Earth news

My Anti-Gypsy Moth Barriers Work

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I know it is odd to post one bug story after another but I did some experiments on stopping gypsy moth caterpillars and lo and behold, the method I invented worked! Since this menace is destroying absolutely everything in their path out here, I am posting yet another story (which I hope the media picks up),

The diagram shows a typical tree wrapped with heavy duty saran wrap. It clings to itself and it is clear, this means, at the top, one can stretch it very tight and wind is about the tree two or three times, tugging the bottom out as one winds in a spiral creating a bell shape.

These creatures can climb windows so shiny surfaces mean nothing to them. But they also like to go up and up and up. Their tiny nervous systems say, "If you see a tree trunk, climb up." This they do relentlessly.

But a clever human can trap them using this same logic! So they go up until they reach the tight top and then they keep on pushing hoping to push past it. More bugs come up the rear and push on the ones ahead. Their tiny brains say, "If you encounter another caterpillar, climb over it!" And so they pile in, many of them. I trapped thousands in just one day this way!

They hatch at the top of trees and at the top of trees on top of mountains. For once they eat their poor host, their tiny brains say, "Crawl down the tree and crawl downhill." And they also prefer to follow each other just like ants and cows and all sorts of animals. Creatures like to walk behind each other. This is because it is nearly universal for all living things to think, "If there is danger, I will know it when the guy ahead of me gets killed."

The system I devised looks fine from far away. It is in fact, nearly invisible. One can check it to see how many bugs are dead or if one is ill tempered like I am about this, I crush them by squeezing the plastic. Heck, I have been stomping on them, running them over, pouring parafin on them, smashing them with my hands, kicking them and in general, being quite vicious.

During the heat of the day, they cluster under rocks and in cool, damp places. I ambush them there, too. Around the foundation of houses on the northside, in particular.

They are killing all my trees. I do this for them. The trees are desperate. I love my forest.

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Battling Gypsy Moths Time Consuming

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We have been under assault here on my mountain. Every mountain top to the east of us including our own has been taken over by gypsy moths. Over the last two weeks, I watched in horror as they methodically stripped all the leaves off of every tree, moving relentlessly downwards, decimating our precious hardwood forests.

I make money harvesting hardwoods here every ten years. This is a great blow to us because the trees won't add much size this growing year thanks to these pests. If they strip the trees bare for ten years running, I will lose all my trees! This is a catastrophe that is directly connected with careless human activites.

Like the Dutch Elm Disease, these scourge was brought about by humans moving organisms across great distances. This is why understanding ecosystems and how they work is very important and not due to idle curiousity, either, but because it is life and death, literally.

When continents collide or break away from each other as they move about the planet, each of these events cause a ecological cascade. Entire families of species can be rapidly wiped out. The arrival of a pair of mating rats on an island can mean the end of millions of years of evolution of nearly all the birds residing there, for example.

Up until humans came along, these catastrophic events were rare. Ecosystems could run along their happy tracks achieving stability and diversity for millions of years. Humans are now the world-girdling bridge that connects all continents and islands. Because of this, many life forms from various ecosystems can now escape and proliferate in virgin territory. Because they are aliens and are outside their normal constraints, they destroy the balance of any system they enter, often annihilating their host environment.

Only after destroying everything, does a new natural order arise out of the ashes. But thanks to the human continental bridge, there is no serenity whereby a new equilibrium can be established. So the system takes one blow after another as all species end up shifting around the planet, carried by humans.

Lizards brought into America as pets, for example, are now proliferating in various communities, eating the wild birds, destroying other animal and plant habitats. Pythons released into the Florida swamps are now taking over and battling alligators, for example. They eat birds, too, and the bird population is dropping rapidly because birds in America are not atuned to surviving python attacks unlike say, Amazonian birds.

Over 5 million years, a new natural order would evolve in Florida except humans will prevent this by constantly introducing more and more alien species. This constant churning is causing the ecosystem flywheel to spin too fast and we might get an overall species crash.

The predators that keep gypsy moths under control didn't make it over here and if they did, they take many more years to establish populations sufficient to eat the tremendous excess of gypsy moth populations. The trees can't wait 5,000 years. They will dissappear and the entire ecosystem which they are a key part will collapse. For stripped trees produce little or no nuts or seeds! The immature seeds on all the oaks are gone! The bugs ate them!

So the nut foraging animals will now starve during the long winter.

The predators that live off of these creatures will starve, too. I have a hawk family that lives in the woods above. They need to hunt small game all winter. They will starve! I hear the song birds lament the sudden lack of foliage protecting their nests. Now predators can easily spot them and they can't fly through the lower stories of the forest canopy. They are exposed. So the hunting animals will grow fat on them only this means there won't be many nestlings next season.

It is already with great alarm, I am watching world migratory bird populations drop ever lower. I have blue birds and gold finches, humming birds and blue jays on my property. A host of bird species but they are all too few. The forests no longer ring with their songs at sunrise and sunset in summer. They sing but the chorus is depressingly thin.

When humans invaded North and South America, they killed off or made life pretty impossible for the native fauna. The invasion of european dogs and wolves changed the balance of nature. Mastodonts that evolved for eons, from 45 million years ago and onwards, were totally terminated with amazing speed as the invaders crossed over during the low sea level period of the last Ice Age.

Mastodonts might have survived one invader but not the host of hunters, human and animal, that crossed over. When North and South America joined up as South America rotated away from Antarctica, breaking the isthmus connecting them and a new isthmus rose up to connect North and South America, an army of predators from the north stalked south, killing a tremendous number of fauna down there. All, exterminated completely. Then the panthers and such dropped in numbers as they eked out a living on the few remaining prey.

The camel family survived this holocaust by retreating to the high mountains of the Andes which rose during this same time period, giving them some bare shelter.

I haven't been posting much lately because of the gypsy moth invasion. I am desperately trying to save my trees. I came up with a possible solution to keep the pests down slightly. I wrapped my saplings and fruit trees' trunks with plastic wrap and then painted tar on the top of it.

