Smallest "national forest" ∞

Bonnie Hulkower, writing for Tree Hugger about an art installation of sorts in San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin neighborhood:

The Tenderloin National Forest, or Forest, is one of the few open spaces in a dense neighborhood of over 40,000 culturally and ethnically diverse residents. The Forest came to life about twenty five years ago when Darryl Smith, an artist and San Francisco native, was living in a Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) managed apartment building adjacent to the derelict alley, then known as Cohen Alley. The alley served as a dumping ground for hypodermic needles and garbage. Smith and his partner, Laurie Lazer, along with fellow artists and community activists decided to transform the dingy alley into a safe, relaxing space for people to congregate. It wasn’t easy.

Hint: It’s not a real national forest. The actual smallest U.S. National Forest is Tuskegee Naional Forest in Alabama, which at 11,252 acres dwarfs the Tenderloin installation.

Smith and Lazer get points for creativity and for bringing a bit of green to one of the most depressing parts of San Francisco. And for shining a light on the homelessness that plagues the neighborhood—without breaking character: “The Tenderloin is known for its hardy outdoorsmen.”

Tenderloin National Forest

Photos by Andrew Turner.

500 million trees wither in Texas drought ∞

Christopher Mims, writing at Grist.org:

This is what long-term desertification looks like: The state of Texas lost 5.6 million urban trees — and as many as 500 million forest trees — in the drought that’s been going on since last year. That’s 10 percent of the city trees and 10 percent of the forest trees in the state. The urban trees alone provided an estimated $280 million in annual services (shading buildings, controlling stormwater runoff) and will cost $560 million to remove.

It’s distressing to see tangible effects of climate change this soon. I thought we’d have at least a decade before it began in earnest.

Another disappearing lake ∞

Lake Fitri in early 2012

Astronauts spotted another shrinking lake late last month. Located in the Southern Sahara, Lake Fitri is shrinking because of a severe drought, not damming or overuse as is the case with Poyang lake in China or the Aral Sea. The lake has gone dry in the past, NASA suspects, because large dunes appear even in the deepest parts of the basin. Whether Lake Fitri is nearly empty or almost full, all water that makes it there eventually “disappears”—it’s a terminal lake with no outlet to the ocean.

Photo by NASA.

Tree City

City tree silhouette

Cities aren’t called “concrete jungles” for their leafy greenness. But perhaps it’s an inappropriate nickname. Several cities actually have more—not less—tree cover than what came before them. By way of example, take this from historian William Cronon: “There are more trees in southern Wisconsin now than at any point in the last 7,000 years.” That’s in part due to more than a century of fire suppression, but also the intense pace of urban development.

There’s ample scientific evidence to back up Cronon’s assertion. In the early 1990s, David Nowak, an urban forester with the U.S. Forest Service, found that tree cover in Oakland, California, between 1850 and 1989 rose sharply from 2 percent to 19 percent. Now, a new study by Adam Berland, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota, found a similar pattern in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Oakland and Minneapolis—and many other metro areas, I suspect—were sparsely forested before urban development. As far back as 1500 BCE, what would become Oakland was regularly burned by the Coastanoan Indians to clear out the underbrush to simplify acorn gathering. What trees remained in the 1700s were logged for lumber and firewood by the missions. Then in 1848, what was left nearly vanished when gold was discovered in California. By the time Oakland incorporated in 1852, its namesake was nearly gone.

Fire likewise held forests in southern Minnesota at bay for thousands of years. Yet unlike in central California, a part of central Minnesota quickly afforested during a brief climate cooling 400 years ago. It wasn’t long lived, though—shortly after their arrival, European settlers swiftly knocked down most of the Big Woods for farming. The remaining flecks large enough to be called forests cover only 2 percent of the original area. In other words, forests near Oakland and Minneapolis had nowhere to go but up.

The arrival of dense settlement was something of a godsend for trees. Young neighborhoods and cities are often depauperate—it’s easier to build without big trees in your way—but they tend to accumulate tree cover as they age. And relative to the denuded landscape that came before Oakland and Minneapolis, those urban forests are more akin to a real jungle than a concrete one.

Urban forests are certainly an improvement from a tree’s perspective, but they’re not a panacea for habitat loss. Neither of these studies examined how those forests function ecologically. Just like 11 random people do not make a soccer team, a bunch of trees is not the ecological equivalent of a real forest. Not only is the understory substantially different in cities—houses are terrible forage for most insects and animals—but the types of trees are often radically different.

