Click on the link below to view the PDF file:

Marin Headlands Review (PDF)

The map above shows directions to the Headlands Institute, located in Golden Gate National Recreation Area at Fort Cronkhite in the Marin Headlands.

Heading North on Highway 101 from San Francisco:

Cross the Golden Gate Bridge and take the Alexander Avenue exit – the second exit.
(1) Merge right onto Alexander Avenue (do not go back under the freeway).
(2) Take the first left (approx. 1/10 of a mile after you merged right) at the left hand turn lane.
(3) Go straight to the tunnel entrance. Follow the directions below *.

Heading South on Highway 101 from Marin County:

Take the second Sausalito exit – the last exit before the Golden Gate Bridge.
(1a) Turn right and follow the road beneath Highway 101.
(1) Go straight after the stop sign.
(2) Take the first left at the left-hand turn lane.
(3) Go straight to the tunnel entrance. Follow the directions below *.

* Directions to Headlands Institute, continued:
(3) Wait for the green light before proceeding through the tunnel on Bunker Road.
(4) Continue slowly through the housing area (watch for speed bumps), and straight at McCullough Road. Pass the horse stables on your left.
(5) Veer slightly right at Field Road. Bunker Road now passes below the old chapel (now a visitor center) and crosses Rodeo Lagoon.
(6) At the next fork, keep left on Bunker toward the beach.
(7) Soon (approx. 1/10 of a mile) you will see a Headlands Institute sign on your right; turn right here. Take the first right into our West Parking Lot (do not park in the first row, which is reserved for Ranger vehicles).

-George Washington Carver, scientist and environmental educator

I teach Physical Geography at the community college level.  It is a physical science requirement for students expecting to continue toward a first degree at a four-year institution.  The course attempts to convey to the student an understanding of “how the earth works”, which I refer to in my class as “the earth’s lifestyle!”

The introduction to the course goes something like this: “The Earth is a unique planet.  It is the only planet of its kind in our Constellation known to support life as we know it.  Everything we do in our daily lives depends on products and resources derived from the earth.  The earth, in turn, derives most of its energy from the sun.”

“The planet takes care of us.  So we should begin by appreciating it as “Mother Earth!”  In this course, we will learn about systems that cooperate with other systems to bring us a ‘living planet’.  Mother Earth is a ‘survivor!’  She will survive anything we can possibly do to her.  The question is: ‘Can we survive what we do to her in our present lifestyle?’”

“This course will observe four interlocking systems:  The Atmosphere, the Hydrosphere, the Lithosphere and the Biosphere.  But, first, we should understand the earth’s place in the solar system and its unique and vital place in the light and heat of the sun.”  With this introduction, my students are taken on a journey to see the world in a “whole new light!”

We start by observing global weather patterns, examining what phenomena influence weather as we know it and studying how weather produces climates.  Next, we introduce the hydrologic (water) cycle as an expression of weather and climate. 

We introduce the Lithosphere by studying a mini-course in elementary geology, which centers around what we call the “rock cycle”.  It is a simplified view of the three major rock classifications, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary.  We then explore how one form leads to another and another in a cycle.  Erosion plays a major role in this process.  Water is the primary vehicle of erosion.  Thus, we study the interrelationship between the water and rock cycles. 

We wrap up the course by observing the role of the first three systems in making life possible on earth.  Here is where we put most emphasis on the earth’s interrelated systems and the examples we have from traditional societies who seek to live in harmony with the resources they derive from the earth.

Thus, with proper emphasis on the elements of physical geography required to meet the attendant academic standards, we observe several alternative lifestyle choices available to us to live well, in harmony with the limits of the Earth’s lifestyle.

Physical Geography and the U. S. Education System:

Many students appreciate this type of course.  However, our education system is sadly lacking in preparing students for the levels of observation and critical thinking necessary to appreciate what our current lifestyle demands of earth’s resources.  Teaching at the community college level exposes me to the lack of geographical knowledge that high school graduates bring to the course.  These are some of our brighter students.  They have done well in school, without basic exposure to the world around them.  Furthermore, the current national policies, advertising and politics prey on this public ignorance, leading them to feel justified in retaining our current lifestyle. 

Ours is a civilization of greed, affluence, excessive waste and a deep adherence to a belief that individual rights with minimal responsibility is sacred.  We worship “science” that seeks to “improve on nature”, “control nature”, “defeat nature” and otherwise ignore the earth’s lifestyle.  We talk about earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, flash floods, blizzards, etc. as “natural disasters”. 