The wrap has to be belled outwards at the bottom to form a trap to those pests climbing the trunk. The few that get past it get stuck on the tar.

Mostly, I pluck them off the leaves. They are everywhere. The few plants I have overlooked have been totally stripped bare, particularily ones like my poor rose bushes. In hours, everything is gone!

So I have to stop posting now, the sun is up. The bugs are out. They have coated the roads here about, millions of them crushed under wheels as they wiggle across the road seeking new trees and bushes to devour.

It is quite disgusting. They are in our hair, our clothes, climbing all over the house. Gah!

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Kill!

Gypsy Moth Caterpillars Are Eating Everything Here On My Mountain

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I have been very busy cutting hay and fighting a mass attack of gypsy moths. These voracious insects are destroying everything here and they are out of control thanks to global warming which meant we barely had a winter which kills the stupid buggers. This is a disaster for me. Not to mention my poor forest.

Gypsy moth larvae prefer hardwoods, but may feed on several hundred different species of trees and shrubs. In the East the gypsy moth prefers oaks, apple, sweetgum, speckled alder, basswood, gray and white birch, poplar, willow, and hawthorn, although other species are also affected. The list of hosts will undoubtedly expand as the insect spreads south and west.

Older larvae feed on several species of hardwood that younger larvae avoid, including cottonwood, hemlock, southern white cedar, and the pines and spruces native to the East. During periods when gypsy moth populations are dense, larvae feed on almost all vegetation: To date, the gypsy moth has avoided ash, yellow-poplar, sycamore, butternut, black walnut, catalpa, flowering dogwood, balsam fir, red cedar, American holly, and shrubs such as mountain laurel, rhododendron, and arborvitae.

My forest was looking so lovely this spring. The cherry trees blossomed beautifully, the wild apples scented the forests with a sweet aroma, my bees have been most happy, buzzing about. Then I saw the nests of the gypsy moths. They are white tents built in the crotch of the trees. They live inside this tent, zillions of them. Then one fine day, they come crawling out and eat every single leaf off of the host tree.

Then they turn their attention to the rest of the planet. They are very similar to some humans. Like logging companies that strip everything from a forest leaving barely a twig or like mall developers paving over paradise so people can go shopping mindlessly for junk that will be cast back into the environment as garbage, so these little bugs match us equally relentless, equally destructive.

Of course, these pests are harbingers of climatic change. Plants and animals don't just die gracefully with a sigh, they lose battles with other organisms as the enviroment makes life impossible for some species.

My forest used to have gigantic chestnut trees. My husband and I sawed up the trunk of one dead tree, it was five feet in diameter at the base! Not radiius, diameter. We still have equally big giant oaks but these insect assaults are taking a toll on top of the acid rain and the many ozone alert days in summer as the sun brutally beats down on us all and the trees struggle in vain to clean the air and put precious oxygen back into the environment.
To enlarge image click here.

Natural enemies play an important role during periods when gypsy moth populations are sparse. Natural enemies include parasitic and predatory insects such as wasps, flies, ground beetles, and ants; many species of spider; several species of birds such as chickadees, bluejays, nuthatches, towhees, and robins; and approximately 15 species of common woodland mammals, such as the white-footed mouse, shrews, chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons.

I have many blue jays and chickadees. But the chickadees move north in summer because it is to ***king warm for them. If any creature can stop an invasion, it is the mighty chickadee! The ruby throated hummingbird that drinks the nectar from my flowers does nothing about these bugs.

This is why "balance of nature" is good for humans. We have dangerously unbalanced it and now we are paying the price as we lose valuable forests and farmlands to pests we bring in from exotic or distant places as well as our own predations.

Time to go outside and squish a zillion nasty caterpillars.

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Southern Tip Of India Sees Explosions While Volcano In Vanatu Turns Water Red

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Strange doings all over the planet today. Explosions at the tip of India, lake inside a caldera turns very red suddenly, and of course, Indonesia is still picking up the pieces after the latest terrestrial insurrection.

India's tip is unstable, politically as well as geologically.

Volcano-like explosion near TN border

Madurai, May 27: The authorities have ordered an investigation by scientists into the mysterious explosion of rocks and spewing of debris from the cliffs of Kondaiketti hill, about 200 km from here, on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala Border in Kanyakumari district on the midnight of May 25.

According to revenue officials quoting the residents of Amburi, Thekkuparai, Shenbagaparai, Mayam, Kootappu, Arugani Hill, the cliff started exploding like a volcano and spewed debris all over.

The officials said similar explosion/eruption took place in November 2000 also leading to landslips in Amburi when 38 people were buried alive. (Agencies)

How very odd that is. I couldn't find much information on line about the geology of this part of India. It is the tip which is interesting since India is an independent continent which collided with Asia at a pretty good clip, geologically speaking.
I did find some amusing religious information, though.

Kanyakumari is located at the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. The small temple dedicated to Kanyakumari, or the youthful form of the primeval energy Shakti (Mother Goddess) is located on the seashore, in the town known by the same name. Kanyakumari was referred to by the British as Cape Commorin.

Kanyakumari represents the site where the spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda spent days in meditation upon a rock off of the coast. A memorial built in his honor is accessible via ferry. There is also a recently built memorial to Tiruvalluvar, the author of the philosophical work Tirukkural - a treatise on the Indian way of life.

Gods and goddesses have this thing about interesting geological sites. They obviously have an eye for amazing mountains and rivers. It is no surprise that the Greek Pantheon lived on the best mountain and their chief temples were all situated in striking sites with great views. The Japanese, for example, have their deities live on top of various mountains or overlooking lovely falls and artistic landscapes. It is a good thing humans enjoy the same vistas. Imagine if our gods were like worms and wanted us to go underground...wait!

During the last Ice Age, the best place to hobnob with gods was deep inside caves! So I suppose that was the cave people's response to their own visuals. They liked caves and so did their gods.

If anyone who reads this blog has any information about this part of India, I would love to see it! Fascinating place, really. Was swept by the recent tidalwaves.

Off to Vanatu Islands which are going under as the ocean rises.

