Through The Sandglass

Europe's inland sand seas (2): Dutch deserts and geoconservation

 

Last week, I wrote about the strange history of wind-blown sand in the pastoral English countryside, and the dunes that invaded Santon Downham in the "great sand flood." This area of East Anglia lies at the eastern end of the European sand belt, a great swathe of lowlands covered, more or less, by aeolian sand deposits originating from the chaos left behind by the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers. Leave eastern England and cross the North Sea to the Netherlands and you will find, perhaps surprisingly, a country half-covered in sand - not including the coastal and estuarine systems. The map below is taken from a new publication by Eduard Koster of the University of Utrecht that is, admirably, open-access; The “European Aeolian Sand Belt”: Geoconservation of Drift Sand Landscapes can be downloaded in full from http://www.springerlink.com/content/a74hr7168667nh21/. The "cover sands" shown on the map are exactly that, the foundation cover of sand spread out over the post-glacial landscape and forming the source for the wind-blown deposits of "drift sand." It's estimated that drift sands cover perhaps 4,000 square kilometers of northwestern Europe, almost entirely stabilised by artificial and natural vegetation. Almost entirely, but, as we know from the Santon Downham experience, not completely - small patches of active, drifting, sand remain and they are of considerable interest both for their ecology and for their role in geoconservation efforts. The areas that Koster focuses on are around Veluwe, and a group of these dune areas around Hulshorster is shown in the Google Earth image at the top of this post.

 

Like the drifting sands of East Anglia, these areas have a dynamic history, the latest phase of which has been significant reduction in size. Re-forestation and agriculture have conspired with natural vegetation spread, in part stimulated by the increasing nitrogen levels from manmade pollution. The Hulshorster dunes, up to 20 meters in height, have been gradually stabilised over the last century, covered by a variety of algae, lichens, mosses, grasses, heather, and pine trees; tree planting upwind of the dunes has starved them of sand supply. In 1900, the two largest areas of sand in the Google Earth image were continuous, an area of around 4 square kilometers but by 2006 this had been reduced to a mere 0.35 square kilometers of bare sand. But historically, the areas of active sands have been significantly larger, periods of remobilisation alternating with soil development (photo, right), and following a timetable that can be broadly correlated with the sequence of events described from East Anglia. The first phase of extensive drift sand formation took place during the eleventh to thirteenth century AD, followed by a second phase during the sixteenth and seventeenth century - the Little Ice Age period and the burial of Santon Downham. But the activity can also be documented from much earlier - the remains of a small, thriving, 8th and 9th century village have been found beneath the drift sands; somewhere in between 950 and 1000 AD, this village had to be abandoned as the local water wells began to dry out, and the farmland became increasingly covered by drifting sands.

These dwindling miniature landscapes of active sands represent extremely complex and unique environments, now protected as European Union Habitat Types; substantial changes in their ecology have been recorded in recent times as the extent of the environment can no longer support the unique ecology.  As Koster writes:

Unvegetated drift sand areas constitute a very specific habitat for plants and insects due to (a) the very nutrient-poor substrate, (b) the continuously changing environmental conditions related to sand movement, and (c) the exceptional microclimate in which daily temperature ranges of more than 50°C and extreme changes in soil moisture content can occur.

So, what to do? As Koster describes, it's a complex issue, but a variety of authorities in the Netherlands have embarked on projects to better understand the character and dynamics of these environments as a basis for planning geoconservation efforts. "Geoconservation" has been defined as "action taken with the intent of conserving and enhancing geological and geomorphological features, processes, sites and specimens,” an agenda distinct from more traditional conservation initiatives  - and one that all of us should thoroughly endorse.

In all European countries, attention is given to landscape preservation; however, policy and practice in the past have mainly been based on specific biological, historical–cultural, and visual landscape qualities. Although the geological aspects are the essential foundation for these values, they seldom formed the primary basis for the preservation policy (Kloster)

Geoconservation of Europe's active inland dune areas has to involve the wholesale removal of thousands of trees, scrub, lichen, and algae-covered soil and sand - not always an easy action to take. Small but ambitious pilot projects are already underway - compare the photo below of the Hulshorster dune area, taken in 1985, with the image at the top of this post.

