A couple of days ago our class attended a lecture by the director of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. It was great to hear him talk not only about the goals of his organization, but also about the work he’s done in his hometown of Bozeman. It was good to hear a fellow Montanan again. Got me looking forward to winter break.

Anyway- conservation. The Center for the Large Landscape Conservation is actually a fairly unique organization.  Its mission is to, “[…] create strategies to solve nature’s large scale challenges, such as climate change, habitat fragmentation and loss of vital goods and services provided by healthy ecosystems.” The way it does this is through collaboration. The Center’s website discusses how the scope of many ecological problems facing our world today is too vast to allow a single group or government to effectively resolve them. Gary Tabor, who spoke to us on Monday, says that the Center’s job is to stand up and serve as a linkage system, connecting groups and communities across the Western states in an effort to promote widespread, coordinated efforts to neutralize threats to the environment and the wildlife in it.

Among the many programs instituted by the Center, the couple that Tabor talked most about were the “Yellowstone 2 Yukon”, which will link climate adaptation efforts between groups across the entire region of orange (above), including the Canadians, and the Crown of the Continent Roundtable. The second one stuck with me more, probably because of the hometown bias. Combining over 100 governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, including the University of Montana, the Roundtable aims to initiate efforts to foster local ecosystem service and climate adaptation efforts in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem. The Crown extends from Waterton almost down to good old Missoula, and encompasses all of Glacier and Flathead Lake. Now, as wishy-washy as its goal might sound, the Roundtable has actually already accomplished some incredible things, primarily in how it has brought community leaders together and united them under the banner of environmental protection. Tabor was happy to inform us that, as a result of the Roundtable, many of the tribal leaders of northern Montana who have long held almost isolationist standpoints on inter-governmental/tribal cooperation were the first ones to sit down in the name of the environment. “The landscape is part of all of us. It ties us all together. Even those people who can’t agree on a single other topic sat down as one to discuss the best strategies to protect this incredible environment that we all call home here in the West.”

Tabor’s genuine pride in this accomplishment was pretty fun to see, as was his incredible passion for his work and the preservation of our landscapes. Kind of brought me back to my days with Ecology Project International. Environmental science is a subject that few seem to have any serious interest in any more, and yet it is rapidly becoming one of the most important factors in our lives. Even now we are seeing the consequences of environmental carelessness, and unless we can mobilize interest and support now, things are going to get a whole lot worse. Listening to the work Tabor has done, and seeing his drive for actual, physical action left me feeling slightly hopeful.

http://www.climateconservation.org/

In 2008, Dr. Gary Tabor and the conservation community were on the cusp of a revolution. With financial support from corporate giants: BP, Waste Management, Microsoft, Patagonia, National Geographic and more, The Center for Large Landscape Conservation seethed at the possibility of initiating state and maybe even federal legislation to protect large swaths of Western lands known as wildlife corridors. Then the real estate bubble burst. Then the economy tanked. Then, all of The Center for Large Landscape Conservation’s corporate backing bailed. The revolution died before it started.

In policy making, money rules. It is an unfortunate reality of government in the United states today. Whether it be state or federal, it does not matter. Lobbying persists in town halls, state capitols and all the way to Capital Hill. This seemingly corrupt practice is nonetheless a democratic necessity, especially in the federal government. Lobbying allows non-profit groups to speak out on behalf of their constituents while providing policy makers with expertise on convoluted topics, allowing them to make educated legislative decisions.

There are two types of lobbying: that of non-profits lobbying congressional committees and individual legislators and that of the citizen contacting their congressman directly. Voicing individual concerns to a representative in an eloquent rational manner inspires healthy discourse and understanding between our government and its citizens. One email, one letter or a brief meeting may seem hopeless in influencing larger policy. But, collectively our ideas can coalesce to create an impetus for legislative action.

