Hoyt Lake Closed to Recreation

According to the news, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) has confirmed the presence of a harmful algae bloom in Hoyt Lake at Delaware Park. Yesterday, Buffalo's Department of Public Works began installing signs in Delaware Park notifying park patrons that "recreational water activities have been suspended until further notice. That includes no swimming, no boating, no fishing and no pets in the water."

First question - who in their right mind would have been trying to swim in Hoyt Lake even *before* they announced the existence of the algal bloom?? The dead fish and the horrible smell at the Forest Lawn end of the lake should have put anyone off long before this.

From http://wivb.com/2014/08/11/algae-blooms-turning-hoyt-lake-green/

And then WIVB had this puzzling statement "The algae still has to go, but fixing the water in Hoyt Lake will require fixing the Scajaquada Creek, which no longer runs continuously through the city."

WTH???

I have no idea why this Google map image shows the Lake as dark brown. That is really, really weird.

The creek still runs through the city - I took the bridge right over it this morning on the way to campus. I assume that this is an utterly mangled reference to the fact that Hoyt Lake is an artificial feature that is disconnected from the creek. The Scajaquada flows through Forest Lawn Cemetery then enters a short tunnel through a debris-collection grate. The tunnel runs through the park, bypassing Hoyt Lake, and the creek reemerges at the western end of Hoyt Lake, where is separated from the Mirror Lake section of the Lake by a cement wall. During high precipitation events water from the lake overflows the wall into the creek.

Smelly section of creek where it enters the tunnel that goes under the park

Apparently when Frederick Law Olmsted originally designed 'The Park' his 'Gala Lake' feature was connected to the creek and there were small wetlands at either end. But during construction of the 198 expressway (I think - the story is actually quite hard to follow) the Lake was cut off.

Aerial view of Delaware Lake and North Bay in 1938, before
reshaping and construction of the Scajaquada Expressway

A $50k fountain was installed at the Forest Lawn Cemetery end of the lake in 2013, partly in order to help aerate the water in the lake. It is refilled using a fire hydrant when the water level drops so there is extremely limited flow in the lake. However, the pump for the fountain broke (again) this summer which lead to an earlier period of algae and stink.  The lake was reportedly blue again at the end of August, but now - more algae.  I confess - I usually don't notice if the fountain is going or not.  I am usually to busy paying attention to traffic there so most of this summer's drama played out unnoticed by me.

Over 400ppm permanently ?!?!

Just noticed this depressing news - CO₂ readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory for the month of September haven't dropped below 400 part per million. If you remember the Keeling Curve, the graph that shows how carbon dioxide levels fluctuate with the seasons but overall are increasing through time, you might already understand how this is important.

Keeling Curve

Normally near the end of September measured CO₂ readings reach their annual low point. The low point reflects the annual transition between summer and fall, when the uptake of CO₂ by vegetation slows and is overtaken by the release of CO₂ from soils.

This year - with only a day to go - CO₂ levels have remained above 400ppm (the daily average or yellow circles - not the red dots which are hourly averages and vary greatly over the course of the day).

Though it is highly unusual, there have been 4 years (2002, 2008,  2009, and 2012) in which the monthly value for October was actually lower than the value for September. However, the decrease from September to October those years was at most 0.45 ppm, which probably isn't enough to pull the overall average for October below 400ppm. So, um, EEK!  Because this probably means that we are now permanently above 400ppm. Not good news.

And in related EEK!

NASA Global Climate Change reported today that 2016 is on track to set a new global temperature record.

Swell news, huh.



For more information see:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/

I get to be a Cybils Elementary/Juvenile Non-Fiction Judge

Yippee!  I can now announce that I have been chosen to be a Round 1 Elementary/Juvenile Non-Fiction Judge! This is such a great honor, and an unexpected one really since I haven't been very active on the blog since last years Cybils.  Work took over my life I and just had no energy for blogging. I am trying to fix that now. 

This category is a bit different than in the past few years. Middle grade has been split off and grouped with Young Adult Non-fiction, though thankfully two Cybils will be awarded - one for a middle grade book and one a YA book.

The Elementary/Juvenile Non-Fiction group will also give two awards one for Elementary Nonfiction and one for Juvenile Nonfiction. Overall I am really glad about the changes. From my perspective, I think that the middle grade titles were getting overwhelmed in our old grouping and partly due to that I believe Guts & Glory: The Vikings by Ben Thompson got robbed last year. I thought it was the best book we read in terms of content plus kid accessibility. On the other hand, now I don't get to read the middle grade books!  Pout!

The Elementary/Juvenile Non-Fiction Category Description is as follows ... 

Kids are curious about the world around them and nonfiction is the perfect way to introduce them to that amazing world. History? Biography? Art? Science? Math? Animals? Sports? It's all here and more besides! We love text and illustrations or photographs that will wow kids and adults alike and topics so fascinating that kids will want to go digging for more, more, more nonfiction!

