Through The Sandglass

Icons old and deep

 
Thanks to Walter for bringing to my attention this particularly resonant and compelling image from the recent coverage of the investigation of a dramatic shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico.

Here’s part of the original report from NOAA:

NOAA, BOEM: Historic, 19th century shipwreck discovered in northern Gulf of Mexico

May 16, 2012

  While most of the ship's wood has long since disintegrated, copper that sheathed the hull beneath the waterline as a protection against marine-boring organisms remains, leaving a copper shell retaining the form of the ship. The copper has turned green due to oxidation and chemical processes over more than a century on the seafloor. Oxidized copper sheathing and possible draft marks are visible on the bow of the ship.(Credit: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.)

During a recent Gulf of Mexico expedition, NOAA, BOEM and partners discovered an historic wooden-hulled vessel which is believed to have sunk as long as 200 years ago. Scientists on board the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer used underwater robots with lights and high definition cameras to view remnants of the ship laden with anchors, navigational instruments, glass bottles, ceramic plates, cannons, and boxes of muskets.

Equipped with telepresence technology, Okeanos Explorer reached audiences around the world who participated in the expedition through live streaming Internet video. As members of the public ashore watched live video from the ocean bottom, they became “citizen explorers,” sharing in the discovery with maritime archaeologists, scientists and resource managers from a variety of federal, academic, and private organizations.

The NOAA-funded 56-day expedition that ended April 29 was exploring poorly known regions of the Gulf, mapping and imaging unknown or little-known features and habitats, developing and testing a method to measure the rate that gas rises from naturally-occurring seeps on the seafloor, and investigating potential shipwreck sites.

The shipwreck site was originally identified as an unknown sonar contact during a 2011 oil and gas survey for Shell Oil Company. The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) requested this and other potential shipwreck sites be investigated during NOAA’s Gulf of Mexico expedition. Surveys and archaeological assessments are required by BOEM to aid in its decision-making prior to issuing permits for bottom-disturbing activities related to oil and gas exploration and development.

“Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull’s copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century,” said Jack Irion, Ph.D., a maritime archaeologist with BOEM. “Some of the more datable objects include what appears to be a type of ceramic plate that was popular between 1800 and 1830, and a wide variety of glass bottles. A rare ship’s stove on the site is one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world and the second one found on a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Significant historical events occurring in the regions around the Gulf of Mexico during this time include the War of 1812, events leading to the Texas Revolution, and the Mexican-American War, he said.

“Shipwrecks help to fill in some of the unwritten pages of history,” said Frank Cantelas, a maritime archaeologist with NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. “We explored four shipwrecks during this expedition and I believe this wreck was by far the most interesting and historic. The site is nearly 200 miles off the Gulf coast in over 4,000 feet of water in a relatively unexplored area.”

The news has been reported widely, these extracts being from CBS News and the Associated Press:

"When we saw it we were all just astonished because it was beautifully preserved, and by that I mean for a 200-year-old shipwreck," said Jack Irion, maritime archaeologist with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in New Orleans… Among the wreckage were "a rather astonishing number of bottles," particularly square gin bottles known as case bottles, as well as wine bottles, Irion said. There were many ceramic cups, plates and bowls that didn't appear to be cargo. Some were green shell-edged pearl ware, a British import popular in the United States between 1800 and 1830. The ship's kitchen stove was found intact. "Very few shipwrecks have been found that still have the stove intact," Irion said. "You can very clearly see the features of the stove. It's in rather good shape." Also discovered were an anchor, cannons and muskets. Irion said researchers have not yet determined whether it was a merchant, military or pirate ship… The wreckage can also give insight to the lives of the crew, where they had been, where they were going and their role in the economy and world history. "It's as if we get a glimpse into what their lives were like, like a time capsule," Irion said.

All kinds of fascinating stuff, but I can’t understand why no mention of the sandglasses lying in the sand…

A sad story of desert preservation

 
A story that appeared all over the news recently caught my eye for a number of reasons - here’s an example of the headlines: “Frozen in the sands of time: Eerie Second World War RAF fighter plane discovered in the Sahara... 70 years after it crashed in the desert.”

The Western Desert of Egypt and Libya is strewn with well preserved wreckage from WW II, but this is an extraordinary example. This is the BBC description:

A World War II RAF fighter, which crash-landed in a remote part of the Egyptian desert in 1942, has been discovered almost intact. There was no trace of the pilot, Flt Sgt Dennis Copping, but the British embassy says it is planning to mount a search for his remains.

The RAF Museum in Hendon, north London, says it is hoping to recover the plane as soon as possible.There are fears souvenir hunters will start stripping it.