At first, I was shocked to see some of the corporations supporting the idea of large landscape conservation. BP, really? Microsoft? What is their stake in this? I thought it must be their bottom lines. But, their underlying interests did not matter because they conspired as a coalition for good. Of course, my amazement dissipated when Dr. Tabor clicked to the next slide and informed us of the economic disaster that destroyed the coalition. It was not what Dr. Tabor told us about the desertion of every large corporate supporter of the CLLC when the Great Recession struck that frustrated me. In times of economic distress, a company must protect its internal assets and frankly does not posses the resources for lobbying. I completely understand. What frustrated me and continues to nag me is the fact that without corporate sponsorship the CLLC’s legislative velocity died. There would be no more federal or state laws regarding wildlife corridors. Without these private financial resources, this alliance, on the cusp of the next great land management revolution, was no more. It ceased not because the passion vanished or the idea was unsound. It died because of the CLLC could not afford to enact their ideas in Congress. Should it really cost that much money to get heard in our government: to make real change?

I do not think so. Even if we accept this bourgeois reality, as citizens, as individuals, we should be inspired to get heard in government and make real change. Instead of forfeiting our ideas when corporate backing bails, we should let it light a flame in our stomachs that excites us to action. The CLLC gave up, when they should have been impassioned to revive their movement through their constituents, and the people. They had the opportunity to start a grassroots movement. It might have been unsuccessful, nobody knows because they did not try.

If such action fails then we better understand our legislative system and, in the future, can more efficiently affect it. Whether that means significant private funding  is necessary or non-profit support is required then so be it. At least we know.

I believe that individuals still posses sufficient political efficacy and the general rationality to influence our legislative process. It just takes determination and a will to succeed. Corporate backing is a luxury of modern times and a privilege of democracy. In feudal times, serfs did not have the resources of corporations to help fund a people’s revolution or to overthrow a monarch. Instead they grabbed their pitchforks and cabbage and attacked their ruthless leaders. Today, for the people to remain relevant, we must grab our hypothetical pitchforks and cabbage and participate in our beautiful democracy.

Just a few days ago, on the morning of Tuesday the 8th of October, physicists Peter Higgs and François Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. This incredible discovery signals the end of a 50+ year search for a particle which was first hypothesized to exist in 1961 by Sheldon Glashow. 

The idea behind the existence of the Higgs particle is very complex, but is well-summarized in a short interactive slide show courtesy of Nigel Holmes and the NYTimes right here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/08/science/the-higgs-boson.html?src=me#/?g=true

If you don’t have any interest in checking out the slide show, here’s my best attempt of summarizing what the Higgs Boson Particle does and why it has such enormous implications on how we view our world. When you get down to it, the true building blocks of this world are tiny atoms that are made up of different ratios of protons, neutrons, electrons, and other sub-atomic particles like quarks and bosons (and many others that I will not get into; if you are curious to see just how extensive this list is, you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_particles). All of these particles have varying masses (for instance, a proton weighs 1.673 x 10E-24 grams, while an electron weighs just 9.109 x 10E-28 grams), and it is the way in which these tiny objects’ masses interact that governs how whole atoms interact. Simply scale this up and it should be clear that because atoms are the building blocks for the objects we see and use everyday – cars, chairs, water bottles – the diversity of materials that we see used in the world today (like how cars are made mostly of steel, chairs of wood and water bottles of plastic) can be attributed to the differences in weight of the subatomic particles that make up these objects. So, we’ve arrived at the central question that scientists have pondered for the past 5 decades – what gives the various subatomic particles their respective weights and is therefore causing the wide diversity of materials in our universe? And the answer, which we have only recently discovered thanks to the work of Higgs, Englert, and thousands of other contributing scientists, is the Higgs Boson Particle. These Higgs Boson particles go together to form the Higgs Field, a plane that is present everywhere in the universe and gives mass to every particle that encounters it. 

How was the particle found? At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, scientists are able to launch tiny protons at each other at extremely high speeds, causing them to erupt. When they are ripped apart, the protons do not simply disappear, instead they separate into the subatomic particles that make them up.

When protons collide at high speeds, the subatomic particles that make them up are revealed

At this point, the “debris” of the explosion can be searched for certain particles, and the Higgs Boson has been one of the targets of the search for a very long time. The Higgs particle is only expected to pop into existence every couple billion impacts, so it is understandable that it took so long for physicists to finally confirm its existence.

