bodies again during the next high tide. Many fish farms had their entire stock, or close to it, die. A bloom of Gymnodinium mikimotoi plankton appears to be responsible.

Mass fish deaths due to algae blooms have been occurring more often in Johor Strait. The exact reason isn’t known, but scientists suspect it could be related to added nutrients in the sea from land reclamation in both Singapore and Malaysia. It could also be a result of warmer water temperatures due to global warming. The fish farms themselves may be partially responsible since the large concentration of fish in a small area adds a lot of nutrients and ammonia to the water, which is very beneficial to plankton.

DNA testing is being done to confirm whether or not G. mikimotoi is indeed the plankton that caused the deaths. The exact way the plankton is toxic to sea life isn’t well-understood, but it may clog their gills preventing them from getting enough oxygen.

G. mikimotoi is not toxic to humans; even so, Singapore supermarkets have removed locally-sourced fish from their inventory, even as fish farmers plead that their fish is safe to eat. The financial impact of this will be devastating for the farms.

The long-term impact of more frequent plankton blooms on the ecosystem is not known. Scientists have suggested improving circulation near fish farms to prevent nutrients and ammonia from building up in hopes of preventing some future red tides. Solutions to the added nutrients from land reclamation and to higher water temperatures from global warming will be much more difficult to find.

Photo Credit: Sean Yap

References: http://bbc.in/1MfiJNa http://bit.ly/1EBvu44 http://botany.si.edu/references/dinoflag/Taxa/Gmikimotoi.htm

A Dune that Swallowed the Town It's difficult to miss the large green Michigan historical marker set up in the middle of the bustling tourist town of Saugatuck. Most people aren't disappointed, since it tells the rather romantic tale of the town of Singapore, Michigan. Named for the island country in the hopes of luring boat traffic, Singapore was once a hub of industry; the town boasted three lumber mills at one time, and even had a wildcat bank (a bank chartered and regulated by the state and known for their nefarious practices). The great Chicago fire of 1871 created a seemingly limitless demand for lumber, which the Singapore mills were more than happy to oblige. At the time, Allegan county was covered in forests. But as the demand for lumber increased, many of the forests in the area were logged out. They removed any suitable tree they could find, including the trees on the dunes that acted as a soil stabalizing buffer between them and the rampaging western winds of Lake Michigan. The town was abandoned shortly after the forest resources gave out; by 1877 the bank and the town were defunct and everyone moved out (although some didn't go very far - just upriver a 1/4 of a mile to Saugatuck). While some of the buildings were moved, many of them were simply covered up over the years by the migration of Michigan's denuded dunes, and Singapore started it's new life as one of the more famous Michigan ghost towns. While the disappearance of Singapore by sand might haunt the imagination like a Stephen King novel, the real star of this show is the sand dune. It seems the town was nearly completely buried with sand in about 4 years (1), although some parts of the town could still be seen as late as 1883(2). The burial of Singapore is a classic example of sand dune movement by the wind, particularly after a dune denuding event. Shortly after the town was abandoned, Henry Chandler Cowles discovered the importance of dune vegetation to the growth and ultimate stability of the dunes. Cowles is famous for his research in dune succession, or how dunes “grow up” and become larger dunes. He was able to identify groups of plants that were the first to colonize dunes. Ultimately he was able to find a suite of plants that accompanied every stage of dune succession. Perhaps one of the more interesting discoveries he made was how cottonwood trees could be responsible for building giant dunes. As cottonwoods are covered in sand they are able to grow taller because they send out roots from the buried trunk. Taller trees allow more sand to accumulate. This continual growth and accumulation leads to large, stable dunes that harbor other forms of plant life. There are many reasons for severe soil denudation, including, but not limited to, strong storm surges, the quick accumulation of sand leading to smothering, fire, and people. This last caused the sudden burial of Singapore and still accounts for shifts in dunes to this day; a walk along any of Michigan's sand dunes will reveal signs asking hikers to stay on paths so that vegetation is not killed and the dunes remain stable. (1) http://bit.ly/1s59vPQ… (2) http://bit.ly/1wrOdO1 Photographs courtesy of the Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society Box 617, Douglas, MI 49406 Aritcle by Colter

Supertree grove These structures aren’t exactly real trees. Instead, you’re looking at a unique project in the Gardens by the Bay, built in the last decade on reclaimed land on the island of Singapore. This is the Supertree Grove, containing 25 to 50 meter high “trees” constructed as a major park feature. These structures are built on metal frames that overlie concrete cores, but they’re designed to integrate into the surrounding ecosystem and help regulate the environment of the park as well.  Each of the supertrees is covered with planting panels that allowed for the growth of live plants on the structures. The plants chosen were a selection of native and imported plants capable of growing in an elevated/hanging position with no soil; over 162,000 separate plants were placed on the walls of these trees. Some of the Supertrees also have photovoltaic cells built into them; others are designed to help process air through the park as part of an integrated cooling system, contributing to the sustainability goals of the project.  At night, some of the power generated by the supertrees is pumped back out to light them up, turning the landscape into a nighttime light show, built on a backbone of sustainable and fascinating construction. -JBB Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adforce1/8100691354/ (creative commons license) Read more: http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/en/the-gardens/attractions/supertree-grove.html

Sunset over Singapore Here we have a deep-red hued sunset over the city-state of Singapore. It was taken from the Sky Gardens at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. I can’t figure out how I feel about this photo. I can come up with every argument in the world for why it should bother me. The buildings and cranes in the foreground could easily be described as scars on the landscape. The redness of the sunset could easily be attributed to pollution in the air. Yet, this image is delighting my eyes. The sun is surrounded by a gorgeous halo of red as it dips behind the clouds. Light from the sun is bouncing off everything in the atmosphere to reach the camera and eventually my eyes. Every time I change the angle I look at my screen, I see something different. The hills and buildings and cranes, bathed in the red light, take on a different feel from just a normal city. Urban landscapes are never an easy scene to describe…but this photo in particular has a quality I struggle to put into words. Beauty and harshness put together in one scene. -JBB Image credit: NEO (creative commons license) http://www.flickr.com/photos/w3i_yu/4852626590