This Week's Post: Climate Change and Biome Shifts

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in. 


This Week's Post: Climate Change and Biome Shifts

There are many reasons why global climate change poses significant challenges for humans.  The pages reproduced below are from my hand-lettered textbook Wa-Maka-Skan:  Fundamentals of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation.

Figure 2 on the page below ("Major Biomes of North America") shows the observed link between two major climate features, mean annual precipitation and mean annual temperature, and the occurrence of major vegetational communities.

As our industrial civilization changes the climate, the new temperature and precipitation patterns become less favorable for biomes as they are currently distributed.  Climatologist Stephen Schneider says, 'biomes find themselves stranded in the wrong climate.'   The existing vegetation will die, beginning on the southern and northern edges of its range, and different plant communities will begin to emerge.  Even with rapid climate change, this transition will take hundreds of years in most cases.

These biome shifts have widespread consequences for agriculture, forestry, groundwater recharge, river flow, biodiversity and a host of other taken-for-granted benefits that we receive from a relatively stable Nature. 

Grassland areas become warmer and drier as they shift toward desert communities.  This is important for humanity since our major agricultural regions occur in grassland biomes.  Shifting agriculture northward (in the northern hemisphere) as grasslands migrate north into formerly forested areas is problematic because the forest soils (that developed under forests) are less well-suited for the crops we depend on.

In ecosystems (and even in engineered systems), change is destabilizing. My generalized biome map on the second page shown below will have to be revised in the year 2500.

 

majorbiomes_no_am
generalized_biomes_no_am

This Week's Post: Avoiding Food Label Confusion

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Recent legislation regarding labeling the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in commercial food products represents a confusing compromise between consumer preference for "plain-and-simple" labels on food products and the commercial food industries' preference for no labels at all.

As a wildlife biologist, I side with the consumers' preference.  We should be able to identify and choose products whose production and processing affect both human health and the "health of the planet."  If consumers can easily choose, the referendum on the acceptance of GMOs can be made by you and me.

I have outlined in a previous post and in chapter 13 of my little hand-bound book Garden Notes:  Thoughts on Gardening, Ecology, and Sustainability several concerns regarding industrial agriculture based on genetically modified organisms.

I advocate organic gardening, organic farming, and the consumption of foods that humans have evolutionary experience with.  This approach usually involves small-scale, locally adapted growing techniques.  It does not involve large-scale, corporately controlled food production, processing, and marketing that compromises human health, land health, genetic diversity of crops, environmental quality, livestock welfare, and the dignity of farming itself.  Many acknowledge that current industrial agriculture is not sustainable.  But, we all recognize that it does provide (currently) cheap calories

Don't be confused by the food labeling controversy.  The way to know with a reasonable assurance that your food does not contain GMOs is simply to purchase only food that is labeled "USDA Certified Organic." 

As of July 2016, the following exclusions apply.  For a food to be marketed as "Organic" it must

1.  not contain genetically modified organisms;

2.  not be irradiated (exposed to radioactivity, for preservation)

3.  not be grown with human sewage (biosolids) as fertilizer;

4.  not contain non-food chemicals (for preservation, color, flavor, etc.);

There are other conditions, but these are the most important.

If a food product is not labeled "organic" assume that it is a genetically modified plant or animal that has been grown with human sewage and that it contains non-food chemicals and that it has been irradiated.

Now, you choose.

Additionally, you could grow some of your own food, and you can support local growers you know and trust.  Some farmers (and commercial gardeners) are growing foods organically but have not yet been certified (or cannot afford to be certified).  They need your encouragement and support.  At a farmers' market simply ask the grower face-to-face.

We are fortunate to have the USDA Organic program (see the current regulations of the program). Be prepared to defend the Organic Certification principles. 

This Week's Post: Visit Us at the Kimball Park City Arts Festival This Weekend, August 12th-14th

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Please visit Fred's booth at the 47th Annual Kimball Park City Arts Festival this weekend, August 12th, 13th, and 14th (Friday - Sunday) (hours, location, admission).  He will be showing and selling his original drawings, letterpress prints, and woodcuts.  Fred's booth (#453) is located on Main Street across from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Dolly's Bookstore. Hope to see you there!

