ECOLANDSCAPES
Category: Gray Merriam’s Ecology Blog
-
Autumn Walk
Follow the river shore. Across the exposed bedrock –gneiss and mica schist. Climb up the gentle slippery slope of the tiny batholith to the moss and lichen gardens in the open veins of the rock. To where the moose cow and calf spent one night three winters ago. And move on to where the
-
Mice Move Lyme Disease North
Lyme disease has been found in ticks and in some humans much farther north than it was found a decade ago. Climate warming is suspected as a facilitator but how did it get there? The cause of Lyme disease is the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi but it depends for transmission on the black-legged tick Ixodes
-
We Need to Prevent Forest Loss by Invasive Pests
Forests are being damaged and lost worldwide by damage from invasive pests that could be prevented. Usually there is a time lag between arrival of an exotic pest and its recognition as a devastating outbreak. Such outbreaks can only be prevented by preventing the introductions of the pests. Emerald ash borer and white pine
-
Human Sexual Freedom has Fishy Consequences
Human oral contraceptives overflow into our freshwaters. Synthetic estrogens such as EE2 enter treatment plants in urine and pass through into receiving waters. It is well-documented that this overflow estrogen is giving male fish female characteristics and these changes are threatening fish stocks in the Great Lakes and other waters receiving output from sewage
-
Not Just Honey Bees
It has been stated repeatedly that native pollinators, not just honeybees, are important to pollinating our crops and wild plants. Now we have results of a bold experiment that confirms the vitality of pollinators other than honeybees. Bryan Danforth, a bee biologist, found 105 wild pollinators in 30 commercial orchards that also were paying to
-
Commercial Agriculture Fails to Use Ecological Knowledge, Globally
Thirteen ecologists from Australia, Argentina, Germany, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and The United States have reported that agricultural managers have persisted in importing honeybee colonies as their main method of managing pollination of their crops. Use of imported single species as pollinators fails to use the fact that species-rich and abundant wild insects
-
Unclear on tar sands?
A recent report by Greenpeace and Environmental Defence* gives some analyses that highlight the confusion in actions about tar sands by Canada’s government. Harper’s singular devotion to tar sands oil as our mid-term economic future requires a high price for oil to give a profit margin over the high costs of tar sands oil
-
WATERSHED — WHAT IS ONE?
The watershed of a river consists of all the land that sheds water into that river. It is separated from neighbouring watersheds by a rim of higher land. The entire watershed is tipped from the headwaters at the high end toward the low end at the mouth of the river. For example, the Salmon River
-
How Clean and Green is Hydroelectricity?
Along with our beavers, other Canadians have been active dam builders. Early dams were quite beaver-like. They needed only to back up enough water to create a “head” – a drop in the water flow that could turn a water wheel to power a saw or a grinding mill; our earliest entry into renewable power
-
MANAGING FOR BEAUTY
Lake management and planning are not just making technical measurements and using some scientific understanding to set values that those measurements should match. That was one view of lake plans and, in its simplest form, all that was needed was to measure total phosphorus in the water and make a plan to hold that measurement