By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer Sun May 28, 11:58 PM ET
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A lake atop a rumbling volcano on the South Pacific island of Ambae has changed color from blue to bright red, puzzling scientists.

Mount Manaro, one of four active volcanos on the island nation of Vanuatu, has been showing signs of erupting for only the second time in 122 years.

"We are still ... trying to understand this change of color in the lake from blue to red," Geology and Mines Department director Esline Garae said by telephone Monday from Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila

Word of warning: all too many volcanists have died trying to take down data from volcanoes that decide to erupt suddenly. More often than not, these vast, powerful dragons will belch fire with little warning. I am very curious as to why the water turned red. Vanatu has had some pretty violent shakes recently including a 6.7 event just yesterday. Something is going on over there and as reader of this blog know, in previous articles, we discussed that odd geological point.

It is a sharp point in the tectonic plates, not an even curve. It is like the Australian Plate is plowing over something subterranean causing it to slice into the Pacific Plate in a very odd way.

Merapi continues to seethe and lava pouring out of only one side. It isn't the only volcano itching to relieve itself.

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Earthquakes Near Merapi Volcano Kill Indonesians

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The old capital of Java was just shaken by a 6.2 earthquake, epicenter only 17.1 km deep. Yesterday, the earth was quiet as the dragon tensed its long, slanky coils and now, it shakes itself in preparation for perhaps a very loud roar. For this deadly earthquake is right smack up against Mt. Merapi. The volcanoes in this chain are famous for blowing up suddenly.

Indonesia has been shaking violently for over a year now.

BBC: Yogyakarta, Indonesia's ancient royal capital and one of its biggest cities, is about 440km (275 miles) south-east of the capital, Jakarta.

"The earthquake was felt to be massive - larger than the locals here say they've felt in their lives," said Brook Weisman-Ross, regional disaster co-ordinator for Plan International children's charity in Java.

"I was shaken from my bed... As furniture was falling, concrete chunks started falling from my hotel room as people were running out in panic in their bedclothes," he told the BBC.

He said there was extensive damage across the city and that many of the smaller, older houses had collapsed.

A witness told the Associated Press news agency he had seen three bodies under the rubble of two houses.

Reports of fatalities also came in from elsewhere.

"We have at least five people dead, but it could be more," Wahab, a nurse at Muhammadiyah hospital, told Reuters news agency by telephone.

Before other famous eruptions, earthquakes would startle surrounding communities. This is a warning sign of a major eruption. This month, the subduction zone along Indonesia's southern shores has been shaking increasingly. On May 16, a 6.8 event happened at only 1.7 km deep. We know very little about how volcanoes work, deep in the earth. We can make many guesses but they are still as mysterious as any dark, coiled dragon in its lair. We get to see them when the stretch their dark wings and spit fire and flex their tails, snapping down whole mountains.

For they do what they wish and the puny attempts of humans to imitate their ancient, dark powers makes them laugh with scorn, magic cloaks or not, no bomb can drop an entire mountain upon one's head or split the earth in molten fury. The dragons of the Heavens can annihilate all living things and even pulverize our planet. The local dragons are not to be taken lightly, either.

Here is a site that discusses the worst eruption in the last 500 years, Mt. Tambora.

Even allowing for the scant documention, the characteristic about the eruption that immediately jumps out at the researcher is its terrifying speed and brevity. When this is contrasted with its stupendous scale and effects, the event becomes a singularly sobering and daunting one. Perhaps only the Mt. Tarawera eruption of 1886 in New Zealand compares in modern times for sheer suddenness and destructive force of eruption.

A word of explanation is in order here. Though such celebrated eruptions as Krakatau, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Pelee, and more recently El Chichon and Pinatubo, capture the public eye and respect, all of those powerful eruptions had fairly lengthy eruptive sequences. In short, for those with mind to do so, there was ample time if not always means to vacate the danger zone. With Tarawera it was different---in 1886 in the space of one night a triple peak mountain range near Lake Rotomahana suddenly split open and erupted. Literally some 4,000 people who had gone to their beds that evening would never again wake up. Such a disastrous and only slightly less deadly suddenness accompanied the Tambora eruption.

Indeed, only a few centuries earlier in New Mexico, a rift in the earth opened on flat ground and let loose with a fair amount of lava. The mountains of west Tucson that rise in jagged black teeth covered with sagebrush and saguaros is a similar, older lava crack. Indonesia tends towards huge volcanoes. As they rise taller and taller, they reach this critical stage and suddenly, with scant warning, blow up.

Rotomahana's blow-up should warn us, we can't take these volcanoes lightly. They aren't tourist attractions. They are elemental forces of the deadliest level outside of cosmic powers like stars going nova.

According to the best available evidence, before the eruption Mt. Tambora was a volcanic cone 4,000 meters high and 60 kilometers in diameter at sea level; densely blanketed in forest. It is reported to have originally had two summits, and there were several parasitic cones on the east and northeast slopes. What is unusual is that studies indicate that in its first phase of activity Tambora was a shield volcano, not unlike those of Iceland or Hawaii. Later, a bedded cone was built up on top of this, possibly the result of a change in the composition of the magma.

The mountain, which may well have begun life as an island separate from Sumbawa, in time rose to dominate a peninsula joining it to Sumbawa on the southwest flank. By the time the Europeans came to occupy Sumbawa in the 18th century Mt. Tambora had lapsed into a deep dormancy. This state of affairs continued for a decade more into the 19th century. Then the volcanic energies once again burst forth.

We don't know why volcanoes "wake up" periodically. The big volcano outside Seattle, Mt. Rainier, is snoozing right now but it is anything but dormant. It is not even hibernating. It's coils go deep into the planet's mantle. And we have little idea what is going on there.

Thanks to glaciers and snowcover, any eruption of Mt. Rainier will have nasty consequences.

By AMY E. NEVALA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

ORTING -- Mount Rainier will blow, that's a given.

When it does, a wall of mud and debris the consistency of wet concrete will come flooding down five river valleys that radiate from the mountain. The towns of Orting, Sumner, Ashford, Elbe, Packwood, Randle, Greenwater and parts of Puyallup will be in its path.