The 24-year-old pilot, the son of a dentist from Southend in Essex, went missing over the Western Desert in June 1942, flying an American-made P40 Kittyhawk single-engine fighter. Two-and-a-half months ago an aircraft believed to be his was discovered near a remote place called Wadi al-Jadid by a Polish oil worker, Jakub Perka. His photographs show the plane is in remarkably good condition, though the engine and propeller have separated from the fuselage. The original paintwork and RAF insignia are said to be clearly visible, almost perfectly preserved in the dry desert air.

But of the pilot there is no sign. He appears to have executed a near-perfect emergency landing, perhaps after becoming lost and running out of fuel, and to have survived the crash. He rigged a parachute as an awning and removed the aircraft's radio and batteries but then apparently walked off into the desert in search of help. Almost 100 miles from the nearest settlement, he stood virtually no chance.

David Keen, an aviation historian at the RAF Museum, says the pilot broke the first rule of survival in the desert, which is to stay with your plane or vehicle. But the very same conditions which made the pilot's prospects so bleak have helped preserve the plane. Mr Keen says of the many thousands of aircraft which were shot down or crashed during the Second World War, very few survive in anything like this condition.

He said: "Nearly all the crashes in the Second World War, and there were tens of thousands of them, resulted on impact with the aircraft breaking up, so the only bits that are recovered are fragments, often scattered over a wide area. "What makes this particular aircraft so special is that it looks complete, and it survived on the surface of the desert all these years. It's like a timewarp."

The RAF Museum has a P40 Kittyhawk on display, but it has been put together from parts of many different aircraft.

Recovering Flt Sgt Copping's plane will not be easy. It is in a part of the desert which is not only remote but also dangerous, because it is close to a smuggling route between Libya and Egypt. The defence attache at the British Embassy in Cairo, Paul Collins, says he is hoping to travel to the area in the near future, but is waiting for permission from the Egyptian army.

He told the BBC: "I have to go down there. This is a serviceman who was killed, albeit 70 years ago. We have a responsibility to go and find out whether it's his plane, though not necessarily to work out what happened. He went missing in action. We can only assume he got out and walked somewhere, so we have to do a search of the area for any remains, although it could be a wide area. But we have to go soon as all the souvenir hunters will be down there." 

He said the British authorities are trying to find out whether Flt Sgt Copping has any surviving close relatives, because if his remains are found a decision will need to be made about what to do with them.

A compelling story. And, of course, being a geologist and having spent some time in the Western Desert, I was curious – where, exactly, was the plane found? The location mentioned, Wadi al-Jadid, is a very large area south and west of the village of Mut, part of the sprawling oasis of Dakhla – through which I had passed, travelling to the southwest on my way to the Gilf Kebir several years ago. Geologists have a strange tendency to look at the rocks in a photo or in a movie (and, unnervingly for passengers, out of the car window while driving), and an examination of the photos above reveals a couple of things. First, all the gumph in the press reports about “buried in the sands of time” is exactly that – this is an area of sand-blasted limestone outcrops across which the blasting grains would bounce, swirl, and keep going: no dunes deep enough to have buried the plane could accumulate there. Second, the reports variously describe the location as being one hundred or “more than 200” miles from the nearest town, which is, perhaps, Mut. Vast areas to the south and west of Mut are covered by dunes sweeping across seemingly endless gravel plains – few outcrops,none of them limestone. Only after around 150 miles did we enter the distinctive blasted limestone landscapes. I would suggest that this image from my trip is evocative of the general environment shown in the photos of the plane:

I have no intention of providing a guide to bounty-hunters – the area shown on the Google Earth images below is still huge (and, anyway, I may be wrong - I am, see comment discussion below after this was posted):

And there is other scattered WWII wreckage strewn through this part of the desert:

The desert preserves, dramatically and effectively, with or without sand. From elsewhere on that trip are some further examples (the unopened can of sliced bacon, and the battery are from the 1930s):

Incidentally, the comment in the BBC piece that the area is “also dangerous, because it is close to a smuggling route between Libya and Egypt” I believe is somewhat misleading. Those photos come from the desert west of the Gilf Kebir and it is there, along the Libyan border, that certainly the main people smuggling routes run – I know (and wish that I didn’t), because we saw some of the trucks in the distance.

The CNN report describes how “The young pilot, according to [British military historian] Saunders apparently became disoriented during the flight and headed in the wrong direction. Another RAF pilot flying nearby ‘tried all sorts of things’ to get his attention, but Copping ‘bizarrely’ ignored a series of warnings.” So where should the pilot have been trying to get to? The Imperial War Museum website proves to be yet another wonderful internet resource. Here are two images from their online archives of the North African Campaign:

Left, “A Curtiss Kittyhawk Mark I of No. 112 Squadron RAF taxies through the sand at a landing ground in the Western Desert. A mechanic sitting on the wing is guiding the pilot, whose forward view is obscured by the aircraft's nose.” Right, “Trolleys loaded with 250-lb GP bombs are drawn up in front of a line of Curtiss Kittyhawk Mark IIIs of No. 260 Squadron RAF at Marble Arch landing ground, Libya, prior to a bombing sortie.” (Reproduced courtesy of the IWM Non-Commercial Licence).