And, given the varied history of sand activity, together with the unknowns of future changes in winds and climate, it's surely difficult to define what, if anything, constitutes the "natural" condition of such environments; nevertheless, I would agree with the efforts being made - a futile and emotional argument about what is "natural" could easily outlast these unique landscapes. I'll end with Koster's conclusion:

Modern concepts of nature conservation and rehabilitation on the other hand now lead to restoration of the originally dynamic drift sand ecosystems. However, it is inevitable that reactivation projects that primarily promote sand drifting processes may come into conflict with classic habitat strategies that aim to achieve maximum biodiversity and natural vegetation succession....In conclusion, inland dune landscapes where aeolian processes of sediment transport and deposition can be observed and investigated are very rare in northwestern Europe, in fact, much more rare than in coastal dune landscapes. Moreover, the dynamism in these landscapes, i.e., the geodiversity of these areas, forms the basis for an exceptional biodiversity. Areas where an ecological gradient exists from bare sand surfaces to partly stabilized surfaces with pioneer plant species to the first stages of forest succession next to each other are equally rare in northwestern Europe. However, geoconservation of these important “natural” landscapes needs careful planning and management that requires a profound knowledge of the interaction of the many geomorphological, ecological, and land use processes.

 [My thanks to Richard Cathcart for drawing my attention to this paper and this topic. And I'd be interested to hear from readers in the US - a quarter of the State of Nebraska is covered in sand dunes: are there similar discussions and initiatives going on there?]

Commercial break - Meet the Author

Once again I shall cast all modesty aside and insert a bit of advertising. Meet the Author is a great idea - writers record very short podcasts talking about their books; this is available on the net both in the US and the UK. I have to admit that I only became aware of it recently when I was asked to do one, but I now root around the site to see and listen to people whose books I have enjoyed - or wonder whether I might enjoy. So, if you are twiddling your thumbs and at a complete loss for something to do for three minutes, go to http://www.meettheauthor.co.uk/bookbites/1888.html

And while I'm on the trumpet-blowing podium (the trumpet being an instrument that in reality I did, and occasionally still do, play), I just discovered that the North American edition of the book received the Honorable Mention in the Nature and Environment category of the National Outdoor Book Awards, for which I'm flattered and very gratified.

Europe's inland sand seas (1): a sand flood and Norman rabbits

 

The little village of Santon Downham, on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia, is today a pleasant, if not particularly remarkable, example of bucolic English hamlets. But it has one extraordinary claim to fame: in the middle of the seventeenth century, over a period of several years, Santon Downham was almost overwhelmed and buried in sand - the great "sand-flood." Dunes several meters high piled up against walls and houses, and sand choked the nearby river. Even a century later, a visitor's account describes "….such a piece of absolute desert almost in the heart of England ..... Nothing was to be seen on either side but sand and scattered gravel without the least vegetation; a mere African desert." 

Sandstorms and migrating dunes in the English countryside? This whole area of East Anglia, a low-lying and very dry area of heath known as Breckland, or "the Brecks," is covered in sand beneath the surface, sand that was derived from the geological rubbish left behind by the Ice Age glaciers and the meltwater rivers that poured across the bedrock chalk of the region. As climatic conditions - and man's activities - changed, the sands would become active and accumulate into dune fields, marching across the Brecks. Periods of activity were interspersed with periods of stability, the sands covered by soil until they broke free once more. A first-hand account of the inundation of Santon Downham was written by a resident, Thomas Wright, who, in 1668, described in a letter to the Royal Society, published in its Philosophical Transactions, the encroachment of the sand and his struggles to preserve his house; he also suggested the origin of the sand and his ideas turn out to be quite accurate. For a very modest sum, the original letter can be downloaded from the Royal Society archives, and it makes for fascinating reading. Here's the title (remember the old ufe of "f's" for "s's"):

 

The body of sand, the "wing'd enemy," had been on the move for decades, grown to cover more than a thousand acres, and reached the outskirts of the village 30 or 40 years before Wright's account. There it paused for ten years "without doing any considerable mischief" but then took off, and "over-ran 200 acres of very good corn" in less than a year. But then Wright wrote, "'Tis now got into the body of this little Town, where it hath buried and destroyed divers Tenements and other Houses, and has inforc'd us to preserve the remainder at a greater charge than they are worth." Wright and the other villages struggled to fend off the dunes over a period of five years: "For, it had so possest all our Avenues, as there was no passage to us but over two Walls of 8 or 9 foot high (which encompass'd a small grove before my house, now almost buried in sand); nay, it was once so near a conquest, as at one end of my house it was possest of my Yard, and had blown up to the eves of most of my out-houses." Wright resorted to planting "furre-hedges", one of the earliest references to the use of conifers in Breckland. And then, month after month, he planted more on top of the newly-buried ones. He eventually ended up with "sandbanks nearly 20 yards high." These, with the help of his neighbours, he covered with "some hundreds of loads of Muck and good earth," and cut a passage through to his house. These early attempts at dune stabilisation seem to have been effective. Today, the geological map shows the entire area still covered in sand, and the remains of dunes are visible in some places, but otherwise there is no sign of the great "sand-floud." Not that sand isn't still on the move -  in the spring vast piles of sand have to be cleared off roads after high winds, and there are places where cars sometimes need their lights on as they pass through sandstorms.

