Newsgroups: lter.ced Path: LTERnet!daniel From: "Bruce P. Hayden" Subject: CED 2.6 Message-ID: <1993May28.202220.16686@lternet.washington.edu> Sender: daniel@lternet.washington.edu (Daniel Pommert) Organization: Long Term Ecological Research Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 19:51:15 GMT ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * ********* * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** * * * * *** *** *********** *********** ********** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Vol.2 No.5 :::::: file name:CED2.5 :::::: June 1, 1993 ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** CED METADATA ---- CED is the Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics bulletin board of the LTER network. In CED, you will find exchanges of ideas, information, data, bibliographies,literature discussions, and a place to find experts within the LTER community. We are interested in both climate controls on ecosystems and ecosystem controls on climate. As this is an inter-disciplinary activity, we hope to provide things that you might not come across in your work at your LTER site. CED is a product of the LTER climate committee and contributions to CED for general e-mail release may be sent to either David Greenland of Andrews LTER [Greenlan@oregon.uoregon.edu] or to Bruce Hayden of the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER [bph@envsci.evsc.virginia.edu]. We expect that the scope of CED will evolve and reflect the interests of the contributors and users of this service. CED will be issued as the preparation work gets done (usually monthly). Back-issus of CED may be requested from Daniel Pommert [daniel@lternet.washington.edu] by the file name given in the masthead. Daniel can also add people to the CED mailing list. Feedback on CED from LTER scientists is welcome (non-$$$$ contributions also welcome.) For example, please forward citations of climate & ecosystem publications on your site. We are keeping a LTER wide bibliography on Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics that we pass on via E-mail. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** CED XYLEM SUCKERS LIFE LIST *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** You may recall that aphids are phloem suckers not xylem suckers [CED 2.4 & CED 2.5]. Seastedt, Niwot via Konza, has informed me that the cicada (17 year locust) is a xylem sucker. Another reader suggested that mistletoe should be put on the xylem sucker list. Well, with these suggestions we will start of CED xylem-sucker life-list. Two entries is a good start. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** LITTLE HOUSE OF HORRRORS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Warning! Achtung! Hey, Watch it buddy! Research station honchos like to warn field-trippers about the threats to life and limb at their research sites [See CED 2.5]. In that CED, we alerted you to Valley Fever at Jornada and Gaillardia at Niwot Ridge. We can add the Grizzlies at Coldfoot truck stop on the pipeline road to the Arctic Tundra LTER Site. At the 1993 Albequerque meeting of data-manager wags and GIS visionaries, Sevilleta's Jim Gosz warned of rapidly building thunderstorms on the ride up the tram to the top of the Sandia Mountain. LaSilva participants at the Albuquerque EIMAEGC meeting (see below) showed a slide of an Arnold Schwartzenager fore-arm-sized LaSilva bushmaster being subdued by three tropical researchers (a mixed gender squad). After the explicit statement of the hazard, they then showed LaSilva researchers tromping through the bush. Well, we did bad things for poor Niwot in the last CED by saying that their hazard worthy of braggadocio was the widely feared Gaillardia. The real Niwot hazard is Giardia not Gaillardia. Giardia is a cute little parasite [credited to the Frenchman Giardi] that inflicts the typical local revenge. Gaillardia grows in my own garden. It is the dastardly, little-shop-of-horrors blanket-flower of the North and South American tribe Helenium. The blanket flower is a wonderful addition to your garden. It does not permit weeds to grow up through its canopy; it hides the imperfection of poor landscape architecture; and, it offers a wonderful bower of flowers throughout the hottest of Virginia's summer days, lasts to the first frost, and starts blooming again in July. But is it a danger to life and limb, a little-house-of-horrors resident await for the LTER site visitors to arrive? No way. Gaillardia details: leaves basal, entire, toothed, or pinnatifid, pubescent ("like my son"). . . flower heads radiate or discoid, solitary, large showy, receptacle hemispherical ("like me") . . . flowers - yellow or red, ligules 3-toothed achenes obpyramidal, hairy, pappus of awned scales ("like my wife"). Gaillardia aristata, like Giardia, is native to Colorado according to Hortus Third [Hortus Third: A Concise Dictionary of Plants Cultivated in the United States and Canada by Bailey & Bailey, MacMillan Pub. Co. N.Y.]