 

These landing grounds were scattered across the Western Desert, but, appropriately, close to the Mediterranean coast; the Google Earth image above shows one of the British-American joint bases, RAF Gambut, from which the Kittyhawks flew. The pilot of this one was certainly, tragically, a long way from home.

 

 

 

 

Some folk who ARE planning for rising sea levels

 
Kiribati. OK, I knew the name, but I had to check the map, too. A group of atolls straddling the equator over an area of 3.5 million square kilometres that host a population of 113,000 people; south of the Marshall Islands, North of Tuvalu and Fiji:

 
But those 113,000 people have a government that thinks ahead – and thinks on their behalf. Continuing my thematic rant, accompanied by the sounds of thundering timpani (think crashing storm surge waves), I invite you to compare the policies of the Government of the Republic of Kiribati with the posturing and lobbying of the vested interests elsewhere in the world (I couldn’t possibly comment more specifically). The thing is that the Kiribati authorities recognise that sea levels are rising and that their entire nation is made up of low-lying land which is already being battered and reduced by tides and storms.

Here, in a recent report from the UK’s Daily Telegraph, is what they are planning:

Entire nation of Kiribati to be relocated over rising sea level threat

The low-lying Pacific nation of Kiribati is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels.

By Paul Chapman, Wellington

In what could be the world's first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed. Some of Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, which straddle the equator over 1,350,000 square miles of ocean, are already disappearing beneath the waves.

Most of its 113,000 people are crammed on to Tarawa, the administrative centre, a chain of islets which curve in a horseshoe shape around a lagoon.

"This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one," Mr Tong said. "Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages."

Mr Tong said the plan would be to send a trickle of skilled workers first, so they could merge more easily with the Fijian population and make a positive contribution to that country's economy.

"We don't want 100,000 people from Kiribati coming to Fiji in one go," he told the state-run Fiji One television channel.

"They need to find employment, not as refugees but as immigrant people with skills to offer, people who have a place in the community, people who will not be seen as second-class citizens.

"What we need is the international community to come up with an urgent funding package to deal with that ambition, and the needs of countries like Kiribati."

The land Kiribati wants to buy is understood to be on Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island.

Mr Tong's proposal is the latest in an increasingly desperate search for solutions.

Last year he suggested the possibility of constructing man-made islands like oil rigs for people to live on.

His government has launched an Education for Migration programme, aimed at upskilling its population to make them more attractive as migrants.

Kiribati youngsters study for degrees at the University of the South Pacific, which is based in the Fijian capital of Suva and jointly owned by 12 Pacific island countries. Dr Alumita Durulato, a lecturer in international affairs at the university, said: "They are already preparing quite well. They have educated their youth to be able to survive in the new lands that they want to go to. They are going to leave behind their culture, their way of life and lifestyle, which is a little bit different from ours in Fiji."

Tarawa lies 1,400 miles from Suva and some i-Kiribati, as the islanders are known, hold concerns about whether their culture would survive after the population moves, especially if those who leave first are mainly the young.

A member of the Commonwealth, Kiribati was known as the Gilbert islands until independence from Britain in 1979. The islands were first named after Thomas Gilbert, a British naval captain who navigated the archipelago in 1788, Kiribati being the local pronunciation of "Gilbert". The total land area is 313 square miles and none of the coral atolls rises more than a few feet above sea level.

Just go and have a look at the Climate Change Unit website of the Environment and Conservation Division of Kiribati, and I suspect that you will be impressed. Check out all their resources and links. These people are addressing climate change adaptation in the most dramatic yet realistic and thoughtful way possible - perhaps they could act as expert advisors to coastal communities elsewhere in the world?

Oh, and by the way, Kiribati is where the latest developments in the search for Amelia Earhart’s plane are making the news.

 

[Photos of Kiribati flooding from the Environment and Conservation Division website; satellite image of Aranuka atoll courtesy Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center]

Playing with sand - and fire - and tsunamis - and who knows what else?

 
Sand boxes are for kids (of any age), and, if they are specifically for adults, particularly military ones, they are referred to officially as sand tables (but they’re still sand boxes). Military planners in any vaguely arenaceous terrain have always enjoyed the opportunity to sculpt landscapes in the sand, and those constrained by location and soils have simply resorted to sand tables.

LTC Edward Rowny (second from left) studies a sand table terrain map at X Corps headquarters in Korea with MG Edward M. Almond (with pointer), commander of X Corps, and other staff members, 2 Oct 1950.

