Through The Sandglass

Sand Scandal

 

From Wired:

A sand scandal is brewing in China, with concerns that low-quality concrete has been used in the construction of many of the country's largest buildings -- putting them at risk of collapse.

The recipe to make concrete is pretty simple -- cement, aggregate and water -- but the strength of the final batch can vary wildly depending on the kinds of aggregate and cement used and the proportions they're mixed in. Commonly the aggregate used in many modern buildings projects consists of crushed gravel or other rock, including sand, and that's the cause of so much distress in the Chinese construction industry at the moment. Inspections by state officials have found raw, unprocessed sea sand in at least 15 buildings under construction in Shenzhen, including a building which, when finished, was set to become China's tallest.

The Ping'An Finance Centre is planned to top out at 660m, making it not only China's tallest building but the second-tallest building in the world after the Burj Dubai. 80m has been built so far, but construction has been halted in the wake of the revelation from Shenzhen's Housing and Construction Bureau that substandard sea sand concrete had been used in its construction. According to a notice on the Bureau's website posted on 16 March, 31 companies had had their licenses to work revoked for at least six months…..

It can take only a few decades for a building to become dangerously unsafe if untreated sea sand is used in its concrete -- including the possibility of collapse. While this scandal has been confined only to Shenzhen thus far, the possibility of it spreading to other Chinese cities is worrying. The country currently has nine of the 20 tallest buildings in the world that are under construction, while there were reportedly so many skyscrapers under construction in 2011 that it worked out as a new one being topped out every five days right through into 2014.

Yup, the wrong kind of sand – again.

Iconic Beach Resorts May Not Survive Sea Level Rises, Warns Ulster Coastal Scientist

This from a University of Ulster news release last month:

Some of the world’s best known beach resorts may not survive projected sea level rises, a leading coastal scientist at the University of Ulster has warned.

 Professor Andrew Cooper, Professor of Coastal Studies in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University, said a rise in sea level of even a few feet could threaten some of the world’s most iconic resorts like West Palm Beach in the US, Cancun in Mexico, Cannes in the south of France, Torremolinos in Spain and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

 And he also claimed the problems caused by changing sea levels are compounded by a lack of political will and a lack of short-term coastal management initiatives.

 Professor Cooper has investigated and reported on the world’s coasts in a research and teaching career that has taken him to more than 50 countries on six continents over the past quarter century.  

 He co-authored the book 'The World’s Beaches: a global guide to the science of the shoreline' last year.

 The Coleraine-based academic said that while the most pervasive driver of coastal change at present is global sea level rise, rising sea levels alone do not necessarily threaten beaches. The problem arises when beaches are artificially hemmed in and not given room to move.

 “Beaches have survived 120 m of sea level rise over the last ten thousand years. Problems only arise if we don’t give beaches room to move and to adjust to the changing sea level.” 

 Professor Cooper explained: “A key attractor in most of the world’s examples of coastal resort cities has been the presence of an adjacent beach. 

 "Some well-known examples are Benidorm, Torremolinos, (Spain), Cannes (France), West Palm Beach, Florida, Atlantic City, New Jersey (USA), Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (USA), Virginia Beach, Virginia (USA), Cancun (Mexico) and the most rapidly developed of all coastal resort cities, Dubai (United Arab Emirates). In all of these resorts the challenge is to preserve the real estate behind the beach and still save the beaches, which are being pushed landwards by rising sea level.  

 “All around the world, people are responding to the threat of rising sea level by building concrete walls to protect valuable beachfront property.  When sea level rises, the beach wants to move, generally further landward, but the wall stops it so eventually, the beach gets squeezed out. When the rising water reaches this protective wall, as it inevitably does, the beach is drowned.”

He continued: “Coastal defences built to protect valuable developments along shoreline are stopping beaches from moving landward which is where they want to go. That’s really the Achilles heel of coastal resorts as beaches must be allowed to ‘move’.” 

 Beach replenishment or nourishment is sometimes seen as panacea for disappearing beaches but, according to Professor Cooper, this is not a solution either.

 “There are a lot of issues with beach nourishment - not least the cost – but  beach nourishment would not be needed if developments were properly planned in the first place to give beaches room to move.  Maintaining resort beaches by nourishment is a major challenge with rising sea level." 

 Professor Cooper recently published the results of a study along Australia’s Gold Coast to assess adaption options for coastal resort cities. The study, believed to be the first of its kind to specifically assess adaptation options for coastal resorts, could become a blueprint for other resorts around the world.

 “On developed coasts, human activities dominate over natural processes in shaping the coastline. Beach resort cities are mostly artificial creations on the shoreline that rely on beach nourishment to sustain them and on their reputation for a clean and safe environment.  To maintain this during rapid sea level rise will be near impossible. To hold beaches stationary while sea level rise is pushing them landwards will require a massive increase in the amount of sand being pumped onto beaches.

 “Our study of resorts along the Gold Coast of Australia suggests that with advance planning, we might just cope with a 1metre sea level rise but not even careful planning beforehand could enable resorts to survive more than that. 

 “The problems are the volume of additional sand required to hold the beach in place and the engineering requirements for protection of low-lying developments and infrastructure.  These problems are compounded by a lack of political will to adapt, uncertainty regarding how much sea level will rise, short-term coastal management initiatives, and the climate change skeptics.”

[Photos: Soil Science, D. Lindbo.]

 

 

Vandalism is an inadequate word

 

There is something of a mystery, an historical debate, about who exactly caused the burning of the great Library at Alexandria. There is, however, no mystery about who torched the library in Timbuktu.