Still, these two studies should make abundantly clear that cities do function as ecosystems, albeit limited ones. And in some cases, they are more diverse and productive than what came before. This is especially true for metropolitan Minneapolis, where monocultures of wheat and corn were less diverse than the Big Woods they replaced and maybe less ecologically complex than the cities that replaced them. These two cases also underline the need for an urban ecology that doesn’t just study what systems cities create, but strives to shape those systems for greater ecological complexity and diversity.

Sources:

Berland, A. (2012). Long-term urbanization effects on tree canopy cover along an urban–rural gradient Urban Ecosystems DOI: 10.1007/s11252-012-0224-9

Nowak, David J. (1993). Historical vegetation change in Oakland and its implications for urban forest management Journal of Arboriculture, 19 (5), 313-319

Photo by frozenchipmunk.

Related posts:

An ecology of gardens and yards

Urban forests just aren’t the same

Creativity—the disturbance that distinguishes urban ecosystems

Why Don't Americans Riot Anymore? ∞

Despite recent clashes between Occupy Movement protesters and the police, Americans just don’t riot like they used to. Emily Badger reports:

“Alienation, youth unemployment, distrust of police,” says University of Pennsylvania historian Michael Katz, “these things are surely as prevalent in the U.S. as they were in France.”

If anything, the conditions that fuel urban violence – income inequality, poverty, joblessness – are as disheartening in America as ever, in the wake of a deep recession.

“So why,” Katz asks, “had collective violence more or less disappeared from the streets of American cities?”

Some answers are encouraging, others distressing.

A new version of the American Dream ∞

Wonderful essay by Kevin Hartnett:

“So, what is it? What is the third American Dream?” I don’t know, of course, and Mead says he doesn’t know either. The suburban ideal would have been hard to imagine in 1890 and it’s just as hard to picture what the iconic American lifestyle will look like sixty years from now.

Via Seth Mnookin.

Gulp ∞

Joanna Foster, writing for NYT Green:

Globally, agriculture accounts for 92 percent of all freshwater use, with the water-intensive production of cereal grains like wheat, rice and corn accounting for 27 percent of the world’s water footprint. Meat production is responsible for 22 percent and dairy for 7 percent, the study indicates.

The study also traced the virtual flow of water that occurs when one crop is exported to another country. The world’s biggest water exporter? The U.S. of A.

The circular economy ∞

It sounds like a shell game, but as Ben Schiller explains at Fast Co.Exist, it could pave the way for a lower-waste economy:

Important question: How can we maintain global prosperity when natural resources are increasingly scarce, the planet is in increasing disrepair, and 3 billion people are expected to join the “middle class” by 2030?

According to a fascinating new report, the answer is a “circular economy,” where materials and products are restored and regenerated much more widely, and where the emphasis is on leasing, renting, and sharing, rather than consumption and ownership.

The problem I with the circular economy is that it seems heavily dependent on leasing and renting, both of which run counter to our seemingly innate desire to own. (It’s one of the reasons music subscription services like Rhapsody failed against the ownership model of iTunes. Never heard of Rhapsody? Exactly.)

Leasing and renting can also be notoriously expensive. Previously, durable goods could last a lifetime or more and only had to be purchased once. Granted many of the appurtenances of modern life are obsolete in a few years, but leasing arrangements will likely result in higher costs to consumers. Why else would big companies like Cisco and Renault commission the study?

America’s suburban future

Aerial view of Carrollton, Texas

If you think American cities are sprawling now, just wait until 2025. In that time, the U.S. population will grow by 18 percent but the amount of developed land will increase 57 percent. Up to 9.2 percent of the lower 48 could be urbanized by then. And while that number includes cities and the infrastructure to support them—roads, rail, power lines, and so on—that number does not include land impacted by farming, logging, mining, or mineral extraction.

That 10 percent of the lower 48 could be crawling with people is a stark reminder that our nation—while immense—is not immune to the pressures of development. It’s also acknowledgement that despite years of hearing about the resurgence of American cities, sprawl is still king.

Today, it feels like much of what drove the suburbanization of America since World War II has changed. Incomes aren’t rising nearly as fast as they did in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, incomes have stagnated or dropped in recent decades. Soaring gas prices and congested freeways have stolen some of the automobile’s glamor, too.