My studies in Geology and Physical Geography tell me that many of our monuments to “scientific progress” are disasters waiting to happen.  Indeed many have already happened.  I would like to apply some of this knowledge to my class presentations, so that students would better appreciate the range of unrealistic expectations that govern our lives today.  But, alas, their previous education has failed them!

This recurring dilemma has convinced me that the work being done to bring more environmental education to our primary schools is a boon.  I am overjoyed to find students who studied abroad and recent immigrants adding so much to my classes.  The students who have lived in rural areas, or on farms often bring welcome insights from their own experiences.  Then, there are many older students who are returning to college to complete degrees, for a better job who also add greatly to the class wisdom. 

For instance, a student from Ecuador can write a paper on the volcano in his neighborhood.  Similarly, the older student, who experienced a large forest fire, is happy to explain to the class how that event created widespread erosion.

In fact, throughout the course, there are many opportunities to observe and examine various natural phenomena and discuss how we can learn from these natural patterns how to choose parts of our lifestyle.  For instance, developers and realtors will offer anything you want.  However, with basic knowledge of natural systems and applied common sense, we learn what to look for in land forms to tell us what sites are safe from potential floods, (including flash floods), landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes.  These are all parts of Physical Geography!

Review this website for assistance and direction in developing a course in Environmental Stewardship: http://naaee.org/forum/bilingualee.php

Begin with introduction to the early native peoples of this land.  Observe how effective and successful they were in sustaining the natural abundance of Mother Earth, The Ohlone example – text: The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books, Berkeley, CA c1978.  Examine the lifestyle, for its sense of  respect for, freedom to use, cyclical sense of balance with the seasons, the animals and plants of the region, the sense of inter-related villages and easy sharing of available resources,  Even accommodating the personal frailties of envy, petty jealousy, gossip, etc., these people seemed to allow these personal quirks to be secondary, in their lives, to the more important process of cooperation, mutual respect, dignity and communal wisdom.

Also discuss the yields of ancient farmers, like the Incas, forest nomads, etc.

Copyright: David L. Romain, 15 December 2004.

The Marin Headlands

as told by its environment
A visit to the Marin Headlands immediately begs the question: “What is the history of the place?”  As one walks around the park, a question is always hovering in the background: “What was happening here before I set foot in this space?” This area offers a vivid outdoor laboratory in which to explore today’s popular concepts of “place-based learning”. 

Furthermore, one’s awareness of a place is never complete until the questions of: “who left their marks on this place before I arrived?” and “what has happened in this place to make it what it is today?”  Many answers to these questions are written in the Headlands environment, itself.  To the trained “listener”, the voices of this environment will speak to us, at almost every juncture, informing us of much of the history of the place.  As one explores these questions, a sense of “belonging to this place” may emerge.

For some, it happens quite by accident.  You know it, when you later feel a longing for the place.  Occasionally, a person may arrive here and may instantly feel an overwhelming sense that you want to stay in this space for a very long time, maybe forever!  For others, the feeling may gradually come over you.  Sometimes, it may even feel that what draws you to the place is an association with another person, or a group, of whom you are particularly fond!  Whatever the drawing card, it leaves you “hooked” on the place.

I am one, who has been slowly drawn to this place and feel particularly “alive”, when I am here.  So, I write from my spiritual sense of the Headlands.  I am particularly indebted to the Marin Headlands Institute for opening up to me a host of observations to add to my own, to feed a growing sense of awareness of the place that is simply unquenchable!  Every single visit awakens yet another new experience!

The Listening Medium:

I have joined a team of teachers, being trained to lead groups of school children around the place and expose them to the life of the place, to explore all the voices that hover around in the environment.  The children have to be sensitized to see, hear, feel, smell and taste the environment.  I refer to that desire to search and explore as “listening”. 

There is a basic orientation that is established in the core of the environmental education that takes place here.  The themes that challenge the students are:

• 1. “The more you look, the more you see!”
  2. “The more you see, the more you wonder!”
  3. “The more you wonder, the more you discover!”
  4. “The more you discover, the more you wonder!” and,
  5. “The more you discover, the more you share!”

When one approaches the environment with this mode of inquiry, the real challenge becomes learning to listen on all channels.  What channels?  Consider what you can be aware of when someone speaks:

• the voice,
• the words,
• the tone of voice,   
• the context in which the words were uttered,
• body language,
• facial expressions,
• other baggage the person may be carrying that influences what is being said,
• the influence the speaker may have on you, the listener, (for example, my relationship to the person, social status, position on the job, family relation, etc.)
• the nature of the forum in which the person is currently speaking.