Some years back, while researching the Sand book, I became fascinated by the stories of the manuscripts of Timbuktu, many of them dating back to the thirteenth century:

It is not only the dryness of the climate that preserves ancient manuscripts—the desiccating properties of sand can do the same directly… Timbuktu holds dramatic illustrations of this. From around a.d. 1300 to 1500, the fabled city was a great seat of learning, with students and scholars coming from far away to study, learn, and debate. But after its fall, many of its archives became dispersed or lost. However, in recent years, following more peaceful times in Mali, literally thousands of manuscripts have been recovered from where they had been hidden, in caves or directly in the desert sand.

“More peaceful times in Mali” – how times do change. Back then, Mauritania, Mali, the Festival of the Desert, were high on my bucket list of destinations, a fine illustration of the foolishness of procrastination. And when I read in the news this morning that the manuscript collections had been burned by the fleeing “rebels,” I was ready to weep. I reached in vain for words that would properly describe this act and the individuals who committed it, until I settled on “obscene” and “evil,” words that apply to essentially all of the actions of these people.

As the culmination of decades of work, largely stimulated by UNESCO, and with the collaboration of the Malian and South African Governments, the support of the Ford Foundation, funding from Kuwait, and the expertise of the University of Capetown, the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research opened the doors of its new building in 2009. It housed collections of literally priceless manuscripts and the facilities and staff to finally document and preserve them. On Monday came the news that it had been destroyed.

However, at the time of writing, there is a glimmer of hope – not, perhaps, for the facility but for the manuscripts. Time magazine reports that, in anticipation of exactly what happened, a significant number of them had been quietly removed and hidden; history repeating itself, ironically:

In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute to a safe house elsewhere. Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied.

Let us hope that this is true.

Update 2 February: grounds for optimism - it seems likely that the majority of the manuscripts were indeed removed and hidden safely.

The muddied waters of Sandy

In the aftermath of the real super-storm (or hurricane) Sandy, there has been, not surprisingly, a super-storm of reporting, opinionating, blogging, and twittering. This is good – there is, in certain quarters at least, some kind of debate going on. However, I have a problem, and so, to wrap up the current sequence of the ongoing theme, I will add my two cents to the maelstrom.

The cover, above, from a recent issue of Bloomberg Business Week illustrates my problem quite well. Putting aside my resentment at being addressed as stupid (I’m sure it wasn’t meant personally), I should say that the cover article is good in many respects. It begins, perhaps a little petulantly, “Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change” and goes on to declare that “Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it…” Then, in my opinion, it fails in its own quest for clarity by confounding two vital issues, two problems, both of which need to be urgently addressed – although these problems are related, the paths to successfully addressing them are distinct, and this distinction is lost in the furore. And Bloomberg are not alone.

The challenge of managing our coasts is not the same as the challenge of “managing” climate change. We urgently need a rigorous, evidence-based, approach to developing policy on both – but with the recognition that the solutions are distinct. Coastal management policy should be informed by analysis of the changing climate but should not be dependent on it. Successfully addressing global warming is neither a pre-requisite nor the solution for coastal management.

Here’s a simple summary of my argument (not that I claim any intellectual property rights whatsoever – I am simply following the logic of the experts):

1. The consequences of the damage caused by even a relatively modest storm such as Sandy are socially, financially, economically, and environmentally unsustainable.
2. More – and more violent – storms are inevitable, regardless of global warming, and their frequency and targets impossible to predict.
3. It is likely that warming oceans are exacerbating the strength and frequency of storms and hurricanes such as Sandy – but then the situation is arguably bad enough already.
4. Any hoped-for global action to address global warming will operate on a timeframe that is irrelevant to storm frequency in the foreseeable future and the consequent immediate coastal management issues.
5. Fundamental reform of the current free-for-all in coastal development needs to be an immediate and local issue, distinct from any longer-term actions to reduce emissions and ameliorate climate change.

So when a video report included in the Bloomberg piece tells me that “our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid,” I have to take exception. It’s not that they don’t hit many of the components – insurance costs and so on - and their message that “We have to pay attention” is, of course, correct. Their concluding statement is absolutely correct: “The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.” But, at the same time, there’s my problem – Sandy was a “climate-related disaster” independent of climate change; and yes, “politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them,” but the immediate cause of the scale of the disaster is not inactivity on climate change.

I really don’t mean for this to be tirade against the Bloomberg article – after all, it succeeded in its intention to be controversial, and that’s a good thing; it’s simply symptomatic of what I feel is a muddying of the waters. But let’s clarify what we should be arguing about. Bill Hooke at Living on the Real World hit the proverbial nail on the head in “Hurricane Sandy’s Real Lesson…will we learn it?”:

America needs a comparable national effort and accompanying long-term investment in reducing the need for emergency response on such a grand scale.

The need for emergency response will never go away. But we shouldn’t resign ourselves to the idea that emergencies will necessarily continue to grow in scope, number and impact, just because our society is growing in numbers, in property exposure, and in economic activity. We can grow our society’s resilience to such events. We can reduce the geographical extent and the population adversely affected by future events.

Exactly (except that it’s not just about America). The issue is resilience – and adaptation, and sustainability.

And some further words of wisdom from Rob Young, often quoted in this blog, from a New York Times piece, “As Coasts Rebuild and U.S. Pays, Repeatedly, the Critics Ask Why”:

“The best thing that could possibly come out of Sandy is if the political establishment was willing to say, ‘Let’s have a conversation about how we do this differently the next time,’ ” said Dr. Young, a coastal geologist who directs the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “We need to identify those areas — in advance — that it no longer makes sense to rebuild.”

That’s one urgent issue. Climate change is another one.

From Judith Kildow (who directs the National Ocean Economics Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies), and Jason Scorse, an associate professor of economics at the institute, in a New York Times opinion piece a couple of days ago:

IT’S no surprise that it can be very expensive to live near the ocean. But it may come as a surprise to American taxpayers that they are on the hook for at least $527 billion of vulnerable assets in the nation’s coastal flood plains. Those homes and businesses are insured by the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program.