 Pfc. Michael Sanchez of 135th Support Detachment Rear Operations Center, Kansas City, and Sgt. 1st Class Richard Rajkovick of 2175th Military Police Company, St. Clair, develop a sand table in Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico  

 But technology moves on – in impressive ways – and with it, ever-broadening applications. Recently, Time Magazine included in its annual “50 best inventions” list “holographic mapping,” both as a general concept and with specific examples. Not being a subscriber, I have not been able to access the original list, but on their Techland site, they report on an different example of the same technology, and cite their earlier article. “Here’s how it works,” they write:

A computer pipes satellite imagery through a projector onto a tabletop sandbox (no really, an actual sandbox). Color-coded areas show where to move the sand (with your hands) to quickly create hills, mountain peaks and valleys. By the time you’re finished, you have a box with astonishingly accurate contours, overlaid by a topographical digital image that makes the whole thing look almost holographic.

Digital displays and sand have conspired in various art forms, but here’s something eminently practical, as well as visually compelling (see the image at the head of this post). The toy that they are referring to is the Simtable, a high-tech sand box that is being enthusiastically used by fire-fighting teams in Arizona and elsewhere to simulate forest fire spread and actions taken in fighting it. This was described in a news piece from Colorado’s 9news – follow the link to watch this – playing with sand, but in deadly earnest. This was back in June when Arizona fires were raging and the Simtable was coming in for serious use; from the 9news article:

COLORADO SPRINGS - Firefighters are using a new tool that resembles a sandbox like children play in to learn more about what a fire can do and where it can go. Chas Curtis started working on the contraption years ago. "We were building the first of these in a garage as prototypes," Curtis said. He went to the Colorado Springs Fire Department to set up his Simtable - a 3D interactive fire simulator that literally brings a wildfire to life. In a matter of minutes, his giant sandbox and advanced computer simulations are all set up and that's when the hands-on learning begins.

"It's really a paint-by-numbers way of creating a topography map, purple is highest," Curtis said. "What it allows us to do is really understand what the terrain is doing because the terrain is so important for firefighting." Then Curtis uses satellite imaging and software his team created to show exactly what the terrain looks like.

"The coolest thing about the box is really getting people to understand fire behavior," he said. After figuring out the slope of the area, Curtis starts a fire at the exact location of where a real wildfire is burning to track its movements. He can plug in wind speeds and direction to see what the fire will do next.

"We get to look at a fire as if we were in an air attack platform, one of the airplanes circling looking down on it," Bob Harvey, the lead instructor at the Colorado Wildfire Academy, said. He uses the Simtable to train firefighters. "So now we have an air tanker drop, and we'll see if the wind and the topography will let it hold," he said using the simulator.

The Simtable helps him figure out where the need to bulldoze, and where to send fire crews. The wind is always a tough variable, but Harvey says the tool is extremely accurate. The Simtable even shows firefighters what the fuels look like in the area. "Some of these fuels will burn hotter and faster than others," Curtis said. The simulator shows neighborhoods and which areas should be evacuated. It also displays roads, allowing enforcement to know where to set up roadblocks.

It's currently being used by fire crews to help battle the massive Wallow Fire in Arizona, and so far, 30 different fire departments and training academies around the country have one of Curtis' Simtables. Each costs $20,000.

After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the State of California began using the Simtable to prepare for a tsunami on the west coast.

Fire departments can also use the tool to track chemical plumes during a hazmat situation.

So, these sand boxes have all kinds of applications, some undoubtedly yet to be recognised. They are being used for community awareness and education:

Perhaps they could be used in schools for geography, geology…who knows what? Maybe (probably) these guys will have some good ideas:

 

[Images from Simtable,  US Army Corps of Engineers, and Duke University]

Sand bottle houses

 
Once in a while, out of curiosity, I just go to Google News and enter “sand.” More often than not, among the reports of the latest exploits of one of the Junior High School basketball teams from Sand County, Nebraska, are a couple of items of interest, not to say surprises. Here’s one from a recent report from BBC News:

Nigeria's plastic bottle house

By Sam Olukoya BBC Africa, Yelwa

Nigeria's first house built from discarded plastic bottles is proving a tourist attraction in the village of Yelwa. Hundreds of people - including government officials and traditional leaders - have been coming to see how the walls are built in the round architectural shape popular in northern Nigeria.The bottles, packed with sand, are placed on their side, one on top of the other and bound together with mud.

"I wanted to see this building for myself as I was surprised to hear it was built from plastic bottles," said Nuhu Dangote, a trader who travelled from the state capital, Kaduna, to see the house. "They were saying it in the market that it looks like magic, that you will be amazed when you see it, that is why I have come here to feed my eyes. The whole world should come and look at it."

The real beauty of the house is its outside wall as the round bottoms of the exposed bottles produce a lovely design. But for those behind the project, its environmental benefits are what are most important.