Add to this awareness the idea of awakening all your senses, (see, hear, taste, smell and feel), and the stimulation can become overwhelming.  When I have been listening with this heightened awareness, much of what I hear is astounding.  It awakens in me a sense of humility. That humility calls me to slow down and truly listen to what the environment has to say to me.  For instance, it is only when one takes the time to observe a bush lupine in the wind on a sunny day with the leaves exposed to the sun closed up while those in the shade are fully open, you realize that the plant is telling you: “I like the sun’s warmth, but I don’t want it to take my moisture from me!”

You begin to realize how much your constant observation and wonder informs you about the weather and other conditioning factors that have caused the local plant and animal life to uniquely adapt to their place.  It may even prompt the question: “How adaptable and flexible are we to the ever present weather, etc.?”  We have so much to learn from the plants and animals we find here!  And, they humbly present us with such vivid lessons about the weather, the soil, the air, the ground, the water and the combinations of habitat conditions that govern their lifestyles.

[Prepare a schematic outline of the mouth of the river, (the lagoon), to show how and why over-flow always follows the same path, even though the sand bar across the lagoon is even for most of the year. =>

* Weathering and Mass Wasting
* Geomorphology-landform science and in this case we’re talking about weathering
* Uplift in the geomorphic cycle begins process event:

o Adjustment
o New equilibrium
o Event

* Slopeàexposed material to transport and erosion
* Hard rockàbiggeràsmaller
* To make the slope stable-or-Read Angle and Repose by Wallace Stegner
* Weathering can be physical, mechanical or chemical

o Organic, roots
o Frozen, joints
o Exfoliation

* Physical
* Chemical-oxidation, carbonation, Karst landscapes caves
* Mass wasting-Show slide:

o Avalanches
o Landslides
o Slips-flows
o Solification-creep

* Man-made mistakes
* Exogenic force
* Fluvial-stream-river related processes, patterns, prediction
* Gravity and isolation

o Erosion
o Transport
o Deposition
o Sorted
o Alluvium

* Base level-cannot erode lower

o Local
o Ultimate

* Drainage levels-divides, defines a watershed
* Continental divide-med, pac, gulf of mexico, atlantic
* See example in book of Pa rivers going to Gulf of Mexico or to Atlantic

o Sediment feeds delta
o Key for Mississippi and hurricane issues

* Stream discharge leeked to evaporation rate, i.e. Nile
* Colorado River fails to reach basin
* Sediment off stream
* Still waters run deep, shallow riffles run fast
* Suspended load-physical
* Dissolved load-chemical
* Gradient-down-hill slope
* Deposits = point bar
* Meanders, under cuts, ox bow
* Braided streams-glacial
* Flood plains-100 year flood-Mississippi Delta
* Deposition
* Levee
* Sinking Delta
* Barrier Islands
* Flood Insuarance-Oachin delta and levee system failure
* Read Chapter 16

Chapter 14

* River systems-hydrology
* Fluvial-geomorphology
* How does a stream bed form
* Drainage-how much land/water covered
* A vast network-arterian system

o Rivers, streams
o Deocribe and enocribe
o The landform base under the H2O

* Watersheds-drainage portion of a creek, stream, river-shapes the land
* Gradient-ultimate base level
* Load-deposits-weight-isostatic,

o Sinking delta, starved without sediments and lack of vegetation

* Floodplain- Ch.19 608-628
* Amazon, Congo, Yangtze, Mississippi

• No two places on earth are exactly the same, why?
• Climactic condition:

• • Humidity
  • Heat
  • Elevation
  • Latitude
  • Soil type
  • Non-biotic

• Ecosystems

• • Self-regulation
  • Communication
  • Nature-balance?