You read that right: $527 billion, which is just a portion of the program’s overall liability of $1.25 trillion, second only to Social Security in the liabilities on the government’s ledgers last year, according to government data.

…The bottom line is that the flood insurance program is a fiscal time bomb for the government.

We should phase out the program, begin thinking strategically about how to shift populations away from the most risky coastal areas, and use the best available science to update the woefully out-of-date coastal-zone risk profiles that government agencies currently rely on to determine danger. We also need to encourage more stringent building codes that take into account the full range of climate risks.  

Which is also precisely what Michael Gerrard, director of the Columbia Center for Climate Change Law emphasised in his recent piece “What Hurricane Sandy was not.” Herewith, his conclusion – which, you will be relieved to know, I shall use as mine:

The prospect of future storms like Sandy is not something where our best future course of action at all plain and obvious. The magnitude of public investments that has been discussed is immense, and these projects must compete against a great many other compelling priorities.  The land use decisions we face are heartbreaking — we seem to be left with a choice between rebuilding communities in places that will continue to be vulnerable to storms like Sandy,  or not rebuilding them and requiring their residents and the rest of us to lose an immense amount of what we value. Perhaps a small fraction of the tens of billions of dollars we’re talking about for sea walls and flood gates should go to offering to buy out the homeowners in the extremely vulnerable areas — that should probably be on the table.  After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Chile in 2010, serious land use restrictions were imposed on coastal areas that continue to be vulnerable to such events.  That, too, should be on the table.  Some really tough decisions lie ahead — and failure to make a decision is itself a decision, but often the worst one.

The ongoing theme, ongoing

“We cannot sustain the shoreline in the future as we have in the past”

   

Oblique aerial photographs of Mantoloking, NJ. View looking west along the New Jersey shore. Storm waves and surge cut across the barrier island at Mantoloking, NJ, eroding a wide beach, destroying houses and roads, and depositing sand onto the island and into the back-bay. Construction crews with heavy machinery are seen clearing sand from roads and pushing sand seaward to build a wider beach and protective berm just days after the storm.

As the assessment of the devastation and reflection on the consequences continue in the aftermath of “super-storm” Sandy, a couple of provocative updates. The quotation above comes from a piece in the New York Times titled “Costs of shoring up coastal communities,” and are the words of S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal scientist with the United States Geological Survey and the University of Hawaii. The entire article – well-worth reading – begins:

For more than a century, for good or ill, New Jersey has led the nation in coastal development. Many of the barrier islands along its coast have long been lined by rock jetties, concrete sea walls or other protective armor. Most of its coastal communities have beaches only because engineers periodically replenish them with sand pumped from offshore.

Oblique aerial photographs of Seaside Heights, NJ. View looking west along the New Jersey shore. Storm waves and surge destroyed the dunes and boardwalk, and deposited the sand on the island, covering roads. The red arrow points to a building that was washed off of its foundation and moved about a block away from its original location.

And now the USGS has published its initial post-Sandy report, accompanied by spectacular – and sobering – before-and-after photos of the coastline. As has been previously discussed on this blog, barrier islands are arguably the most dynamic and shape-shifting coastal landforms; they are simply piles of sand that are constantly on the move, dramatically so during storms. Their typical migration is landwards, storms breaching the islands and hurling gargantuan volumes of sand from the ocean beaches and dunes (where there are any left) across the islands and into the lagoons and waterways behind them. The USGS photos sampled here need no further explanation – these are simply the most stupid places to build (and re-build) anything.

Oblique aerial photographs of Bridgehampton, New York. The view is looking northwest across the south shore of Long Island towards Mecox Bay. This location is a very narrow and periodically opens during large storms. Large volumes of material were transported into Mecox Bay when it breached during the storm. One week after the storm, the breach was being closed by mechanical means.

 

[Thanks to Steve Bossert for the NYT link, and Jim Jackson for the USGS report.]

An ongoing - and ignored - theme

 

When I say “ignored,” it’s not that I pretend that this humble blog has any influence whatsoever on the policies of governments, it simply reflects the fact that the considered and rational voices of scientists who know what they are talking about continue to be not only ignored, but even defied, by the powers that be, national and local. I have often mounted my soapbox about coastal management issues in the past, generally amid the chaotic aftermath of the latest hurricane (or, as the case may be, “superstorm”). A good starting point in the archives, should you be interested, would be “Our own little bridge to nowhere,” from March of this year; in there are various links to the views and advice of experts such as Rob Young and Orrin Pilkey.

So, in the aftermath of the unfortunately named Sandy, I can only reproduce – somewhat forlornly - a piece by Young and his colleague from USA Today a couple of days ago:

Sandy reminds us of coastal hazards

Rob Young and Andrew Coburn

Our governments encourage rebuilding in vulnerable areas -- at a large cost to taxpayers.

Story Highlights

• Hurricane Sandy represent a chance to reassess and improve future coastline exposure.
• A new study showed that New York and New Jersey among states most vulnerable to sea level rise.
• Blame our federal and state governments for encouraging rebuilding.

5:14PM EDT October 31. 2012 - Superstorm Sandy will almost certainly join the pantheon of "costliest storms in history." The impact of the storm has been felt from South Carolina to southern Massachusetts. There has been massive damage to significant segments of the New Jersey and New York coastline.

As hard as it may be to think about while people are still being plucked from rooftops, storms such as Sandy represent an opportunity to reassess and improve future exposure of coastline communities to storms and ocean surges.

