The Weather Gods are angry (8/21/2018)

At one point in my my life I must have angered the weather Gods. I am not sure when I did this, but from what it looks like, it must have been some time ago. They have been on my case for some time!  Of late, the weather Gods seems to try to sabotage whatever (family) plans I (or we) have. Take for instance this past weekend.

Our daughter is in town and so were friends. What better opportunity to go for a bike ride on the Capital Trail in Jamestown and end this at the Billsburg Microbrewery, followed by a dinner. Oh well, ominous clouds gathered and halfway driving to the starting point of our bike ride we were surprised by a downpour. When we arrived at the designated starting spot to meet our friends Val and Dave, thunder was cracking and rain was starting again. We decided to go to the microbrewery instead and wait out the rain. We got a little wet running in from the parking lot to the taproom, but so be it. In the microbrewery we sampled some delicious beers, experienced some great company, watched a magnificent lightning show, and a tropical downpour. From the looks on the radar, it was not going to stop so eventually we decided to go out to dinner. Suffice it to say, the weather Gods prevented us from exercise and our biking a thing we usually enjoy very much. Although we did try to make the best of it. But then, we beat the crowd to the restaurant; maybe the weather gods were actually looking out for us.

It always seems to go like this though. This summer, it seems to have rain on the weekends and and it is nice during the week. I have not been out sailing yet this year! I can blame the weather Gods for that, or maybe the (hurt) knee Gods, the college graduation Gods and all kinds of other scapegoat Gods. 

Take for instance the other evening, I was peacefully waking the dog (we do that every evening) and the clouds break open literally when we reach the furthest point removed from our home. I did not carry an umbrella or raincoat and the only thing I could do was walk home through what felt like a tropical downpour. The only thing missing was a good electrical storm; I guess I have not yet angered the Gods that much. By the time Jake the dog and I arrive home, 10 minutes later, nothing on my body was dry. We usually dry the dogs off before we let them in the house; this time I was also handed a towel to dry myself off outside, so I would not get the inside of our home wet. My wife took a rain check that evening and let me go walk alone. Her knee hurt she said. Funny how people’s joints can predict the weather. I now know what it means when people take rain checks. 

Earlier this week, I took a day off to enjoy some time with the family. Maybe some outing, beach time? Well, by two o’clock that afternoon we almost had 3 inches (7.5 cm) of rain that fell in about two to three hours time. On top of that we lost electricity. But it was a nice family bonding experience sitting in our gazebo watching the yard getting flooded.

This photo was taken during the height of the storm this past Monday.  The path in our back yard that leads to the woods behind our home was literally a flowing creek.

At points that day the water in our yard was ankle deep.  I was really wondering when the snakes were going to float by.

Weather has always played a large part in our lives. Two of my posts deal with some of the weather we experienced while living in Nepal. We went through one monsoon season and it was so bad, the one night we got almost swept away by floods. Two days later, we were crossing a stream and the wife of the same friends lost her footing and was swept away by a raging stream towards an even larger raging stream. If she would have entered that one it would have been the end of her. Somehow I was able to run after her and put my walking stick out which she was able to grab a hold of and I was able to pull her out of the stream. I really hate to think what would have happened if I (or she) would not have been able to do that. We crossed that stream all the time, it was less than 3 feet wide with stepping stones, but during the monsoon it had turned into this wild torrent of at least 30 feet wide and more than knee deep. It swept her off her feet. During that same monsoon we witnessed whole mountain sides collapsing around us and landslides everywhere. So we decided that the next monsoon we were going on vacation. But then I also wrote about getting dehydrated in a snowstorm in the mountains of Nepal. Those weather Gods are amazing!

Living in coastal Virginia for the past 18 years I have seen my share of tropical storms and other weather phenomena. I am just so concerned that with global warming or what some euphemistically call "climate change," things will get even more extreme. I think we are seeing that already; many old timers in my classes mention this, but as soon as I mention those words “Global warming”, they try to take it back and “oh no, the storms are really not getting more severe, they are just outliers.” The weather Gods are not getting angrier in their eyes; while we all know that they actually are, and that it is the result of all the stuff we do, the stuff we emit but try to deny and ignore!

