Are we part of a holobiont? (7/29/2023)

If you haven’t been living in a hole in the ground, you must have heard about the word or concept called microbiome. Microbiome is defined as the community of microorganisms that exists in a particular environment. These can include fungi, bacteria, other singular cellular organisms and even viruses. When we look at us humans these are our gut bacteria and everything else that is down or better in there. Moreover, it seems that even our hands, our body and every other part of our body have a unique microbiome. The microbiome on our left hand might even differ from that on our right hand. Being a baker, I listened to a podcast on sourdough breads and it seems that every sourdough baker has a microbiome on their hands that is unique to the sourdough starter they use.

The microbiome seems to be responsible for a lot of things in our life including gut health; our resistance to diseases; dementia at older age; and even our mental health. It appears we have more (micro)organisms in our gut microbiome than cells in our body. We are what is considered by some scientists a holobiont.

A holobiont is defined as an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit. In other words, we as individual humans and our microbiome together are holobionts. There is still some controversy about this concept of holobiont and even my spell checker does not know the word yet.

What medical science is slowly telling us is that if our microbiome is off, we get in all kinds of trouble. The simple issue maybe diarrhea or other stomach upset. It may include weight loss or conversely in folks who suffer from obesity. As I mentioned above, it seems that Alzheimer can even be linked to our microbiome being out of balance, or at least it can excel the mental decline or onset of dementia in some. We can change our microbiome with the food we eat, and this is where the concept of not “not every calorie is the same” comes from. We are hopefully also all learning about probiotics (fermented foods rule), prebiotics, and now even post-biotics. All parts of a healthy nutrition that is good for gut health. Folks with CDIF (or Clostridium difficilus), a very virulent bacterial infection may even require a fecal or poop transplant to get a healthy microbiome from someone else implanted in their gut. Which might be the only way to shake this disease.

Anyway, I want to stop here, and write more about the concept of holobiont. This idea, an assemblage of a host and other species living together in some form of harmony is interesting to me and to a lot of scientists. I think this is what makes it so darn controversial. One of the reasons is that if we look at it on a large scale, we can look at an island or even the Earth as a holobiont as well, and that everything living on this earth are part of that assemblage. Ah, we are quickly entering the world of Gaia and I think this is where the whole concept of holobiont runs into trouble. Gaia is more metaphysical; it seems to be more the believe in the divine personification of the Earth and the matriarch of all things in existence. Modern pagans believe Gaia is the Earth and she is the spiritual embodiment of the Earth. In other words, scientist that consider the Earth a holobiont are skating on thin ice and can be accused of being pagans or some other form of religious heretics.

However, the concept is an interesting one. Like our gut with diarrhea, the earth can also get or be out of balance when the assemblage of species gets out of balance. An interesting concept isn’t it? It is somewhat Malthusian, but I am beginning to believe that we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth; the carrying capacity is the number of individual humans the earth can safely handle before things go awry. In my eyes, we humans could be considered the E. coli of even CDIF of the Earth. There are just too many of us, and the Earth is sick! That is what I think we are seeing, global warming, the weather is going bonkers; everything seems out of balance. Even today there was a report that the gulf stream that keeps western Europe warm may be diminishing and put Europe in an eventual deep freeze. Strange days indeed! Have we reached the point of no return? I don’t know, only time will tell.

During our hike last week we encountered communities like this.  Although not a holobiont, the lichen on the rock are a perfect union of algae and fungi living together in perfect harmony.  In addition I just loved the community of plants.  This was in Grayson Highland State Park. 

 

Zombies (7/27/2023)

“It must be the zombie apocalypse” was our reaction, while sitting in the parking lot of the Burger King in Hillsville, Virginia. A sirens was going off, an ambulance was coming by, various fire engines, and not to count the large number of police cars. We were on our first real camping trip in our van; post retirement. Somewhat of a dress rehearsal for our coming trip across country, and also just our first real vacation. (By the way, I am borrowing the zombie apocalypse metaphor from Nigel Saunders from the Bonsai Zone who always uses that phrase when he hears a siren.)