For example, let's take the hardest hit coastal area from Sandy -- New Jersey and New York. A study released in March 2012 by Ben Strauss and Climate Central, which does research on climate change, listed New York and New Jersey among those states most vulnerable to sea level rise. These shorelines will only become more vulnerable with time, and more costly to maintain.

Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agrees. When NBC's Brian Williams on Tuesday night asked Christie about the power of Mother Nature, and rebuilding the Jersey Shore, he said: "There is a way to do it, but we're going to have to sit down and be smart about it. ... One of the things I'm going to be talking with President (Obama) about ... is bringing the Army Corps in immediately to talk to us about how's the best way to rebuild the Jersey Shore."

Of course, predicting the likelihood of wind damage 50 miles from the coast is impossible, but we have a far better grasp today of the impact of coastal flooding and erosion. Every coastal community has its hazard hotspots, and yet we still have failed miserably in keeping development out of these highly vulnerable areas.

How can we keep repeating the same mistake? The federal and state governments provide multiple incentives for homeowners and businesses to rebuild, rather than relocate.

The continuing saga of Dauphin Island, Ala., is a notable example. The west end of island is arguably the most vulnerable shoreline in the United States. It has been impacted by tropical storms 10 times since Hurricane Frederic in 1979. Though it was spared Sandy's wrath, it is still recovering from damage from Hurricane Isaac in late August. The cost from the previous 10 storms to the federal taxpayer was approximately $80 million for an area of about one square mile with only 400 homes.

The funds for this rebuilding come largely through the public assistance sections of the 1988Stafford Act. This law created the federal system of emergency response that we are all so familiar with. When the president makes a federal disaster declaration for a county, aid dollars flow in with few strings attached. And, as with Dauphin Island, those dollars are often used to replace the same infrastructure over, and over again.

The Federal Flood Insurance Program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), provides vulnerable properties access to flood insurance that would not be available in private markets. Many states have government-managed "wind pools" to keep the rates for non-flood property insurance artificially low. The largest insurer of coastal property in Florida is the State of Florida through its Citizen's Property Insurance Corporation. Private losses not covered by insurance are often written off at tax time, an indirect federal subsidy of risky development.

Finally, federal and state taxpayers have spent billions of dollars over the last four decades pumping up beaches in front of coastal properties (beach nourishment) and constructing coastal protection projects. In New Jersey alone, approximately $1 billion in public funds have been spent just to keep beaches in front of homes and oceanfront buildings.

Even more mind-boggling is the fact that FEMA treats beach nourishment projects as infrastructure. If a storm washes away your beach, taxpayers will put it back. One of the hidden costs of Hurricane Sandy up and down the East Coast will be the federal funds used to put the sand back in front of the houses.

It really shouldn't be like this. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the risk of irresponsible development, and we clearly shouldn't be rebuilding areas of known hazard multiple times. We need to allow market forces to set insurance rates and property values without the current government subsidy and risk underwriting.

Superstorm Sandy is a chance to change that calculus. Let's hope that federal, state, and local governments can come together to rebuild infrastructure in a way that will reduce future vulnerability, and limit taxpayer exposure.

Ultimately, let's hope that government at all levels can finally take the issue seriously. Every storm like Sandy is an opportunity to change the way we have been doing business. Let's take it.

Rob Young is director and Andrew Coburn is associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University.

So we’ll wait and see – perhaps after the next hurricane….

Meanwhile, there’s a good post at Geology in Motion on “Why did Sandy leave so much sand in Seaside Heights and even NYC?” and a useful explanation of what a storm surge is at Geology.com.

 

[Images courtesy of the BBC and AP]

Sand Wars

Apologies for being off-line for a while, but circumstances beyond my control have meant that posting has been a low priority.

However, please go to this link for news of what will be a powerful documentary by the award-winning director, Denis Delestrac: Sand Wars

More on this later, no doubt....

The US role in the 21st Century: one to be proud of

At a time when there is a great deal of hand-wringing introspection, garishly coloured by the inevitable political posturing and empty but bombastic rhetoric, on what role the US will play as this century progresses, allow me to recommend one. Unfortunately, it’s one that is in complete conflict with the agenda of most of the rhetoricians.

Our world today would be a different place if it were not for the extraordinary contribution to society’s global knowledge by the US Government scientific agencies: the role that the USGS, NASA, NOAA, and others have played is, quite literally, unequalled by any other country. And the potential of their future contribution to our (shamefully imperfect) attempts to understand and manage our home planet is beyond value. The US is established as the world leader in providing open and comprehensive geoscience data (in the broadest sense), and has the capacity to build on that role in the future, to provide truly global benefits. And yet, in the bizarre political parallel universe of today, the support for the work of these agencies, never mind science in general, is already eroded and under further threat. 

To illustrate my grand claim of scientific leadership, the obvious headline is that of Curiosity and the stunning achievement of the mission so far. But in the excitement of that event, it has been easy to overlook another that, in many ways, is of greater significance to us and our own planet: the Landsat mission celebrated 40 years of continuous operations last month. Forty years of recording the changing surface of our planet, seven successive satellites, and an unparalleled body of earth imaging data whose multitude of applications have demonstrably made a difference to our world. There are, of course, many other satellites, from different agencies of different countries, circling the earth, each with its own sophisticated technology dedicated to specialist imaging. But none have equalled the collective contribution of Landsat.