Wetland delineations (8/14/2018)

One of the classes that I teach introduces my students to wetlands, their value and how to recognize them.  Wetland regulations have been a contentious issue for quite some time here in the U.S.A., and I suspect it will not go away soon, although under the current administration things could change on a dime.  Wetlands always seems to cause a confrontation between the environmental community and sometimes the government on one side and landowners and developers on the opposite side: “Who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do on my property?”  This is partially because there are periods in the year that some wetlands can be bone dry.  Let me explain:  Here in the U.S. a site is usually considered a wetland when the soil is continuously inundated or saturated for more than 5% during the growing season (or when there are leaves on the deciduous plants).  In my neck of the woods of eastern Virginia that is as short as somewhere between 9 to 12 days.  You can see how this can piss off a property owner who claims that his property is usually mostly dry.

While this may not be one of the most photogenic pictures I have ever taken, it illustrates the point I write about above.  This is a wetland and in the winter and parts of spring and fall, you walk through water here.  However, on a warm summer day this is dry as a bone as you see here.  A property owner could easily say: "What wetland?"

I teach my students this and what some of the additional red flags are in recognizing a wetland, just in case a landowner forgets to report a wetland when they are about to develop their property.  I mostly teach folks who deal with projects that are at that (early) stage of development; it is therefore important for them to recognize them, so they can let us know before it gets impacted by the construction of a new building, a subdivision or parking lot.  I tell them that I can absolutely not turn them into wetland scientists or wetland delineators; I just want them to be able to recognize some of the "red flags."

I often start out with telling my students how wetland delineators do their jobs and the way I started out in this business back in the early 1990s.  I was a part-time assistant professor at the Gallup branch campus of the University of New Mexico, when the Chair (and only full-time staff member) of the biology department got a call from an owner of an old sawmill just across the border in Arizona.  The sawmill had shut down, but in the past, they had treated their lumber with arsenic to make treated lumber.  My understanding was that the soil was contaminated, and they were going to be required to clean things up, but the site drained into a wetland, and they were either supposed to stay out of a wetland that was below the site, or only supposed to clean up the wetland since that was the place where all the arsenic had ended up.  Either way, they needed to know the extent of the wetland and were wondering if there was anyone at the university that could help them.  I was hungry and wanted to start my own consulting business, so I went for it (the chair was a human biologist and could not distinguish one plant from another, let alone identify a wetland).  Truthfully, I had never done it either, did not know what the heck I was doing or what it was about.  All I knew was that I was an ecologist, so, I thought, it must not be very difficult to figure out.

Being at a university I was able to get a hold of the Corps of Engineers “Wetland Delineation Manual” and I set out to work.  It was a very isolated site on the Navajo Reservation, not too far from Gallup, kind of interesting an abandoned sawmill, eerie but still neat.  I figured that it would not be very difficult, here we were in the Four Corners, in the Sagebrush Steppe which can be considered part of the Great Basin Desert or if you are a splitter it technically can be called the Colorado Plateau (Desert).  Whatever you call it, the area is dry, and a wetland should be darn obvious.  Boy was it ever!  That is the nice thing about working in the desert.

A few years later, after moving to the mid-west and gaining more experience I became quite the expert wetland delineator.  I first lived in Cincinnati and ended up traveling throughout the U.S. to do delineations.  While living in Virginia I traveled all over the eastern U.S.  In my blog post that contains my sermon I discuss some of the perils of field work, including being hit by a cottonmouth.  