Nonfiction Elementary/Juvenile includes titles with factual content and informational titles. At least 50% or more of the book should be narrative nonfiction (as opposed to experiments, activities, instructional, or collections of facts without a strong narrative thread like encyclopedias). Mythology, folklore, poetry, graphic novels (including nonfiction), and historical fiction should be nominated in the appropriate category (which isn’t this one). We are currently accepting nominations only in print (no ebooks or books containing additional materials like kits) for this category.

How do I decide which category to nominate in?

Elementary Nonfiction
Intended for preschool through beginning readers (picture books, easy readers,
 and early chapters).

Juvenile Nonfiction
Intended for elementary age readers up through 5th grade. May include picture
 books with more complex text and themes and chapter books.

I love reading the entries - there are some really great non-fiction books out there for kids and they deserve to be celebrated.

Nominations for all Cybils categories open October 1st and close on the 15th. The guidelines are here.

Submissions from publishers and authors will be accepted October 16-26 and information for that is at the publisher section.

The mission of these awards is as follows ... "The Cybils Awards aims to recognize the children’s and young adult authors and illustrators whose books combine the highest literary merit and popular appeal. If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussels sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious." 

So if you have read a great picture book, early reader, chapter book, middle grade or young adult novel, graphic novel, poetry or nonfiction book this past year please nominate them!


This year, the Elementary/Juvenile Non-Fiction Chair is Jennifer Wharton Jean Little Library (Yeah!  Woot! Woot! Go Jennifer!) 

The First Round Judges are (in alphabetical order):

• Elisa Bergslien (me!)   Leopards and Dragons                        @DNAPL     

• Sandy Brehl         Unpacking the Power of Picture Books     @PBWorkshop and @sandybrehl

• Reshama Deshmukh       Stacking Books                                @stackingbks    

• Sara Ralph                     Two Nerdy Sisters                             @sralph31

• Joanne Roberts            Bookish Ambition                               @BookishAmbition   

• Carrie Waterson       IndyPL Kids’ Blog     IndyPL Ready to Read           @indylibrary      

• Ellen Zschunke        On the Shelf 4 Kids                                 @ontheshelf4kids 

The Second Round Judges are:

• Alyson Beecher         Kid Lit Frenzy               @alybee930     

• Terry Doherty           The Reading Tub           @readingtub                    

• Carrie Gelson      There’s a Book for That      @CarrieGelson      

• Michelle Leonard   The Winged Pen               @MGYABookJunkie and @WingedP

• Debbie Tanner      The Booksearch                @imtanner2

So Excited !  I hope you all have some amazing nominations to make!  

Arctic Sea Ice Reaches Second Lowest Yearly Minimum Ever Recorded in the Satellite Record

Each summer the ice cap in the Arctic melts to a point of lowest annual extent or "minimum" before the temperature once again drops, the sun falls below the horizon in the Arctic, and the sea ice once again regrows during the frigid fall and winter months. This first six months of this year have been the warmest in the recorded history of surface temperatures, a record that extends back to 1880. And relatively speaking, data shows that the increases in Arctic temperature are larger than the rest of the globe.

As a result, this year the Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its minimum on September 10th, decreasing to roughly 1.60 million square miles (or 4.14 square kilometers), or roughly 911,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average, effectively tying with 2007 for the second lowest yearly minimum ever captured in the satellite record, which goes back to 1978.

The 2016 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum, reached on Sept. 10. 

The 1981-2010 average minimum sea ice extent is shown here as a gold line.

Credits: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr

It is even more striking in this animation ...

which shows the Earth rotating slowly as the Arctic sea ice advances over time from the prior sea ice maximum on March 24, 2016, through September 10, 2016 when the sea ice reached its annual minimum extent. 

Credits: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr

This video is public domain and can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/arctic-sea-ice-annual-minimum-ties-second-lowest-on-record

New Office - again - in new Building this time

So, last September I posted about how I had become department chair and moved into the Chair's office?  I didn't even get to keep that particular office for a whole year. Over the summer we had to move everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, out of the old Science Building and into the newly renovated Science and Mathematics Complex (Phase 2). The department office, my faculty office, my laboratory, and everything else had to vacate because the old building is coming down to make way for Phase 3. 

The new department offices are pretty good - here is the Chair's bit of the Earth Sciences and Science Education office ...

Too little shelving space and the layout is weird. I sit on one side of the room and the motion detector for the light is on the other side of the room, so the lights are always turning off on me, which is really annoying. And I am doing a bunch of class prep so the surfaces are completely covered.

I do think that our department office has the coolest office wallpaper though ...

All the offices have discipline relevant gray-scale wallpaper, like equations or molecules. We have the a view of the Lake Ontario shoreline at Chimney Bluffs State Park. Much cooler!  In my biased opinion at least. They tried to get us to put up a picture of Arizona (O.o) or a bunch of leaves (O_O). Local rocks, water and wind is much better for an Earth Sciences Department.