So where did this "eruption," driven by "the rage of those Impetuous blasts," actually come from? Wright suggests from the warrens of Lakenheath and Wangford, just a few kilometers southwest of Santon Downham; recent work by Steve Godby from Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge and Mark Bateman of the University of Sheffield suggests that he was, living up to his name, right. The warrens (and yes, rabbits do come into this) are areas of disturbed sand dunes, more or less overlain by scrubby vegetation and planted pine trees (see the photograph at the head of this post, courtesy of Martin Sandford), next to the American Air Force base at Lakenheath, where the construction of the golf course must have essentially been an exercise in isolating the bunkers (sand traps). As a personal aside, I was intrigued to discover this because, as a graduate student, typically struggling to make ends meet, I taught geology evening classes for the University of Maryland programs at various air bases, including Lakenheath - little did I realise that I was in the midst of a great landscape of sand or that I would be writing about it these many years later. But, back to the warrens. Godby and Bateman have established the chronology of the periods of activity and stability of the sands using luminescence on the sands and radiocarbon dating on some of the organic-rich peaty soil layers that formed during the quiet periods (luminescence dating is an extraordinarily powerful technique that measures how long it has been since material, for example sand, was last exposed to light - more on this in a later post, but see the excellent USGS discussion).

Five periods of sand deposition have been identified, 6500, 1600-1100, 500, 400-335, and 200-30 years before the present. The 400-335 dates, corresponding to the 17th century AD, come from Santon Downham - these ages are not found in the sands of Wangford Warren, and it's reasonable to infer that this is because the sands were blown out of the Warren and inundated Santon Downham. And the event described by Thomas Wright was not the first - at least one previous sand deposition event has taken place at the village. 

The exact combination of climatic and other circumstances that lead to each episode of sand activation are complex, but some factors around the sand flood event are clear, as described by Godby and Bateman. The period 300 to 600 years ago was drier than average, sea level was relatively low, and, from around 650 to perhaps 50 years ago, Europe was in the "Little Ice Age" - and the 17th century was the coldest in the last millennium. Changes in the North Atlantic circulation caused periods of highly variable conditions and extreme storminess. Vegetation on the sands of Breckland would have been stressed and the sand vulnerable to the "rage of those Impetuous blasts." Furthermore, human agricultural excess had resulted in deforestation and impoverishment of what soils there were. And then there were the rabbits.

The Normans brought not only a whole new language to these islands, but a whole new cuisine. They introduced rabbits to the UK. The Bayeux Tapestry shows the invaders feasting upon arrival on these shores, and my personal interpretation is that the scene below depicts rabbit kebabs and spit-roasted rabbit.

 

Rabbits breed proverbially, and while they were to some extent managed for food and fur, they took over vast swathes of the countryside. The sandy ground of the Brecks was ideal for them but they turned the land into more or less a desert. The rabbits were "harvested," using specially trained dogs (called "lurchers") and ferrets, by professional men and women, the "warreners," (image, right), all this activity generating significant income for the lords of the manor. The picture below shows warreners in around 1925, complete with lurchers and ferret boxes, and Lakenheath Warren in the background. 

Without doubt, the rabbits contributed significantly to mobilisation of the sand dunes already activated by the changing climate and the inundation of Santon Downham. But all this was happening not just in England. The Brecklands and other inland sand landscapes of England lie at the western end of what is known as the "European sand belt" that extends across the lowlands through the Netherlands to the Polish-Russian border and beyond. Coastal dune systems are familiar to all of us, but these stretches of inland sand seas (well, perhaps "seas" is a slight exaggeration) are less well known, and are the subject of some fascinating work going on in the realm of geoconservation. This kind of research in the Netherlands was what originally prompted this whole story - but that will have to wait until Part 2.

{Thanks to Martin Sanford for the use of his photograph at the top, from his flickr photostream that includes several images of Wangford Warren. There is a comprehensive guide to the Brecks at http://brecks.org/default.aspx, and the image of warreners, originally from the Ancient House Museum in Thetford, is from one of their downloadable leaflets; http://www.brecks.org/shared/pdfs/brecksfa.pdf is an excellent environmental and historical resource for teachers. Short summaries of the sand flood and the recent research can be found at http://www.santondownham.org/sandflood.html and http://www.santondownham.org/moderntimes.html. My thanks to Richard Cathcart for starting me off on this - he sent me the paper on the Netherlands geoconservation project, which reminded me of the Santon Downham story that I originally intended to include in the book but which ended up as one of the items on the cutting room floor - back to Richard's reference in Part 2.]