What I had learned during my career as a wetland scientist was that desert ecology and wetland ecology was not that different.  Plants were under stress.  In wetlands plants had oxygen stress in their roots because of flooded soils, and because of that could often not take up water unless they had very specific adaptations.  Being an arid land physiologist by training (who could not find a job and thus ended up in consulting), I found that this was not very different from desert plants who were also often under (drought) stress and had very specific adaptations to survive.  The issue is that plants only have four major hormones and only one of those four hormones, ethylene, mediates stress.  I spent a lot of time studying this hormone; in the past it was thought that is was released as an adaptation to flooding and it helped with fruit ripening (that’s how we get evenly ripened fruit like bananas on the shelves in our grocery stores); however, we were able to show in the lab that it also made plants more tolerant to drought stress.  Oh well, I will leave it at that.

When I started my career as a wetland scientist I learned that I had to look for three main characteristics in the field: certain plants that are known to grow in flooded conditions, while other plants absolutely could not; soils that showed signs of flooding; and landscape features indicating flooding.  We also call this the three mandatory wetland criteria: vegetation, soils and hydrology.  This is what we look for when we examine a site, we look if it is a wetland or has pockets of wetlands.  Over time wetland delineations got easier and easier to a trained eye, although it was always exciting when you got to a new area in the country, where you had never delineated before.  You got to see new plant species and new soil types.  I was always a bit nervous to start out in such an area.  I usually studied the soil survey of the county to see what kind of soils I may encounter, while in the field I often collected plants to take back with me to my motel room or to my office so I could take my time to identify them.

We sometimes joke that we delineate with our feet; actually, it is a combination of feet and eyes.  With a bit of experience, you start noticing subtle changes in vegetation composition, and the consistency of the soil under your feet.  The ground might just get a little softer and at the same time it feels like you just stepped one or two inches lower in elevation.  This may be important, for as I described in the beginning of this post, wetlands can be bone dry, especially in the middle of the summer.  But, together with a minor vegetation change like the entrance or disappearance of one specific plant species may be enough to make you stop and wonder.  Now it is time to examine the soil.  Has the soil also changed when you crossed that subtle boundary you think you perceived in the field.  At first, I would take several soil samples with a probe or an auger on both sides of the boundary to compare.  Once I determine that I may have a soil that is representative of a wetland soil I may use a shovel to dig a decent soil pit to get a representative soil description.  Subsequently, I determine the boundary of the entire wetland, flag it and describe it, after which it is ready to be surveyed.  I often survey it with GPS, although that is not as accurate as a survey done by a licensed survey crew.  After that it is often up to the engineers, the owner and the developer to decide what to do with or to the wetland.

One of these days I may write more about wetland plants, wetland soils or the more illusive hydrology.  Stay tuned.

A wide-angle photo of one of the ponds behind our home.  There is still a little water visible in the center of the pond which is 6 feet (1.8 meters) deep in the middle.  In winter and early spring the water comes all the way to where I am standing.  As you can see, at that time and in early summer these trees stand submerged in water.  Species include: black gum, red maple, tupelo and overcup oak. They are what we call wetland species. 

Gaslighting (8/3/2018)

Wow, one of those verbs I never thought I would write a blog post about. But is seems to become a more commonly used word. So common that my wife told me the other day: “You are trying to gaslight me.” Thanks goodness she was using it more tongue in cheek, but boy we have come a long way, that we use this in our common intercourse between people.  (Warning for those of you expecting one of my regular blog posts, this one is a bit more political than others, so be forewarned! )

Where does the term come from? Gaslighting comes from a play “Gas Light” which was made into the 1944 movie “Gaslight.” In this movie a husband tries to convince his wife that she is insane by trying to change little things around her and trying to convince her she is just imagining it. He did this trying to save his ass after murdering the lady in the upstairs apartment. Not that I am that old, but I remember watching it. It seems that “gaslighting” came into vogue as a term in the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate someone's perception of reality. 