• Biotic
• Biomes/Major Ecosystems:

• • Forest
  • Desert
  • Grassland
  • Tundra

• Climate Elements:

• • Insulation
  • Air pressure
  • Air mass
  • Precipitation
  • Temperature
  • mT-marine tropical
  • mC- marine continental
  • high pressure/low pressure
  • El Nino/Southern Oscillation
  • Classifications pp. 281
  • Koppen system

• Boundaries-related to air masses, but subject to shift at edges, see p. 285
• Paleo climatology –pollen courts
• Climate Change Lecture

• • Stepiup.irg this weekend
  • Reduction of 80% of CO2 by 2050
  • No half measures
  • We have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy, and lead the world in the same direction or “face a totally different planet”
  • Campus climate challenge: 100% clean energy at our school
  • And so we see how the climate shifting can affect small things which may affect larger things (microclimate)
  • Ends with global warming consideration of which we have discussed at length
  • The area w/most concern is the arctic melting ice

• Ch. 10: Climate-Biomes/Ecosystems:

• • Primary producers, primary consumers, secondary, tertiary, top predator
  • Habitat, conversation, #1 cause, invasive species
  • Size of shape = theory of biogeography of islands or of parcels of land
  • Genetic fitness decrease with inbreeding-bottleneck example
  • As habitat shrinks-less individuals around, resulting in the 6h great extinction, which we are engaged with and responsible for

• Ch. 11: Systems Thinking:
• Endogenic system;

• • Deep in the earth radioactive decay of elements created heat via convection
  • Move, warp fracture the upper earth
  • These events can be catastrophic-huge instantaneous events that created mountains, valleys, volcanoes, islands
  • And so the theory of catastrophe didn’t require eons and so the world could have been formed in 5000 years or so
  • Fundamentalists, uniformitarianism, slow change, not as before

• Pg. 324 Drivers: 

• • 46 billions years ago, the earth conjualeded and sorted out by density
    • Heavier matter sinking into the center of the earth, like iron
    • Solid iron core
    • Liquid iron outer core
    • Lower mantle, upper mantle, athenosphere, lithosphere-uppermost, silica at top
  • The Dynamic Planet:
    • Lithosphere
    • Just as the atmosphere was layered, so is the earth
    • Heated core of molten
  • Geologic Time Scale
    • Begin 4.567 billion years old
    • 30 million old, earth was slammed by impact asteroid
    • Carved out the material that coalesced into the moon
  • The time scale of life: 88% of all time on earth
    • 540 million years ago MYA
    • 100 bacteria evolved –Precambrian (6 major cataclysmic extinctions of almost all life forms)
    • 440 MYA first invertebrates evolved-Cambrian
• The Poem

• The earth’s core

• • Inner core
    • Molten iron-perhaps a single enormous crystal, 5500-12000 F, 1400 miles
  • Outer core
    • fluid-reverses magnetism
    • converts thermal and gravitational energy into magnetism
    • reverses polarity
    • 9 times in last 4 million years/500,000 years
    • Magnetic field protects against cosmic radiation and solar wind
  • The mantles- Lower and upper
    • 80% of earth’s volume
    • Rich in oxides
  • Lithosphere- crust 0.43, 43-70 km thick
  • Asthenosphere-weak-plastic of molten rock from radioactive decay
    • Conversion currents move moisture, rocks, slowly deforms crust
    • Hotspots develop like pimples, bring molten rock to the surface-eruption in Hawaii, also thought to be connected to deep pipes in lower mantle

• Crusts:

• • Continental-granite
  • Oceanic-basalt
  • Irregular-brittle layer that floats on hotter, more dense rock

• 5 Layers  “Everything Changes, Nothing’s the same”

• • 40-75 km thick-Lithosphere, crust uppermost mantle
  • Asthenosphere-irregularly molten
  • Outer mantle
  • Inner mantle
  • Outer core
  • Inner core
  • Crust is brittle, fractured into larger plates, laying over dynamic core
  • Reverse of magnetism every 500,000 years
  • Small magnetic particles align in the molten state
  • Seismic caves travel differently through different material, thickness or viscosity
  • Oceanic Crust is 3 miles thick-basalt
  • Continental crust is 19 miles thick-granite
    • Mountain building-erosion
    • Isostasy-weight rebound, elasticity

• Everything changes in the geologic cycle:

• • Hydrologic
  • Rock cycle
  • Tectonic cycle

• Rock Cycle:  (field trip forms)

