My office

The first is in uranium country in NM. The circle you see is a rock shelter structure. I haven't yet seen the archeological reports for this area, so I can't tell you who built it or when. I'm not giving out any details of the location (the photo doesn't, either). This is to protect cultural resource sites from unscrupulous people.

The second is an example of a culvert placement gone bad. Hyper border collie mix for scale. There are actually three or four more in similarly bad shape along this NM creek, effectively stranding the residents in this canyon as they need to keep their cars on the other side of this crossing in order to travel. Just outside of the picture, there is a footbridge across the creek the residents use (including children and older folks who have to walk several miles from their homes to the footbridge).

The last is the Rio Grande in Colorado. The structure is a rock structure designed to effect bank stabilization and create fish habitat by working with, instead of against, the river's energy. I sometimes have a problem with the aesthetics of these structures, but they're better than some of the alternatives (gabion baskets, riprap, channelization).

Another oldie but goodie...

I promised Tuff Cookie over at http://magmacumlaude.blogspot.com/ that I would post some text from my 1914 Handbook for Field Geologists by C.W. Hayes, Ph.D. (a former Chief Geologist at USGS)*. It's a second edition, the first being published in 1909 (?).

Some of my favorite selections come from the first chapter of the book, "Pre-requisites for a Field Geologist." Take this one:

"The first qualification is a good physique and a strong constitution, for sooner or later severe and long-continued physical exertion will be required, and a defect in ability to sustain this exertion will result in serious handicap [ADA was clearly not an issue then]. The second is adaptability. Few occupations present so wide a diversity in conditions under which work must be carried on as that of the field geologist. His [no her yet] surroundings may vary all the way from the luxuries of a summer resort hotel to the bare necessities which he can pack on his back, and he must be able to adapt himself with equal readiness to either extreme. If one cannot so adapt himself, but is dependent on any particular kind of surroundings, he should abandon the idea of becoming a field geologist, for he will find the occupation extremely unsatisfactory. A geologist must possess a practical knowledge of horsemanship, of boating, and of general woodcraft, so that he will equally be at home in the saddle, in the canoe, or on foot in a trackless forest. One is fortunate who has already acquired this practical knowledge, but if he does not possess it he must be sure that he has an aptitude for acquiring it quickly."

There are actually few geologists I know who have and regularly use horsemanship skills in the course of their field work (I've only known a few who needed pack animals and a muleskinner usually came with the mules/ponies/horses/burros - my grandfather needed dog-sledding, fishing, and hunting skills for his gold-mining in Alaska). Besides that and a little gender-bias, his words remain fairly true. At least a couple of profs I've known over the years have wanted to instill this understanding in their field-oriented students. More to come...

*Hayes, C.W., Handbook for Field Geologists, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York 1914.

More words that bug...

Geology Happens http://geologyhappens.blogspot.com/2008/05/words-that-bug.html and Callan Bentley http://nvcc.edu/home/cbentley/geoblog/2008/05/words-worth.html have asked for additions to words that bug you. My issues are more with grammatical usage. Having a four-year-old in whom I am trying to instill an appreciation for proper grammar (thus far not very successful), I am acutely aware of grammatical improprieties in my local area that make me cringe.

Without further adieu:

"It works good." "It plays real good." Any usage of the word "good" for "well" creates an immediate impulse for correction. I have actually hear this usage from one of the my child's pre-school teachers. My significant other is being continually subjected to this correction, much to his chagrin. We live in the southwest, we have college degrees, therefore there is no reason to subject your audience to this incorrect term usage. There shouldn't be a reason if one has graduated from junior high, yet it persists.

The action of ending a sentence with a preposition. "Where's it at?" "Where are we going to?"

"Anyways" There is no "s" on the end of "anyway."

"Located" as a redundancy, as in: "Where is it located?" I regularly strike out the word when used similarly by my employees or colleagues. True writing skill is getting the most across with the least amount of words.

Loss of definite articles, such as the British usage "He went to hospital." No, "he went to THE hospital."

Finally, a misspelling that is a clear indication of never having seen the correct spelling of the word. Examples I have seen recently: "Escavate" for excavate (the writer is first generation American of Hispanic origin and so I give him/her great credit for trying) and "spicket" for spigot. Enough said.