 

There are several excellent resources celebrating Landsat’s anniversary and browsing them is inspiring: of course, the Goddard Space Center and the mission home page, plus an excellent series in Wired Science, and videos and other material via Google’s Earth Engine. The power of monitoring 40 years of change is evident in many of the time-lapse videos – probably the Aral Sea sequence is the most dramatically depressing - but all are fascinating – see NASA’s top ten. And then there is the the Earth as Art image gallery – the two images at the head of this post (Algerian dunes and the Mississippi, credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/USGS) are from the top five selected by popular vote:

Beyond the scientific information they supply, some Landsat images are simply striking to look at, presenting spectacular views of mountains, valleys, and islands as well as forests, grasslands, and agricultural patterns. By selecting certain features and coloring them from a digital palate, the U.S. Geological Survey has created a series of "Earth as Art" perspectives that demonstrate an artistic resonance in satellite land imagery and provide a special avenue of insight about the geography of each scene. We asked the public to vote on their favorite images from the more than 120 images in the online "Earth as Art" collection. We received over 14,000 votes and are happy to announce the top five winners.

 
However, this is a celebration that could have an unhappy ending. As reported in Wired Science in a separate piece - “Our View of Earth from Space Is in Danger” - earlier this year:

The nation’s Earth observing capability from space is beginning to wane as older missions fail and are not replaced,” according to a new National Research Council report, released May 2 as an update to a 2007 decadal report on Earth-observing capabilities.

While roughly 22 satellite or satellite systems run by NASA, NOAA, and the USGS are currently in orbit, that number could drop to only six by 2020. Of the 18 missions recommended in the original 2007 report, only two have specific launch dates.

This is a dire situation, considering that the U.S. relies on this network of satellites for weather forecasting, climate change data, and important geologic and oceanographic information – not to mention the thousands of amazing pictures of our home planet. Weather-related damage from wildfires, flooding, tornadoes, and heat waves resulted in nearly 600 fatalities and cost the economy approximately $50 billion in 2011, but this number would have been even greater without satellite observations.

There are many arenas in which the US can continue or develop a global leadership role as this century progresses, but to consciously abandon its leadership in acquiring and providing – free to every individual on the planet – the earth science data that we need if we are to have any hope of addressing issues that face us, would, in my humble view, be a crime against humanity.

 

 

Here, for those interested, is the (slightly edited) summary of the Landsat program from the USGS:

Landsat Turns 40

The Long View of Earth from Space

The world’s longest-running Earth-observing satellite program — Landsat — turns 40.

NASA — working in cooperation with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and its science agency, the USGS — launched the first Landsat satellite on July 23, 1972. The resulting 40-year archive of Earth observations from the Landsat fleet forms an impartial, comprehensive, and easily accessed register of human and natural changes on the land.

Remote-sensing satellites, such as the Landsat series, help scientists to observe the world beyond the power of human sight, to monitor changes, and to detect critical trends in the conditions of natural resources. Data supplied by Landsat supports the improvement of human and environmental health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery, and crop monitoring.

Through 40 years of continuous coverage, the Landsat series of Earth observation satellites has become a fundamental global reference for scientific issues related to land use and natural resources. Landsat is valued all over the world as the gold standard of land observation. No other satellite program, in our nation or in any other country, comes close to having the historical length and breadth, the continuity and the coverage, of the Landsat archive.

A Versatile Perspective

Landsat satellites can give us a view as broad as 12,000 square miles per scene while characterizing land cover in units the size of a baseball diamond. In one instant look from over 400 miles in space, a single Landsat scene can record the condition of hundreds of thousands of acres of grassland, agricultural crops, or forests.

A comparison of the images illustrates the significant growth in the greater D.C. area. Major urban development can be seen the surrounding communities of Rockville, Greenbelt, and Suitland, Maryland. The expanded Woodrow Wilson Bridge, connecting Springfield, Virginia, with Oxon Hill, Maryland, is evident. The record of surface change is used by urban planners and local officials to evaluate the rate and direction of growth in the area.

Landsat images from space are not just pictures. They contain many layers of data collected at different points along the visible and invisible light spectrum. Consequently, Landsat images can show where vegetation is thriving and where it is stressed, where droughts are occurring, where wildland fire is a danger, and where erosion has altered coastlines or river courses.

Landsat images reveal subtle, gradual changes, such as Wyoming rangelands greening up after a drought, as well as massive landscape changes that occur in rapidly growing urban areas. Landsat can also provide inexpensive assessments of sudden natural or human-induced disasters, such as the number of acres charred by a forest fire or the extent of tsunami inundation.

Impartial information freely available

The Department of the Interior’s policy of releasing the full Landsat archive at no cost allows everyone to have access to this important resource, allowing researchers in the private sector and at universities to generate even more data applications — applications that serve commercial endeavors in agriculture and forestry, that enable land managers in and out of government to work more efficiently, and that define and tackle critical environmental issues.

Landsat and innovation

Landsat has sparked innovation in Earth systems research and in commercial applications of the data from its inception in the mid-1960s.  Since 2008, when Landsat images were made available free of charge, there has been a remarkable burst of innovative science applications of the data.

For example, Landsat data played a central role in an award-winning type of mapping that tracks water use. Using Landsat imagery supplied by USGS in combination with ground-based water data, the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho developed a novel method to create water-use maps that are accurate to the scale of individual fields. Water-use maps help save taxpayer money by increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of public decisions involving water — for instance, in monitoring compliance with legal water rights. In 2009, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University cited Idaho’s original design for these maps as an outstanding innovation in American government.

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2006) produced by USGS and the federal interagency Multi‑Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) from Landsat imagery is a massive database that describes the surface condition of each 30-meter cell of land in the conterminous U.S. One such cell is approximately the area of a baseball diamond. The range and accuracy of the database enables land managers, urban planners, agricultural experts, and scientists with many different interests (for instance, climate change or invasive species) to identify critical characteristics of the land for a wide variety of investigations.

In the beginning

By the mid-1960s, some civilian geologists, geographers, and agronomists were familiar with imaging potential of classified Earth-observing satellites and had also studied the surprisingly detailed land-surface photos taken by early astronauts using hand-held cameras.