Parts of Tacoma, Buckley, Enumclaw, and to a lesser extent, South Prairie, Carbonado and Wilkeson, could also be hit by the flow.

In all, 30,000 Puyallup River Valley residents could be in direct danger from a volcanic eruption, along with 100,000 people living in the mountain's six other valleys.

Just a week ago, we had a good shake at the southern end of the California Great Rift Valley, right below the Salton Sea. Otherwise, it has been terribly quiet along the entire West Coast even as it seems the Indonesian/Indian Ocean to the outer edges of the Australian Plate have been hammered by massive, earthshaking quakes of astonishing power.

Back to the 1816 event:

The Europeans were perplexed and concerned, but some of the Java natives, however, were delighted: priests declared with confidence and satisfaction that the thunder and dark was the sign that the gods of the mountains were coming forth to free the island from foreign rule. However as the ash fall grew and persisted, while the rumblings and explosions continued, all those in-the-know now realized it must be a volcanic outbreak, and the speculation was that Merapi, Kelut, or Bromo was the likely culprit. With the cause if not the source of the disturbance identified, the Europeans at least became less concerned and ceased to pay much attention to it, for this volcanic outbreak was not yet "considered of greater importance than those which have occasionally burst forth in Java".

This educated complacency abruptly shattered on April 10. As if rebuking their hubris, as the afternoon came, suddenly the roar and detonations like blasting gravel and cannon renwed, even stronger than before, and this time a truly menacing and darkened cloud of ash billowed over from the east. This time it was even greater than before, so that the sun was almost blotted out. In the eastern part of Java, the situation was even more severe.

At Solo and Rembang some reported small and continuous earthquakes, and the explosions were tremendous, booming frequently through the 11th with such violence as to shake the houses noticeably.

Once again the priests sang with joy that liberation was at hand, and even some of the Europeans now felt fear and concern. What was happening? None of the suspected volcanoes were known to be in eruption, and yet almost 2,500 miles of island chain was being rocked by cataclysmic quakes. Not a few must have contemplated the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum---buried by Vesuvius in AD. 79 - but there was little anyone could do but wait. These were the conditions on Java and neighboring islands as dusk approached on April 10. But for those living on the peninsula upon which Tambora stood, matters would grow much worse this night. For in the late afternoon of the 10th Mt. Tambora in fact entered paroxysmal eruption and would inflict a devastation that would leave precious few survivors to tell the tale.

It is interesting to see that the victims of the European imperial invasions hoped the dragon would destroy the invaders. Of course, these dragons don't care who they kill, they are the definition of heartless. Merapi has been active for many years. Building patiently with medium to small eruptions, people become accustomed to this and assume the dragon inhabiting this sizable cave is a small creature.

It is not! One look at the size of this dragon home and one has to shiver with fear.

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Great Eruptions Have Very Far Flung Effects

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Here we are, on the verge of a possible major volcanic event. One that can have a huge impact if it is big enough and the chances of that are fairly high for Merapi is not only a large volcano, it is one of a chain of very dirty volcanoes prone to exploding violently. I remember when Mt. Agung blew up right after my sister Mary's birthday in 1963.

BBC News:

The mountain is also revered by many locals, who believe mystical sprits live in the volcano's crater. Many say they are waiting for specific signs - such as clouds in the shape of a sheep's fleece - to show them an eruption is imminent.

'MOUNTAIN OF FIRE'
Merapi has had 68 historic eruptions since 1548
In 1994 a gas cloud burned 60 people to death
About 1,300 died when it erupted in 1930
Most violent eruption in recent history was in 1872
Major eruption in 1006 covered all of central Java with ash

Merapi, which means "mountain of fire", is one of the most fearsome volcanoes in the Pacific "Ring of Fire".

A gas cloud from the volcano's last eruption in 1994 killed 60 people.

One of its deadliest eruptions was in 1930, when about 1,300 people were killed.

Great volcanoes have great effects. Where they happen to blow, how high the cloud of ash goes, volume of ash, chemical compostion of the tuff, whether it is near civilizations (bad luck!) or far away, makes a big difference. Many times, volcanic eruptions in the Alaskan chain has no terrific effect because it is at the top of the planet but major eruptions at the equator can spread across the entire stratosphere and greatly alter the climate. Some were not so great an effect but due to the chemistry of the ash, caused terrific events to unfold due to famine and death.

My parents are very well known for pioneering work in high atmospheric fine ash, volcanic gas studies. I remember vividly how it all started.

We were driving along in the desert heading due west into the setting sun, coming back from the McDonald observatory outside of El Paso, Texas. As Aden drove, Marjorie began to remark that the sunset looked marveously odd. It became increasingly pyschodelic. At the observatory, my parents were puzzled by the dimness of the light the telescope recieved and wondered if there was some sort of dust storm.

Back then, there was little immediate communication from distant parts of Indonesia, there were no satellite weather monitors nor direct longdistance calling to that part of Asia. We had a shortwave radio but there was no news story about a major eruption.

But there was one! And unlike all the previous ones since Krakatoa which didn't expell enough gas and dust to the higher levels of the stratosphere, this one shot right up quite powerfully. As the sky darkened, paradoxically, it lit up. Dad stopped the car and hauled out his camera and other equipment and began observations. My parents noted how the east was also lit up, the zenith shone "like during an aurora."

They become most excited. We wondered if this was a one day deal. It wasn't. Over the months, the sky grew ever more amazingly brilliant. It was the most beautiful late summer and into fall. I associate the assassination of Kennedy with the blood red sunsets.

The weather changed. It rained and rained in the desert, the desert wept while muffled overhead with grey clouds and it even snowed.

SAS.org:

Aden and Marjorie Meinel described a very simple method for estimating the altitude of the aerosol layers that cause extended twilights. The method is described in "Sunsets, Twilights, and Evening Skies" (Cambridge University Press, 1983), a fine book which belongs on every sky watcher's bookshelf.