What worth ephemeral?

One of the questions with which I am repeatedly faced regards ephemeral streams, washes, and arroyos. These systems have an ordinary high water mark (a easily noted bed and bank), clearly convey flow, can be only a foot wide, but are dry most of the year, only run in response to a storm event, have no vegetation or upland vegetation only, and are written off by most consultants, regulators, and the general public as having limited to no value.

In the generally accepted classification schemes for wetlands and riparian habitats, we talk about functions and values. Functions are a fairly easily defined activity conducted by the aquatic resource, such as infiltration to the water table. Values are the socially-defined worth we give to that function or resource. My value can be different from your value, which is why we don't usually use values in the whole aquatic resource regulation scheme.

Clearly, headwater ephemerals do something. They convey water and sediment, they allow some infiltration. But what I find little of in the literature is any other function they conduct in the whole biogeochemical scheme of southwest aquatic systems (related to water quality and system function as opposed to strictly fluvial geomorphology). There is research that suggests (I don't have it at hand, otherwise I'd cite it here) that headwaters in wetter systems conduct some pollutant attenuation and act as a buffer between uplands and the perennial reaches, and there's plenty of research on biogeochemical activity in an intermittent-to-perennial stream system in AZ (Sycamore Creek) but I haven't seen any research in the southwest on strictly ephemeral systems, other than grey literature on what flood event to which the OHWM actually corresponds (Lichvar, et al, Corps of Engineers ERDC-CRREL). (Funding is probably an issue; Sycamore Creek is lovely and inviting, an ephemeral wash is not so much, what hypothesis to test, durability of equipment in the summer monsoons, etc.)

With such limited information, it is hard for consultants/regulators to have concern regarding the regulation of ephemeral systems, much less argue with clients/applicants that piping, wholesale filling, or otherwise constricting the inconveniently-located dry washes in their development is not a good idea. We've been trained to think "green is good, brown is not" in our aquatic values (inherent in Clean Water Act regulation - wetland is better and more precious).

I'd love to have a biogeochemical argument other than flooding/water conveyance as to why it is important to avoid/preserve our ephemeral headwaters here in the southwest. There's nothing I like better than to walk through a large wash in the lower Coloradan, Sonoran, Mojave, and Colorado plateau deserts on a spring day, with wildflowers abounding, birds chirping, and lizards scrambling away from the day's sunshine.

Attachment to place

I spent the last week in SoCal, and passed by a familiar landscape with which I had become intimately involved over a number of years by working on a long-term project in the area. I had become very attached to this certain landscape that is really quite trashed from anthropogenic activity, through many visits with a variety of colleagues, from hydrologists to ecologists, soil scientists to botanists. I had tears in my eyes as I drove through the area, once (and now barely) home to three endemic plant species (spreading navarretia, SJ crownscale, and threadleaf brodeia). Between the ag, previous recreational bulldozing in the waterway, sheep grazing, and sludge spreading, there is limited potential for restoration. Most of my work frustration in SoCal was related to this area, and the knowledge that this place had been a wonderfully functioning habitat for a variety of species that had perfectly adapted to the arid but occasionally very wet, alkaline but wetland, tectonically spectacular environment (the closest large fault system is around 700K years old and is one of the most active in SoCal). I really fell in love with the place, and shared that passion with some of my colleagues (a place only a mother could love).

Recently, I spoke with a coworker about the differences between where we used to work, and where we work now (somewhere in the southwest with not too much housing development, but lots of other activity). We both came from larger metropolitan areas, with precious aquatic resources in limited supply. We both realized in our conversation that it was only infrequently that we privately felt dismay and, frankly, heartbreak at the potential loss of these special places where we are now. Where we once felt this heartbreak on an all-to-regular basis, it only comes very infrequently in our current location. I'm lucky in that most of my work currently is focussed on repairing an already-impaired aquatic landscape or just dealing with legal or regulation-related minutiae, instead of watching the wholesale demolition of 200-1000 acres with no vestige of the former topography left (except perhaps in the development's name).