In 1966, with NASA still heavily committed to the Apollo Program in preparation for what would be a 1969 moon landing, the USGS convinced Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to hold a press conference announcing Interior’s new Project EROS, the acronym for Earth Resources Observation Satellites, and, furthermore, that Interior’s first satellite would launch in 1969!

In a statement that echoes true to this day, Udall said, “…the time is now right and urgent to apply space technology towards the solution of many pressing natural resources problems being compounded by population and industrial growth.” This bold announcement succeeded as a catalyst for what eventually became the world’s first civilian land-imaging satellite, developed by NASA and launched on July 23, 1972.

Six years earlier, Udall had said the satellite would be “…just the beginning of a great decade in land and resource analysis for a burgeoning population.”  Today we celebrate not one but four great decades in Earth science from space.

On the horizon

NASA is preparing to launch the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), on February 11, 2013, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. LDCM will be the most technologically advanced satellite in the Landsat series. LDCM sensors take advantage of evolutionary advances in detector and sensor technologies to improve performance and increase reliability. Once it successfully achieves orbit, LDCM will join the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites as Landsat 8 to continue the Landsat data record.

Can we please not blow up coral reefs?

BEFORE: A Pinnate batfish swimming among other fish in Tatawa Besar in the waters of Komodo islands, Indonesia. AFTER: damaged coral reefs in the water of Tatawa Besar, Komodo islands, Indonesia. [Robert Delfs/Michael W. Ishak]

I admire corals – not only for their beauty, diversity, and the communities they harbour, but also for their fortitude. Notwithstanding our (justified) concern over the future of coral reefs today, they are extremely ancient critters and have survived for hundreds of millions of years through thick and thin. And when you consider the number of mass extinctions that have occurred in our planet’s turbulent history, those are extreme thicks and very thins.

Let’s face it, corals represent yet another example of things about which what we do know is but a fraction of what we don’t – see, for example, recent revelations on their survival skills. It’s only a few months since I had the pleasure of visiting parts of eastern Indonesia and, amongst the many memories, snorkelling around the glorious coral reefs of the Komodo Islands ranks right up there:

 
So, you can perhaps imagine my horror when recently, in the Jakarta Globe, courtesy of Associated Press, I saw the image at the head of this post and read the following story:

Fishermen Blast Premier Dive Sites Off Indonesia
Jacob Herin | April 20, 2012

Komodo Island, Indonesia. Coral gardens that were among Asia’s most spectacular, teeming with colorful sea life just a few months ago, have been transformed into desolate gray moonscapes by fishermen who use explosives or cyanide to kill or stun their prey. Dive operators and conservationists say the government is not doing enough to protect waters off the Komodo Islands in eastern Indonesia. They say enforcement declined greatly following the exit of a US-based conservation group that helped fight destructive fishing practices. Local officials disagree, pointing to dozens of arrests and several deadly gunbattles with suspects.

Michael Ishak, a scuba instructor and professional underwater photographer who has made hundreds of trips to the area, said he’s seen more illegal fishermen than ever this year. The pictures, he said, speak for themselves.
When Ishak returned last month to one of his favorite spots, Tatawa Besar, known for its colorful clouds of damselfish, basslets and hawksbill sea turtles, he found that a 200-square-meter reef had been obliterated. “At first I thought, ‘This can’t be right. I must have jumped in the wrong place,’” he said, adding he swam back and forth to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake. “But it was true. All the hard coral had just been blasted, ripped off, turned upside down. Some of it was still alive. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The site is among several to have been hit inside Komodo National Park, a 500,000-acre reserve and U.N. World Heritage Site that spans several dusty, tan-colored volcanic islands and is most famous for its Komodo dragons — the world’s largest lizards. Its remote and hard-to-reach waters, bursting with fluorescent reds and yellows, contain staggering levels of diversity, from iridescent corals and octopuses with lime-green banded eyes to black-and-blue sea snakes.
They are supposed to be protected, but fishermen are drawn there by locally popular fish like fusiliers and high-value export species like groupers and snappers. Fishermen can be seen in small wooden boats, some using traditional nets or lines. Others have been captured on video blasting sites with “bombs” — fertilizer and kerosene mixed in beer bottles. Breathing through tubes connected to air compressors at the surface, young men plunge to the bottom and use squeeze bottles to squirt cyanide into the coral to stun and capture fish. Dive operators are increasingly seeing dead fish on the sea floor or floating on the surface.

“The biggest problem is that fishermen seem to be free to come into Komodo, completely ignoring the zoning and resource use regulations,” said Jos Pet, a fisheries scientist who has worked with numerous marine conservation groups in the area in recent years. He said they are “quite simply fishing empty this World Heritage Site.”

Sustyo Iriyono, the head of the park, said problems are being exaggerated and denied claims of lax enforcement. “It’s only part of the black campaigns against us by those who are hurt by our rules and orders,” he said without elaborating. He said rangers have arrested more than 60 fishermen over the past two years, including a group of young men captured last month after they were seen bombing waters off Banda island in the western part of the park. One of the suspects was shot and killed after the fishermen tried to escape by throwing fish bombs at the rangers, Iriyono said. Three others, including a 13-year-old, were slightly injured.

“You see?” said Iriyono. “No one can say I’m not acting firmly against those who are destroying the dive spots!”
He added that the park is one of the few places where fish bombing is monitored with any regularity in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian nation of more than 17,000 islands.