Twenty-five houses, which will be available to rent, are being built on this estate on land donated by a Greek businessman and environmentalist. Each house - with one bedroom, living room, bathroom, toilet and kitchen - uses an estimated 7,800 plastic bottles. This "bottle brick" technology started nine years ago in India, South and Central America, providing a cost-effective, environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional building bricks.

Yahaya Ahmed of Nigeria's Development Association for Renewable Energies, estimates that a bottle house will cost one third of what a similar house made of concrete and bricks would cost. It is also more durable.

"Compacted sand inside a bottle is nearly 20 times stronger than bricks," he says. "We are even intending to build a three-storey building." The bottle houses are also ideally suited to the hot Nigerian climate because the sand insulates them from the sun's heat, helping to keep room temperatures low. And because of the compact sand, they are bullet-proof - which may also prove another attraction in more insecure parts of the north.

A firm concrete foundation is laid to ensure that the structure is firm and stable - and the sand is sieved to make sure it is compact. "You need to sieve it to remove the stones otherwise it will not be nice and it would not be able to pass through the mouth of the bottle," explains Dolly Ugorchi, who has been trained in bottle house building. Bottles for the houses are mainly sourced from hotels and restaurants

Some have expressed concern about the amount of sand needed for the new houses. "My fear is that this building method will increase the demand for sand and even lead to an increase in the price of sand," says Mumuni Oladele, a mason in the southern city of Lagos. "At the moment people looking for sand to build houses dig everywhere to get the sand. You can imagine what will happen when the demand for sand goes up to build bottle houses."

According to market research company Zenith International, most water in Nigeria is sold in small plastic bags, but it says the bottled water market is growing - accounting for about 20-25% of official sales, the equivalent of up to 500m litres a year. This means discarded plastic bottles are actually sought after in Nigeria where they are often used for storage or by street vendors to sell produce like peanuts. The bottles for these houses are currently being sourced from hotels, restaurants, homes and foreign embassies.

The project is also hoping to help to remove children who do not go to school from their life on the streets.

"I don't want to be a beggar, I want to work and get paid - that is why I am doing this job," says 15-year-old Shehu Usman, who is working on the building site. "When I grow old I want to build myself a house with bottles," he says.

After the 25 houses have been completed, the next construction project for the Development Association for Renewable Energies will be a school on the estate, which street children like Shehu will be able to attend.

Children making money filling bottles may one day be able to attend a school to be built on the estate

Seems to me that this creative idea addresses all sorts of issues - but then, of course, I would think that.

[See also a report with some more details here.]

Pulp fact - an appeal

I have recently received the devastating news that the several hundred unsold copies of the Oxford University Press hardback edition of my book are to be pulped.

This is purportedly so that the hardback "doesn't interfere with the paperback sales," but I wonder how this equation really works. Is my book clogging up valuable space in the OUP warehouse? Quite apart from my intimate personal relationship with this, the idea of pulping any book is repugnant (well, maybe I can make an exception for the countless Mills and Boon romances that provided the foundation for a stretch of British motorway). I would be relatively happy if Sand showed up in remaindered book stores, but pulped?

So, this is by way of an appeal. Does any reader of this blog have any ideas as to a better destiny for the books than toilet paper? Are there educational charitable organisations, distributors to schools in the developing world, anybody anywhere that could find a better use for them?

Needless to say, any ideas gratefully received....

Another margarita!

You live and learn – well, at least I try. And often I don’t even have to try – something I didn’t know (a category that knows no limits) just ups and surprises me. I read in the paper today about the birth of a sand cat (or sand dune cat, otherwise, Felis margarita). I wan't even aware that there were such critters as sand cats, and I certainly didn’t anticipate how damned cute they are. This sand kitten – above, with her mother - has just been born at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv, Israel. The kitten is the first of the Sand Cat species, considered extinct in Israel, to be born at the safari park. “She has been named Renana and it is hoped that she will join Israel's Sand Cat Breeding Program in order to reintroduce the species back into the wild.” (3news, New Zealand). 

Sand cats are so-called because hairs on the soles of their feet have helped them adapt to their desert environment by providing both insulation and traction in the sand; herewith, from the BBC’s “Wildfacts” site: 

Sand cat, sand dune cat
Felis margarita

Like some other desert animals, sand cats are capable of surviving without drinking - they obtain all the water they need through their food.

Subspecies
F.m. margarita, F.m.harrisoni, F.m.thinobia, F.m.scheffeli.

Life span
In captivity, sand cats live for up to 13 years.

Statistics
Body length: 42-57cm, Tail length: 26-35cm, Shoulder height: unknown, Weight: 2-3kg.

Physical Description
Sand cats have a pale yellow, to grey-brown coat, which is slightly darker on the back and pale on the belly. A bold streak runs across each cheek from the corner of each eye.

