Environmental Science Winter Trimester Blog #1

AHS 2nd Trimester Env. Science students:

As you know, water, in general, and the Great Lakes in particular, are valuable for their life-giving properties.  You can survive for weeks without food; but, just days without freshwater....Early French explorers called the Great Lakes the "Sweet water seas," because of their expansiveness and thirst-quenching freshwater.  "Detroit" also comes from French, meaning "the strait" (a connecting channel between two large bodies of water).  Long before the French arrived in the area along with other European trappers and settlers, the Native Americans had been living successfully in the forests and along the shores of the Great Lakes for millennia.  The Anishinabe (Chippewa/Ojibwe), Wyandot (Huron), and other tribal nations hunted and gathered in the Great Lakes region prior to the arrival of Europeans and survived well on a subsistence way of life that respected the spirit of all life and nature.  Though they often changed the landscape around them to their benefit, their "ecological footprint" on the planet was far less than that of the Europeans, who viewed nature as simply something to be used for personal gain, without regard to environmental consequences.  European technologies, including gun powder, steel manufacturing, and the steam engine (and then the combustion engine) also allowed much greater transformation of the environment and increasing environmental degradation.  It is unfortunate that these Native American peoples were decimated by war, disease and exploitation by their European counterparts; and, today, their culture and history is only vaguely acknowledged in our history books.  Adapting to the new world of machines and manufacturing, Native Americans still remain throughout the Great Lakes region, often settling on reservations set aside in treaties and living as autonomous "nations" with their own governing charters and law enforcement.  The Great Lakes region is also filled with names of cities and waterways from the Native American languages.  Post a comment about a name of a city or waterway in the Great Lakes region and provide its Native American origin and meaning.  For example: "Michigan" from the Ojibwe word "mishigama" meaning "big water" or "large lake."

*(Please provide your name with your post!)

Raptor Force

Just watched a video called, Raptor Force (PBS Nature series), with my classes as a prelude to tomorrow's AHS visit by naturalists from the Leslie Science Center in Ann Arbor, who will be bringing in live raptors and speaking about their special talents--all aligned to state standards, of course!  The film got me to thinking about the raptors that have come through Southgate Anderson's 38-acre Nature Center over the years...A couple of weeks ago, we had a short-eared owl visiting during its migration southward.  Quite a thrill, as it is a state-threatened species in Michigan.  I have noted this rare bird once before in the Anderson Nature Center...We also have seen, over the past several years, a few bald eagles, a couple of ospreys, a merlin, some kestrels and resident red-tailed hawks, as well as numerous Cooper's hawks, a great horned owl, and some kettles of vultures and broad-winged hawks passing overhead during their long-distance migrations, along with a few sharp-shinned hawks; so, we have had quite the raptor display at AHS over the past decade.  These sightings are always exciting, as Southgate is located just 10 miles or so south of Detroit near the Detroit River corridor.  More urban than rural, there are still unique natural oases found in the Detroit area where one can find wonder and joy while observing the beauty of the natural world around us...But, the film also showed how video cameras were revealing the world of the raptors in more intimate detail than ever, as small cameras were fitted to the backs of falcons, hawks and eagles during flight to follow their every movement, providing stunning images of the world below at raptor speed...Remote sensing from a bird's-eye view!  Spectacular!  The inspiration humans get, and have gotten, from other living things to make our lives better is incalculable in my estimation; and, it is these interactions with other living things that enrich our human experience to depths we cannot even fathom, though I know intuitively in my soul that they are experiences I cannot live without...Will the aerokats/twin cams on kites inspire me to new heights, like birds have?  I doubt it; but, I like to think that this project brings me a little closer to the world of other living things that we share the planet with.  Hopefully, the ICCARS Project will result in lessons for humans that teach not only about remote sensing and the need to monitor our Earth systems for signs of potentially harmful change, but in lessons that continue to feed our wonder of the natural world around us and allow us--students in particular--to appreciate the intimate link between the miraculous evolutionary adaptations of nature's creatures and our ability to imagine and design new technologies that benefit humanity.  I hope we learn one day to honor our kinship with, and dependence on, other fellow "Earthlings" with more benign technologies that display not only human ingenuity and technological prowess, but ecological wisdom as well...Let us learn to soar to the Sun with our newfound wisdom, while humbly acknowledging our limitations before we lose all our feathers...

Venturing into the blogosphere

Am I in the blogosphere? I've breathed in the atmosphere...I've swam in the hydrosphere...I've climbed the lithosphere...and, I'm interconnected to life in the biosphere. So what is the blogosphere's role in my world? I guess it connects me to the human world; but, I need to speak with the rest of nature. How do I communicate with all life in the blogosphere? I'm afraid if I do not make this ecocentric blogospheric connection, my voice in the blogosphere may whither and die, for monocultures do not sufficiently feed the soul, no more than they adequately nourish the body...