If you would like to read more about the Higgs Boson particle and this revolutionary discovery, here is a great article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/science/englert-and-higgs-win-nobel-physics-prize.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=science&

Quantum computers are the next evolution of computing power, attaining higher speeds of functionality than any silicon-based computer ever possibly could.  Using binary code in long sequences, normal computers are told what to do in linear sequences that involve either 1s, 0s or blank spots.  However, the stream of data which a quantum computer uses as well as the the reader/writer tool reside in a quantum state, allowing for the superposition of certain points.  This means that these certain points can simultaneously be 1, 0 or anything in between, called qubits.  The use of qubits as a carrier for data allows quantum computers to perform many calculations at once, increasing its processing speed exponentially.  The many different forms of information involves within quantum computers can be summed up by the statement, “Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons and electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as computer memory and a processor.”  This duality is what leads quantum computers to be able to run so many calculations at once, which scientists theorize could at some point reach millions per second.  However, because of the tricky nature of these particles, measurements of them directly would change them.  To bypass this, scientists are using the entanglement of atoms, which is the theory that states that one atom will take on the properties of another when pushed together.  It is then that they are measured, so as to give a better understanding of the properties of the particles under less outside influence.

Although personal quantum computers are a distant thought right now, progress is still being made upon their design every year.  As more qubits of data are added unto the processing power of these quantum computers, we inch ever closer to having more practically applicable versions of these devices, that will someday revolutionize the speed at which calculations are done.

http://www.research.att.com/export/sites/att_labs/library/image_gallery/articles/2011_Jan-Mar/201011_qubit_vs_bit.jpghttp://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1rrBpQ/:J_ltq72H:LcIOHTq@/computer.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm/printable/

This post is a response to a lecture on Large Land Conservation by Dr. Gary Tabor, veterinarian and environmentalist.

First, what is LLC?

Large Landscape Conservation is conserving environments on a, well, large-scale. More importantly, it is recognizing that eco systems are not static in their action nor in their location. Animals migrate all over the place and their habitat of choice is determined by the ever-changing climate and other environmental factors. Therefore, it is not enough to dedicate a chunk of land to these animals. They do not recognize political borders. Instead, they travel to the areas that suit them, best which again, are constantly changing.

So, what have we been doing?

As Dr. Tabor puts it, we have created, for these animal, an imaginary box. Though as he showed, the majority of the animals are not using this land, nor even the national wilderness.

The animals just follow their instincts in response to the changing environment, a change induced by humanity.

By cutting across the natural landscape with roads, fences and establishments, we limit the animals’ ability to migrate. We cut them off by cutting up the globe into chunks of preserve and ignoring the fact that these ecosystems are much more extensive than that. Most large land masses are interconnected and work as a whole.

How can we do it better?

The solutions proposed by Dr. Tabor are some pretty simple:

1) Recognize that everything is interconnected and take into consideration animal migration when building new developments, especially roads.

2) Expand our national preserves to encompass as much of the ecosystem, as possible.

3) Combine small-scale conservation efforts to focus on the bigger picture

4) Individual awareness. Individuals need to recognize that their “animal problems” are caused by them and so need to see what they can do to fix the problem (rather than just shooting all the “pests”). Individuals should also have a sense of caring for the world that sustains them and a sense of responsibility to take care of it.

5) Planet Doctors across all fields. This means that scholars from all fields (not just environmental science) have a duty to contribute to this effort.

How does it relate to terraforming Mars?

If it is possible to doctor Earth in small ways to make significant changes, could we not do this to, say, Mars? By understanding our own planet, we can work with it to get the outcomes we want. Though as we learned about our planet, we learned that we will soon (relatively, of course) be an unhabitable planet. As the sun brightens, we will experience a runaway greenhouse effect, just like Venus. It is probably about time to think how we will continue humanity as these change happen.

The idea of terraforming Mars has been around for quiet some time. As the habitable zone moves past Earth, it will start to encompass Mars. We already know so much about Mars, its atmosphere and its resources. Though we could use to learn a lot more before we start the move to another planet.