"I'm real concerned about the beach"

 

So declared Dennis Dare, a Manager of Ocean City, Maryland, after the conspiracy of a nor'easter and the remnant of tropical storm Ida wrought havoc along the coasts of the northeastern US over the last few days. His concern was well placed - much of the beach simply wasn't there any more, instead there was a twelve-foot cliff marking the extent of relentless wave erosion. Ocean City engineer Terry McGean, after inspecting the scene, is reported as saying “We lost a lot of dune. We lost a fair amount of beach. We’ve seen worse. Certainly, the idea is that we lose sand and not buildings, so it did its job. Now we get everybody rolling to get it back together”; he went on to describe how when it comes time to reload the beach with sand next summer, it’s going to be more expensive and take more sand than they’d planned for. He said the beach lost between 25-50 percent of its dunes.

"Reload the beach" ? I suppose he must be referring to the time-honoured futility of beach nourishment.

The press reports contain many dramatic images and I shall simply reproduce some of my favourites here, with quotations from the accompanying descriptions.

 

"Coastal community leaders said Saturday they were crossing their fingers that the waves would send enough sand back up onto the beaches that human assistance wouldn't be needed to finish the replenishment, shoring up the resorts in time for the economically vital summer."

 

"In Delaware, tides washed out dunes, leaving several feet of water and 3 feet of sand along state Route 1. Transportation officials say it may take two days to clear the sand."

 

"Several vessels carrying hazardous cargo broke loose from their moorings in Virginia during the storm. Crews were working to stabilize a 570-foot barge carrying containers of chemicals in the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach. Work crews boarded the barge and were riding out the storm with it, hoping it would run aground and could be towed away when the weather improves. A similar fate awaits a 700-foot oil tanker that broke loose and ran aground on a sandbar in the James River in Newport News, Va."

 

"But even if another storm were to hit today, the sand washed away from the dunes will still be of some help, creating a larger near-shore sandbar system that serves to break the waves' energy as they pound the coast. That effect was apparent Friday afternoon, Tony Pratt, Delaware's shorelines and waterway administrator said. "The waves really were breaking quite a distance from the dune by the end of the day ... and losing a tremendous amount of their energy," he said. 'I like it better when the dune is whole, [but] that sand is still serving a great service. ... It's not like a total loss.' "

"Beach replenishment is a costly endeavor. A project earlier this year in Dewey Beach alone cost $6 million. "We're hopeful that Mother Nature will do her job," said Carol Everhart, executive director of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce. Since 2001, the Army Corps and others have spent $100 million pumping sand from the ocean onto Delaware's beaches. Building sea walls will cost much more -- a sea wall built in Galveston, Texas, cost $10,000 a foot."

 

"State and local beach officials have credited the dunes with defending their towns' homes and boardwalks from the storm's wrath.

Taking an opposite view is Orrin H. Pilkey, emeritus professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and author of "The Corps and the Shore" and this year's "The Rising Sea," which he co-authored.

Pilkey said it would be a huge error for Delaware to ignore science and not plan for the inevitable approach of climate change and rising seas. He pointed to the damaging Ash Wednesday storm of 1962, when the Army Corps of Engineers erected a dune along the shore in Ocean City, Md., and issued an advisory to restrict development inland of the protective barrier. But homes and hotels eventually moved oceanside, on top of and across the dune.

'The town paid no attention to it -- it had no teeth,' Pilkey said. 'Money speaks -- so away we went.' "

[I couldn't possibly comment further on all this - the images and the quotations speak for themselves. Many of the images are from http://www.delawareonline.com/, and http://www.nj.com/, credits Patti Sapone, Robert Sciarrino, Chuck Snyder, Laura Emmons]

And, for Sand Puzzle #2, thanks to Jules, see the comments on Sand Puzzle #1

Sand Puzzles #1: Cooking pasta

 

 Nina must cook some pasta for 15 minutes. The only way she has of measuring time is a 7-minute sand-timer and an 11-minute sand-timer.

How can she use these timers to measure exactly 15 minutes?