We left home on Monday morning for the Rocky Knob Camp Ground on the Blue Ridge Parkway, just outside Floyd. We planned to stay there two nights, knowing well that there would be no electric hookups; water was available at the restrooms. In other words, camping was relatively primitive. It proved to be delightfully true when we got there. It was a larger campground than expected, and the camping spots were fine. It took a bit of adjusting to get a somewhat level site, but by the second night we were fine. We had taken the van out to go to a magnificent hiking spot (more about this a little later), followed by lunch at a winery and a visit to Floyd which was downhill from the campground. So, when we returned, we had learned our lesson and parked the van at a more level position.

After two nights, we packed up and drove to Grayson Highland State Park. Their campground is much more developed; it has running water and electricity. Spots are tighter together, and here again, partially because of my choice and because of the vehicle, getting a perfectly level (sleeping) site was difficult. However, the second night was a charm. We stayed in the park, did some magnificent hiking and after two nights, we moved to Highland County to visit friends where we camped in their driveway but ate and showered in their home. My wife even managed to break their toilet seat cover. The following day we drove home.

What amazed me the most about both camp grounds was that they had volunteer hosts. These were older couples in their 70s and 80s who stay at the place for free and help with hospitality and in the camp store (if there is one). Something to consider.

The hiking:

In the Rocky Knob Recreation Area, we did the Rock Castle Gorge Trail the first day. We only did the lower part, approximately 2.8 miles each way, although our FitBits told us it was closer to 3 miles (so 6 miles total). It is an absolutely gorgeous trail. A fairly moderate hike (on the easy side of moderate in our eyes), with some nice up hills and vistas along a wild creek. It was extremely enjoyable. We topped it off with that visit to the Chateau Morrisette Winery for a glass of cold white wine and a cheese plate for lunch. The winery is very dog friendly; I highly recommend a visit to this winery. The location, vistas, layout and the wine a super.

On our way out, on the second day we walked the 3-mile Black Ridge Trail. This trail was also very nice, somewhat slightly more challenging, but very pleasant with some nice vistas. This trail has much more variability in the landscape; however, both trails in this area were great.

In Grayson Highland we only walked one trail. The 3.7-mile Stamper’s Branch Trail kicked our butt; however, it was great! With the 3.7 miles I mean that the trail is actually only about 1.9 miles each way and it leads from the camp ground to the visitor’s center. The trail has an elevation gain of close to 900 feet and let me tell you, these 70-year-old knees felt it. Moreover, coming from sea level, I noticed that we peaked at an elevation of almost 5000 feet. Grayson Highland is near Mount Rogers, Virginia’s highest mountain. I enjoyed the types of vegetation we hiked through and we even saw a bear in the far distance.

So how did my bonsais fare while we were gone? I had received a LinkTap Wi-Fi watering timer what is called a “tap linker”. This is a Wi-Fi water timer that opens a valve to a hose on which I had two sprinklers mounted. I had the sprinklers go on every morning for 20 minutes. Let me tell you, from the looks of it my plants loved it. They look lush and in much better shape compared to when I water them by hand. Thank goodness, my neighbor Bob was also looking out for them, and all was good.

In all, we had a successful trip. We now feel much more comfortable and want to do again. Living the retired life! Not like zombies.

Our Rocky Knob camp site.  Somewhat primitive, but very pleasant.

Our first hike.  It was a nice tail along a stream.

Chateau Morrisette Winery.  Our cheese palte after a nice hike.  A great way to recover.

The view on the hike of our second day (departure day) on Rocky Knob.

Our Grayson Highland Hike.  The stream crossing.