• • 8 elements = 99% crust
  • O2 + silicon = 74 %
  • O2- reactive-atmospheric gas, 47% in Rx, 21% in air
  • Minerals:
    • 4200 chemicals in formation
  • Rocks:
    • Assemblage of minerals or mishmash
    • Defined by their origins:
      • • Igneous-melted
        • Sedimentary-settled out of H2O
        • Metamorphic-altered by heat and pressure
  • Igneous:
    • five formed from magma liquid rock that intrudes into other Rx lava-extrudes to the surface
    • 90% of crust
    • Batholiths-intrusive rock body like origin of Yosemite
  • Sedimentary:
    • Rocks once uplifted and exposed to the hydrologic cycle
    • Rock begins to disintegrate over time
    • Glaciers, water and wind move mass
    • Sandstone-physically laid down, shale = mud, limestone = CaCO3, dissolved solution
    • Strata-graphy-like a book
  • Metamorphic Rocks
  • Plate Tectonics:
    • Triassic Period-225 MYA = Pangaea-super continent
    • Pan = means all, gea = geo = earth, all one earth
    • Mid latitude coal deposits
    • Construction:
      • Sea floor spreading-linked by a submarine mountain range around the globe called the mid oceanic ridge
      • Mechanism?
      • Magma convection brings hot rock to the surface and breaks the crust
      • So youngest crust is at the cracks
      • Oldest is seafloor, 208 MYA, older rock is gone
      • Ocean trenches-plunging lithosphere beneath the continental plates

o   It is a play of giants, rising, spinning, sink, sweep across the continent, E to N, S to N, N to S

o   Water with ability to absorb and release heat energy fuels the drama

o   Weather vs. Climate

o   Meteorology-not study of m.

o   Air Masses:  

·         Arctic

·         Polar

·         Equadoric

·         Tropical

·         AAntarctic

o   Moisture:

·         m—maritime—wet

·         c—continental—dry

o   Humidity:

·         mT = Gulf/Atlantic air mass, late spring to early fall active  vs.

·         mt. = Pacific-low moisture content

o   As air masses migrate onshore they take the characteristics of land—cake effects of snow

o   Rain:  for air mass

o   Lifting:

·         Lift—rise—cool

·         Saturate, condense, precipitate on dust

·         Convergent lifting-lifting flows toward low pressure

·         Convection-surface hearting

·         Orographic-over a mountain, rain shadow, leeward

·         Frontal-contrasting air masses lift

o   Fronts-leading edge of advancing air mass, cold or warm

o   Cirrus clouds last night

o   Squall line

o   Dramatic weather, down drafts and wind, broken arm sailor

o   Violent weather—cyclonic storms, low pressure

·         Thunderstorms-release of condensation energy, heat and air which rises, causing up drafts-rain friction drag causes down drafts

·         Lightning-5 million lightning strikes a day on earth, 100 million volts-super heat air (25-50,000 F), violent and air expansion makes thunder

·         Hurricanes- West 180 w

·         Typhoons-Post East 180 e

·         Cyclones-ocean

o   Collapsing aquifers: (Fresno)

·         After years of groundwater mining, land levels digged 10 # meters = 33’ soil compaction and water removal

o   Pollution-

·         Remember recently here when your favorite or local gas station was closed? –Tanks replaced to cease leaking of MTBE, significant pollution, CA aquifers

o   Supply—Available Global Water

·         North America = 5,960/518 (11.5)  vs. Africa = 4220/1323 (3.4), Asia = 13200/4778 (2.7)

o   We all live downstream-e.g. New Orleans-gets water from all the other Mississippi, have used it, runoff from farms-fertilizer, pesticides, treated and untreated sewage, gas, oil from urban streets, so called Cancer ally

o   Our use = billion gallons, 1340 gal/person in 1990, 1280/person in 2000, but population is rising

·         48% hydro power

·         11% industry

·         11% domestic

·         30% farming

o   Salt Water Intrusion-Bay Delta issue

o   Ch. 9-Weather, Water Cycle, Resources

o   In the last 2 chapters we saw how exchanges of water, energy on the atmosphere drive earth’s weather.

o   Did you see on last Thursday high cirrus clouds coming in and signaling an advancing front?

o   Fortunately, water is s renewable resource (unlike oil, gas), constantly flowing through the:

·         Hydrologic Cycle

·         Global Water Balance-where water is and people are

·         Water Budgets-Receipts = precipitation, Expenses = evapotranspiration( plants) evaporation

·         Fig. 91-show

·         Fig. 92-budget

o   Time, residence of a H2O molecule:

·         10 days in atmosphere

·         3000-10,000 years in ocean aquifer, glacial ice

o   System memory-heat energy is stored in soil, water budget

o   Key is to determine the demands of crop plants, with evaporation, soil moisture requirements—just know there is higher areas of rain evaporation that affects growing seasons

o   249-254—260-270 groundwater, about half of US population uses groundwater, which comes from the sky

o   70 times more water in ground than in streams and lakes

·         It’s not quite recyclable due to the amount of time it took to accumulate

o   Aquifer-a rock sponge with pores that are saturated and hold water = table

·         Confined pressure = springs

·         Unconfined wells = pumped

·         May be formed during different climate conditions

·         Now dry and overused

·         “fossil water”

o   Groundwater-invisible to eye, slow to appreciate complexity

o   Water budget-esp. sugarcane

·         Loss of ag. Land-due to water shortage

·         Creates land crisis-land goes to development and in storm drains, runoff

·         Less into recharge

o   HI islands

·         Ancient water—too short for streams

o   Evapotranspiration

o   Evaporation

o   Advective = horizontal movement of air, when air mass migrates from one temp. to another

o   Adiabatic = a parcel of air cools by expansion up/down heats up by descending or contracting, warming or cooling rates for air parcels

o   Radiation = giving off heat = as in cooling off a parcel of ground, chilling air above it to dew point

o   Precipitation record = Mt. Waialeale, Kauai = 486”/yr = 40.5 ft.

o   Water conflicts:

·         Dams-Bonneville, OR

·         Damming the Columbia River

·         River water

·         Salmon now endangered species-fisheries, sport, commercial, hydropower, wildlife, agriculture

·         Delta, SF Bay-needs lots of freshwater to survive, push back saltwater intrusion

• Polarity-why water acts “wet”
• The positive hydrogen bond is attractive to the negative O- side
• Hydrogen bonding creates surface tension

o Capillary action
o Wicking up principle

• Also used to draw water up into tall sequoia tress
• Hydrogen bonding makes H2O a liquid —
• And it does from a solid-sublimation

o Phase Changes
o Sling Psychrometer, Demo

• Dry bulb-surrounding air temperature
• Wet bulb- absorbing the latent heat of evaporation from the wet bulb cooling
• Compare 2 temps = relative humidity

o WEATHER vs CLIMATE — many complain but few do anything about the weather whether

• Weather-day-to-day——-vs——–Climate-decade-to-decade
• Doppler Radar- 2 displays used to determine diversions

o Damages due to destructive weather- $90 billion in 1998
o Air Masses: moisture/continental: maritime polar, maritime tropical, continental arctic, continental polar, continental equatorial, continental tropical, continental Antarctic
o Migration-is affected by land and water bodies (lakes affect snow fall)
o Atmospheric lifting mechanisms:

• Convergent lifting-flows toward low pressure (ITCZ)
• Convectional
• Orographic
• Frontal

o Cumulonimbus clouds of summer NE are mT
o Orographic: wet winward/dry leeward

• Chinook winds-descend, compressed heating as the compression goes

o Frontal lifting: leading edge advancing air mass is called a FRONT—cold or warm front:

• Cold Front: ground hugging-not convectively lifted, higher density

o Pushing up air in advance, creating cirrus clouds
o Winds shift, temp. drops, lowering barometer
o Clouds build up into cumulonimbus
o Heavy rain, bid drops, hail, lightning

• Warm Front:

o Rides up on/over cooler air-temp. increases
o Nimbostratus clouds-drizzly
o MidCyclomic storms:

• Polar and tropical = cold and warm fronts

o H2O: In our Solar System, only on planet earth does water occur in significant quantities, covering 71% of the earth, mostly in the liquid phase.
o Water makes up the same proportion in our bodies by weight
o Pure Water is a pure chemical: colorless, odorless, tasteless
o But solvent dissolves many other chemicals, so is rarely pure (as driven snow)
o The salt water is the most common pollutant for pure water:

• 97.22 % of all water is salty
• 2.78% is fresh
• Ice = 77%
• Lakes = 1 %
• Groundwater = 26%

o Cold air moves faster than warm air —–pg. 275-2
o WATER, WEATHER, CLIMATE SYSTEMS
o Climate- long term weather patterns
o Climatology- analysis of weather patterns
o Regions:

• Mediterranean region-dry season/wet season

o Coast-high humidity, fog
o Hills-low humidity, adventive
o Climatologist
o Bio regions: biomes—-forests, grasslands, deserts, tundra—ecosystems
o Principal elements of climates:

• Insulation
• Temperature
• Air mass
• Pressure-air-subtropical air pressure zones
• Precipitation

o Can someone tell me some elements of climate?
o Temperature and Precipitation:

• Reveals general climatic types
• Torrid zone, frigid zone, temperate zone

measured have occurred in the last 25 years! Most of these increases are due to carbon dioxide (CO2) which is known to trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Over a period of 650,000 years, levels of COs

closely match deviations from the earth’s mean temperature, clearly showing both ice ages, heat waves and today’s mild climate.