I just came across a website called NRICH, a superb UK-based resource for maths teachers at all levels, a joint project between the Mathematics and Education Departments at the University of Cambridge. I'll let them describe the aims of their project themselves:

NRICH aims to:

• Enrich the experience of the mathematics curriculum for all learners
• Offer challenging and engaging activities
• Develop mathematical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Show rich mathematics in meaningful contexts
• Work in partnership with teachers, schools and other educational settings

For teachers of mathematics, we:

• Offer you FREE enrichment material (Problems, Articles and Games) at all Key Stages that really can help to inspire and engage learners and embed RICH tasks into everyday practice.
• Help to promote RICH thinking in classrooms by offering on-line and face-to-face support at Primary and Secondary level.
• Deliver professional development courses and workshops in rich mathematics.
• Help teachers to think strategically about 'next steps' and progression in problem solving.

And for those learning mathematics, we:

• Provide FREE and interesting mathematical games, problems and articles.
• Encourage you to share your solutions to our mathematical problems.
• Have Mathematicians that can help you to solve problems - just 'Ask NRICH'!
• Offer a safe online space where you can meet others with similar interests.

A note for parents:

• NRICH is a joint project between the Faculties of Mathematics and Education at The University of Cambridge
• Our FREE and extensive Rich Resource Bank has been designed to meet the needs of learners from ages 5 to 19 (Key Stages 1 to 5).
• Our resources are tested and proven and do make a difference.
• Rich tasks are suitable for learners of all ages and abilities.

I found several items in which sand cropped up (well, of course I would - as any reader of this blog is well-aware, the stuff is everywhere), but the puzzle caught my eye. It's geared towards kids in the 5-10 age group, but I'll readily admit that it took me a couple of minutes. And the interesting thing is that, if you go on the solution page, there are three different (but clearly related) methods of achieving what's needed.

So, this post is titled "Sand Puzzles #1" - anyone want to contribute number 2?

[Sandglasses image borrowed, with appreciation, from La Crosse McCormick, "Manufacturers of Fine Timepieces"]

An anniversary

The Nima Sand Museum on the coast of Japan's main island of Honshu contains the world's largest sandglass. Six meters in height, it is ceremonially turned at midnight on December 31st every year - and takes until exactly a year later for all the sand to fall. If, instead of December 31st, the giant sandglass had been turned on November 11th, 2008, when the first post on Through the Sandglass was published, the last grains would be trickling through today. I find it difficult to believe that this rather eclectic blog has been on the go for a year; I started it initially at the suggestion of my publishers as a follow-up to the book, but it has taken on a life of its own. There remain endless topics deposited on the cutting room floor after the book was edited that I still haven't got round to covering - there just seem to be too many other things of interest (to me, at least) cropping up on a daily basis.

So, more than 120 posts later and after visits from people in 105 countries, I'm quietly celebrating my first year of blogging ("quietly" meaning a particularly good bottle of red wine, nothing more exuberant). It has been great fun and has given me the great pleasure of putting me in touch with all kinds of delightful people around the world - something that otherwise would never have happened.

So I want to sincerely thank everyone who reads this blog, whether routinely or just occasionally.

And please keep the comments, suggestions, links and references coming - they're much appreciated.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this: I sometimes fear that my obsession distorts the true frequency of mentions of my topic - but then I watched the news last week and, in one broadcast, were the images below (from the recent G20 finance meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland) and a description of yet another line being drawn in the sand. Put that phrase into google news search and there are 500 instances of its use in the last week. I rest my case. 

 

P.S. it seems that almost all the images on the blog have spontaneously and unilaterally decided to de-centre and left-justify themselves, detracting from the appearance - I have no idea why and am seeking the help of the experts at Typepad. Any suggestions will be most welcome.

Ten things we don't know about sand: Number 2

 

It just won't stop cropping up. After I returned from giving the talk in Manchester, checking through the news in the world of science, not only did I come across impressive progress in coastal research (my number 6 unknown ), but there, in Wired Science, was a report titled "Baffling Patterns Form in Scientific Sandbox." It began "With nothing more than beads in a glass box, physicists have revealed yet another mysterious property of granular solids, now recognized by scientists as a unique state of matter, like solids or gases" - my number 2 in the ten things we don't know about sand: "What is it?"

The report describes work by Ralf Stannarius and Frank Rietz of the Otto von Guericke-University Magdeburg in Germany; using, as is so often the case when investigating the bizarre behaviours of granular materials, very simple apparatus, they have produced some quite astonishing results. Results that demonstrate, yet again, that we don't really know how to describe granular materials - they are not consistently solids or liquids, but rather a state of matter in their own right. We don't really know how many states of matter there are - in addition to the solids, liquids, and gases, there are numerous other candidates, including liquid crystal, amorphous, Bose-Einstein condensates, and, of course, the notorious quark-gluon plasmas (all this, I will readily admit, from Wikipedia, where I also discovered something called a "superglass" - but the article was categorised as an "orphan"). As Heinrich Jaeger, the granular guru, remarked when talking about his recent work on the nano-scale forces causing droplet formation in falling streams of sand, these "experimental results open up new territory for which there is currently no theoretical framework." 