. Gaillardia crosses with the grandiflora van Houtte cultivar to give the famous Golden Goblin that you can buy [$5.00 per seedling] at yuppie perennial shoppes. At the Virginia Coast Reserve, we warn against the Lyme toting tick, pack-a-wallop greenheads, sock&ankle-loving chiggers, and drink-till-they-drop Mosquitos. The VCR mosquito first made publication fame in 1903 [Stallings, 1903]. VCR's Machipongo Island mosquito differs from the Bonanza Creek and New Jersey versions. Jersey types take off at the cocking of the wrist and await a later chance at bloody seconds. Bonanza mosquito, as I remember them, are so numerous that swatting contests are held. Hundreds can be crushed with a single swat on someone's shoulder-blade/landing field and just as many escape the on-rushing palm. The VCR mosquito, once it has established the flow of blood, will suck until all its tanks are filled. A swat in the slowest of slow-motions is almost always successful and the stomach-tanks disgorge their booty at the sight of the battle. Slap-squashing a dry mosquito just doesn't induce a beta endorphin release and a welling up of the positive emotions that are associated with flattening that full Machipongo sucker who just got you - the bloody proof is there for all to see! ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** REPORT FROM EIMAEGC *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** EIMAEGC = Environmental Information Management and Analysis: Ecosystem to Global Scales. This little international symposium was dreamed-up, proposed, NSF-funded, arranged, managed, hosted and enjoyed by LTERers Brunt, Michener and Stafford. A book, ESA article and a Gopher publication is in the works. The ruling principle is get the word out quick, quicker, and quickest, respectively. Albuquerque was the venue. That's the OlympicTV-coverage talk for where EIMAEGC was held. EIMAEGC could well stand for Environmental Information Magic. The GIS art was displayed and promised, data was revered and metadata got boffo raves. Please! LTER attendees were mostly computer-paper-perforation-dustlint-in-the-bellybutton data-managers, not dirt-under-the-fingernails (aka dirt-ball) PIs. EIMAEGC was the second such meeting and there is talk of the need to have another in 3 to 5 years. The first meeting was in South Carolina, this one in Albuquerque. By all rights, the next one should be on the coast of Oregon. Get your abstract in early, the Albuquerque go-around had a 65% rejection rate! The math here is easy. With 24 papers accepted (A) we find the number submitted (N) from N(1-0.65)=A. So, N = 69. If we could get 120 submissions next time for the needed 24 papers (which consume 3 full days) we find by a similar formula an 80% rejection rate. That is ecosystem panel rejection rate! Or, we could go 4 geek-filled-days and lower the rejection rate. That is like increasing the NSF Ecosystem budget by 33%. A 33% increase is about as probable as keeping all the seats at a 4 geek-filled-days conference occupied to the end. Yes, attention occasionally drifted. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** RECYCLING AT ALBUQUERQUE *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Sitting through a three-full-day meeting on metadata and the like allows many opportunities to study the lecture hall decor, count ceiling tiles and observe the goings-on that make a place a university. Take, for instance, the trash cans - you can't have a university without them. The trash cans in the geology building at UNM are three-times recyclable. Like Shirley MacLaine, UNM trash cans have life and an after-life after an after-life. It all begins with the Office of Civil Defense, a key player in the Department of Defense. Your parents' tax dollars are at work here. Trash-can life #1 is as a CD drinking water storage unit (17.5 gal.). Instructions on how to fill with water are printed in white on government green: "put plastic bag in first [this is no 1950s-worry-about-the-bomb gizmo)], then fill with water." Instructions to dispense call for a siphon. Instructions to reuse the geology-trash-can-to-be (life #2) as a commode include specific instructions to add seat. The sharp rim of the can poses serious problems. (Good move.) Next comes a warning not to remove the "filled bags [an euphemism for these Dow Chemical, three-ply honeypots]." Subsequent recycling was not encouraged by the CD people. Then came the Lobo-geologists-who-do-not-heed-warnings-cum-recyclers and life #3 begins. The Department of Geology must earn the UNM recycling award each year. No only