The tail is ringed with a black tip. Sand cats have a broad head with large eyes and low-set ears. They have short limbs and dense hair on the soles of the feet. The hair on the feet serves to insulate against the intense heat and cold of their habitat, as well as aiding movement across the sand.

Distribution
Sand cats range across N Africa and SW Asia (Sahara to Baluchistan).

Habitat
Sand cats live in the desert and are adapted to extremely arid terrain.

Diet
They hunt rodents and occasionally hares, birds and reptiles. They are apparently able to survive without drinking free water, and obtain the moisture they require from their prey.

Behaviour
Sand cats are mainly active at night. They are good diggers which helps when hunting for underground prey and for digging the burrow that they rest in during the day.

Reproduction
Sand cats give birth to 2-4 kittens after a gestation period of 59-63 days. The kittens weigh about 39g at birth.

Conservation status
The IUCN lists the Pakistani subspecies F.m.scheffeli as Lower Risk. Sand cats are on CITES: Appendix II. They face persecution due to the threat they pose to livestock. F.m.scheffeli was not discovered until 1966 but has declined drastically through uncontrolled commercial dealing.

In a somewhat chaotic week that continues to consume time and mental energy, this has provided a fun (and yet informative) instant post topic. But it also reminds me of the sort of feline meme that went around the geoblogosphere not long ago, wherein photos were contributed of various cats in geologically resonant poses. Not owning a cat these days, I could not contribute, and even my daughter’s feline, Woody, has yet to show even a passing interest in the mineral and rock collection that should attract his limited attention on a daily basis – and hence provide a geofelino photo-op. But what this does do is give me an excuse, with no arenaceous connotations whatsoever, to post my photo of a quintessentially Indonesian cat that I recently found living in a quintessentially Indonesian tree. 

Sandbagging sand boils, harbingers of flooding

 
"We did have a petty big sand boil act up last night, but it's under control today," Chicot County [Arkansa]Judge Mack Ball said Wednesday.

..............................................................

May 17, 2011, NATCHEZ — More than 2 million cubic feet of water per second are flowing through the Mississippi River at its Natchez pass, and today it is expected to stand at — and then exceed — 61.7 feet.

And Monday, that much water meant the Miss-Lou cities on both sides of the river had to up their flood fights.

In Vidalia, one of the temporary levees made of Hesco Bastion baskets on the riverfront filled with water after a sand boil erupted from the ground Sunday night. The boil originated in the parking area near the front of the convention center.

The boil started to form at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, and inmate crews have worked around the clock to sandbag around the convention center, Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland said.

“The Hesco boxes are working fine,” Copeland said. “You are going to have some areas where the river is going to find a way in — in this case we think it was maybe an old drain left over by a construction crew — that will let that water come in and create a vacuum.” The city attempted Monday to plug the boil with several extra-large sandbags flown in by helicopter. Those efforts had to be aborted, however, because the helicopters caused too much turbulence against the Hesco boxes, Copeland said. The mayor said the plugging operation would be attempted again today using a barge loaded with the large sandbags and a track hoe.

As the flood crest has swept inexorably down the Mississippi over the last few weeks, sand boils have erupted in countless locations, sometimes in the middle of towns, other times in fields, and often, ominously, next to a levee threatened by the pressures of the rising waters. I have written a number of posts on the topic of liquefaction as a result of earthquakes, most recently on events in Christchurch, New Zealand, but earthquakes are not the only cause of soil losing its strength and yielding to eruptions of water and sand: the pressures of flood waters create the same effects.

The first stories that I came across of sand boils surfacing in advance of the ongoing devastating floods down the Mississippi were from Cairo, Illinois. Pronounced “Kair-oh” and the original destination for Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, the town lies at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers, and has historically experienced severe flooding. The record levels of the 1937 floods that left a million people homeless would be surpassed not long after the sand boils began to appear, the residents were evacuated and the contentious actions of breaching levees and opening flood control gates began. Images from NASA show the normal course of the rivers (left) and the current devastation (right). But look at the swirling patterns of old sand bars left behind by the ever-changing bends in the river channels – it’s a dynamic system.

 
On May 1st, The Missourian reported on a huge sand boil that had appeared in the suburbs of Cairo, and the efforts to control it by sand bags and plastic sheeting:

CAIRO, Ill. -- The mayor of Cairo ordered everyone in the city to leave by midnight on Saturday afternoon, just hours after meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers commander of area flood-control operations.

Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh met with Army Corps of Engineers and city officials to observe a large sand boil caused by the extremely high Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Walsh, the head of the Mississippi River Commission charged with making a decision on breaching the Birds Point levee to relieve pressure at Cairo and other points, described the boil as the largest he had ever seen.

He said that while the boil is stable, it should continue to be monitored.