The fact that granular materials do not like to remain mixed has long been observed, and Stannarius and Rietz describe earlier experimental work which their latest research continues. Put a granular mixture in a container and vibrate, shake, rotate, or otherwise disturb it and it will perpetrate an act of self-segregation. Stannarius and Rietz have shown that such a mixture not only self-segregates, but convects. In the image at the top of this post (from their publication), it almost seems as if the material is mocking us, saying "hey, you'll need better spectacles than these through which to understand what we're up to" (OK, blogger's poetic license). "On the Brink of Jamming: Granular Convection in Densely Filled Containers" by Rietz and Stannarius was first published last year, but last month they released an update with compelling and extraordinary videos of granular convection. The apparatus was, indeed, simple, but clever. As shown below, they used a simple mix of two sizes of glass sand-sized beads in a container that is essentially a Hele-Shaw cell, just like the home-made one I have used in my kitchen physics experiments. Once filled (and it is important that the cell is filled beyond a critical level), it's placed in a mechanism that simply rotates it, slowly, for hours. The cell is back-lit and photographed periodically.

 

The results are staggering. The movies, of various runs of the experiment and at various resolutions, can be found at the Magdeburg website (caution: if you go to the MIT Technology Review report, the movie link embedded there is for a 150 mb version - better to check out the link I've just mentioned). The movies are dramatic and well-worth watching, but just to whet your appetite, I've assembled a time-series of stills, shown below.

 

In a completely unpredictable (and unpredicted) way, the grains develop a graceful series of dynamically sustained convection rolls. As the authors wrote, "Known mechanisms for granular convection could not be applied." Another echo of Heinrich Jaeger's comment that "Physicists have a rich toolbox for dealing with solids, liquids and gases. But we don’t have a manual for when the old categories don’t apply." Whatever next in the mysterious world of granular materials?

Arenaceous sporting trivia - the baseball World Series

 

My daughter and her grandfather, both in Philadelphia, will probably, to put it mildly, have less than kind words for me when they see this post. For the Phillies (last year's champions) were beaten in the baseball World Series last night by the New York Yankees - of all teams, it had to be the Yankees (for non-North American readers, I have appended some brief explanatory notes at the end of the post). Angst, tears, and rage in Philadelphia, exuberant celebration in New York. But, for Through the Sandglass, it's just another opportunity, to point out the ubiquity of my topic - in the continuing tradition of my daughter's Simpsons challenge.  

For a start, like many sporting surfaces, the construction of a world-class baseball field relies on first-class sand. The iconic diamond, its grass and its surrounding "dirt," are made from specialty materials. Go to the website of the Beam Clay company of Great Meadows, New Jersey ("Your 'one-stop source' for America's baseball and sports turf surfaces and supplies!") and you will be bewildered by the choice of over 200 products for the construction, care, and maintenance of your dream infield - for example, their "Premium infield mix":

Made from uniform orange sand and red Beam Clay® with our special binding process that reduces wind and water erosion. Doesn’t separate and blow away! Doesn’t become dusty in stadiums! With proper maintenance, provides firm traction without tracking, good drainage while retaining playing moisture, distinctive reddish/orange color, works up readily, no separation of ingredients, long lasting, safe to slide on - for safe, attractive, consistent professional quality baseball diamonds.

The nature and performance of the materials used for the batter's and catcher's boxes are particularly important, but as in the action of a game, the pitcher's mound has to be a focus of attention. A good history of the pitcher's mound and how to construct one can be found here; the ingredients and recipes vary little - although the climatic environment of the stadium is important. This particular summary is from http://www.baseball-almanac.com/:

The mix used to build the pitcher's landing area (and often the batter's box and catcher's box) should have a significant concentration of clay to provide the necessary stability to resist degradation from increased traffic. A good material will be about 40% sand, 20% silt, and 40% clay. If necessary, you can mix individual components together. Just be sure that individual components are evenly distributed throughout the material.

     A quality infield material will have a lower concentration of clay than the pitcher's mound. The infield skin should be moist and firm, not hard and baked dry. To achieve firmness, an infield mix should not be too sandy. An infield mix with greater than 75% sand causes unstable footing for ballplayers and increases infield skin maintenance problems. A sandy infield will create low spots more quickly and is more likely to create lips at the infield skin/turf interface. Ideally, the infield mix should be between 50% and 75% sand and 25% to 50% clay and silt. A combination that has been successfully used is a 60% sand, 20% silt, 20% clay base mix (sandy clay loam to sandy loam). The silt and clay give the mix firmness. If the mix contains too much silt and clay, compaction and hardness become a problem.