have they solved the problem of transmogrification from drinking vessel to commode to trash can but they recycle their rocks too! Outside the Geology department, EIMAEGC goers witnessed a volkswagon owner loading his yellow bug with rocks from the landscaped environs outside of the geology building. I thought he was lowest kind of thief - one who steals from universities. He was selecting the rocks from the grounds for color and size. This was no ordinary thief; I soon learned that the rocks are brought in from the field by geology field-trippers of the student variety. The student's booty makes it back to the campus labs. There they are whacked with the hand picks known as the rock hammers. The rocks are cleaved, broken or shattered. Hardness is checked, lab reports are written, and then the students toss them outside the geology building. It looked like they used the windows for rock egress. Yellow bug owners, a common campus species, come and consume. Build a rock pile and they will come. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** EL NINO AT SEPTEMBER ALL SCIENTIST MEETING *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Bonanzan Les Viereck is working hard to get an El Nino workshop off the ground at the September All Scientist Meeting. He e-mailed me about getting the El Nino data record. I sent him two records. One begins with the El Nino of AD 1525. The second record starts with the El Nino of 1726. You have been reading metadata for the data to come in this CED issue. Here is more metadata. The first record was put together by Quinn [QUINN et al. 1987, JGR 92:14,449-14,461]. The second is put together by. The Quinn record gives the year or "Christmas year" of onset [El Nino = Christ Child], the strength of the El Nino [VS=very strong; S=strong; M=Moderate; W=weak; and, +=not quite in the next higher class]. After the strength estimate, a second estimate is given. This is a subjective estimate of the confidence in the strength estimate. In the Rasmussen record, we have date of onset; strength according to Eguiguren (1894); and, strength according to Rasmussen. Strength scale: 1=very weak, 2=weak, 3=moderate, and 4=strong. These long records were developed from four indicators: equatorial and especially Peruvian rainfall, sea surface temperature off Peru, pressure component of the Southern Oscillation, and the Southern Oscillation Index. A discussion of the El Nino, the Southern Oscillation, and the Walker Circulation should crop-up in the next CED. Then you will have all the data and metadata needed for the All Scientist Workshop on ENSO. The Quinn Record: The Quinn Record below is one long string with the following content and delimeters "year of onset," "strength code,", data quality estimate; "1525","S",3;"1531","S",4;"1539","M/S",3;"1552","S",4;"1567","S+",5;"1574"," ",4;"1578","VS",5;"1591","S",2;"1607","S",5;"1614","S",5;"1618","S",4;"1624" "S+",4;"1634","S",4;"1652","S+",4;"1660","S",3;"1671","S",3;"1681","S",3;"16 7","S+",4;"1696","S",3;"1701","S+",4;"1707","S",3;"1714","S",4;"1720","S+",4 "1728","VS",5;"1747","S",5;"1761","S",5;"1775","S",4;"785","S",4;"1791","VS" 5;"1803","S+",5;"1806","M",3;"1812","M"4;"1814","S",4;"1817","M+",5;"1819"," +",4;"1821","M",5;"1824","M",5;"1828","VS",5;"1832","M",5;"1837","M",5;"1844 ,"S+",5;"1850","M",5;"1854","W/M",4;"1857","M+",5;"1860","M",4;"1864","S",5; 1866","M",4;"1867","M",4;"1871","S+",5;"1874","M",4;"1877","VS",5;"1880","M" 4;"1884","S+",5;"1887","M+",5;"1891","VS",5;"1896","M+",4;"1899","S",5;"1902 ,"M+",4;"1905","W/M",4;"1907","M",3;"1911","S",4;"1914","M+",5;"1917","S",4; 1918","W/M",5;"1923","M",5;"1925","VS",5;"1930","W/M",5;"1932","S",5;"19","M ",5;"1940","S",5;"1943","M+",5;"1951","W/M",5;"1953","M+",5;"1957","S",5;"19 5","M+",5;"1972","S",5;"1976","M",5;"1982","VS",5;"1987","M",4;"1992"," ", ; [With a little text editor you can put this data in the form you love best.] RASMUSSON first # is Eguiguren 1894 intensity scale; second # is according to Quinn and others. ---------------intensity <3 not included until 1844 "1726", ,3;"1728", ,4;"1763", ,4;"1770", ,4;"1791",4,4;"1803",2,;"1804",4,4;"1814",4,4;"1817",3,3;"1819",3,3;"1821",3 3;"1824",3,3;"1828",4,4;"1829",1,;"1832",3,3;"1837",3,3;"1844",3,2;"1845",4, ;"1846",2,3;"1850",2,2;"1852",2,2;"1854",2, ;"1855", ,2;"1857",2,2;"1862",2, ;"1864",4,4;"1866",2, ;"1868",1,3;"1871",4,3;"1873", ,2;"1875",1,1;"1877,4,4;"1878,4,4;"1880",2,3;"1884",4,4;"1885", ,3;"1887,2,3;"1888,2,3;"1889,1,1;"1891", ,4;"1896", ,4;"1899", ,4;"1900", ,3;"1902", ,3;"1905", ,3;"1911", ,4;"1912", ,3;"1914", ,3;"1917", ,2;"1918", ,4;"1919", ,3;"1923", ,2;"1925", ,4;"1926", ,4;"1929", ,3;"1930", ,3;"1932", ,2;"1939", ,3;"1940", ,2;"1941", ,4;"1943", ,2;"1944", ,2;"1946", ,1;"1951", ,2;"1953", ,3;"1957", ,4;"1958", ,4;"1963", ,1;"1965", ,3;"1969", ,2;"1972", ,4;"1973", ,4;"1976", ,3;"1982", ,4;"1983", ,4; ANOTHER DATA SET [Cayan & Webb 1992. Chapter 3 in El Nino: Historical and Paleoclimate Aspects of the Southern Oscillation by H. F. Diaz and V. Markgraf. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge U.K.] El Nino Years (tropical Pacific warm): 1901,1903,1906,1912,1915,1919,1924,1926,1931,1933,1940,1941,1942,1947,1952,1 54, 1958.1964,1966,1970,1973,1977,1978,1983 La Nina Years (tropical Pacific cold): 1904,1907,1909,1917,1921,1925,1929,1932,1939,1943,1950,1955,1965,1971,1974,1 76, 1989. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** HOW BIG IS THE MOON AT MOONSET *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** In recent CED issues, the issues of light and optics have graced our pages. A new one came to the CED mailbox. Why is the moon so big at moon-set? I thought this to be an easy one. The biggest moon that I had registered in my memory banks was a sighting at the end of the Susanville Valley in northeastern California. It was a hot day and the moon at moon-set was oooh and ahhhh in bigness quality. I concluded that the moon is big in proportion to steepness of the temperature lapse rate. But my mind played tricks on my eyes. My education in this matter was faulty and I must give credit to Bob Davis, one of my down-the-hall colleagues. He convinced me I might be wrong by telling me that if you take a sequence of pictures as the moon sets and measure the diameter of the moon in each picture, it just does not change! The change I had seen was crafted by my neural networks. I had been brain-duped. What follows is a discussion of why sometimes your neurons just can't be trusted. That optical-illusion moon on the horizon arises because your mind (and mine) subconsciously relates the distant sun or moon to the nearby horizon. Here we need the concept of the heavenly vault to get anywhere in thinking about all this. The heavenly vault is the hemispherical "shell" we see when we scan the heavens, above us and to the horizon. When frolicking in the great outdoors, your mind tells you that the distance to the roof of the vault above you is less than the distance to the roof of the vault at the horizon. Or, lets put it this way -- you think the stars above you are closer than the stars on the horizon. You have tricked yourself like this from the beginning. So, the sun, by way of example, from noon to sunset, goes from a place you just know is close to a place you just know to be farther away. With our agile neuron-gymnastic, we perceive the setting orb to get bigger and bigger as it approaches the horizon. To us, the orb gets bigger because we "know" it is farther away! Hey, this is serious. You believe one thing that is clearly wrong [the stars above are closer than the stars on the horizon] and as a result you swear that something else that is flat-out-wrong is right and that your senses tell you it is so [the moon or sun gets bigger as it approaches the horizon]! In political campaign lingo you would be said to have "failed senses." Ouch! Are there ecological things we perceive to be true but are wrong, perhaps never tested, that cause us to have illusions about and err on other ecological things? Oh, bother! Do false beliefs have consequences? Does one wrong make a right wrong? Well, even though this sounds like a conclusion, I am not done yet. How about height of the sun in the sky in winter? At noon, in the pre-dead of winter (Dec. 21), the sun seems high in the sky. Yes? No! Consider CPR at say 45 deg. N. Latitude. The sun at noon is 45 deg - 23.5 deg above the horizon, i.e. 21.5 deg above the horizon. Man, that's low. I thought it was higher than that! The heavenly vault tricked me again. We overestimate heights of things near the horizon! Mountains and hills at the horizon are too high and the steepness of slopes we see before us are judged steeper than they really are. What are we to do? Squint! See the world with half-closed eyes. It helps minimize the illusion. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** HEAVENLY VAULT METRICS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** The Heavenly Vault is an illusion and so we cannot measure its dimensions. But, we can ask our minds-eye about the ratio of the distance of (eye to horizon)/(eye to zenith). Estimates by fooled observers range from 2 to 4! Try this. Look up and find the zenith then look to the horizon. Bisect this distance and mind mark-it with a star you can find again. If the vault were spherical, the angle to the bisect point would be 45 degrees. Now take a big protractor and measure the angle. For most of us the actual angle would be between 20 or 30 degrees! The vault is really, really flat in your round head when it is cloudy and at twilight. The