Archive for the 'Science' Category

Sea walls do more harm than good

Published on December 24, 2006 in Community, Environment, Governance, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 1 Comment

Glynn’s Folly, as the Summerplace Sea Wall Atrocity is commonly called, has already cost the public a fortune in legal fees, ongoing sand pumping, damages to adjacent property, and lost recreation value.

Additional actual costs must include the catastrophic erosional impacts on the adjacent public Wabasso Beach, immediately down-current from Summerplace. Lawsuits from Disney’s Vero Beach Resort loom as a potential future liability of the sea wall. And, then, there are the environmental impacts…

Recently the Vero Beach Press-Journal noted that the beach in front of Glynn’s sea wall is non-existent at high tide, having been washed away because of inevitable changes in beach dynamics resulting from the armoring.

All Summerplace residents have deeded beach access, and the right to use this beach. Now, their beach has been destroyed by the actions of a few, selfish property owners. These folks live in an unsustainable location: on top of the primary dune in a State-designated area of a critically eroding shoreline. How long will we have to wait for a rational, science-based solution to the current mess we call our County’s beach management policy?

Gopher tortoise extinction is up to us

Published on December 12, 2006 in Environment, Governance, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

The plight of Florida’s gopher tortoise is largely in the hands of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Recently, they have “uplisted” the tortoise from Species of Special Concern, which allows killing tortoises as long as certain rules are followed, to Threatened status, which will more tightly limit killing tortoises during land development. The new management plan and rules are not likely to be completed until June, 2007, however.

Dr. Jennifer Hobgood of the Humane Society of the U.S., is participating in drafting the new management plan for the gopher tortoise. She says that the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is likely to honor all Incidental Take Permits issued under the current management plan, and may continue to issue Incidental Take Permits even under the new plan. Note that “incidental take” means “killing incidental to development.” It is not incidental to the tortoises, or to those concerned by the dramatic decline in gopher tortoise numbers incidental to our explosive growth.

Gopher tortoises are not alone. Turtles everywhere face the threat of extinction by habitat destruction and automobile predation. Humans are their problem in almost every case, as documented in Natalie Angier’s excellent article on the extinction crisis facing turtles, in today’s New York Times. The threats to turtles are global, yet protective actions in thousands of localities can help assure their survival.

Here in Indian River County, Florida, a concerned group of citizens has formed the Gopher Tortoise Coalition to protect and conserve our reptilian neighbors. Working together we are conducting our county’s first “emergency humane relocation” of tortoises, fully permitted by the FWC. Next, we need to address the Incidental Take issue through our county ordinances. Gopher tortoises will continue to be killed, and killed by entombment, for the foreseeable future, perhaps even under the new statewide management plan. We must prohibit take by entombment county by county if we are to stop state sanctioned animal cruelty and ensure tortoise survival.

The water cycle and sustainability

Published on December 11, 2006 in Environment, Growth, Mysteries, Science, Sustainability and Water. 0 Comments

Water is a naturally circulating resource that is constantly recharged, unlike oil. The amount of water on our planet will not diminish on shorter than geological time scales (Oki, 2005). Therefore, even though stocks of water in natural and artificial reservoirs are helpful to meet our water resource needs, it is the flow of water that should be the main focus in water resource assessments (Shiklomanov, 1997; Korzun, 1978; Oki and Kanae, 2006).

For example, the amount of water stored in all the rivers in the world is only 2000 km3 , which is much less than the annual water withdrawal of 3,800 km3/year. A more accurate measure of water availability is the 45,500 km3/year of annual discharge flowing through the rivers to the sea (Oki and Kanae, 2006).

Water flux is the most relevant measure of water resources. Therefore, the speed of water circulation is crucial. How long water molecules stay in a given reservoir, that is, their mean residence time, can be estimated by dividing the volume of the reservoir by the mean flux into and out of it. For rivers unaffected by humans, the mean residence time of the water is about two and a half weeks (Oki, 2005). In contrast, the recharge rate of some groundwater aquifers is very slow, and the mean residence time is considered to be hundreds or even thousands of years. When water is extracted from such an aquifer, it will take a very long time, measured on a human time scale, to return to the original volume stored; in practice, the water is exhausted once it has been used. For this reason, the groundwater in such aquifers is called fossil water.

The global population will continue to grow for at least a few decades, and water demand will thus increase. Reliance upon slowly recharging groundwater aquifers is not sustainable as a global strategy. Circulating renewable freshwater resources are essential to meeting the growing human demand for water.

Korzun, V. I. 1978. World Water Balance and Water Resources of the Earth, Vol. 25 of Studies and Reports in Hydrology. UNESCO, Paris.

Oki, T. 2005. In Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences, M.G. Anderson, J. McDonnell, Eds., Wiley, New York,Vol. 1, pp. 13-22.

Oki, Taikan and Kanae, Shinjiro. 2006. Global hydrological cycles and world water resources. Science 313:1068-1072.

Shiklomanov, I. A., Editor. 1997. Assessment of Water Resources and Water Availability in the World. World Meteorological Organization/Stockholm Environment Institute, Geneva.

Discovery launch seen from the surf

Published on December 9, 2006 in Community, Mysteries and Science. 0 Comments

Discovery launch 12-09-06

Discovery rises in the first night launch in four years. We were leaning into the briny breeze on the beach at Summerplace, waiting and watching with a hearty crew of neighbors. Ten-nine-eight…Lift-off! From surf to space in minutes: what a mystery.

The Laws of Ecology

Published on December 7, 2006 in Environment, Mysteries, Science and Sustainability. 0 Comments

In the fall of 1971, Barry Commoner published The Closing Circle, which along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, were central texts for the popular environmental movement that led to most current environmental law (e.g., Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act).

Commoner identified four deceptively simple “laws of ecology.”

1. Everything is Connected to Everything Else
The ecosphere harbors an elaborate network of interconnections among all life and its surroundings.
2. Everything Must Go Somewhere
Matter is indestructible, there is no “waste” and we always need to ask, “Where does it go?”
3. Nature Knows Best
Major man-made changes to natural systems tend to be detrimental.
4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Every gain is won at some cost.

To sum up: “Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced.” Every gain is won at some cost, and though payment of the price can sometimes be delayed, it cannot be avoided. There is no free lunch.

The complex web of life in which we find ourselves, and the environmental troubles which continue to plague us on our beautiful planet, are just as marvelously perplexing today as they were 35 years ago, when Barry Commoner wrote The Closing Circle.