Koratty, Trichur District, Kerala
Warming Climate & Shrinking Bison
Bison graze on Ordway Prairie, owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. The site has a USFWS grassland easement protecting it in perpetuity. Photo © USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr
Thanks to science writer Matt Miller, and the Cool Green Science website, we get these stories daily that increase our understanding of the lesser known details of our environment. Are they important? It is a matter of perspective:
Here’s a climate change impact you probably never considered: bison diets.
As the climate warms, bison in North America are likely to shrink, as documented in research published by Joseph Craine and colleagues.
The reason they shrink is because as grasslands warm, grasses and other plants accumulate less protein. Bison are then forced to eat plants that are less nutritious.
This raises a related question: what plants do bison actually eat?
The answer to this question could help conservationists manage for plant species that are higher in protein and preferred by bison – ensuring healthy herds on warming grasslands. Continue reading
Conservation, Technology & Ethics
Adam Ferriss
We have had the good fortune, and could not agree more with the questions raised and the puzzles presented in this opinion editorial published two days ago in the New York Times:
The Unnatural Kingdom
If technology helps us save the wilderness,
will the wilderness still be wild?By
IF you ever have the good fortune to see a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the experience might go like this: On a sunny morning in Yosemite National Park, you walk through alpine meadows and then up a ridge to the summit of Mount Gibbs at 12,764 feet above sea level. You unwrap a chocolate bar amid breathtaking views of mountain and desert and then you notice movement below. Continue reading
The Back Stories
Beach time with little Adoniya and her mother Sini, member of the Xandari family.
Ask me the most meaningful part of my job around here in recent time and I’d hold up the Xandari films without a doubt. To call them films or videos is an acknowledgement of their formats and the creative process that goes into them. But to embrace all of them together with the words labour of love is simply the truth. (Watch them here).That we loved making them, loved dissecting the resorts to take a closer look at their DNA, their dreams. Above all, loved the Xandari family a little bit more. I’ll tell you why.
Bird of the Day: Greater Crested Tern
Kundapur, Karnataka
Urban Forest
Urban forests play an important role. Not only continuing to act as the Earth’s lungs, but they perform other valuable services – least of all providing the sense of peace and refuge for both humans and wildlife.
Our urban trees in the James River Park System and City of Richmond perform valuable services for us. They anchor the soil on hills and along river and stream edges, which reduces runoff into the river. They provide habitat and food for animals, and moderate the temperatures and rainfall with their canopies. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blue-faced Malkoha
Sivarpanam Palace, Tamil Nadu
Ornithological Epicenter
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has long been a leading presence in the study, appreciation and conservation of birds. From citizen science programs, to eBird, to research collaboration with the the National Geographic Society, the Lab has helped to educate the public about the environmental importance of birds. The Wall of Birds, titled “From So Simple a Beginning,” from the Darwin quote above, celebrates the world of birds, showcasing biodiversity and evolutionary change, by featuring species from all surviving bird families alongside several extinct ancestors.
The scale of the mural is mind-blowing! The world map covers the largest wall of the Lab’s visitor center, with life-sized birds from each of the 243 taxonomic families of the world, placed in their geographical endemic locations. Check out the scale of the flying albatross in the lower left of the mural! The pale, gray scale depictions of the extinctions and ancestors adds to the complexity of the mural.
Bird of the Day: Chestnut-tailed Starling
Sunderbans National Park, West Bengal
For The Pleasure Of It
We have plenty of readers on these pages who have the time, the energy and smarts to crack the code on this, so must pass this along to them:
Seeking Adventure And Gold? Crack This Poem And Head Outdoors
Visualize Pi (and Happy Birthday Albert!)
Visualize Pi Noise
Histogram of Emotions
Weather Mural
Visualize Pi with Golden Spiral
Both a transcendental and an irrational number, Pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. And both in definition and actuality it epitomizes coolness, inspiring musical homages, from rap to fugue. Albert Einstein, master of the time-space continuum, was born on this day. Makes sense, right?
But what about visual inspiration?
Artist Ellie Balk collaborates with students from The Green School in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn to combine mathematics and art to VISUALIZE Pi as murals in their community.
Starting in 2011 the artist/student/educator teams graphed Pi in colorful, creative and innovative ways: a histogram of emotions; a weather mural, a reflective line graph that resembles a sound wave and the relationship between the golden ratio and Pi.