The Kimball Park City Arts Festival was featured as one of the "29 can't-miss festivals of 2016" in a recent Smithsonian magazine article. This juried festival attracts top artists from around the country and is the Kimball Art Center's largest fundraiser of the year. 

This Week's Post: More on investigating climate change

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This post is a follow-up to my last one-- providing a way to discover for yourself the important signals of global warming, even as it is happening.

I have provided (below) the actual assignment and data recording sheet that I used in my environmental science classes at the University of Utah.

Please download the materials and have fun collecting the data.  The analysis will likely be more serious.


BIOL 3460 (Montague)
Exercise: Investigating Climate Change

Climate is "average weather." In order to begin to understand the controversy regarding climate change (and global warming) we will collect and analyze some data.

Assignment:

1. For the next 30 days collect the following information and record it in the table provided below. Information required: Daily observations of nighttime low temperature (NLT) and the average nighttime low temperature (ANLT) for a specific local weather station. You could obtain this information from any of the following sources: A local radio or television news/weather program or a local daily newspaper or a web site that provides daily weather observations (e.g., http://www.wrcc.dri.edu, http://gbdash.dri.edu). Whichever source of information you select, you must use the same source for all 30 data entries.

2. For each observation, calculate ΔT (the difference between NLT and ANLT). Construct a graph and plot the 30 observed values for ΔT. Your graph may be one of various forms. Try different approaches. Pay attention to which is the dependent variable and which is the independent variable.

 3. Answer the following questions.

What is the "average" nighttime low based on?

What is the null hypothesis in this exercise?

After 30 days, what are your tentative conclusions based on the evidence you collected?

What analyses did you perform to arrive at your conclusions? Did you add the number of days of above normal, normal, and below-normal nighttime temperatures? Did you add all of the lower-than-normal ΔT's and all of the higher-than-normal ΔT's and compare the sums? Etc.?

What are the limitations of this exercise with respect to revealing change or stability?

How many days of observations of "weather" would we need to assess "climate?" How about 100 days? How about 1,000 days (2.7 years)? How about 10,000 days (27 years)? Could you work back in time?

What will you have actually measured if you did this for 10,000 days?

To learn more about widespread (global) climate change, could you enlist the help of college students at every North American university (or every university in the world)? --or every thinking citizen with a TV?

Do local TV meteorologists suspect that above-average nighttime low temperatures are a "fingerprint" of global warming? On a commercial TV station, what would prevent a meteorologist from explaining his/her interpretation of the science he/she reports daily?

Once again, why are we interested in nighttime low temperatures? 

temperature_data_table

This Week's Post: Climate Change Homework Assignment

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Climate Change Homework Assignment

Here's a topic for every fifth-grader's science fair project.  Or, if you are a "climate change skeptic" or if you would like to challenge your friends who are, this is a simple exercise.

Background:  We know that the Earth's pre-industrial atmosphere contained certain trace gases that absorb heat energy.  During the daytime, the sun warms half of the planet as it rotates on its axis.  At night, some of the absorbed warmth is reradiated back into space.  Without the atmosphere's greenhouse effect, all heat energy would be lost to space and the Earth would be very cold-- less than 32 degrees F.  Water would be frozen and life as we know it could not exist.

So, the natural greenhouse effect created by water vapor, carbon dioxide, and a few other gases keeps the Earth a comfortable temperature for the life that has evolved over the past 3 billion years.

Since the industrial era began in the 1800's, however, humans have enhanced the natural greenhouse effect by emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide, and by land use practices (plowing, forest cutting) that limit the Earth's capacity to absorb (sequester) some of the released carbon dioxide.  As a consequence, the atmospheric greenhouse has become more and more effective in trapping re-radiated heat energy.  This brings us to the homework exercise.

The Assignment:  Since the atmospheric greenhouse works primarily at night, by absorbing some of the heat energy absorbed the preceding day, nighttime low temperatures are trending above average.  This warming trend becomes apparent to anyone who pays attention to their local weather reports. 

For the next 30 days, record your local nighttime low and the average nighttime low. 

The null hypothesis(for your science fair project) is 'the actual and the average nighttime lows will not be significantly different over the 30-day period.'

