Wednesday, February 06, 2008

washed out in the flood

one of my favorite books when i was little was euphonia and the flood. it was one of my dad's favorite books to read to me, along with cloudy with a chance of meatballs and alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. euphonia and the flood tells the story of a woman, her pig friend named fatly, her broom, and her boat. when the creek in front of their house floods everything, they go on a boat trip down the creek, stopping to pick up a few extra friends, and finally stopping to have a picnic at the end of the line. i liked the story when i was younger because of the phrasing, things like (if i remember correctly): "roll over, fatly" said euphonia, and the pig rolled over fatly... or: and marianne (the boat) floated along nicely, thank you (the boat always did whatever with a thank you). i like the story now because i think that it offers a good way of dealing with natural events--how to get along with them and work with them, to use them to build community and to have fun.

now perhaps this is a very inopportune time for me to be writing this, in the wake of devastating tornadoes in the south, which seem to me to be six or more weeks earlier than they should be arriving (not to mention the tornado in wisconsin in january, which is unheard of)--i'm more likely to point to a changing climate that will change severe weather potential, possibly allowing, even encouraging such extreme events. and i wish that we were doing something to deal with climate change from the front end, and also doing more to set up support structures for the back end. am i talking about enjoying life and having fun when tornadoes destroy people's homes and take people's lives? no. certainly not. but a little spring flood along a creek--is that something to live with? yes. but that hasn't been the traditional response among americans. rather, it has been to build bigger and bigger, and more expensive (and also less suitable) dams, and to control floods and rivers, decreasing the riparian flood pulses that allowed for rivers to be interesting, to meander, to deposit nutrients, to allow for the regeneration of cottonwoods and willows along the rivers i know and love so much.

people have a tendency, or desire, to live close to nature or interesting places and things, but then they have the secondary tendency to eliminate all the excitement, nature, or wildness from the very places that made them so attractive in the first place. it's all for the protection of their homes (from floods, from forest fires, from wild animals). but there's an existential and a social/political cost. the existential cost is the loss of experience where things are only slightly in our control, and the wonder and excitement that accompanies that. the social/political cost includes the insurance bailouts, the federal disaster aid, the loss of meandering streams and recharging aquifers, and the politicization of something that used to be up to nature. the existential/political cost comes when the corps of engineers decides who should have water, when and where, rather than the weather and geography determining that. as my grandfather said once, it was a lot easier to deal with a flood or a drought when it was nature's decision than some person living hundreds of miles away. he called it a real grievance. and i agree. i'd much prefer euphonia's response to a flood that arrives on my doorstep: find a canoe or boat and my favorite pig (or other friend) and go figure out where the flood came from or where it's going, and then use it meet my neighbors, to have a picnic, and maybe to get out in the world.

it's the start of second semester here tomorrow morning, and i met with my independent study student (kind of an awkward phrase) this evening, planning out some projects and readings. it should be an interesting time. and i may end up with a couple more (students who can't seem to get into classes they want). even though i'm not getting paid for it (and i'll have advised nine independent projects this year), i still feel like this is the best kind of educational experience. i took full advantage of these kinds of opportunities as an undergrad, and i remain committed even now. the other things i did today include playing basketball (want to get addicted to that), watching basketball (wish i did less of that), feeling stunned at the shaq/marion trade, and writing the first few pages of an introduction to my thesis. of course, this is the fourth or fifth different introduction i've worked on, and i haven't been happy with any of them, but this one promises to be okay. i'm using will ferrell's earth to america clip as the framework in which to introduce and discuss the clip. and i think it might work.

if i can finish the more creative introduction tomorrow and get to the literature review part, that should go much faster since i've written a literature review with some basics in my master's thesis, and the preliminary exams can also serve as good "stock writing" (like stock footage for video editing). i addressed many of the issues that will be covered while writing my exams, and they should just need to be rearranged, edited, and in a few places developed in the context of the larger project. once i get this done (it will also serve as my prospectus to defend at the end of the month), it'll be on to analysis, and that's where the scholarly life should get fun and interesting.