It may seem far-fetched or merely sci-fi day dreaming, but moving to Mars may be our only option once Earth starts to fade off towards the light. We can doctor our planet, all we want, but Earth is a hospice patient. It is ailed with a malignant fate. Not that we should not give the “patient” our best care before its inevitable end, but we should also probably start more seriously considering the birth of a new environment to call home.

A current study out of the Paleontological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich has documented “plant-like pollen” dating back 100 million years prior to the previously believed origin of flowering flora. This shifted the origin of flowering plants to the early to mid Triassic, rather than the Cretaceous. This fossilized pollen was discovered in two drilling cores from northern Switzerland, about 3000 km south of the site of a previous study in which a different plant like pollen fossil was discovered. This helped to solidify the belief that flowering plant life arose long before previously thought. While we don’t yet know what these plants may have looked like or the exact nature of their life and existence, this discovery acts as a reminder that we still have much to learn about the nature and history of life on Earth, and that before we become too focused in our search for extraterrestrial life, we should allow ourselves to become better acquainted with the life right here on our planet.

Today my class went to a lecture on large-scale conservation efforts, hoping that we could find parallels between conservation on Earth and terraforming on other planets.  Unfortunately, the lecture was primarily about gathering supporters and networking to help kick start various large-scale projects.  The speaker, knowledgeable as he was did not really discuss rebuilding ecosystems as he did discuss protecting those that already exist.

Despite this, the lecture was still interesting to me, and there were still a few ideas put out that could carry over to terraforming.  One of these ideas was the percent of land that must remain preserved for wildlife in order to sustain all of Earth’s current ecosystems.  While the speaker said that politicians typically quote 12% as the upper limit, most scientists put the number much higher, many are closer to 35% and some are higher still.  This relates to terraforming because in order to successfully and permanently terraform you need to create a self-sustaining ecosystem, and to ensure that the ecosystem in self-sustaining you must make sure that there is enough space.

Though they do not relate to our topic of space, the rest of the lecture was interesting nonetheless.  Of all the conservation projects proposed, the presenter seemed most excited about the “Spine of the Continent” proposal.  This proposal would conserve an area stretching from Yellowstone north through Glacier and well into Canada.  This project would protect tens of millions of acres of land, ensuring that species such as the Grizzly Bear and Bison have ample area to graze and live free from human disruption.  Other projects include the conservation of the Pacific Northwest, and British Colombia, the vast central boreal forests of Canada and the Eastern coast of Canada. 

While the majority of this lecture did not directly relate to terraforming, by learning more about the ecosystems of Earth we can better adapt them to other planets.  If there was one thing that I took away from this, it was that managing a planet is still beyond our grasp. Only once we have successfully avoided environmental disaster on Earth should we attempt to control life elsewhere.

Often times, when society thinks of life in the universe, they tend to overlook the most important life of all: the lifeforms on Earth. In the search of exploring the universe, many people have also forgotten of the life that exists on the planet. Animals and humans have co-existed for generations, but these same animals are losing their habitats and their homes. Human disruption and destruction have cause many species of animals to die out at an ever-increasing pace. This issue has become so dire that many non-profit organizations all fight to protect all the animals from human devastation; one such organization is the Center for Large Landscape Conservation.

Banner for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation

The United States has taken some approaches to protect the natural woodlands, yet it has not been enough; many species still struggle to survive through the destruction of their habitats and ever-increasing human need for space and supplies. It is these concerns that Dr. Gary Tabor, Director of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, addressed in his presentation, entitled The Emergence of Large Landscapes in an Era of Planetary Thresholds. His presentation discussed the role of nature in the ever-changing human world, focusing on the interactions between other lifeforms inhabiting the world, and brought out ideas on how to coexist in a less destructive manner.