My significant other must have thought I was nuts, sadly proclaiming my attachment to a landscape that looks like mostly a trash dump and meth lab haven, a place only someone with intimate knowledge of its potential could love. I disparaged the sheep, the sludge, and once again, wished I'd win the lottery so I could just buy the floodplain up and return it to its former glory (along with a spa weekend, anywhere). I also realized that it's really kind of nice not to feel that heartbreak on a daily or weekly basis; that it is quite a drain on one's soul to live with that sense of landloss regularly.

Even though many of my recent conversations have centered around "no, using car bodies as riprap in designated critical habitat for endangered fish species isn't really a good idea...", I'm doing a lot of proactive, restoration-oriented activities, as well as assisting industries and local governments to buck up their maintenance and construction practices. It's satisfying in a way I didn't get to feel in SoCal. I'm glad I'm here.

Other places, other riparian habitat

Over the last month or so, it's been irrigation ditch, canal, and acequia clean-up time over the southwest. Much of the water in AZ and NM used for agriculture comes from surface irrigation supplies, especially in NM. The supply canals, ditches, and acequias are mostly unlined, so they end up supporting a wide variety of riparian and irrigation-induced wetlands. When it is clean-up time, the vegetation gets burned and the ditches get dug out. In some areas of CO that I've visited this spring (if you could call it that a month ago), even the freshwater marsh (i.e., cattails) that inhabits some of the low-lying swales gets burned.

We use these agricultural resources, and I understand the need to have a clear-flowing ditch or acequia to supply water to pastures and food/hay crops. Unfortunately, in many areas of the southwest, the acequia-induced habitat is most of what's left of the fairly vast riparian zones along the once-perennial or strongly-intermittent stream systems with occasional tenajas to supply water throughout the year. When the riparian habitat gets burned, there's that much less during the year for southwest critters to use as forage, nesting, and refuge habitat. One could argue that the riparian veg grows back, but the temporal loss still remains.

This all reminds me of the two months one summer (before the axis of evil) spent in the mountains of a central asian country, one with a very tall volcano. Like NM, the mountain villages (and the desert communities, too) have well-developed irrigation supply systems to provide their fields with water. The systems are called qanats (covered in the desert), some which have been in place for over a thousand years (or so I was told). I wasn't there during spring qanat-cleaning, but one of the practices I saw made me shudder all the same.

I was there as a tagalong with a more official research team. I was lucky enough to be looking at Neogene fluvially-derived sediments for a independent study-type project, of which there is a fairly large wedge in the local area. There are also springs in the hillsides of these sediments which support a diverse, fairly native (as far as I could tell) riparian habitat. There is little riparian along the creeks and rivers for both natural and anthropogenic reasons (primarily because the streams run big and carry lots of coarse-to-fine grained sediment - boulders to silts/clays - that blow out streamside veg). As such, the hillside springs support riparian veg that acts as forage, nesting, and refuge for the local central asian critters including these big, honking grouse-like birds that were about small turkey-sized. Each spring-fed riparian zone would house about 2-3 of these grouse, about half an acre in size. The locals would torch the zones to drive out the grouse-y birds, which they would then shoot for sport and dinner. In the area in which I was working, I recollect about three of these zones along one large stretch of hillside. There weren't very many, over all, and they housed what was left of the native habitat (probably having been grazed/flooded out centuries ago). I still think it was a shame to destroy those, even temporally, for one or two dinners, when a whole herd of goats and sheep were there to provide cheese, yogurt, milk, and meat on a very regular basis.

My other main recollection is that, like Europe, there is no place without people. I could not go about with my head uncovered, even in the mountains, as there was always the chance of coming upon a goatherd or another local, or even one of the religious police (yes, even in the mountains). I still think how lucky I am to live and work in the southwest, where I can always escape to fairly empty places, without a headscarf.

Not enough time on my hands...

The last month has been spent in plenty of overtime and lots of travel. Not much time to write then, but I now have a little space to play catch-up and put all the thoughts I've had over the last month or so to e-pen and e-paper. I've been all over the southwest this last month, from LA to Denver, from Redlands to Moab, and all sorts of places in between. It's really good to be home for awhile. I have lots to write about, so keep looking in to see what's new.