Spirit of the Wind

So, I read this article a few days ago.

I have to be honest, I have mixed feelings about research like this.

It's not because it's wrong. I mean, it is to some extent; one of the authors of the study pointed out that they know the dataset has issues, but that's going to be true of pretty much any dataset that tries to cover something like human activity for the entire planet over 12,000 years. But none of that is going to affect the conclusions of the paper that much; they're right to say that the vast majority of the planet has had some degree of human presence (and, accordingly, some degree of human influence) for quite some time. And it's good to point that out, and indigenous groups and ecologists do need to collaborate more.

No, the problem is that any 100 square kilometer area with a population greater than literally zero (even if it's fractional) is given the label "cultivated," a label which extends to (but not including) 20% cover with intensive land use.

This is fine for the point they're trying to make, but on the fine scale, there are lots of places that are large blocks of uncontrolled nature which wouldn't show up on their map. For instance, Acadia National Park doesn't have a single block of 100 square kilometers with no human presence. It's still got old-growth forest, though, and the presence of humans near it does not necessarily mean that the ecology of Acadia National Park is "cultivated." That's determined by the extent to which the ecology of the region is under active control of humans, and as far as I know, it, by and large, is not.

Acadia has the usual effects of air pollution, wildlife road death, et cetera from being near humans, and the release of invasive species and attempts to control them (presumably). But it is not a garden. It is not being manipulated for the self-interest of humans. People call it "wild" even if humans had some impact on it.

Now, you might fairly ask, "Citrakayah, why the fuck do you even care about this definitional quibbling?"

I care because in the modern era, the impact of a scientific paper is not only determined by what's actually in it, but what people will say when summarizing it as a 280 character viral Twitter post. Everything gets dumbed down, and the nuance gets stripped out of it. This is bad enough when it's arguing about whether Picard was better than Kirk. It's worse when it can result in one of the fundamental justifications behind not ruining large parts of land gets stripped away.

And this really does happen. I've seen people say that certain ecosystems were mostly the result of human influence when all that's been demonstrated was that they had some amount of human influence, and I've see headlines that blare "IS THE AMAZON MAN-MADE?" (no; it predated human habitation). The difference between "humans had some impact on the ecosystem" and "humans had control over the ecosystem" tends to get ignored.

I've seen other people argue that the wild simply doesn't exist anymore, and humans should just actively manage the entire planet.

It's all too easy, whenever I see this subject pop up in the media, to see how it can get twisted into an excuse to justify the total exertion of human control. And I think that if humans do exert that sort of control, something important, if insubstantial, will be lost. And it will be followed by the loss of a great many concrete things.

This may be overly alarmist of me, and I hope it is. But it's a fear I just can't shake.

This week's Science is a special issue literally titled "A World of Mud." It is full of news reports about mud and I find this immensely entertaining. Unfortunately I can't just link the stories.

There was a story about the bacteria (in mud) that make these structures, which I found interesting because they are very long for what are cables of single cells. They are also conductive--I don't think this will be of that much use technologically, but it may be useful and is certainly curious--and ensure the health of marine ecosystems by limiting phosphorus.

There was also an article on this project. Reading about it has reshaped the way I think about streams. It's cool to see how the wetland has started to regenerate, and to think of the degree to which it could reduce eutrophication.

They also had some articles on how mine tailing dams break and release toxic mud everywhere, and about how the red mud from mining aluminum is dangerous, but I figure most people reading this know that.

Been a while since I posted anything that was completely public, but I thought I'd share a scientific paper about a shipworm that burrows through and ingests rock.

It doesn't appear to derive nutrition from the rock, either directly or indirectly, but it's the only known invertebrate to do this, and there's still a possibility that symbiotic bacteria could feed on the rock and then contribute to the worm. Morphological adaptations are pretty neat, too.

So it's cool.

Summer is going well so far; I actually have work experience now. Currently I'm not being paid because the university has no money because Certain Individuals Who Shall Not Be Named defunded Illinois (university budget is getting slashed by 40%, IIRC). Everyone's pretty pissed about it.

My internship itself is pretty awesome. Right now we're doing an experiment to determine how heavy metal pollutants affect fish larva survival if nighttime cooling is eliminated. The fact that some of the fish die is pretty horribe, but the survivors are released after their most vunerable stage and I'm hopeful the data will be of use to bluegill populations.

There have been a couple BLM demonstrations recently, and there's one scheduled for tonight. At one of them some asshole tried to run a protestor over and carried them a good few hundred feet before stopping. That particular asshole currently has a smelly car and got punched.

I'm going to the one tonight.