vault is least flattened, most spherical, when the sky is crisply clean, in the dark of night when the stars are very bright! The bisected angle averages 22 degrees at night and 30 degrees at mid-day. The mountains you climb seem higher at dusk than mid-day. This helps you make better decisions when to camp for the night before pushing on. If you look at the vault through large piece of red glass the vault at the zenith seems low and through an equally large piece of blue glass the vault at the zenith seems high. Well, this is more than I intended to say when I started this piece but I am still not done. The heavenly vault is more nearly spherical when viewed from flat on your back than when you standing up. So, if the full moon on the horizon bothers you vampires, prostrate yourself. In the recumbent posture, sometimes called the suds position, the moon will not seem so threatening. Find a day when a bit a cloud is near the horizon and note its apparent distance. Now take a piece of newspaper and hold it up so you can't see the terrestrial part of the horizon and the cloud will suddenly seems closer than before! The vault has become more spherical. Remember a lot of this stuff is in your head. How you learn all this as a little kid without classroom instruction in incorrect things to remember is not at all clear. Somewhere along the way we become corrupted observers of things near and far, low and high. Well, you now have a lot of work to do. When you get done checking the things above, try hanging from the monkey bars or your gravity boots and retest all these observations in the up-side-down position. That finished, watch the sunset or moonset from window seat 4a at 35,000 feet. Is the heavenly vault effect greater and merit a big "Oh, boy!" or less and win only "ho-hum." Happy eyeballs and calm neurons! ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** HARVEST MOON, BABY MOON & COYOTE HOWLER *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** CED readers know something about backscatter and manure piles. This little offering is about sunlight backscattered to Earth. Moon gazers know how very bright it is on the night of the full moon. Brighter than the days before and the days after. Brighter than the very-slightly-larger, illuminated moon-disk at full compared to just before and just after. Here we go back to recent Science magazine findings [Hapke, Nelson and Smythe (1993). 260:509-511]. The cause offered has to do with the size class of the back-scatter granules on the moon surface (near the wavelength of the light itself) It isn't green cheese or tinkerbell dust. Very nice wavelength coherent backscatter (rather than destructive) interference gives that extra wallop to your retinal rods. What a kick. You just get all romantic and gushy. One out of thirty teenage mothers earned their titles under coherent solar-lunar backscatter. Other man-lunar effects may show up in future CEDs. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** IN THE NEXT CED *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** The next CED will include, in addition to stuff on ENSO, a discussion of how weather and climate do cause the shape of the sun and moon at sunset to be something other then round. CED will also review a Spring 1993 article from an atmospheric sciences periodical with the Oh-boy!-This-is-going-to-be-fun title "Climate, Liberalism and Intolerance." CED does not make these things up! You also might see a short note on sunspots, your lifespan, and your mother 20 years before you were born. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** FOR THE BOOKSHELF *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Please draw CED readers attention to the availability of two recent and important books. "Climate Change and Its Biological Consequences" by David M. Gates. Sinauer Associates. Sunderland. Mass. 1993. A very good overview of manu of the things in which LTER researchers are interested including quite a lot on forest stand models and El Nino. "Vegetation Dynamics and Global Change" Ed by Allen M. Solomon and H.H. Shugart. 1993. A collection of papers by contributors to the IIASA Biosphere Dynamics Project. The project gave rise to, among other things, the very important paper on the best biome model yet by Prentice et al. 1992. A global biome model based on plant physiology and dominance, soil properties and climate. Journal of Biogeography. 19:117-134. ----------------+--------------------------------+------------------------- Bruce P. Hayden | Dept. Environmental Sciences | bph@virginia.EDU (804) 924-0545 | Clark Hall, Univ. of Virginia | bph@virginia.BITNET (804) 924-7761 | Charlottesville, VA 22903 | (804) 982-2137(fax) ----------------+--------------------------------+-------------------------