"There are certainly some concerns in what that's going to do and how this could act as a mechanism that we need to keep good track on," he said.

The sand boil was discovered around 7 p.m. Tuesday in Cairo behind the Napa Auto Parts building. City officials and residents worked about 12 hours through the night to stabilize it.

The Cairo area commander for the Corps of Engineers, Tom Morgan, escorted Walsh through the area of the boil.

"This is the biggest sand boil we have ever laid eyes on," Morgan said.

This operation is shown on the left in the illustration below (from The Missourian’s gallery), and two of the many historic Cairo area sand boils documented by the US Army Corps of Engineers are on the right.

 
The image at the head of this post is from April 27th and the Washington Post; the sand boil erupted near Hickman, Kentucky ominously close to a levee – “The sand bag ring is used to allow the water from the Mississippi River to seep while containing sediment to use pressure to prevent a major break in the levee. (AP Photo/The Paducah Sun, Stephen Lance Dennee).” Hickman is just across the river from Missouri and not far from New Madrid, site of the series of earthquakes in 1812 that not only changed the course of the Mississippi, but caused – yes, liquefaction and sand boils.

Sand boils have appeared through Arkansas, Mississippi, (where the report quoted above on helicopters attempting to stop a sand boil near Natchez comes from) and Louisiana, where, near Vidalia, a sand boil watch has been going on: “More than 25 Louisiana National Guard members from the 769th Engineer Battalion have spent the last nine days walking portions of the 72-miles of levee that protect Concordia Parish residents from the brimming Mississippi River in search of sand boils and seepage.” The article goes on to say

In Concordia Parish, 45 sand boils have been marked and reported to the Army Corps of Engineers, who then make determinations for further action. To date, the Louisiana National Guard has identified approximately 100 sand or pin boils in northeast Louisiana. “Sand boils can possibly weaken the integrity of the levee,” said Vernon Smith, a 35-year veteran at the USACE’s Vidalia office. He said having the Guard out looking in the areas that have historically supported sand boils has eased the burden on his shoulders.

And, last week, The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee, carried this photo, as “Deputy Area Commander for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Elizabeth Burks checks on one of several 'sand boils' located on the Ensley Berm (earthen levee), several miles south of the Allen Steam Plant. According to Burks, 'boils are a normal and natural process seen on the dry side of a levee during flooding.' "

Yes, they are normal and natural, but sand boils can be signs of problems with the levees – which is why Elizabeth Burks is engaging in a close encounter with one.

 

[I mentioned the “contentious” issue of managing flooding by intentionally breaching levees and opening flood  control systems. This has indeed been highly controversial – and understandably emotional – but inevitable. For a series of excellent discussions on this difficult issue, misconceptions, and  why the grounds for complaint and litigation may not be as clear-cut as they may seem at first, see Steve Gough’s recent posts, for example here, here, and here. Steve lives north of Cairo and is something of an expert on river systems – he knows of what he speaks. And see also Brian Romans’ post on Clastic Detritus – “Flooding creates floodplains.”

 

 

A sand sculpture memorial

Created at Cape Canaveral a few days ago by Florida artist Todd Brittingham, this sand sculpture celebrates Earth Day, but also marks the end of the space shuttle program through the fourteen stars, each dedicated to one of the astronauts who lost their lives on the Challenger and Columbia.

The volunteers who help create the sculpture have arranged themselves as more stars around the work.

 

[Photo by Craig Rubadoux, FLORIDA TODAY]

Mining the sands of Anak Krakatau

“Anak” in Indonesian means child, and Anak Krakatau is the child of the old volcano that explosively self-destructed in 1883. The kid was born in 1927 and has indulged in bouts of adolescent rage ever since. When I was living in Indonesia many years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the island on two separate occasions, both of them quite exciting.

On one trip, tossed about in a leaking old tub by the swells of the Sunda Strait, and hanging on to my young daughter for dear life to stop her sliding overboard, we had the delightful experience of being “rained on” by sand. The wind had carried the cloud of drifting ash from the kid’s latest outburst to where it simply fell on us with a gentle pattering sound. I still have a small bottle of the product, and there it is in the image at the head of this post – newly born volcanic sand.