For example:
In 2012, students constructed an image of the golden spiral based on the Fibonacci Sequence and began to explore the relationship between the golden ratio and Pi. The number Pi was represented in a color-coded graph within the golden spiral. In this, the numbers are seen as color blocks that vary in size proportionately within the shrinking space of the spiral, allowing us to visualize the shape of Pi and its negative space to look for “patterns”. The students soon realized that the irrational number of Pi created no patterns at all, resulting in a space that resembles “noise”.
In response to that, in 2013 students worked to visualize the number Pi as a reflective line graph that resembles a sound wave. The colors of the mural change at each prime number in Pi so that the viewer can visualize a pattern of prime numbers within Pi. Located on a busy corner in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the sounds of the bustling traffic and rhythmic commuter passing creates the perfect backdrop for our visualization. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Great Blue Heron
San Miguel Reservoir, Turrúcares, Costa Rica
If You Happen To Be In New York City
When the exhibition space re-opens, under new management, this is one of the empty spaces that will be filled, and this post on the New Yorker website makes us think it would have been interesting to see the spaces empty, before:
On Friday, March 18th, the Metropolitan Museum of Art invites the public into the Met Breuer, better known for the past fifty years as the Whitney. (The Met is leasing the building for eight years, while its modern and contemporary wing undergoes a radical transformation.) Fun fact: the Whitney might not have existed at all if the Met had accepted Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s offer, Continue reading
Enzyme Superheros
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction – but imagine the impact of a plastic eating bacterium! Thanks to Scientific American for posting this story.
A tiny microbe one day could devour the millions of metric tons of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, that pile up in landfills each year. Researchers in Japan have discovered the world’s first PET-eating bacterium, a critter that uses PET as its major carbon and energy source.
Each year, plastic manufacturers pump out more than 45 million metric tons of PET to make water bottles, salad domes, peanut butter jars, and other products—all of which sport a stamp with the number one inside a recycle symbol.
PET is the most recycled plastic in the U.S., according to PETRA, the PET Resin Association. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Andaman Barn Owl
Port Blair, Andaman Islands
Breathe Deep
Photograph by Robert Dash
Regular visitors to this site already know we love hearing what Robert Krulwich has to say: always fascinating, informative and funny.
Kudos to NatGeo for giving Curiously Krulwich a platform!
We have 3.1 trillion trees on our planet—that’s 422 trees per person. If we count all the leaves on all those trees and take a look at what they do collectively to the air around us, the effect—and I do not exaggerate—is stunning. I’ve got a video from NASA. When you see it, I think your jaw is going to drop—just a little. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Honey Buzzard
Sivarpanam Palace, Tamil Nadu
Volcán Barva
The lagoon in the crater of Barva Volcano
This weekend, I visited Braulio Carrillo National Park for the second time, but at a different sector: Barva Volcano. I’d been to the Quebrada González area further east in July of last year, where the ecosystem is more tropical rainforest than the high-altitude cloud forest of a volcano. The Quebrada González eBird hotspot has 382 species reported in 288 checklists at the time of writing this post; in stark contrast, the Volcán Barva hotspot on eBird has 82 species in only 8 checklists, including my own contribution despite arriving at the national park at around 11am, nowhere near ideal circumstances for birdwatching.
This discrepancy is likely explained both by the fact that Barva is at a higher elevation and therefore less diverse in terms of species count, but also a pretty small chunk of this massive national park. The lower diversity, however, is compensated by a higher rate of endemism, which is what occurs along high mountain gradients where habitat needs are specialized. For example, I spotted a Spangle-cheeked Tanager that’s endemic to the highlands of Costa Rica and western Panama, and there were lots of special bromeliads and mossy, licheny trees to admire. Continue reading
From Behind the Wheel: Pottering Around
A truck laden with clay pots packed with straw in Cherthala, Kerala
Roots and Anchors
Anybody can welcome you to a destination. Tell you about the must-do and the must-see. Weave you through its facts and fables, seat you through its culinary journey. At Xandari, we welcome you to our people. And the living stories they are. From what’s cooking to an effective cure for colds, good ol’ ways of growing with the land to dreams by the beach, we hear them loud. And, are part of them.
Here’s to our pride. Here’s to our people. Here’s to our family.
Rosanna Abrachan
Community, Collaboration and Conservation are the “3 Cs” that we stand by, and crafting these videos felt like a large family gathering with a smorgasbord of experiences to choose from. Thank you Anoodha and the RAXA Collective –Xandari Pearl teams!
Stay tuned for more!
Organikos 