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Monthly Archives: December 2014

An Oilspill on December 15th, 2014 in the World’s Largest Mangrove Forest. Why isn’t this on the news?

Posted on December 21, 2014 by TheMorningTomatoReport

The oilspill in the Sundarbans National Park seems to have been all but ignored by world news services.  I heard about it on a blog, SkyTruth, and decided that there must be information out there that would help me to understand the area, the damage, and the responsibility.

There is.  There is a lot out there to read!  Scientists and other concerned people have been writing about pollution, oil spills and clean-ups for a very long time.

Here is some of what I have been reading as well as some of what I will be reading:

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The Sundarbans National Park – A UNESCO Heritage Site

The Sundarbans is an area composed of rivers, some arable land and the largest mangrove forest on earth.  It is also home to some of the poorest people on earth.  There is no industry here.  There are no resource friendly alternatives to illegal fishing and hunting.  There are no jobs.  This is an area where caste restricts choices.

Abhiroop Chowdhury and Subodh Kumar Maiti.  2014.  Mangrove Reforestation through Participation of Vulnerable Population:  Engineering a Sustainable Management Solution for Resource Conservation.  International Journal of Environmental Research and Development, Vol 4, No 1, pp. 1-8.  Link

There is a novel that depicts the Sundarbans as treacherous with humans holding on to a tenuous existence in the presence of an untamed nature.  (The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, 2005.)  Even the islands that dot the waterways are not constant but change, grow, disappear and reappear with seasons and storms.

Louise Squire.  2014. The Thoughts in our Head: A World.  Alluvium, Vol. 3, No. 1.  Link

Huma Yaqub.  2014.  Tides of Change Breaking against the World of Sundarbans:  A Study of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.  International Journal of English Language, Literature and Humanities, Vol. II, Issue V, pages 104-113.  Link

Mangrove Forests:

Ken W. Krauss, Karen L. McKee, Catherine E. Lovelock, Donald R. Cahoon, Neil Saintilan, Ruth Reef, and Luzehn Chen.  2013.  How mangrove forests adjust to rising sea level.  New Phytologist, doi:  10.1111/nph.12605  Link

Daniel M. Alongi.  2008.  Mangrove forests:  Resilience, protection from tsunamis, and responses to global climate change.  Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science, Vol. 76. pages 1-13.  Link

Kandasamy Kathiresan and Narayanasamy Rajendran.  2005.  Coastal mangrove forests mitigated tsunami.  Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science Vol. 65, pages 601-606.  Link

Daniel M. Alongi.  2002.  Present state and future of the world’s mangrove forests.  Environmental Conservation, Vol. 29, No. 3, pages 331-349.  Link

Ivan Valiela, Jennifer L. Bowen, and Joanna K. York.  2001.  Mangrove Forests:  One of the World’s Threatened Major Tropical Environments.  BioScience, Vol. 51, No. 10, pages 807-815.  Link

Tigers:

Chloe Inskip, Zubair Fahad, Rowan Tully, Thomas Roberts, and Douglas MacMillan.  2014. Understanding carnivore killing behaviour: Exploring the motivations for tiger killing in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh.  Biological Conservation, 180, pages 42-50.  Link

Chandan Kumar Mondal, Bholanath Mondal, and Debashis Sarkar.  2014.  Study on Utility and Revival through Community approach in Sundarbans Mangrove.  International Journal of Social Science, Vol. 3, No. 2, pages 191-203.  Link

R. Mani Murali, P.J. Vidya, Poonam Modi, and Seelam Jaya Kumar.  2014.  Site selection for offshore wind farms along the Indian coast.  Indian Journal of Marine Sciences.  Vol. 43(7).  Link

Dolphins:

B.E. Smith, G. Braulik, S. Strindberg, R. Mansur, M.A.A. Diyan, and B.Ahmed.  2012.  Habitat selection of freshwater-dependent cetaceans and the potential effects of declining freshwater flows and sea-level rise in waterways of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, Bangladesh.  Aquatic Conservation:  Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, Vol 19, pages 209-225.  Link 

Ram Boojh.  2014.  Ensuring Sustainability of Wetlands in the Global Context, in International Conference on Lakes & Wetlands:  Bhopal, India.  Link

UNESCO World Heritage Sites:

This Link will take you to a map of all of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  Just point and click or, search for the Sundarbans.  Link

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How did we find out about this spill?  Satellite images!  I would like to find something a little more current but, for now this is interesting….