Dr. Gary Tabor, Director for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation

The lecture covered a wide array of different topics and issues that nature currently faces, all leading to the idea that humanity is making a change in the world, and not in a good way. The weather and the environment are being dramatically affected by the human activity occurring worldwide, but there is a chance to stop the destruction before it is to late. Dr. Tabor suggested that everyone works together to bring the ideas of increased conservation of large landscapes will lead to an increase in stability for the natural processes of life that occur. By making adjustments to current architecture, it will make it safer for wildlife to live and move around. Also, more land should be designated as protected zones, due to the fact that animals do not like to be constrained to one small area. Tabor continued on saying how humans have the opportunity to make a difference, and to right the environmental wrongs that occurred in the past.

Graph of protected land area around the world

The talk brought up a lot of important questions that needed to be answered: What role do humans play in the destruction of natural habitats? What can be done to prevent these atrocities? Is it possible to peacefully co-exist with nature? Maybe. Maybe not. but what’s important is making steps toward a better future. That’s a start.

Image Sources:

http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs158/1109042460850/img/222.jpg?a=1111798305707

http://www.climateconservation.org/images/Staff_pics/Dr_Gary_Tabor.jpg

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/biodiversity2/protect.gif

Today I listen to a talk given by Dr. Gary Tabor, the Executive Director for the Conservation for Large Landscape Conservation. The lecture focused on efforts to conserve wildlife habitats in North America, especially focusing on the west coast and Colorado Basin. One of the most interesting things Dr. Tabor talked about was the efforts we are making to help animals cross large highways and roads. According to Dr. Tabor, roads, highways and railroads can be extremely detrimental to wildlife habitats because they cause a divide in the habitat over which animals are either unable, or too scared to cross. One of the ways we help animals to cross these man made boundaries is by creating land bridges or underpasses. These passages allow animals to cross boundaries and access parts of their ecosystem that would otherwise be cut off. Below is an example of one of these land bridges:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v1vUgBgKYCI/UAYGh2knxEI/AAAAAAAABdg/oE4Jwi5pEkw/s1600/The+Netherlands.jpg

While these bridges are a very inventive and effective way of maintaining habitats for wildlife, they are not a final solution to the problem. While they do seem to provide a safe way of travel for animals, they can sometimes become a bottle neck for these animals, where they may run into other animals. This can result in conflicts between animals that would never has arose had there been no bottleneck. In the lecture, Dr. Tabor showed a video of two bears who met on one of these bridges. They immediate began to attack each other.

These bridges also have one other, extremely obvious, flaw: some animals might not know where they are. Animals a few miles away from the bridge may be forced to cross the highway without ever knowing there is safe way to cross just minutes from them. The only way to fix this problem is to build many bridges all down the highway. Given the amount of highways, in America alone, that cut through endangered wildlife habitats, the cost of this project would be astronomical. Therefore it will be neccessary to find another way of getting these animals across major boundaries.

Stars are formed in cold cosmic clouds. Most of the time they form in groups as “clusters”, and scientists believe that this is in denser areas known as Infrared Dark Clouds. When the temperature of one of these clouds surpasses -160 °C, it is classified as a “hot core” and there is a large concentration of organic compounds. Wait, that doesn’t seem very hot, does it? Well even though it seems ridiculously cold to us, it’s roughly 100 °C hotter than the regular cloud.

(Different infrared dark cloud) – http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Cepheus_B.jpg

Recently, a very young small star was seen to have an extremely massive hot core by radio telescopes in Chile. The age of the protostar is estimated to be 740 years as calculated by the speed of gaseous output. It isn’t known why exactly this star is so hot, or why the surrounding hot cloud is ten times the average size of what we have observed before. One potential explanation is that the extreme mass of the cloud caused the large hot core by increasing the rate at which gravitational potential energy is converted to thermal energy. Another potential explanation is that there are more than one protostar inside the hot core. 

The lesson that should be taken from this new observation is that there is more opportunity for variety in the creation of stars than we originally thought. Perhaps we do not understand nearly as much about the star formation process(es) as we thought. The next question to investigate for these scientists is: what is the cause of this young star’s extremely large infrared dark cloud?

Sources:

National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. “Astronomers discover large ‘hot’ cocoon around a small baby star.” ScienceDaily, 4 Oct. 2013. Web. 6 Oct. 2013.