At no time in these 650 centuries up to the industrial age have COs levels been above 300 parts per million (ppm). Today, COs levels stand at about 370 ppm, and are rising at about 1.8 – 2.6 ppm per

year. These levels are projected to reach 450 ppm (or more) by the year 2050. Considering that ice ages occur when CO2 levels are at 160 ppm (a drop of 140 from CO2 levels related to recent mild

temperatures) what will our climate be with this projected increase of 150 ppm? Note that in 1999, it was projected that 1,442 new coal-fired power plants will be built by the year 2030, and that in 2002,

coal contributed 41% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. Note also that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for about a century. We are rapidly putting the earth on a path that has never occurred

before, and with unknown, but most likely dire, consequences.

Is Lake Merritt getting warmer? Essentially, the available data set is not adequate to determine this. A regression (statistical) analysis of most of the known data (twelve months in 1972-3 and sporadic data

from 1990 to the present – with several gaps) indicates that surface temperatures may have actually dropped by a few degrees F. in the last few decades. But considering the limited data and numerous

gaps, the record is too limited to be certain. In addition, changes in operation of the tide gates during these years and Lake-wide dredging in the mid ‘80’s have undoubtedly impacted Lake temperatures.

Also, methods used to measure and record data over the years have been quite variable. It is interesting to note however, that minimum temperatures from the mid 1990’s and 2005 do indicate a

considerable warming trend, and that the oceans in general have been warming.

What will happen to Lake Merritt as the earth gets hotter? Global warming manifests itself in many ways, not the least of which is flooding due to changed rainfall patterns and sea level rise. Our Lake however, is protected from flooding (to a certain point) by tide gates and pumps. More common storms will not cause the Lake to flood. But if, as many predict, COs levels continue to increase and

either the Greenland ice sheet melts (about 1/3 of it is melting now) or the west Antarctic ice shelf melts (ocean temperatures under it have warmed) or half of each melts, sea level rise would be

between 18 and 20 feet, and the Lake would be only a few feet above sea level. By the way, the entire City of Alameda would be under water. The Lake would not quite be joined to the Bay, but the tide gates and pump station might be under water (as well as Jack London Square and much of the Port).

What is more certain is that we will see a change in the distribution of plants, animals and people, as has been already documented elsewhere. Formal monitoring of the Lake does not include life forms, but we did notice wire weed for the first time a few years ago, and a very large decrease in spring algae and summer widgeon grass during the last three years. As the Lake warms, red tide plankton blooms, which thrive in hotter water, will become more prevalent. It is also likely that disease vectors will increase, the Lake will become more acidic (as have the oceans in general due to global warming) and air temperatures will be much hotter. A more acid Lake would reduce the prevalence of animals that build calcium carbonate houses, such as our tubeworms, clams and mussels.

An increase in rainfall is also possible since warmer air holds more moisture. This would mean a less salty Lake, and more urban runoff. Combined with increased tide gate closures for flood control, this

will cause (unless a mixing system is installed) more and longer periods of stratification, leading to more and longer periods of very low oxygen levels, especially in the bottom layers. An increase in tide gate closures has already been documented along the Thames River in London where between 1990 and 1999, rising sea levels caused the gates to be closed more than twice as many times per year compared to the period from 1931 to1990. Global warming is not a prediction, it has started.

Trees, Plants are Great, But the Real Action is Underground

By Ron Sullivan, Special to the Planet (08-01-06)

In some ways, we humans are educating ourselves about the planet that sustains us the way the owner of a cranky old car educates herself about how cars work: We learn about systems and parts when they break down and we’re forced to figure out why. Partly that’s a matter of perceived urgency that gets grants written and funding done—“pure” research is a delicious notion, but it’s rare that anyone can get the time, facilities, and support to study a matter just because we all get intrigued by it.

Studies aside, there’s the matter of which things get the attention of the broader public. That attention eventually drives some funding, of course, from foundations with close oversight from nonspecialists. And sometimes several foci come together, and something pops up that nobody had imagined. Sometimes that something is the importance of a known fact or substance, importance that is greater than anyone had assumed.