Mervin F. Fingas and Carl E. Brown.  2000.  Review of Oil Spill Remote Sensing.  Emergencies Science Division, Environment Canada.  Environmental Technology Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  Link

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What have we learned and what do we do?  Whatever it is, we must do it carefully and with thought for the future….

Luis A. Soto, Alfonso V. Botello, Sergio Licea-Duran, Marcial L. Liarraga-Partida, and Alejandro Yanez-Arancibia.  2014.  The environmental legacy of the Ixtoc-I oil spill in Campeche Sound, southwestern Gulf of Mexico.  Frontiers in Marine Science, Vol. 1, Art. 57, pages 1-9.  Link

Naomi Klein.  2014.  Chapter 13: The Right to Regenerate.  In, This Changes Everything:  Capitalism vs. The Climate:  Canada:  Alfred A. Knopf.  Pages 419-448.  Link

Dagmar Schmidt Etkin.  2000.  Worldwide Analysis of Marine Oil Spill Cleanup Cost Factors.  Presented at:  Arctic and Marine Oilspill Program Technical Seminar.  Link

S.R. Pezeshki, M.W. Hester, Q. Lin, and J.A. Nyman.  1999.  The effects of oil spill and clean-up on dominant US Gulf coast marsh macrophytes:  a review.  Environmental Pollution 108, pp. 129-139.  Link

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Where does the information in these papers come from?  Research!  Research by the authors of these papers and by researchers and authors before them.  A selected bibliography is here (this will be a large file!):  Soon….

 

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Added on February 8, 2015.

A collected bibliography, most gathered from the above articles but not all, for you to peruse.  Possibly, this bibliography could be called ‘second generation’ as it provided the writers of the above research papers with documented research that they could use and further….

Reading List – Blog Post Dec 21, 2014

This document is fairly long.  There is a lot of good information in there, research and writing by many very qualified science specialists and others…..  I began to put links in to the articles in this list but, there are just too many.  If you have trouble finding anything on this list just leave a comment below I would be more than happy to take a look and see if I can help.

 

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Research: Think of it like a family tree….

Posted on December 18, 2014 by TheMorningTomatoReport

A family tree branches and branches and branches….  It is endless in that we have not yet found the beginning.  Going back through the generations, it does not take long to find that you are related to millions of people.  Going back further, with research and DNA evidence, we find billions of people on our family trees.

An article or a book is only as good as the research that supports the conclusions drawn by the author.  Going back through the bibliography, and then tracing back through the generations of bibliographies that have direct descent through the research, it does not take long to find that there may be (in many cases) tens of thousands of published writings that are, in fact, related to a single published writing.

There can be many citations for a single article or book.  This outwards branching of the bibliography does not trace a direct line of descent but rather widens the tree and records more ways in which a single piece of research has been used.  Going back through the research, we may never know the exact beginnings as our beginnings were not written down and we are only just starting to sort out some of the puzzle pieces that have been left to us by our ancestors.

Personally, I think that every article and book ever published, is important.  Many of them do not require close reading, many of them I disagree with, all require our acknowledgement.  Evidence is important.  The questions we ask about our world is what drives science.  In questioning something, in looking for answers and we may not always find the correct answer the first time round.  If we keep asking though, there is a good chance that we will find understanding.

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I have decided that future posts will contain selected bibliographies of the works that I include.  I will work on making the posts a little shorter and to do this, I have an idea.  Mini posts! To do this I am going to see what happens if I begin the comments section of new  posts with a bibliographic selection from the articles that are included in the main post.