The Meinel method is based on the duration of the twilight glow. If you watch a sunset on a clear evening, you will notice that the entire western sky is brightly illuminated for at least 10 minutes. Gradually, the twilight forms a bright arc in the sky. The time between the setting of the Sun and the upper edge of the twilight glow is closely related to the altitude of aerosol layers in the stratosphere.

The nearby chart for estimating the height of stratospheric aerosols from the duration of the twilight glow was made using the equations given by the Meinels in "Sunsets, Twilights, and Evening Skies." The spreadsheet from which the chart was made is available at www.forrestmims.org (click on the Scientific Research page).

My grandfather proposed Krakatoa affected the sunsets and weather patterns and he was pooh-poohed. Well, my mother was so happy to prove him right. Now it seems, everyone knows this and would find it hard to believe that once upon a time, it was not accepted by scientists!

Just like all my yap here about how it is very possible that the universe is not flying apart at all. Laugh today, agree tomorrow.

The history of earth rests in the lap of the Great Volcanoes and Traps. We evolved into homosapiens with big brains thanks to the interface of volanoes and the variable sun. So it is of highest, indeed, survival depends on us figuring out how to co-exist with these two vital and utterly dangerous neighbors.

Volcano World:

Lakagigar (also called Skaftar) was the vent for the 1783-1784 eruption of Grimsvotn caldera. It was the second largest basaltic fissure eruption in historic time (after the ~935 eruption of nearby Eldgja) and caused notable atmospheric cooling and effects. Additional vents of Grimsvotn were active from May 1783 to May 1785.

The eruption began on June 8, 1783 and lasted eight months. An estimated 14.731 cubic km of basalt was erupted and covered an area of 565 square km.

*snip*

Laki is also known for its atmospheric effects. The convective eruption column of Laki carried gases to altitudes of 15 km. These gases formed aerosols that caused cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, possibly by as much as 1 degree C. This cooling is the largest such volcanic-induced event in historic time. In Iceland, the haze lead to the loss of most of the islands livestock (by eating fluorine contaminated grass), crop failure (by acid rain) and the death of 9,000 people, one-quarter of the human residents (by famine).

This was not a great eruption but was extremely poisonous. The ash, even that which traveled thousands of miles, killed many things, wheat, sheep, trees, gardens. Most of the population of Iceland died and thousands and thousands had to flee Scotland. Not that the British overlords minded. They preferred to empty out the Highlands. Many came to America.

Wikipedia:

Proto-revolutionary activity started when the French king Louis XVI (reigned 1774-1792) faced a crisis in the royal finances. The French crown, which fiscally equated the French state, owed considerable debt. During the régimes of Louis XV (ruled 1715-1774) and Louis XVI, several different ministers, including Turgot (Controller-General of Finances 1774-1776), and Jacques Necker (Director-General of Finances 1777-1781), unsuccessfully proposed to revise the French tax system to a more uniform system. Such measures encountered consistent resistance from the parlements (law courts), dominated by the "Robe Nobility", which saw themselves as the nation's guardians against despotism, as well as from court factions, and both ministers were ultimately dismissed. Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who became Controller-General of the Finances in 1783, pursued a strategy of conspicuous spending as a means of convincing potential creditors of the confidence and stability of France's finances.

However, Calonne, having conducted a lengthy review of France's financial situation, determined that it was not sustainable, and proposed a uniform land tax as a means of setting France's finances in order in the long term. In the short-term, he hoped that a show of support from a hand-picked Assembly of Notables would restore confidence in French finances, and allow further borrowing until the land tax began to make up the difference and allow the beginning of repayment of the debt.

In France, the crops failed and many became very ill from the poisons. This is when the story of Marie Antoinette supposedly said, "Let them eat cake" arose. The fury over the deteriorating situation in the peasantry spilled out of the countryside and into the city where they fled. This turned a difficult political situation into a revolution.

BBC Tuesday, 8 June, 2004

Mount Awu is one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, and has erupted repeatedly since the 17th century.

Nearly 3,000 people died when it blew up in 1812. The last major eruption was in 1966, when 40 people died and thousans were evacuated.

Napoleon invaded Russia the same year the Indonesian volcanic chain decided to begin a series of blowouts. Winter came roaring into Moscow very suddenly that year and Napoleon decided to run for his life as temperatures dropped like a rock in to sub zero ranges at the end of October. Much of his Grande Armee perished with some assistance from Cossack raiders harrying them as they ran.

Tambora's eruption was the greatest in recorded history. It caused huge hardship a year later here in the Northeast. It is a good thing Lewis and Clark went on their great expedition in 1804. If they did it a mere decade later, they might not have survived.

BBC:

Every thousand years or so, a volcano erupts somewhere on the planet with enough power to significantly alter the global climate for years afterwards. Prodigious quantities of dust and sulphur aerosols are ejected into the atmosphere, preventing the Sun's rays from reaching the ground. Universal crop failures occur, temperatures drop dramatically, and living creatures across the globe die off in large numbers. Such an event occurred in 1815, on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia - the explosion of the great Tambora volcano.

*snip*

Five days later, on 10 April, a number of colossal explosions occurred, creating columns of volcanic material that stretched up to 40km into the sky. What goes up normally comes down, so when these columns collapsed, they formed pyroclastic flows - earth-hugging clouds of hot ash, rocks and pumice, that rampaged across the island killing everyone and everything in their path2. Almost the entire population of the Tambora province, over 10,000 people, were killed instantly by these flows. In addition, when these flows reached the sea, tsunamis up to 5m high were formed, that careered into neighbouring islands across the locality, killing yet more people in the immediate vicinity of the volcano.

*snip*

The longer term effects of Tambora were felt across the globe. In addition to the large quantities of ash, rocks and dust ejected by the volcano, over 200 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide gas were propelled into the stratosphere. This had the effect of limiting the amount of sunlight that reached the ground, so that temperatures, particularly across the Northern Hemisphere, began to fall dramatically4. Monsoon season was interrupted in India, possibly leading to a deadly outbreak of cholera that insinuated its way across the globe. Europe experienced widespread crop failures just as it was recovering from the effects of the Napoleonic Wars. Ireland had its first great famine. Devastating floods hit China. In North America, 1816 is remembered as 'the year without a summer', when snow fell during June and frost was still widespread during the month of July.