Note:  The average nighttime low for your area is based on a 30-year record, and it is updated every 5 years. You might have to find a weather information source that reports an "almanac" that gives nighttime low averages for that date.

If you believe 30 days is too few data points, try 60 days or 90 days or a year.  If you search the weather/climate records for the last 10 or 100 years, you won't have to collect your own current date.

TV and radio weather presenters know about this trend, but due to commercial considerations on commercial stations, never mention it.

This Week's Post: New Woodcut--Snowy Owl

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This Week's Post: New Woodcut--Snowy Owl

I completed the "Snowy Owl" woodcut in June 2016, and I have several other owl portraits on the drawing board for future prints.

The Snowy Owl occurs throughout the North American Arctic (Alaska and Canada). Occasionally it occurs in the lower 48 States, especially in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes Region.

Regarding the bird's facial expression, Alan Eckert, in his 1974 volume, The Owls of North America, remarks that "the eyes are set slightly closer to the top of the head than in other species, and though they can be opened widely at will, more often then not they are partially lidded, tending to give the bird a sleepy or dreamy appearance...".

This particular owl has widely opened eyes.

Print is 14" x 11" matted.  $48.00, edition size 88.

This Week's Post: An Updated 'Moon Phase' Page for your Garden Book (repost)

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This Week's Post: An Updated 'Moon Phase' Page for your Garden Book (repost)

It's still planting season! 

If you own a copy of Fred’s Gardening: An Ecological Approach, the page with the moon phase table (p. 72) is nearly out of date.  The original page covered 2009-2014.  A revision in 2011 provided tables for 2011 – 2016.  The updated page (below) covers 2016 – 2021. 

Feel free to download the page (right-click to save) and paste it over the old one to make the only time-sensitive aspect of the book useful for another six years.

moon_phase_2016_2021

This Week's Post: Join us at Summit Arts 2016 this weekend, July 8th and 9th, 2016

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in. 


Join us at Summit Arts 2016 this weekend, July 8th and 9th, 2016

Fred will be exhibiting his artwork at the Summit Arts 2016 Fine Arts show and sale in Oakley, UT, this weekend. The show runs Friday, July 8th, 4:00 pm - 8:00 pm, and Saturday, July 9th, 2016, 10:00 am - 5:00 pm. Admission is free. See the flyer below for more details. 

summitarts_postcard

This Week's Post: The Stories with the Images, Part 2

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The Stories with the Images, Part 2

So far I have completed four woodcuts in the "Ancient Wisdom" series.  Last week I highlighted two in the series of four. Here are the stories associated the remaining two so far.

1.  "Wa-Maka-Skan"

Wa-Maka-Skan is a Lakota word for all the moving things of the Earth.  This woodcut print depicts four types-- the winged peoples, the crawling peoples, the four-legged peoples, and the two-leggeds.  The concept and the word reflects a more biocentricworldview, a more life-centered approach to viewing humans' place among other "moving things."


2.  "Storyteller's Circle"

In an earlier time, before the recorded word, cultural knowledge was passed from generation to generation through stories told by elders to children.  The advantage of the oral tradition is that the stories may be modified by those with experience and insight to fit the changing circumstances of the people.  The disadvantage of this mode of cultural coordination is that as the storytellers fade away or are displaced by the written word, both the language and the lessons fade away also.  The oral tradition is flexible, but it is extinction-prone.  The recorded word has the advantage of "permanence," but the disadvantage of archived error.

This Week's Post: The Stories with the Images, Part 1

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in. 


The Stories with the Images, Part 1

So far I have completed four woodcuts in the "Ancient Wisdom" series.  Here are the stories associated with two of them.

1.  "Journey"
My understanding of the interpretation of Native American rock art is that images with a depiction of a hand reflect the personal experience of the artist.  A spiral represents a journey.  A spiral going "away" is an outbound trip.  A double spiral is a journey away and back.  What an ingenious way to represent a long trip in a small space (rock surface or tanned hide)-- coil the miles up.  If one were to accept all of this literally, the journey could be a vision quest. 

2.  "Stone Circle"
This simple woodcut depicts a circle of stones that can be found, often partially buried, throughout the plains of North America.  In earlier times, some Native Peoples anchored the sides of their hide or brush shelters with stones that they gathered, undoubtedly with considerable effort.  Since then the shelters have disappeared and the people who built them are gone, but the rings of stones remain.