New comments will appear at the top of the comments section.  You will be able to add to all of the comments in the list.  I am hoping that this will encourage discussion of the research that has been collected by each of the authors that I have read and posted about.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts….

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Posted in Concilience. Bookmark the permalink.

Is this all the choice we get? Gender Bias in Universities…

Posted on December 9, 2014 by TheMorningTomatoReport

There is a photograph on the home page of the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Website that I initially found amusing but after thinking about it for a while, I have decided that I actually find it offensive.

It is a photograph of a row of shoes.  Three pairs are black, one pair is brown, one pair is white.  Three are kind of dressy, two are kind of casual.  Two are flats, three have heels.  Four have a strap across the instep, one doesn’t.   All five pairs of shoes would be appropriate for an entry level position in an office environment (my opinion only, I am sure you could wear them other places too….)  The shoes are not the problem.  The problem is the caption at the top of the photograph:

 

“Career Choices and Life Success
Attend an information session to learn more about this program.” 
 ccls-itsf-slider[1]

Kwantlen Polytechnic University Home Page link

Photograph and caption are being used here for educational purposes only.  Fair use.

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There is one pair of feet filling the middle pair of low heel, white shoes.  Is this it?  Are the choices that these shoes represent the only ones that women can expect to fill?  Are the choices of women choosing this particular university literally this narrow?  And, why choose the middle pair (middle of the road)?  Why choose the white pair (I don’t want to go here right now – I will go here later!)?  Why choose the pair with the mid-range of heel height (again in the middle…)  Why choose the middle pair (the middle pair?  Did I ask this already)?  Would the corresponding line-up of men’s shoes have five pairs of middle-of-the-road, entry level office position style choices?  Who chose these shoes?
.
My problem:
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Is this it?  Is this all the choice that a woman entering this university can expect?  Middle of the road, sensible, affordable shoes that are appropriate for an office setting?  I mean, careers?  Where are the CSA approved worked boots?  Where are the hiking boots for the archaeologists and geologists?  Where are the nursing clogs (these are not only practical but really comfy!)?  This row of five pairs of shoes doesn’t even have anything suitable for wearing into a fine arts class….
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A peak into my closet (front to back, left to right):  Sensible tough walking shoes with sturdy soles.  Running shoes.  Strappy high heels.  Hiking boots.  Mid-heel black slip-ons.  More heels.  CSA approved green-tagged workboots (2 pair!).  More running shoes.  Another good sturdy pair of boots.  Rubber boots.  More strappy heels.  A pile of flip-flops (well, those might not be appropriate in too many work environments) and a couple pairs of sensible flats (these don’t get to work much either)….  You get the picture.  Life is about choice!  Dress for it!
.
.
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Where are the university watchdogs?  The ones who sing at the top of their lungs if you accidentally put a “he” or a “she” into a piece of writing?  Where are the people from the student groups who managed to get two gender-free washrooms at the Surrey campus?  Well?  Where are they?  Or, is going after an approved photograph on the home page of the university website just a little too, ummmm….  up front and political?

 

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Okay, link time.  I am not too certain where my article links might take me after this little rant but, I do know that they will probably be interesting.  If you know of any articles or papers that would fit in here, please post a link in the comments section.

 

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Is there gender bias in university advertising?  This article is not specific to university advertising but it is interesting and does provide an active mind with lots of relevant questions….

Article:  Gender Issues in Advertising – An Oversight Synthesis of Research:  1970-2002.  link

Author:  Lori D. Wolin, Lynn University.  Publications Link

Published in:  Journal of Advertising Research [link].  March 2003

DOI:  10-1017/S0021849903030125

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found using Google Scholar.

Click to access A9001206.pdf

 

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Does education that is traditionally gender-biased (nursing / trades) put a person at risk of being an outsider?  Having been through trades training and attained journeyman status (red seal tickets), I have to say that it does.  The following article, viewed from behind my background in the trades, is particularly interesting.