So, a skilful (and well-paid) pitcher can stride out to his patch with confidence that its consistency will provide a reliable foundation for his art. And, in the case of Mariano Rivera ("Mo"), who finished off the Phillies last night and has been called "the best closer in the history of the game," his appearance on the field - if the game is in New York - is accompanied by a loud rendition of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" - "we're off to never-never land." It is said that this is by no means Mo's favourite song, but that it is played on his entry because when he comes into a game, you can pretty much put it to bed. If you wish, you can see a video of this from last night's game at http://www.wikio.com/video/1925785.

And then, of course, there's sand lot baseball. And plastic baseball-shaped bottles that can be filled with coloured sand - but one example of a wide range of such things; I couldn't possibly comment on their artistic merit - but I suspect that Andrew Clemens will not be rolling in his grave..... 

 

Notes for non-American readers:

1. The "World Series" has been widely derided by non-North Americans as being no such thing, since no countries other than the USA and Canada can compete for it. In order to combat such accusations of sporting arrogance, it has often been declared that the name originates from the original sponsorship of the championship by the newspaper, The New York World, early in the last century. Indeed, my (American) wife firmly corrected me to this effect a long time ago. But it's a myth - the "World Series" is, and always has been, exactly that (see Snopes). Not that I would in any way revert to my earlier derisive remarks ..... Always remember that the other life of Steve Gould, the extraordinary and revered evolutionary biologist and writer, was as a devoted and passionate baseball fan - of the Yankees. 
2. I would no more attempt to explain baseball to non-Americans than I would cricket to baseball fans (both are challenges equivalent, in Shakespeare's words, to "numbering the sands and drinking the oceans dry.") Suffice it to say that both games are very much like the classic description of a soldier's life - long periods of boredom interrupted by brief moments of terror (well, generally not exactly terror, but action, something to actually engage the senses and the emotions).
3. In the later stages of a game, the starting pitcher is often replaced by a specialist finisher - a "closer" like Mariano Rivera.
4. A baseball signed by Mo and with the words "Enter Sandman" can be purchased from http://www.mlbfansite.com/ for a mere $399.99 (knocked down, so to speak, from the original price of $501.86).
5. Herewith, from http://www.baseball-almanac.com/stadium/baseball_field_construction.shtml, a simple illustration of the layout of the diamond and the infield. From now on, you're on your own.
   
   
   
   
   

Too much, too little, and often in the wrong place

 

It rose out of the omnipresent sand of a natural island, and there remains a thin layer of the ocher substance almost everywhere: on the canopied grandstands, on the brilliantly lighted hotel at the edge of the track, on the seats and in just about every corner of the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

So went the start of a New York Times article on yesterday's finale to the Formula One Grand Prix season. Small armies of workers were sweeping the sand right up to the last minute and yet, as The Walrus and The Carpenter observed, it's essentially an impossible task. Holding an extravaganza of highly sophisticated but delicate technology in this kind of environment brings many challenges. As the article went on to comment

 It may play havoc with the engines of the cars and it will change the grip, lap by lap, for the drivers, even affect the lenses and other camera mechanisms belonging to the hundreds of photographers and journalists who will document the final race

For races in neighbouring Bahrain, it's long been a problem, as explained by Red Bull’s technical director Gunther Steiner:

You have to be aware that it can get in to every part of the car. It literally sandblasts the car every time it goes on track and gradually erodes all the surfaces and the cooling fins on the radiators.

Unique measures are taken to protect exposed suspension and other parts of the cars, and specially designed air filters have to be used. And then there's the problem with grip and tyre selection - after all, a motor race in which the drivers have to go slowly in order to stay on the track - and avoid whole sections of it because it's covered in sand - detracts somewhat from the sporting attraction. David Coulthard, the now-retired driver, was quoted before the race as saying

It does seem to be very sandy. When I followed a car the amount of stuff coming out the back was incredible. What that does is two things: one, it makes the driver pay the price if he goes a bit off line, which is good because it favours ability, but it is also makes people not want to take the risk in overtaking. Sand on your tyre takes a good lap to be cleared out.

And so it proved. It was largely a risk-avoidance race with drivers clearly sticking very closely to a single driving "line," conspicuously steering clear of the rest of the track - and often running into problems when they didn't. Grains of sand influencing a sporting spectacle and, as The Times Online concluded, "Whoever wins the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday will be fêted in a nation that can afford to buy its heroes — but the victorious driver might feel his name is not written in history, but in the sand."