Artists, poets and writers were all inspired by the changes wrought by Tambora. One famous example is Turner's brilliant sunset paintings.
http://commons.
Of course, the most important aspect of all this is the possibility of extinction caused by volcanic events. First Science:

Every now and again in geology, as in any other science, evidence is obtained and presented that cannot easily be explained in terms of familiar processes or accepted ideas. Such a case was continental drift, proposed by Wegener in 1912, which languished as a theory for about 45 years because there was no logical explanation of HOW continents could move. The mechanism of seafloor spreading proposed in the late 1950's led to the development of the modern theory of plate tectonics, which provides an explanation for continental drift.

The time relationship between flood basalt province formation and mass extinctions of organisms is another example of a scientific "hard nut to crack."

Extinction events are increasingly seen as important factors in the history of life on Earth, and recent studies suggest catastrophic causes for at least some mass extinctions. Two catastrophic processes that have been invoked are (1) impacts of asteroids or comets and (2) large volcanic eruptions. The end-Cretaceous (Cretaceous/Tertiary or K/T boundary) mass extinction has been convincingly correlated with the impact of a 10-km diameter asteroid with the Earth about 65 million years ago. Evidence of similar impacts has been found at the times of several other extinction events.

When you compare the age of LIPs with the estimated ages of stratigraphic boundaries involving significant biotic changes (dated according to the most recent geological time scale), in at least three cases (the Deccan, Newark, and Siberian flood basalts), a direct measure of correlation with major extinction events is possible (see graph below). The probability that three major volcanic events that typically last ~1 Myr should occur within 1 Myr of major extinction events during the last 250 Myr (of which there are ~12) is about 10-4. Thinking about the ways in which these two types of global event might be causally linked is a worthy scientific challenge.

This is grim reading. Perhaps the greater super-mega events were triggered by the earth's crust being greatly disturbed by metor or cometary events. The earth's history is the story of a very dynamic system. Thanks to water and living organisms, it is complex, dangerous, beautiful beyond description and more interesting than half of the galaxy. I think (heh).

News of Merapi's activities can now be watched 24/7 by the whole world and you better believe, this bears close watching, too. It is literally life and death. And I am horrified that people are hanging out so close to this volcano. When little Mt. St. Helens blew, many people died who thought they were more then 50 miles away and they could outrun an explosion.

No, you can't. Try 500 miles. Even then, it is possible to be caught.

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Mount St Helen's Upthrust Rock Amazes

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The dome in Mt. St. Helens is growing and in the middle of the dome is a sharp nearly rectangular rock that is shooting straight up. Many of the world's volcanoes are troubled by recent tectonic plate events.

National Geographic News:

John Roach
for National Geographic News
May 9, 2006
A massive fin-shaped slab of hot rock has recently been seen growing in the crater of Washington State's Mount St. Helens.

The feature is the seventh such structure to rise in the volcano's crater since it began slowly erupting in October 2004, say scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Cascade Volcano Observatory.
"This one has created a stir, in part because it began to emerge in the dead of winter—in the middle of November '05," said Daniel Dzurisin, a volcanologist at the Vancouver-based observatory who studies the dome.

"It was a particularly snowy winter in the Northwest. We didn't get many views, and we hadn't seen this feature before recently."

The newest creation currently stands about 300 feet (90 meters) tall and is 330 feet (100 meters) wide at the base, Dzurisin says.

The feature is growing at a rate of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) a day.

Here is a video of the rock emerging from the lava dome.

Evidently, this is a fairly steady mountain building that is different from the Hawaiian volcanoes, the Cascade system is quite different. "Hot spot" volcanism is less likely to be hyper-explosive unlike subduction volcanoes. This week the subduction chain the ties Siberia to Russia have been having minor eruptions and earthquakes, the latest a 6.3 event on Fox Island. Then today, another 6.2 event at Kamchatka, Russia.

I want to thank Marty Salo for sending emails about these events.

Mt. St. Helens is of great interest to Americans since it is on our continent. But the one that can alter the weather world-wide as well as rearrange the landscape extensively are the Indonesian volcanic chain and the most active volcano this cycle is Mt. Merapi.

Geologists said that Merapi was continuing to show increasing activity. On Tuesday, a total of six shallow volcanic temblors were recorded compared to two a day earlier, while there were 152 quakes caused by lava movements compared to 102 the previous day.

A new lava dome at the peak of Mount Merapi was continuing its rapid growth but Muzani from the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the volcano, said it was still stable.

A collapse of the lava dome would send lava and deadly heatclouds speeding down the slope, geologists have warned, rather than a massive explosion.

During the middle of the last century, volcanoes were pretty inactive. This is starkly different today. The last 20 years has been a bonanza for students of volcanoes. I am betting it is going to be increasingly interesting.

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Chinese Scientists Find New Ozone Hole Over Tibet

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Chinese scientists have confirmed the existence of an ozone hole like the ones over the poles. This has serious implications for the entire planet. For one thing, it makes living in the upper regions of the earth more dangerous due to dangerous cosmic rays damaging DNA.

Political Gateway:

BEIJING, May 4, 2006 (AFP) - Chinese scientists have warned a 2.5-million-square-kilometer (one-million-square-mile) ozone hole may be forming over the Tibetan plateau, state media reported Thursday.

While it does not yet qualify as a regular ozone hole, like the ones over the two poles, the area has seen a dramatic drop in ozone density in recent years, the Xinhua news agency said, citing China's Scientific Report journal.

The decrease in ozone over the plateau was caused by atmospheric air movements rather than the global greenhouse effect, Xinhua quoted the journal as saying.

"When low-ozone air currents in the lower layer enter the upper air layer, the overall ozone density is reduced."

Scientists have known about the thinning of the ozone density in the area at least since early this decade, but the report in the journal offers the most solid scientific evidence so far.