Yet two studies show that while the outlook in the U.S. may have changed, our desire for suburban living has not. The study’s results differ slightly—the 2004 paper says we’ll add 25.8 million hectares (64 million acres) by 2025, the 2009 manuscript says 22.4 million hectares (55 million acres) by 2030—but their conclusions are the same. American cities will continue to sprawl, adding more land per person than in the past.

In recent decades, the locus of suburbanization has shifted from the Northeast and Midwest to the South. With its warmer weather and lower costs of living, the South has grown faster than any other region in the U.S. since 1980. Development has been fueled by flat, cheap land and abundant freeways, which has pushed land demands well above the national average in some states.

That boom also meant the South was hit hard by the housing bust in 2008. But that doesn’t mean the market for suburban housing has disappeared. Living the burbs is still cheaper than the city, and since real incomes for most Americans have suffered in recent years, development will continue to chase lower land prices. The recession and housing slump may have put a damper on suburban development, but I’m guessing it’s just a temporary blip.

Another factor that should conspire against suburban development—higher gas prices—also doesn’t seem to have much of an influence. The 2009 study suggests development rates won’t take much of a hit from high fuel costs. To simulate rising gas prices, the study’s authors reduced the forecasted development rate in states where it was highest—primarily the car-centric South. Only 5 percent less land was converted from rural to urban uses.

It’s possible things could change—perhaps fuel costs will rise even higher, or maybe the home downsizing trend that’s in its infancy will mature. But I think we should prepare for a future filled with suburbs. In the South, where most of the development is happening, land continues to be cheap and easy to access. The same warm weather that drew many people there will also keep them in their cars. Nobody likes walking in the South’s sweltering summers, even if it’s just from the steamy parking lot to the over-air conditioned mall.

The question then is, how can we make the suburbs more environmentally friendly? Encouraging compactness would be a good start, even just at the subdivision level. Hopscotch development inflicts ecological damage well beyond its immediate footprint—there are many plants and animals that cannot survive surrounded by a sea of humanity. Dispersing job and commercial centers is another option, helping to reduce the number of miles people have to drive on a day-to-day basis.

In the end, though, we’ll have to push for more ecologically integrated development. We’ve seen small steps in that direction already—most new subdivisions must deal with run-off from rainstorms on-site rather than shunting it to an overburdened creek. It’s a start, but not enough to offset America’s suburban future.

Sources:

Alig, R., Kline, J., & Lichtenstein, M. (2004). Urbanization on the US landscape: looking ahead in the 21st century Landscape and Urban Planning, 69 (2-3), 219-234 DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.07.004

White, E., Morzillo, A., & Alig, R. (2009). Past and projected rural land conversion in the US at state, regional, and national levels Landscape and Urban Planning, 89 (1-2), 37-48 DOI: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.09.004

Photo by La Citta Vita.

Related posts:

An ecology of gardens and yards

Plants rockin’ the suburbs, animals not so much

What do we mean by “rural”?

Should city trees bear fruit? ∞

Amy Biegelsen, reporting for The Atlantic Cities:

There’s a block in San Francisco that will soon be blossoming with cherries, plums and pears, but Tara Hui will not say where. That’s because she’s worried that backlash from city officials or unsympathetic citizens will halt the progress she and her fellow Guerrilla Grafters have made splicing fruit-bearing branches on to city trees.

Hui’s neighborhood is a food desert, and her grafting is both a statement and a solution. It’s horticulture as protest, and it’s a great idea, until it isn’t. San Francisco’s public works director isn’t thrilled with the idea—he’s concerned about pest outbreaks and probably (though he doesn’t say) infections from bad grafts. My concern is that the city would stop planting trees in graft-happy areas, making them tree deserts as well.

What's missing in the new Blue Marble ∞

Jeff Masters, meteorologist at Weather Underground:

The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.

Via Bill McKibben.

Mo' chickens, mo' problems ∞

From a study on broiler chickens presented at the “22nd Symposium of Veterinarians of Serbia with International Participation”:

Sudden death syndrome is one of the diseases that usually occur between the ages of 21 up to 28 days, affects healthy, vibrant birds that die in 1 to 2 minutes. Dead birds usually lay on their back; mortality in the flock is 1 to 2%. The causes of the disease are inadequate technology posture, nutrition, metabolic disorders and the rapid growth of broilers. The aim was to examine the impact of population density on the occurrence of sudden death syndrome.

I know the image of little baby birds keeling over is a sad one, but this abstract grabbed my attention because it reminded me of the lady who saved her chicken with mouth-to-beak resuscitation. She recounts the harrowing tale in Mark Lewis’s The Natural History of the Chicken, the best documentary about chickens ever.