This Week's Post: Join Us at "Pilar's Art in the Garden"

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Join Fred and eight other invited artists at Pilar's "Art-in-the Garden" event on Friday, June 10th;  Saturday, June 11th;  and Sunday, June 12th at 403 8th Avenue in Salt Lake City.  This exhibit and sale will take place from 5 to 9 p.m. each evening.  There is an admission fee of $15 that includes beverages (wine and lemonade) and light fare.  There is free parking in the LDS Hospital parking garage on D street (between 8th and 9th Avenues).

Fred will be exhibiting his large ink drawings, woodcut prints, and letterpress prints. For more information, see the event announcement below.

 

This Week's Post: "Zebra Longwing" (Heliconius charithonia)

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"Zebra Longwing" (Heliconius charithonia)

This is a drawing I completed several years ago and is now in a private collection.  It is about 12" x 16" and rendered in pen and ink.

zebralongwing

The living animal is about 3" from wingtip to wingtip.  The wings are black and the slashes and broken lines of spots are yellow. Undersides are also black but with paler streaks.  It is a tropical species that occurs as far north as the Gulf Coastal States, South Carolina, the lower Mississippi drainage, and Mexico.  Larvae feed on passionflowers and concentrate the poisonous compounds these plants produce.  While the plant chemicals are harmless to the larvae and adult butterflies, they make the insects unpalatable to predators.  The black-and-yellow color patterns provide a conspicuous warning.

The Zebra Longwing (or simply Zebra) is not related to the Zebra Swallowtail. More information on the zebra longwing is available at the "Featured Creatures" website (University of Florida Entomology).

To view another of Fred's available butterfly drawings ("Calico Butterfly"), visit the original drawings gallery.





 

 

 

 

This Week's Post: The Economy and the Environment

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.


The Economy and the Environment

This Fox Sense II page depicts how some view the relationship between economic activity and environmental quality-- a "rigid linkage" model.  When the economy flourishes, environmental quality declines.  This occurs as conventional business activity depletes resources, creates pollution, contributes to climate change, and converts more natural areas to production for humans. 

When economic activity slows down or stagnates, environmental quality typically improves (or doesn't decline as fast).  Fewer resources are used, less pollution is produced, and large-scale land use projects are cancelled or put on hold.

This sorry state of affairs is primarily the result of lack of imagination and profound ecological ignorance.  It is also big-picture, long-range economic ignorance.

Our challenge is to engage in appropriate economic activity that also contributes to environmental quality.

 

This Week's Post: Upcoming Events in May and June

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.

Two Upcoming Events

1.  Come and join in a discussion on gardens, gardening and the environment on Wednesday, May 25th, 2016, from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. at The King's English Bookshop (1511 S. 1500 E. in Salt Lake City).

Fred will be discussing his hand-lettered Gardening: An Ecological Approach, and his hand-bound Garden Notes: Thoughts on Gardening, Ecology and Sustainability.  He will also have copies of his 24th Anniversary Edition of Fox Sense: A View of Humans and Their Environment.

If you have questions about planning your garden, the 3' x 6' garden bed system (outlined in his books), or how gardening can be a component of environmental activism, be sure to attend.  For those who are interested, he will also discuss the concept, details and construction of these artists' books.

2.  Join Fred and eight other invited artists at Pilar Pobil's "Art-in-the Garden" event on Friday, June 10th; Saturday, June 11th; and Sunday, June 12th at 403 8th Avenue in Salt Lake City.  This exhibit and sale will take place from 5 to 9 p.m. each evening.  There is an admission fee of $15 that includes beverages (wine and lemonade) and light fare.  There is free parking in the LDS Hospital parking garage on D street (between 8th and 9th Avenues). Proceeds from admission benefit the Pilar Foundation, which supports the arts in Utah.

Fred will be exhibiting his large ink drawings, woodcut prints, and letterpress prints.

This Week's Post: Another View of Global Population Increase

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This Foxsense II page calls our attention to the fact that in 14 years we will add more than a billion people to the human population. With humans using 48% of the Earth's land surface to feed a single species (us), what will be the prospects for the other 2 to 10 million species on the planet?