From the movie "Gaslight"

And here we are today. The term gaslighting is so commonplace now, it is scary. But let’s look at it in more detail. This is what an online article in Psychology Today that was posted on January 22, 2017, says about people who gaslight:

1. They tell blatant lies,
2. They deny they ever said something, although you have proof,
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition,
4. They wear you down over time,
5. Their actions do not match their words,
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you,
7. They know confusion weakens people,
8. They project,
9. They try to align people against you,
10. They tell others that you are crazy, and
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

That is a lot to digest isn’t it?  It is usually something one person does to another, but I have a feeling we have reached a point where one person can do this to a nation.  Scary, in particular since we just witnessed the use of the majority of these bullets after the meeting of our president with the president of Russia. Truthfully, it is not the first time I have felt gaslighted in the current political climate. For example, terms like fake news and fake press fit in bullets 4, 7, 8, 9 10, and 11.

Some additional observation about gaslighting, (I borrowed the bullets and some of the discussion from this article):

1. Gaslighting does not necessarily has to be deliberate. We see this all the time. For example, when an African American person (read male) was killed by a police man. In the past nobody seemed to care, except his family of course. He was either armed, on drugs, had a record, was deranged, reached for a gun; and society blindly accepted it. We were gaslighted by stereotype. It was the killing of Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter Movement that changed this or at least is trying to change it. It is about time that we are wondering and fighting this apathy when it comes to all those police killing (yes some might have been justified, but a lot of them were not).  The problem is that we are now experiencing push back from people who have been thoroughly gaslighted.  However, remember, as we saw in the Psychology Today list; gaslighting is most often done deliberately. 
2. Gaslighting aims to changes a person character, the trust in them self and experience of reality; while simple manipulation just only changes self-esteem. Scary isn’t it? I am sorry, but you have to look at some of the most recent political rallies and the vicious attacks on what they call the “fake press” or the killing in Charlottesville to see how the character of a group of people has been changed by a gaslighter. 
3. Gaslighting does not always involve anger or intimidation; it can be and often is much subtler. It seems that some gaslighters will shower their victims with special attention but never give them all the attention they need. In bullet 6 of the Psychology Today article the describe it as keeping the victim off-kilter. Other gaslighters will act like they are the victim. Whatever is their modus operando, gaslighters are able to change their victim’s memory, perception of reality and truth (bullets 2, 4, 5 and 7 from above). 
4. It is normal to forget things and gaslighters can easily manipulate your memory. This is what I teach in my classes; I tell my students to “document, document, document.” I tell them I don’t remember what I had for dinner two or three days ago. 
5. There may be three (3) stages to the gaslighting process: 
• You know they are ridiculous, 
• You consider their view, and then 
• You consider their view as normal and lose your ability to make your own judgement.
• Boy, this gets interesting these politically charged days. There was a tweet from our President the other day, telling the attorney general to stop the Russia investigation. This is a direct order and any jury would consider this obstruction of justice. In the past we all thought his tweets were ridiculous, his allies then considered his views, and now his allies don’t even question what he tweeted or even defend him. This is a pure case of gaslighting in my eyes.
• Now I just learned that he told a rally that Putin did not want him to win, while during the press conference Putin said he did (bullets 1 and 2; the first two steps in the process of gaslighting us on a new item or lie isn't it?).
6. Concluding, gaslighters do not give a crap about you, they do not see you. Gaslighters are pure narcissists. 

So what do we do about being gaslighted on a personal level or as a nation?  On a personal level it seems that you don’t win by confrontation; however, you win by ignoring a gaslighter.  Naturally, you need to be strong enough not to be influenced by that person, or not allow him or her to influence you.  

I enjoy watching Morning Joe in MSNBC in the morning  (that is when I have the time).  However, I wonder if Joe and Mika have the right approach.   Naturally they partially sell entertainment, but they desperately try to get under the president's skin.  I wonder what would happen of they completely ignore him for a week and not mention him?  I wonder what would happen if we would do that as a country?  If all the reporters and news networks would not cover him for a week, would he self-destruct?  That would be one way of allowing him not to gaslight us, even only for a week.