Divers, however, say enforcement has dropped dramatically since 2010, when the government reclaimed sole control of operations. For two decades before that, The Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based nonprofit, had helped the government confront destructive fishing practices there. “No-take zones” were created, protecting spawning areas, and coastal areas also were put off limits. Patrols using park rangers, navy personnel and local police were key to enforcement.
In 2005, the government gave a 30-year permit to Putri Naga Komodo, a nonprofit joint venture company partially funded by The Nature Conservancy and the World Bank to operate tourist facilities in hopes of eventually making the park financially self-sustaining. Entrance and conservation fees — just a few dollars at the time — went up several tenfold for foreign tourists. With around 30,000 local and international visitors annually at the time, that would have given the park a budget of well over $1 million, but outraged government officials demanded that the funds go directly into the state budget. The deal collapsed in 2010, when Putri Naga Komodo’s permit was yanked. “They had no right to directly collect the entrance fees from the tourists,” said Novianto Bambang, a Forestry Ministry official.

Dive operators and underwater photographers have asked The Nature Conservancy and similar organizations like WWF Indonesia, to return to Komodo and help with conservation efforts there. Nature Conservancy representative Arwandridja Rukma did not address that possibility, saying only that the organization operates in Indonesia upon the invitation of the government.

Yes, this is horrifying: blowing up coral reefs or injecting them with cyanide is utter lunacy. But, as always, it’s not a simple issue. Unregulated and chaotic fishing have depleted natural stocks, and, regardless of what proportion of explosive mayhem is perpetrated by outsiders as opposed to locals, the fact is that the inhabitants of the Komodo islands, if not actually poverty-stricken, live very lean lives. These are some of our photos from the town of Komodo, the largest concentration of the population. These people have to live, and fishing is their main – virtually only – means of doing so. These kids deserve food, an education, a life.

After I read this piece, by yet another twist of serendipity, I received an email from Richard Bready. Richard is a frequent commenter on this blog, always adding a fascinating, and often provocative, dimension to the posts - and he is, so far, my only guest poet. It seems that, from the post on the European sand belt, he had been following a trail of links on the subject of geoconservation, and come across the site of Ashoka Changemakers – whose purpose is to create “opportunities for organizations, corporations, and individuals to drive meaningful and measurable social change.” They are supported by, amongst others, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Never having come across this initiative, I followed up, specifically, as Richard directed me, on their coastal program, and their “Geotourism Challenge 2010: Places on the Edge - Saving Coastal and Freshwater Destinations.” Now this competition has been supported by the National Geographic, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the latter’s Multilateral Investment Fund, and there is an understandable focus on Central America. But what fascinated me – and is of great relevance to the topic of this post – were two of the three winning initiatives:

1. Coral Gardens - Living Reefs

Reefs provide food and income for coastal communities and are a foundation of tourism, producing white sandy beaches and protecting shorelines. My idea has been to actively involve communities and the tourism industry in planting and caring for corals, with the dive industry trained to care for dive sites, and with resorts taking on trained "coral gardeners". Guests can also become involved and learn about reefs while they help plant corals and garden the reefs, giving something back to the destination and to the planet.

Go to the full description to read the details – this arises directly from the passion of an individual.

Then, there was this winner – deeply relevant to Komodo, and again the idea of an innovative individual:

2. Development of economic partnerships between artisanal fisher folk and tourism operators

Project will create economic partnerships/opportunities between artisanal fisher folk and the tourism sector by constructing a locally-supported fisheries co-op for certified, sustainably caught products and direct marketing strategy with local hotels/restaurants. Project will construct a marine research center that contributes to responsible tourism development/heritage protection by promoting local SMEs.

It struck me that these projects address exactly the issues that the reefs and the inhabitants of the Komodo Islands are facing – and that support for them by Ashoka Changemakers is admirable. The concept of translating these ideas into an Indonesian context is, as the article above so depressingly shows, a huge challenge. But Komodo is a National Park, and has been a World Heritage Site since 1991. If anywhere fits the definition of an “ecotourism destination,” and a prime candidate for geoconservation and biodiversity preservation, Komodo is it. But people live there and must be active participants in - and beneficiaries of - any progress. It may be difficult, but we can’t accept that it’s impossible, and surely somewhere there are people with the vision, the passion, and the expertise to make something like the initiatives described above actually work in Komodo. Please.

 

Today's Mad Hatters - the toxic price of gold

 
The Mad Hatter was mad as a result of poisoning from the mercury used in curing felt. Today’s artisanal gold miners are poisoned by the mercury used to extract the precious metal. Perhaps 15% of gold production today still comes from the small-scale activities of more than 50 million people in seventy countries around the world (see http://www.artisanalgold.org/home). And one of those countries is Indonesia, where, as is commonly the case, the gold is mainly extracted from placer sands and gravels by the age-old process of panning. Gold panning may be back-breaking work, but the real health hazard comes with the mercury used to further purify the product: mercury attracts the gold, forming an amalgam, and the mercury is then burnt off to leave the gold behind: 

 
There are relatively simple and effective devices that can prevent the mercury vapour escaping into the air – and the bodies of the miners and all around them – but they remain the exception rather than the rule. I had not appreciated the extent of this problem and was recently horrified to read (and see the images from) the following piece in the Jakarta Globe:  

Indonesia's Poisonous River of Gold: The Mercury Dilemma
March 29, 2012

Esrum has always gone to the river near his house when he needs something for his family.
“Our ancestors always had two things to sustain them: the jungle and the river. The jungle provided us with our basic needs and the river with gold, so we could buy what we could not get from the jungle,” Esrum said.
For decades, villagers in Tumbang Anoi in Central Kalimantan have panned for gold in the Kahayan River, and for generations the system worked well. But at the end of the 20th century, a relatively cheap and efficient way of extracting gold was introduced that used mercury.
A deadly combination