Not only will it be a challenge to feed humans, but at the current rate that industrial agriculture diminishes soil, water, and crop biodiversity, we will also be crowding out other species, natural areas, and the critical ecological functions they provide to support all kinds of life on Earth.

Fox Sense II, a new work in the Fox Sense series, is scheduled to be released later in 2016. Each volume in the series consists of a hand-bound collection of environmental mini-posters written and illustrated by Fred and accompanied by the insightful (and sometimes cynical) commentary of a watchful fox. These volumes make excellent reading for anyone concerned about the currently trajectory of human impacts on the Earth. The 24th Anniversary Edition of Fred's 1992 classic collection, Fox Sense I, is currently available. 

foxsense2_population2030

This Week's Post: Add Some Color (revisited)

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities and shop.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.


This week we present a page from Gardening: An Ecological Approach for you to color. See chapter three in the book, which discusses gardening methods, techniques, and skills, for more ideas on planning your garden space. 

freespirit_garden_fred_montague

This Week's Post: Gardens and the Environment

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities and shop.  Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.


GARDENS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

We face many difficult challenges.  These include addressing our own activities that threaten climate stability, soil fertility, biological diversity, resource availability, and general environmental quality.  In fundamental ways, our lives depend on rapid, responsible, and widespread solutions.

While we are waiting for the right leader or poem or song (or disaster) to motivate people to act, there are some things we can do as individuals, families, or small groups to begin.  It seems logical to me that if our difficulties have arisen from many people engaged in (or tacitly promoting) unsustainable activities, then we could quickly turn things around if many people incorporated nature into their worldviews and nature-friendly activities into their lifestyles. 

If you have a small space (e.g. a yard) or have a neighborhood that has some small spaces (churchyards, schoolyards, etc.), then you can begin today.  You don't need a leader, an advanced degree, a government grant, or a permit.  You simply need a shovel, a hoe, and a few packets of seeds.

A small garden provides multiple benefits to the gardener, the landscape, and the global environment.  Gardens provide fresh, healthy, organic food for those who tend it and to those with whom they share.  Gardens recycle unused nutrients from the kitchen, yard, and garden itself via the compost pile back into the next crop.  In the process, organic matter accumulates and some carbon is removed from the atmosphere and stored in the ever-increasing fertility of the soil.  In this way, food can be grown without synthetic fertilizers.  With organic matter in the soil and mulch on top, moisture is conserved and efficiently used.  As gardeners save seeds from their best vegetable plants and trade them with each other, plant diversity is maintained, and sometimes increased.  Diverse organic gardens with food plants, flowers, grassy strips, little rock piles, and odd (weedy) corners provide habitat for beneficial insects, songbirds, and other animals the make the home site interesting and biologically functional.  Furthermore, food produced in places where we have already displaced Nature helps to preserve the "real Nature" that still exists. 

And, while we are tending the beets and the kale and contemplating the compost and the lilting morning song of the house wren, we may be able to think of additional approaches to living sustainably in a neighborhood on a finite planet.

Environmental Commentary: Rethinking Consumption

Time to revisit another graphic from Fox Sense I, a hand-bound collection of environmental mini-poster/editorial cartoons. Rethinking consumption enables one to strike at the roots of many modern-day challenges.

Fred is offering a 24th Anniversary Edition of Fox Sense I, which features Fred’s illustrations accompanied by the insightful (and sometimes cynical) commentary of a watchful fox.

This book has been popular among environmentalists and teachers, conservationists and environmental education specialists, social critics and book collectors—anyone concerned with the current trajectory of human impacts on the Earth.  The interesting thing about the book’s topics is that each one that was outlined in 1992 is just as relevant today, or more so.

rethink

From the Gallery: Fred's Woodcut, "Young Wolf"

"Young Wolf" is the first in the current series of thirty-three woodcut prints. To produce each woodcut, Fred carves away the negative space of the image on a maple block, leaving the surface to be inked. He then prints the edition on his 1913 letterpress. The bold silhouette of the woodcut prints present a striking contrast to the detailed pen-and-ink drawings that comprise another part of his work. 

A few of these prints are still available.