But if the sport was less than inspiring, the setting made up for it. This was the inaugural race at Abu Dhabi's latest example of construction extravagance. Ras Island, just down the coast from the preposterous artificial island developments of Dubai, was but a sandy expanse a mere 30 months ago (see the Google Earth image at left of the image at the head of this post). It hardly seems to have been a natural island, but rather 25 square kilometers of coastal desert, sandbanks, and sabhka (salt flats) carved out and isolated from the mainland by manmade waterways. After several tens of billions of dollars, and the efforts of tens of thousands of workers, things have changed. The image below is of the hotel complex across the track (as night falls, as it did for the Grand Prix, the whole thing glows in a succession of changing colours) and at the right in the image at the top is the way the whole place will look when finished.

 

The strange red object in the centre of the header image is "Ferrari World," the largest indoor theme park on the planet, "like a megalomaniac’s pleasure dome" in the words of the NYT. Yas Island will boast  20 hotels, 3 theme parks, a "Super Regional mall", golf courses, several marinas, and commercial and residential developments. You can read the full specs at the developer's website, but in case you don't here's a sampling of the exuberance on this "island of dreams":

There will be a Super Regional Mall that will house famous retail brands from
around the world in over 500 stores and 4 floors including lifestyle, fashion &
boutiques.
• There will also be room for a complete town centre concept, contained in a
number of adjacent buildings and built under a 88,100m2 roof
• The Yas Mall will have one of the largest free standing roofs in the world,
showcasing 296,000m2 of the world’s best retail space
• Adjoining the Yas Mall will be will be Abu Dhabi’s first Multi-purpose Retail
Park (100,000m2)
• Three major department stores will be accommodated.
• A large hypermarket covering an area of 17,000 m2

 What I have not been able to determine is how much concrete goes into this monster (one hotel used 45,000 cubic metres of it, the racetrack 225,000) or, indeed, where all the sand came from for that concrete; presumably, as in neighbouring Dubai, local sources of non-desert sand were used (the windblown stuff being too rounded and smooth for good concrete), and the local natural sand budgets consequently profoundly changed. But it's not just the natural sand budgets. Although sand prices around the world have fallen during the economic crisis, they peaked in 2007 at more than $40 per ton, and sand supplies were becoming difficult. The Economist recently ran an article (pleasingly titled "The hourglass effect") that began:

“LOOKING for sea-sand for reclamation project in Singapore. Prompt reply is greatly appreciated.” Many such pleas can be found on Alibaba.com, a popular Chinese trading-website. Malaysia banned sand exports as long ago as 1997. Indonesia followed suit in 2007 on environmental and, some say, political grounds. Ever since, it has become harder for Singapore to secure supplies for its booming construction industry and sea-fill plans.

Singapore has turned to Cambodia and then Vietnam for its sand, but both have now banned exports. It seems that Myanmar may be the replacement supplier, so I will see my favourite material propping up, through, of course, western contractors, a loathsome dictatorship. The need is clear for a more widespread development and use of advanced forms of concrete that not only use less sand, but also can be manufactured without the associated emissions. And considering that every man, woman, and child on the planet "consumes" forty times their own weight in concrete every year, the sooner the better.

And finally, still on sand budgets and still in the news, today's Guardian newspaper carries a piece titled "Tide turns again for Cancún in shifting sands row." The 800,000 cubic metres of sand that were used to replace beaches washed away by Hurricane Wilma a few years ago lasted only a few months, and the current project is only the latest in a series of failed attempts at beach nourishment.

A huge project to replenish eroded beaches in Mexico's main Caribbean coastal resorts, including Cancún, has been suspended after legal action by environmentalists.

Campaigners claim the $75m (£45m) plan – involving taking 6.2m cubic metres from a sandbank just off Cozumel island, 50 miles from Cancún, to hotel beaches – is based on incomplete assessments.

Critics say dredging the sandbank will alter currents and damage ecosystems, including coral reefs and breeding grounds for species such as the queen conch. They also fear Cozumel will become more vulnerable to hurricanes. "It's absurd. We understand it is necessary to fill out the beaches but it needs to be done without sacrificing other places," said Alejandra Serrano of the Mexican Centre for Environmental Law.

But Rodrigo de la Pena, president of the Hotel Association, criticised the delay: "We cannot sell ourselves as a place of sun and sand, if we don't have the sand."

Alejandra Serrano is right - it's absurd. But then so many things are, including much of what I've just written about .....