Lately there’s been media hand waving and even actual information about carbon sequestration. Five, 10 years ago, how many of us had ever heard the phrase, let alone known what it is or why it matters? It matters because carbon in the air, combined with oxygen as carbon dioxide, is a “greenhouse gas”; that is, when there’s lots of it in the upper atmosphere, it helps create that greenhouse effect that’s destabilizing the weather systems we’ve had for a long time, making the world’s air a bit warmer by trapping solar heat that used to escape. It doesn’t take much, just a few degrees, to get glaciers and polar ice caps melting and ocean temperatures rising and currents changing, including upwellings that feed sea life (and then us) and surface changes that make storms stronger.

Carbon sequestration is an ecosystem service (another new term: the life-support the world gives us) that helps put the brakes on this career. Plants, in particular, make themselves out of elements including carbon. Remember that thing about how they “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen? They keep that carbon atom and make it into their flesh.

As long as they live, they keep the carbon they accumulate out of the air. Imagine how much carbon is in a hundred-foot tree, or an acre of grassland or chaparral. When they die and decay, or burn, that carbon goes back up in real or virtual smoke. When trees are cut down, they stop working, even if the carbon in the lumber stays there for (optimistically) a few centuries. The waste, the sawdust, the trampled understory, starts decaying then and there.

But there’s more to the forest than the trees.

Under all that green stuff, way down in the dirt, there’s serious and complicated action going on. Roots are growing, absorbing nutrients from the soil, engaging in the dark half of that great dance of making. Roots are permeable, and so is the whole substance of the forest, or the field, or wherever plants grow.

Trees and many other plants, when we look closely, aren’t isolated, aren’t independent, aren’t even quite separate entities. They absorb what they need from the soil with the help of the mycorrhizal network, the web of fungi under the surface that lives in symbiosis with many plants. People who garden with native plants and who keep bonsai are finding that a bit of soil from a plant’s original home might inoculate its new one with the right organisms to help the plant flourish.

Mycorrhizae are performing another ecosystem service that has only recently come to light. The USDA published a report by Don Comis on work by Sara F. Wright and Kristine A. Nichols that suggests that a substance called glomalin, discovered by Wright in 1996, does indeed glom onto quite a lot of carbon—27 percent of the carbon in soil. It binds organic matter to mineral particles in soil. It also forms soil clumps—aggregates—that improve soil structure and keep other soil carbon from escaping.

Glomalin is produced by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (order Glomales, hence the name) on plants’ roots, from carbon they trade for other nutrients and water. The fungi produce glomalin, apparently to seal themselves and gain enough rigidity to carry the stuff across the air spaces between soil particles. The fungi grow only on the newest root tips; the glomalin sloughs off the dissolving older hyphae and stays in the soil for seven to 42 years.

There are ways like no-till farming to encourage glomalin production, but keeping a piece of ecosystem intact in its original form seems to keep the stuff in the soil in greatest amounts. Yet another reason to keep our collective hands off, to avoid breaking what we don’t understand well enough to fix.

See the forest for the trees? A lot of “ecosystem services” take place underground, out of sight.

Injection of Sulfur in the Atmosphere an Option to Fight Global Warming

In a study to be published in the August issue of Climate Change, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the University of Californi at San Diego, says that with the apparent lack of political will to curb man-made greenhouse gases (GHGs), cooling down the atmosphere through sulfur injection is an option worth serious consideration. Dr. Crutzen said, “Given the grossly disappointing international political response to the required greenhouse gas emissions,…research on the feasibility and

environmental consequences of climate engineering of the kind presented in this paper, which might need to be deployed in future, should not be tabooed.”

Sulfur particles in the atmosphere have a cooling effect as they reflect more sunlight back into the space. Dr. Crutzen, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, argues that this effect could offset the warming effect of GHGs. His idea is based on the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which after ejecting sulfur in the atmosphere, global average temperature dropped 0.5°C one year later. Dr. Crutzen’s method employs balloons to carry sulfur

into the stratosphere, then using artillery guns to release it.

The  “albedo enhancement” would take place six months in the atmosphere after the injection of sulfur. The sulfur particles could stay in the stratosphere for up to two years. Although Dr. Crutzen’s proposal is being taken seriously by many scientists, he warned that his proposal is just for emergency purposes. Dr. Crutzen said, “Importantly, its possibility should not be used to justify inadequate climate policies, but merely to create a possibility to combat potentially drastic climate heating,…The very best would be if emissions of the greenhouse gases could be reduced. Currently,

this looks like a pious wish.”