But this is not just any old sand – it’s rich in iron and titanium and therefore of some considerable interest to illegal sand miners – and yes, sand-smuggling is an occupation pursued the world over. During the last two years, the extraction of volcanic sand from the shores of Anak Krakatau has gathered pace. We’re not talking about a bunch of guys with shovels, but huge barges, dredges, and pumps, removing hundreds of thousands of tons of sand. For some time now, arguments over making this legal and issuing the required permits – for mining in a designated conservation area – have rumbled on in, I have to say, a very Indonesian way. In February, the Jakarta Post reported as follows:

Anak Krakatau’s natural exploitation opposed

Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post

The South Lampung administration’s plan for sand mining around Mount Anak Krakatau has been met with opposition as green activists have said the activities threaten the environment.
Opponents of the plan also claim that the alleged mask of disaster mitigation is not justifiable.
Regent Rickyo Menoza was reported to have made the proposal for the permit with the Forestry Ministry, Lampung Natural Resources Conservation Body (BKSDA) and the Volcanic, Geological Disaster Mitigation Center.
Environmental watchdog Walhi feared the administration’s plan to dredge the sand would threaten the environment. The project, however, is expected to augment the administration’s income.
“The on site disaster mitigation efforts are only tricks to obtain permits that will allow entry to the Anak Krakatau area to dredge up the sand. On the other hand, the volcano and its surroundings are a designated conservation area that has to be protected,” Walhi Lampung chapter chairman Hendrawan said.
Sutono, a government official, denied the accusation.
“We are conducting these activities as part of a far-reaching program. We will build a drainage system to allow for lava flow so that the impact would not be severe in the case of an eruption,” Sutono said.
Hendrawan said he would file his complaint with police headquarters and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) if the permit was issued and the sand mining operations were carried out.

Hmmm - “disaster mitigation efforts” – I’m not really convinced by that either. I’ll keep you posted.

My other visit to Anak Krakatau was one of those enormously enjoyable trips that could well have been my last. The volcano was in a particularly explosive mood – no lava, but ejection on a grand scale. If you look closely at the image above, you can see very large lumps flying through the air and cascading down the flanks of the volcano. Similarly in this photo below (taken, I hasten to add, with a good telephoto lens).

 
 
I recently discovered that, a while ago and completely forgotten, I had written up a brief account of this encounter with the bratty kid:

The critics liked it: a controlled performance, but one of passion and spontaneity. The performer was Anak Krakatau the small child of the monumental volcanic parent, Krakatau. We were correctly, west of Java, in a flotilla of three small Indonesian boats, out on a day trip to see the performance, swim, eat, drink a few beers and enjoy a rare opportunity for socialising between the Indonesians and expatriate Brits from the office.

Our pleasure craft hardly fell into the category of luxury yachts – indeed they were of quintessential local character, weather-beaten, patched, in need of a makeover, their mechanical systems hardly throbbing with vitality. But they seemed to work, their crews were cheerful, the sun was out, the sea was blue, and the volcano beckoned. Anak Krakatau has emerged from the sea in the midst of the wreckage of its parent’s explosive end, a substantial and very active volcanic island surrounded by a small jungle-covered archipelago which is all that remains after Krakatau finally overdid its incandescent rage. Entering the outer ring of islands we could see in detail what had been apparent for the entire trip from the mainland – Anak Krakatau was erupting regularly and spectacularly, but, by mainstream volcanic standards, modestly. Roughly every twenty minutes a great cloud of ash and small rocks welled into the sky from the crater, the rocks tumbling down the side in plumes of dust and ash, the ash cloud driven by the wind and raining volcanic dust in its path. We had had an excellent opportunity to build a simple and informal statistical database as we approached, timing the episodes, observing where the ash fell and comparing the size of each event. Rigorous analysis of these data supported what we had determined before our departure – the eruptions were small and regular and circumnavigating the island (at a circumspect distance) was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. So we did it.

Staying a couple of hundred metres out from the shore gave a spectacular view, along with the sound effects, of a couple of eruptions, and allowed collection of the fine volcanic grit as it drifted out of the sky onto the boats (and us). This was, you will understand, an intensely romantic experience for a geologist. Steam rose from the sea where newly-minted hot rocks continued to build the island. Unfortunately steam also rose from the engine of one of the boats. The other two gathered around and, while we watched the display, water was passed over to the invalid. It took about twenty minutes for the fever of inadequately-cooled internal combustion to be assuaged, and the sounds of coughing and decaying plumbing announced that we could get under way. It was approaching lunchtime and the decision was made to head off to anchor for sustenance and recreation next to one of the parental vestiges a kilometre or so away from where we had been stopped.

The sound of opening beer cans was overwhelmed by a particularly violent volcanic expostulation which accompanied, when we turned to look back, an equally, and unusually, violent eruption. We raised our beers to nature red in tooth and claw and were making the appropriate ooing and aarhing sounds when we began to realise just how big this one was. The cloud of georubbish was being hurled much higher than before, and the rocks were not landing harmlessly on the slopes of the volcano but were plummeting into the sea.

Including one, approximately the size of a bus, which created a huge plume of water as it landed at the same spot that all three boats had occupied twenty minutes before.

Recently, Anak Krakatau has grown into a more fluid phase of adolescence, erupting copious amounts of lava (photo Tom Pfeiffer, at Explore Volcanoes Now). I shall perhaps have to bring some prudence and discretion to planning my next visit.