Article:  Fear Extinction to an Out-Group Face.  link

Authors:

Published in:  Psychological Science (link), Volume 20, Number 2, 2009 (Link).  Pages 155-158

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014 and I found it using Google.

Click to access Mendes_FearExtinction.pdf

 

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Maybe feminine looking legs just have less risky preferences or is there a possibility that there is a lack of knowledge as to what the risks actually are?

Grey Paper:  Gender Differences in Preferences.  link

Authors:

Published by:  Harvard University

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/content/download/70408/1254442/version/1/file/rachelcrosonandurigneez.pdf

 

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The recruiters are out there, at the universities, looking for future banking, civil service, retail employees.  What about the other choices?  Is anyone actually doing any recruiting for the people that actually fit into the non-traditional roles?  They used to!

Article:  Girls.  link

Published in:  Fords and Raritan Township Beacon (Link)

Published on:  Friday, April 28, 1948

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it using Google.

Click to access pg_0002.pdf

 

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…and maybe, it just comes down to what we want and expect from our career choices.

Article:  A New Frontier for Title IX:  Science.  link

Author:  John Tierney.  Publications

Published in:  The New York Times

Published on:  July 15, 2008

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.

Click to access tierney_TitleIX.pdf

 

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After reading the above, I need to read this.  I have it on hold at my local university library!

Book:  The Sexual Paradox:  Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap (Link)

Author:  Susan Pinker.  Books

Published by:  Simon & Schuster, New York.

Published in:  2009

 

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Not every question I ask gets answered.  In fact, most of my questions do not have answers or at least, they don’t have easy answers….  This stroll through academia is just that, a stroll.  For me, I ended up with more questions than I started with.  This is not a bad thing.  What are some of the questions you have?

 

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If any of these links do not work, please contact me and I will try to help you find the article, paper or book that you are looking for.

If you find any broken links on this blog, please leave a comment or send me a note so that it can be repaired.  Thank  you….

 

 

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Posted in Anthropology, Being a Mature Student, Biology, Concilience, Economics, Education, Psychology, Science, Statistics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Are Barrier Islands Worth Protecting? What Makes This Type of Island Special?

Posted on December 6, 2014 by TheMorningTomatoReport

Barrier islands are islands that form a barrier between open water and a larger body of land.  They form a “first defense” of protection from sea born storms such as hurricanes.  They protect the mainland against unceasing tidal action and waves.  They are breeding and nesting grounds for numerous vertebrates and invertebrates.  They form some of the loveliest places, visually, on this planet.  But, are they special?  When they are in trouble, are they worth saving?

Cat Islands, Mississippi Delta

I may or may not agree with what is in the following articles but, every one of these articles is important.  I have arranged them in chronological order.  My choices have taken into account the inclusions of maps and photographs (it is an easy way to compare today with yesterday).  I hope that you open one or two (or all) of them.  These research papers are more than just interesting and they are worth a browse through….

A blog worth browsing!  SkyTruth  Last Chance for Cat Island?

 

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following are links to grey papers, peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.  Together, these publications form a body of work that is more than just interesting, it is historical and most are scientific in their approach to finding out answers to questions about things like barrier islands and what they do for this planet.

 

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Thesis:  Quantifying the Impact of Hurricanes, Mid-Latitude Cyclones and other Weather and Climate Extreme Events on the Mississippi-Alabama Barrier Islands Using Remotely Sensed Data.  pdf

Author:  Rebekah Jones

Published in:  2014

Thesis:  Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Department of Geography and Anthropology.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access text2.pdf

 

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Chapter:  Hurricane Katrina, the Role of US National Parks on the Northern Gulf of Mexico and Post Storm Wetland Restoration.  pdf

Author:  Mark Ford.  National Park Service Southeast Regional Office, New Orleans, LA.

Book:  Safe Havens:  Protected Areas for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation.  Edited by Radhika Murti and Camille Buyck.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Safe%20Havens.pdf#page=155

This is Chapter 16.  The book is worth finding!