Stormwater, the early years (7/10/2023)

In a previous post I mentioned that I once had the ambition to write a book on stormwater and erosion and sediment control (and I may still do it). This idea was a natural outflow of the job I did pre-retirement. The following post is part of an introductory section that I wrote for the book. Ince I lifted from a chapter, I have changed it a little to make it a narrative for you all to follow and understand. I left the literature citations out, feel free to contact me, if you are interested in them. So here I go:

Very early, North American settlement history may have followed similar patterns as were encountered in Europe of the Middle Ages. The settling population in North America initially concentrated in towns and villages for mutual protection from outlaws and native Indian population. This is evident by some of the older larger urban centers on the east coast. In addition, large tracts of land were deforested very early on in settlement history for the use of timber (building materials) and the growth of cash crops, in particular tobacco. A 17th century document in the historic town of Williamsburg describes that climbers of the church spire in town (or what is now Colonial Williamsburg) were able to see the York River to the north and the James River to the south, a feat that is impossible nowadays because of the regrowth of the forest in the area. The peninsula appeared to have completely deforested, mostly for the growing of tobacco at that time.

The cartographer Lewis Evans observed the same thing when he reported in 1750 about the deforestation and conversion to agriculture land that had already greatly altered the hydrology and clarity of streams and creeks in the Piedmont of Northern Virginia:

"When the country was cover'd with Woods, and the Swamps with brush, the rain that fell was detained by these interruptions, and so had time to insinuate into the Earth, and contribute to the springs and runs. But now the country is clear'd, the rain as fast as it falls is hurried into the rivers, and washes away the earth and soil of our Naked Fields."

 

The reports by Evans were only the beginning. Human caused accelerated erosion increased steadily as is shown in a recent study by Kemp et al (2020) who conclude that European settlement of North America during the past century has resulted in the movement in as much sediment that natural processes can move in 700 to 3000 years. They estimated that geologic sediment production which had been relatively stable for the past 40,000 years increased 10-fold as a result of European settlement and the rapid expansion of agriculture and river modification seen throughout the continent.

So, what are currently the main sources of sediment the waterways in more developed nations? It was reported that while agriculture practices generate considerable amounts of sediment by way of erosion; we now estimate that areas cleared for construction are able to generate the equivalent of many decades of sediment in one year compared to agricultural uses (let me know if you are interested in the source). Research determined that construction can yield 140,000 tons of sediment per square mile per year, compared to 1000 tons from agriculture land and up to 500 tons from forested land in the Piedmont area of Maryland. In other words, construction is a major contributor producing 140 times more sediment than agriculture land per unit area (for example per acre or hectare). However, , there is so much more land being used for agriculture than actively being disturbed by construction activities.

On an interesting note, while sediment production increased at least 10-fold over historical times in North America during the last century, it was also observed that during the same period it seemed that less sediment reached the ocean. This was caused by the retention of the sediment by reservoirs that were constructed by human. Reservoirs served for the storage of drinking water and water for energy generation and irrigation. It has been estimated that a total of 1.4 ± 0.3 metric tons of sediment per year is retained by reservoirs world-wide. Siltation of these reservoirs will eventually greatly reduce the capacity, function, and usefulness of these structures. It appears that Indonesian rivers were a rare exception and that they deliver more sediment to the coastal areas than other rivers that they surveyed.

Here I’ll step away from my book chapter. I saw similar issues in Nepal where the land or better fertile soil was being carried away by runoff. The main reason was deforestation for agriculture. We often joked that a new island was being formed off the coast of Bangladesh. This island was formed from the sediment being carried by the rivers coming out of Nepal. The results in Nepal were the drying out of springs and dropping groundwater table, a phenomenon seen throughout areas that are being deforested.

I’ll end here, there are many posts where I discuss some of these items as well. Just look in the keywords for the words like stormwater, erosion, sediment, erosion and sediment control, runoff reduction and alike. If you like or enjoy what I wrote here, let me know and I’ll pull some additional material out of my writing.

Our daughter was in New Delhi, India these past few weeks and sent me this newspaper shot.  They had 6" (126 mm) of rain in the afternoon and it flooded the town.  Can you imagine all the impervious area in such a large city, it created havoc.