This is not good news. Many people feel that if they ignore these sorts of things we can then live happily. Well, actively destroying our home planet is not a good plan. There are obvious drawbacks. If what scientists have learned about the Permian extinction proves true, we could be heading into a situation whereby only very small animals hugging the lowest elevations will survive. Not a good prospect for humans.

Evidently, the entire ozone layer of this planet has been thinning thanks to human activities. This is something to be alarmed about. Only, like any ecosystem problem, asking someone to sacrifice so others may live is problematic. Obviously, someone using bicycles so others may drive bloated pleasure vehicles with impunity isn't an attractive solution, is it?

For some reason, quite a few people shut down the "let's take care of things" parts of their brains and they let the "whoopee! Let's blow it all up" sectors free rein. Oh, by the way, many writers these days have no idea what "free rein" means. So they use similiar words such as "free reign," for example.

My horse, Sparky can explain this: "Free rein is when I don't have those stupid leather strips yanking at the bit in my mouth! So I can run all over the place, looking for mares in heat! Or graze. Or roll over."

"Taking the bit in the mouth," refers to when horses simply ignore humans pulling on the reins usually when the human wants to stop a runaway horse.

And this is a runaway planet! And too many humans have taken the bit in their mouths and given themselves free rein. Not a smart idea.

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Plankton Blooms Before Earthquakes

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists have connected plankton blooms that occur in subduction plate zones with earthquake events. This is another clue for predicting earthquakes. Just like before a thunderstorm, many creatures can also sense an impending earthquake's manifestations.

BBC News:

Concentrations of the natural pigment chlorophyll in coastal waters have been shown to rise prior to earthquakes.
These chlorophyll increases are due to blooms of plankton, which use the pigment to convert solar energy to chemical energy via photosynthesis.

A joint US-Indian team of researchers analysed satellite data on ocean coastal areas lying near the epicentres of four recent quakes.

With the oceans warming, it is increasingly common to have sudden population surges. But it seems, thanks to satellite photos, very specifically local blooms come out of a very small area which is exactly the same area where a subsequent quake occurs.

The authors say the chlorophyll blooms are linked to a release of thermal energy prior to an earthquake.

This causes the sea surface temperature to rise and increases the surface latent heat flux - the amount of energy moving from the surface to the air due to evaporation.

And in turn, there is enhanced upwelling - the process by which cold, nutrient-rich water is transported from the deep sea to the surface.

Heat does rise whether it be water or air. But here is a puzzle:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/12/MNG8SDMMR01.DTL">San Francisco Chronicle:

Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

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Oceanic plankton have largely disappeared from the waters off Northern California, Oregon and Washington, mystifying scientists, stressing fisheries and causing widespread seabird mortality.

The phenomenon could have long-term implications if it continues: a general decline in near-shore oceanic life, with far fewer fish, birds and marine mammals. No one is certain how long the condition will last. But even a short duration could severely affect seabird populations because of drastically reduced nesting success, scientists say.

The plankton disappearance is caused by a slackening of what is known as "upwelling:" the seasonal movement of cold, nutrient-rich offshore water into areas near shore.

This cold water sustains vast quantities of phytoplankton and zooplankton, which are the basis of the marine food web. During periods of vigorous upwelling and consequent plankton "blooms," everything from salmon to blue whales fattens and thrives on the continental shelf of the West Coast.

Far from plankton upwelling, it is doing the opposite. But not because the water is getting colder. Scientists don't know what is going on except the water is defintely warmer and the cycling of very deep water with the upper currents isn't happening and this is an ongoing crisis on the West Coast. So maybe it is the same thing?

Perhaps, unlike the upwelling of plankton before great quakes in Asia, we see the opposite here? Namely, the warm water below simply is heating up the waters above? An interesting thing to explore. We do know something big is going on very deep in the ocean trenches and the trenches are where the main "warfare" is going on as the plates battle for space.

One the geologically more stable East Coast, we have been having serious algae blooms this spring. Chronicle.com:

May 2, 2006, 7:26PM
Toxic Algae Bloom Returns to Maine Coast

© 2006 The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine — The red tide, which shut down much of the Maine coast to shellfish harvesting last year, is back. Red tide has now shut down harvesting in an area near Harpswell from Dickson Point to West Cundy Point. Shellfishermen say they hope the shutdown doesn't spread like it did last year.

"We're all worried," John Lyon, a clam digger, told WCSH-TV. "We don't want another year like last year."

I heard this on the radio and thought, this is becoming common, isn't it?

A study this year by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass., shows little threat in southern New England but more cause for concern in Maine.

Microscopic cysts dropped by toxic algae blooms on the ocean floor act like seeds for future red tide outbreaks. Despite the intensity of last year's bloom, the cysts are far less widespread than expected on the southern New England sea floor, Wood Hole scientists said.

While researchers found an average of 10 to 40 cysts per cubic centimeter of sediment off the Massachusetts coast, some Maine concentrations remained in the 1,000 to 6,000 range.

But scientists caution that cysts are only one of a variety of factors needed for a crippling red tide. Other factors include weather patterns and ocean currents.

And now one can add, subduction earthquake heating.

Here is another take on algal toxic blooms: Woods Hole:

One question that scientists ponder is "Are HABs spreading and is the problem getting worse?" A growing body of evidence suggests that HABs are increasing around the globe.

Maps of the expansion of HABs in the US since 1972 indicate the scale of the problem now compared to 30 years ago. We have more toxic algal species, more algal toxins, more areas affected, more fisheries resources affected, and higher economic losses.