Duck power ∞

Philippe Mesmer, writing at Guardian Environment:

On his six-hectare farm in the village of Keisen, on Japan’s Kyushu island, Takao Furuno, 61, grows rice and wheat without chemicals.

He rediscovered an ancient rice-growing practice involving the use of ducks. Dozens of these birds, raised on the farm, patrol the paddy fields. They feed on insects and weeds, without touching the plants. Their wading oxygenates the water and stirs up the soil. Their droppings are a natural fertiliser.

Production is up, costs are down. Furuno even wrote a book on his experiment, The Power of Duck. Such integrated pest management practices may not work on big, industrial farms, but they may help smaller farms in developing countries.

Environmentalism in perspective ∞

Gernot Wagner, being interviewed by Andrew Price at Fast Co.Exist:

Should you buy the local apples that have been stored for months in a cool house somewhere, or should you buy the fresh apple flown in from across the world? Or should you not buy apples at all when they are not in season and risk not getting enough vitamins?

You’d go positively crazy trying to figure out what to do, and you’d miss the big picture: That, at the end of the day, none of that really matters.

Wagner hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, we’re beyond the first and second generations of environmental issues—the ones that were easy to solve like acid rain or overburdened landfills—and are now dealing with more intractable problems like climate change.

The more I read, the more I tend to agree with people like Wagner who believe that economic approaches will be the best way to tackle environmental problems. Education and awareness can open people to the possibility of change, but economic incentives can really affect it.

Unwilding ∞

Brandon Keim, writing at Wired Science:

“Normally you think of domestication as something that happens at the hands of humans,” said Brian Hare, a Duke University evolutionary anthropologist and co-author of a bonobo research review published Jan. 20 in Animal Behaviour. “The idea that a species domesticated itself is a bit crazy, but there are some species that outcompeted others by becoming nicer.”

…

But why stop with dogs and bonobos? Hare and Wrangham suspect self-domestication is happening elsewhere, and new niches around human habitation remain a likely place look. Large cities and suburbs are new to much of Earth’s surface, and represent opportunity to animals that can exploit them.

Expect the bright line between “city” and “wilderness” to dim even further.

Amazon's biggest weakness ∞

David Streitfeld, writing for the New York Times’ Bits blog:

Until we achieve the teleportation of objects, there is only one way to immediately get physical goods. It is called a store.

In the meantime, Amazon is compensating by building warehouses closer to you. Order today, delivery tomorrow. Not quite teleportation, but probably the next best thing.

Streitfeld also touches on a rumor that Amazon may open “stores”. In reality, these outlets would really be showrooms, wherein customers gawk at some goods and then order them for home delivery. It’s a stupid idea, and one that Amazon is unlikely to try. Gateway tried this in the early 2000s and failed spectacularly. As Streitfeld points out, the whole purpose of the store is convenience—it’s both close to home and scratches the “need it now” itch.

It’s ironic, really, that Amazon finds itself building much of the infrastructure it once forwent. To attract more customers, they’re enticing with faster shipping times. That’s not a problem that datacenters can solve. Amazon’s quandary is remarkably similar to that faced by cell phone companies. Just as Amazon’s dominance has nibbled away at the indispensability of brick-and-mortar stores’, cell phones’ explosive growth has eroded the market for physical land lines. Yet as Amazon and cell phone companies try to serve more customers—and serve them more quickly—they will need more numerous and more distributed physical outposts.

Infrastructure ebbs and flows. New technologies may obviate old analogs, sending the pendulum swooping toward virtual replacements. But as those technologies mature, things will inevitably swing back toward physical manifestations.

Programming languages are dense ∞

John Pavlus, writing at Fast Co.Design:

Unless you’ve had specialized training, looking at lines of code is like reading hieroglyphs, only less intuitive. According to findings by researchers from Southern Illinois University, this reaction isn’t just because you’re a n00b: they found that Perl, a major programming language used by untold zillions of developers, is no more intuitive to novices than a language with a randomly generated syntax.

While many programmers often cite Perl’s brevity as an asset, I can tell you it’s an incredibly dense language to learn (and not always in a good way). Pavlus rightly points out that many programming languages were designed by committees of engineers who often don’t value usability, but I think information density is another part of the equation. Engineers just love short and sweet, sometimes at the expense of ease-of-use.