“The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images of the Twin Cities region on March 17, 2010 (top), and August 5, 2009 (bottom). Both use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between water and land. Vegetation appears bright green. Clouds appear sky blue. Water varies in color from electric blue to navy. Bare ground ranges in color from dark brown to tan.
Taken in different seasons—late winter and mid-summer—these images not only show different water levels in the Mississippi and other rivers, but also dramatically different amounts of vegetation. While much of the region is heavily vegetated in August 2009, river levels are low enough to make the water bodies nearly invisible. (Tree cover along the riverbanks may partly obscure the rivers.) In contrast, the image from March 2010 shows vegetation just beginning to emerge from winter’s chill. Differences in vegetation between August and March are especially visible in the west, in what appears to be a large patchwork of agricultural lands. Compared to the previous summer, the Mississippi and other rivers in the region appear swollen. Some of the electric-blue hues in water bodies away from the rivers might result from lingering ice. Springtime rains and snowmelt often conspire to raise water levels.”
Jellyfish are stirring up the oceans. Above is a video demonstrating, with dye, how the negative pressure void behind a swimming jellyfish brings some water along for the ride. This may seem trivial, but when you add up the movement of all the swimming ocean creatures it sums to a major component of (previously unknown) significant ocean water movement. Which of course has major implications for world climate. Read more here (WIRED Science).
Also, sorry for the long blogging silence. The good news is that I have been very busy! The bad news – no time for blogging. A New Year’s resolution of mine is to find time for this blog – stay tuned and hold me to it!
I knew it would be good because it won a 2008 NAI Interpretive Media Award, but it far exceeded my expectations. I anticipated a curriculum guide much like the Project WET and WILD guides – which are great resources. However, the MinnAqua Guide builds on the template in a couple major ways.
First, each chapter contains an impressive quantity of local aquatic natural history, essentially eliminating the need to seek out other sources to build your knowledge or to tweak activities to be locally applicable. The guide is alone worth reading to simply increase your natural history knowledge.
Second, the guide also comes with a CD containing a plethora of seriously impressive images, especially of fish. No simple line drawings here, think detailed full-color images that look like the fish jumped out of the water onto your page.
The guide also includes hyper-detailed evaluations of how each lesson meets Minnesota’s Academic Standards and ready-to-use assessment quizzes and standards. To top it all off, the entire guide was reviewed by over 100 experts in various fields so you can feel ultra-confident about the accuracy of the content.
You can get a copy by attending or hosting a MinnAqua Educator Workshop. Contact Michelle Kelly for more info.
Here are two interesting links relating to water ownership:
Here is an article from the LA Times about who literally owns the water in California and about the people who collect “someone else’s” water in rain barrels.
Here is a link to a Minnesota blog called CleaningUpTheRiver.com which encourages people to take ownership of local rivers through trash collection. The author marks the location of trash items (tires, safes, etc.) with GPS and then encourges people to go remove it = geo-trashing. Clever, huh?
This is a topic I’ve some professional familiarity with – I spent some time working with the DNR’s Adopt-a-River Program. Among many different ecological lessons, it was in that position that I learned the Minnesota Governor has a unique contraption at his (and hopefully in the future, her) disposal – a signing machine. Used to imprint the governor’s signature on duplicates – such as Adopt-a-River certificates, it somehow traces the governor’s original signature with a mechanical arm that holds a Sharpie. It works rather slowly and the poor soul assigned to monitoring the process (me) loses a few brain cells and gets a little loopy inhaling the Sharpie fumes. I inquired if some other writing utensil could be used, but was informed that the governor thought that Sharpie was the most “manly.” If I remember correctly, the machine is the only one like it in the nation.
Also, Google has added an ocean component to its already amazing and free Google Earth program. You can dive underwater and interact with ocean creatures and famous oceanographers via a partnership with National Geographic.
This page is dedicated to hosting information and media which I hope the Twin Cities environmental community will find interesting and valuable. Please check back often for updates or subscribe via RSS feed.