Why is this? There are many reasons. The first thought of many is that pollution or other human activities are involved. On close inspection, however, many of the "new" or expanded HAB problems in the US occurred in waters where pollution is not an obvious factor. The organisms responsible for HABs have been on earth for a long time, so new bloom events may simply reflect better detection methods and more observers rather than new species introductions or dispersal events. The 1987 NSP event in North Carolina is a good example, as that was a Florida bloom carried by the Gulf Stream to North Carolina waters - a totally natural phenomenon with no linkage to human activities. Likewise, a massive 1972 red tide was responsible for introducing dormant cysts of the PSP-producing species Alexandrium tamarense to southern New England waters, where it has persisted to this day. Those coastal waters have seen an increase in pollution over the years, but the actual introduction and colonization of the species is the result of natural currents and environmental forcings, including a hurricane which occurred immediately prior to the 1972 bloom. It may be that subsequent blooms of this species are enhanced by pollution, but this has not yet been demonstrated. The appearance of ASP along the west coast after 1991 is also not a result of pollution, but rather to communication among scientists and improved chemical detection methods that led to the identification of a toxin that was surely present in those waters for many years. Some believe that man may have contributed to the speading problem by transporting toxic species in ship ballast water, but this also remains an unproven hypothesis in the United States with respect to HAB species. Another causative factor is that we have dramatically increased aquaculture activities, and these lead to increased monitoring of product quality and safety, revealing indigenous toxic algae that were probably always there.

I noted last summer the various blooms occuring in the Gulf region immediately before the four biggest hurricanes hit. Human pollution is destroying aquatic environments, no ifs ands or buts. Nonetheless, the "natural" expansion of these events isn't due to direct pollution but indirect via the greenhouse effect.

We seem to be in a cycle where both the earth is heating things up and so is the sun and humans are alteraing the ratios of various gasses. Altogether, an unsettling time.

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Important Monsoon Cycle Wind Circulation Pattern in Pacific Is Weakening

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Scientists note that the cyclonic wind cycle in the Pacific that controls the El Nino/La Nina cycles as well as the monsoon/drought cycle in Asia is significantly weakening. This has been an ongoing process for the last 100 years, not a cyclic situation.

AP:blockquote>By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer 39 minutes ago
NEW YORK - An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests.

It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said.

El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South America and bring dry weather or even drought to Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere in the western Pacific.

As for the Pacific food chain near the equator, the slowdown might reduce populations of tiny plants and animals up through the fish that eat them, because of reduced nutrition welling up from the deep, said the author, Gabriel Vecchi.

Vecchi, a visiting scientist at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Princeton, N.J., and colleagues present their results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The slowdown was detected in shipboard and land-based data going back to the mid-1800s. It matches an effect predicted by computer climate simulations that trace global warming to a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the researchers report. But simulations that consider only natural influences fail to produce the observed slowdown, Vecchi said.

The shifting of the techonic plates changes not only ocean currents but also air currents. The uplifting of the Tibetean plateau, the uptilt of the North American continent as well as the twisted rise of the Andean mountain range all change the natural flows of winds around a planet. If one looks at the great gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn, one can see how bands of weather flow in various directions with turbulence on the edges and sometimes tremendous storms like the Great Eye on Jupiter that has lasted for hundred of thousands if not millions of years. Thanks to the ocean/mountain complex on earth, we have complex weather systems.

And whether or not continents are shoved against each other or are all on one side of the planet or evenly spaced out as they are today, makes a huge difference on what sort of ecosystem can exist, what sort of weather. I would guess, the storms during the time much of the continents were in a mega-glop were tremendous since there was no landmass for half of the planet to break them up.

Click on picture to see full size.

Here is the Wikipedia diagram of the Walker circulation.

The Walker circulation is caused by the pressure gradient force that results from a high pressure system over the eastern pacific ocean, and a low pressure system over Indonesia. When the Walker circulation weakens or reverses, an El Niño results, causing the ocean surface to be warmer than average, as upwelling of cold water occurs less or not at all. An especially strong Walker circulation causes a La Niña, resulting in cooler ocean temperatures due to increased upwelling.

The upwelling of water from the depths is an important part of the marine ecosystem since the krill and other infitestimally small creatures breed down in the colder, darker parts of the ocean. Stagnating ocean waters is bad for the present ecosystem. We have persistent bad "dead zones" at the mouths of many of our rivers today thanks to fertilizer and over fishing as well as petroleum pumping. Maine has just called for a ban on shellfish and it is only early May, due to red tides developing.

Last summer, the Gulf of Mexico was devasted by such problems and it was cooler than this year. One of the oddities of the Atlantic/Pacific cyclonic cycles is that when there is little wind in the Pacific, this enables hurricanes in the Atlantic to swell greatly in size. Their heads aren't reduced by upper atmospheric winds.

The Age of Ships which began when the Portugese and then the Spaniards set out across the oceans blue was also the Little Ice Age and this meant violent cycles of hurricanes and typhoons were at a low ebb and the trade winds were vigorous, enabling swift sailing.

Bartleby:

There are two belts of latitude where winds are light and the weather is hot and dry. They are located mostly over the oceans, at about 30° lat. in each hemisphere, and have a north-south range of about 5° as they follow the seasonal migration of the sun. The horse latitudes are associated with the subtropical anticyclone and the large-scale descent of air from high-altitude currents moving toward the poles. After reaching the earth’s surface, this air spreads toward the equator as part of the prevailing trade winds or toward the poles as part of the westerlies. The belt in the Northern Hemisphere is sometimes called the “calms of Cancer” and that in the Southern Hemisphere the “calms of Capricorn.” The term horse latitudes supposedly originates from the days when Spanish sailing vessels transported horses to the West Indies. Ships would often become becalmed in mid-ocean in this latitude, thus severely prolonging the voyage; the resulting water shortages would make it necessary for crews to throw their horses overboard.

My horse, Sparky, would be very offended by this information. Snort.

If ships were becalmed constantly, international invasions of many lands would have had to been cancelled. But the winds blew with vigor and wooden ships merrily traversed the planet and even in the Little Ice Age, many a fleet went down due to violent storms or languished in dead air cycles. The system is now more dynamic. This also means the vacillations between strong winds and no winds is greater. I notice here, our weather cycle is way off. For the first time in many months, for example, we had an Atlantic storm system, the classic "April showers" that happens when a storm moves "backwards" coming from the middle Atlantic and backing into the continent. These are the multi-day, gentle rain cycles that nourish the land. It was tremendously dry here in the Northeast, we had fire alarms all spring long! Insane!

Now, the grass is growing and my horse is happy. But we can now go an entire spring without these storms. Just as Indonesia, Malaysia and the other islands have to worry about losing their monsoon season.

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