i would guess that many of my readers aren't entirely up on their wetland/river hydrology, and since that's a big part of my work in modeling the effects of climate change on wetlands (and because i almost became a phd student on river modeling), maybe a little primer here would be good. my job as an ecological modeler is to use systems of mathematical equations to approximate how wetland surface water dynamics (the water that you can see) change when the climate does (if it becomes hotter, and either wetter or drier in this area of the continent). what this means practically is that we have observations of actual wetland surface water depths, and we have a model that does rather well to predict those surface water depths based on weather inputs. we calibrate the model (make the observation dots line up with the simulation dots), and then we use the model to predict responses under various climate scenarios in various parts of the prairie pothole wetland region (parts of minnesota, iowa, north and south dakota, montana, alberta, saskatchewan, and manitoba).

the important thing to do when calibrating the model is to get the spring flood pulse (where water from snow melt and rain goes into the wetland) and the summer/fall drawdown (where evaporation off the water surface, drainage into the groundwater aquifer, and evapotranspiration by plants causes water to leave the wetland). getting these two dynamics to fit right (with all of the factors that contribute to them) can be tricky, but after working on this for a few years (and having previous models that have done it rather well for single basin wetlands), we're now working on papers that give results of our work. it's really quite interesting and fun, and i'm looking forward to having more time to spend on the research and presentation of our work.

in keeping with the theme of this post, the cycle of flooding and drawdown is different for different wetlands, and the wetlands end up with different classifications depending on how long they generally hold water. a permanent wetland would be a lake (and in some cases, even they dry up sometimes), but we mostly study semi-permanent, seasonal, and temporary wetlands (in decreasing order based on how long they hold water). because they have different sizes, shapes, and flows among basins, there is a very large diversity even within these types. but just as interesting, because of their size and elevation in the landscape, they also can fill up at different times of the year with rain events, and even have different times when the snow and ice melts and makes them functional wetlands. in other words, the spring flood pulse is slightly different for different places and wetlands.

in the end, climate change will cause wetlands to get more water earlier in the calendar year because a winter/spring warmup will occur earlier most of the time. but the wetlands will also dry up much faster with high temperatures and different distributions of precipitation throughout the year and in terms of number and size of precipitation events. we've published a number of papers on these topics and have studied the effect that land-use decisions and management can have on these wetlands also, so it turns in to a big interesting topic. this time around, we've even brought in three economists to help us scientists understand how climate, crop prices, and land use relate to each other and to wetlands--it promises to be quite interesting. the take home message here is that if we aren't all that interested in a destabilized or messy world (in terms of climate, food and water, human health and wellbeing, animal and plant species long term prospects, etc.), we need to do something about climate change, because we're already going to experience some of the messiness associated with these changes, and we should probably minimize it. i won't go into detail here, but i'll write some more later about this.

now, i don't make a habit of writing about my day-to-day life here, and i'm going to try to stick to that. but in order to keep the content a little more regular, i'm going to allow myself to do a little more present/personal writing, falling more into the traditional blog genre. forgive me if that's a turn-off. but i'll continue to stick with the song lyrics (or other similar media that i recommend you check out). today, you even got two (a children's book and a song). i might also write about interesting books or other things. obviously the theme of today is flooding--rivers and creeks, children's books and real people's lives (like my grandfather, and me), wetland flood pulses and the life of an ecological modeler, and music lyrics.

i remember i first heard this song when i watched monumental, a documentary about david brower, the sierra club leader, called endearingly or otherwise the archdruid. the video itself was quite interesting for a biographical documentary, but more importantly, the soundtrack was very good, and this was my favorite song. i had heard of this group before, perhaps even listened to them a little, but i went and got the album and have enjoyed it ever since. this is still my favorite song (second is slipping through the sensors), and i hope you'll enjoy it also.

when you love somebody by the fruit bats

baby, remember on the bus and my hand was on your knee.
when you love somebody, it's hard to think about anything but to breathe.
baby, i am the cub who was washed out in the flood,
when you love somebody, bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood.

when you love somebody, it's hard to figure out, it's hard to figure out
when you love somebody, it's hard to think about anything but to breathe

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Dear Brett:

Thank you for posting the Fruit Bats Lyrics. My buddy had it stuck in his head and you helped him remember. ISN'T THAT GREAT!?!

I thank it is. SO THANKS AGAIN!!

8:46 PM  

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