 

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Article:  Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.  link

Author:  Cutler J. Cleveland, (ed. Peter Saundry

Published in:  The Encyclopedia of the Earth

Published on:  December 5, 2010 and updated on February 22, 2013

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbf0267896bb431f6a0797/

 

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Article:  What are Barrier Islands Worth?  Estimates of Willingness to Pay for Restoration.  pdf

Authors:

Published in:  2009

Journal:  Marine Resource Economics (link), Vol. 24, pages 131-146.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1889277

 

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Article:  Geomorphologic Evolution of Barrier Islands along the Northern U.S. Guld of Mexico and Implications for Engineering Design in Barrier Restoration.  pdf

Authors:

  • Julie Dean Rosati, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center (Publications)
  • Gregory W. Stone, Louisiana State University (Publications)

Published in:  January 2009

Journal:  Journal of Coastal Research (link), Vol. 25, No. 1, pages 8-22.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access JCRv25-1_Rosati_Stone.pdf

 

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Article:  Historical Changes in the Mississippi-Alabama Barrier-Island Chain and the Roles of Extreme Storms, Sea Level, and Human Activities.  pdf

Author:  Robert A. Morton, U.S. Geological Survey

Published in: November 2008.

Journal:  Journal of Coastal Research (link), Vol. 24, No. 6, pages 1587-1600.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access historical.changes.in.the.MS.AL.barrier.islands.pdf

 

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Article:  Hurricane Katrina Storm Surge Distribution and Field Observations on the Mississippi Barrier Islands.  pdf

Authors:

  • Hermann M. Fritz, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (publications)
  • Chris Blount, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Robert Sokoloski, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Justin Singleton, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Andrew Fuggle, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Brian G. McAdoo, Department of Geology and Geography, Vassar College (publications)
  • Andrew Moore, Department of Geology, Kent State University (publications)
  • Chad Grass, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Banks Tate, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (Publications)

Published in:  2007

Journal:  Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science (link), 2007, pages 1-9.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access ECSS_HurricaneKatrina_Fz.pdf

 

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Article:  National Assessment of Shoreline Change:  Part 1 Historical Shoreline Changes and Associated Coastal Land Loss Along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.  pdf

Authors:

  • Robert A. Morton
  • Tara L. Miller
  • Laura J. Moore (publications)

Published in:  2004

Journal:  USGS:  Science for a Changing World, Open File Report 2004-1043

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1043/

Just a quick note.  The front cover of this report is stamped “Distribution Unlimited.”  There are publishing companies who want to charge to let you see this.  It is available for free, just a bit tricky to find….

 

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Article:  Land Loss Rates:  Mississippi River Deltaic Plain.  pdf

Authors:

  • Louis D. Britsch, Geotechnical Laboratory, Department of the Army
  • E. Burton Kemp III, US Army Engineer District, New Orleans

Published in:  April 1990

Publisher:  U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it by using a Google Scholar Search

If this article is not showing in the link, try copying and pasting the full title (Land Loss Rates: Mississippi River Deltaic Plain) into a search box on your browser.  This is a wonderful publication for photographs!

 

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Article:  The Flank Margin Model for Dissolution Cave Development in Carbonate Platforms.  pdf

Authors:

  • John E. Mylroie, Department of Geology and Geography, Mississippi State University (publications)
  • James L. Carew, Department of Geology, The College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina

Published in:  1990

Journal:  Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Vol. 15, pages 413-424.

My copy was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access Mylroie_Carew_1990_ESPL%20flank%20margin%20caves.pdf

 

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Chapter:  Sediments of the Eastern Mississippi Delta.  pdf

Author:  P.C. Scruton

Book information:  Finding Ancient Shorelines, edited by Jack L. Hough and Henry W. Menard.  Published by SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology.  1955

My copy of this chapter was downloaded in December, 2014.  I found it here

Click to access SEC2.body.pdf

 

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Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Chemical Engineering, Concilience, Economics, Environment, Food, Geography, Geology, Geophysical Engineering, History, It's All Connected..., Nature, Political Science, Science, Statistics, Zoology and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.