Mercury binds particles of gold together, forming an amalgam of metals that miners are then able to burn to remove the extraneous mercury. The process works well, but what Esrum and his fellow small-scale miners did not know was that this deadly toxin can enter the air, water and ground, poisoning the fish they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe.
Even in small quantities, mercury can cause severe health problems like miscarriages, brain damage, tremors, kidney, skin and eye problems and even death. These symptoms can appear quickly, or over a long period of time. Mercury is especially dangerous to young children and pregnant mothers, who can pass on the poison to the unborn child.
As background levels increase in the environment, more people, even outside of the mining community, are threatened.
The worst recorded case of mercury contamination was in Minamata, Japan, where thousands of people were poisoned by methylmercury as a result of eating fish. The mercury was released in the industrial wastewater of a Chisso Corporation chemical factory, taking place over decades from 1932 to 1968.
The mercury accumulated in sea life in Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea, and while human, cat, dog and pig deaths continued for some 30 years, the government and company did little to prevent the pollution. As of March 2001, 2,265 victims had been officially recognized — 1,784 of the victims have died ­— while more than 10,000 other related parties have received financial compensation from Chisso.
By 2004, Chisso had paid $86 million, and was also ordered to clean up the contamination. In 2010, a settlement was reached to compensate as-yet unverified victims.
“We want to prevent the Minamata incident from appearing here in Indonesia,” said Sumali Agrawal, head of the Mercury Project, part of a nonprofit foundation based in Central Kalimantan.
“But mercury contamination is already widespread in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, as well as other islands, including Java. Small-scale gold mining is by far the greatest cause of mercury emissions in Indonesia. Even in Bogor, near Jakarta, 17,000 kilograms of mercury are emitted by gold processors every year. In Central Kalimantan, over 50,000 kilograms are emitted into the environment each year in one location alone.”
The Mercury Project was implemented by Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta, a nonprofit foundation set up by Kalimantan Gold Corporation, a minerals exploration venture that supports sustainable mining practices. Its mercury remediation program receives support from the Blacksmith Institute, the United Nations Environmental Program and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

A way out
The foundation works with local miners and introduces recycling technology that reduces mercury emissions by up to 95 percent. But it’s not just the miners who need to understand the dangers of using mercury; the entire community must be made aware of the risks in order for real change to occur.
“I really didn’t understand how mercury could hurt my family,” said Nyai, who lives in the mining area. “My kids even played with it. We would burn the amalgam in the open. I never thought breathing the smoke could harm us.”
Getting mercury recycling equipment to gold miners and processors is just one way to help reduce the impact of mercury on the environment. Each of the cheap and simple retort devices supplied by YTS recovers mercury directly and immediately reduces the quantity that escapes into the environment.
In January 2007, YTS created a water-box condenser as a low-cost solution to prevent pollution from gold shops as part of efforts from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Global Mercury Project. UNIDO provided these mercury recovery systems to 36 gold shops in a village in Katingan district. Their mercury-pollution program has since been extended with funding from the Blacksmith Institute, and now covers six districts in Central Kalimantan.
The water-box condenser traps mercury fumes inside a plastic box filled with water. Equipment distributed last year directly prevented 3,400 kilograms of mercury from being released into the air.
YTS is also working to introduce mercury-free methods such as gravity separation and direct smelting with borax. This method has been used successfully in the Philippines for decades but has not yet been implemented in other areas.
A 1967 law on mining practices prohibits small-scale mining except in designated community mining areas. However, the rising price of gold, decentralization, lack of natural resource management and unclear regulations have contributed to the rapid spread of mining with mercury across Indonesia over the last 15 years.
There is also a lack of alternative employment for many of the people in these new gold mining communities. In 2006, 570 mining hot spots were identified that involved 50,000 miners and 300,000 ancillary people who depended on small scale mining activities.
By 2010, more than 800 hot spots were found throughout the archipelago.

A global issue
Nearly a third of the world’s gold production comes from more than 15 million small scale miners, including one million child laborers. The mercury problem affects many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In many countries, small-scale mining is an important driver of economic development, but one that brings unacceptable health and environmental consequences.
Experts from MercuryWatch estimate that small-scale mining releases at least 1,400 tons of mercury into the environment every year. For every kilogram of gold mined, at least three kilograms of mercury are released into the ecosystem.
The international effort to ban mercury has caused a sharp rise in the price, which is having a beneficial impact, limiting some of the worst practices such as pouring mercury into rock-crushers.
Indonesia is one of 140 countries that has agreed to outlaw the use and production of mercury by entering into a legally binding international treaty on the toxic liquid metal.
“Now, more than ever before, it is vital that artisanal miners are empowered to change their practices in order to prevent further mercury contamination of our environment,” Sumali said. “This will require a coordinated effort from all stakeholders in this sector, working hand in hand with the government and the global community.”
Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta
Jl. Badak VII No.2, Bukit Tunggal
Palangka Raya
Central Kalimantan
tambuhaksinta@gmail.com
www.tambuhaksinta.com

So, our desire for bright, shiny, precious stuff provides a livelihood for tens of millions of people around the world – but, at the same time, poisons them. Nevertheless, there are solutions and these are being actively addressed by organisations on all scales, from the local YTS in Kalimantan, to the UN Development Programme. May they be successful. Let’s hope that toxicity can be eliminated, and, just as “blood diamonds” became part of our terminology, “dementia gold” becomes part of our consumer awareness.

 

[Images from the Artisanal Gold Council, the Jakarta Globe, and the Jakarta Post. For further excellent resources, see, for example, http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/blog/?p=121, http://bario-neal.com/bn/blog/?p=1197, http://www.epa.gov/international/toxics/mercury/asgm.html, and http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28596948/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/mercury-gold-mining-poses-toxic-threat/]

Oh, and wasn’t I self-disciplined in making no commentary on the Tea Party?