August 2011 Archives

Dennis Felgen of the National Hurricane Center told the New Scientist "We expect an active season with up to 18 named storms. We're halfway there." Irene wasn't nearly as bad as she could have been, but we got lucky.¹ From the New Scientist:

That's partially because Irene's central core took an unexpected turn between the Bahamas and North Carolina. Under the right conditions, a ring of thunderstorms can form around the central eye of the storm. This outer ring can choke off the inner eye wall and then contract, providing a surge of faster winds.

The U.S. may not be so lucky next time. Katia looks pretty scary.

Related articles

• Blog - Why Were Irene's Intensity Predictions So Off? (technologyreview.com)
• Intensity of Hurricanes Still Bedevils Scientists (nytimes.com)
• 'Gold medal forecast' of Irene's path saved lives (msnbc.msn.com)
• Don't Be Mad at the Weather Man Because Irene Fizzled [Irene] (gizmodo.com)

I knew that budget cuts hit the University of California system hard, but I never expected this:

Driven by dramatic budget cuts that will shutter four campus libraries, staffers at UC San Diego are removing roughly 150,000 books and journals from their collections by summer's end - selling volumes to the highest bidder or donating them. ("UCSD library cuts mean 150,000 books must go", by Erica Perez, California Watch, 26 August 2011)

It's bad enough when university libraries are no longer able to afford print subscriptions to scholarly journals, when they have to cancel subscriptions to journals they currently receive, and when they have to buy fewer books. It's awful when they have to close buildings and sell or donate their books, but that's what's happening at UCSD. They're getting rid of books and journals that aren't used very often as long as they can get them electronically.

Related articles

• Libraries Home - UCSD Libraries (libraries.ucsd.edu)

And the damage is not nearly as severe as it could have been. Peak winds around here were probably around 50mph (85kph). Trees are down across some roads,¹ more than 700,000 of us are without power across the state, and power may not be fully restored for a week or more. I'm in my office and I have power here, but according to alert.uconn.edu

Classes are currently scheduled to resume tomorrow, but that may change depending on how much of the campus is without power.

But I and the people I know are merely inconvenienced. The Courant reports a tragic example of what can happen when people don't take warnings seriously.

Witnesses on Sunday urged Shane Seaver, 46, and Raymond Clyman, 39, not to take their canoe into the Hurricane Irene-swollen Pequabuck River in Bristol.

The river was raging and flooded a significant portion of Bristol. A veteran Bristol police officer said the river was the worst he's seen it in 33 years on the job.

One of the men reportedly responded to people photographing the river from the bank that they couldn't pass up the once in a lifetime experience to go canoeing in the swollen river, police said.

That experience ended up costing Seaver his life. As people along the river bank photographed the pair trying to negotiate the raging river, the canoe capsized. Clyman surfaced and made it to shore, police said. Witnesses told police that they never saw Seaver surface.

Related articles

• Hurricane Irene leads to at least 22 deaths in eight states (pennlive.com)
• All Jokes Aside: Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene Responsible For At Least 21 Deaths, A Million Without Power In 8 States (bossip.com)

I'll be bringing Darwin down later this afternoon. The current track of Irene has her coming right over Hartford. The coast is under a hurricane warning. Inland, we're under a tropical storm warning. The rain is supposed to start this afternoon and get heavy overnight, with strong winds 50-70mph (85-115kph) and heavy rain most of the day on Sunday. If all goes well, I'll be bringing Darwin back on line Monday morning.

Between now and then, you can enjoy this from Leadbelly.

Related articles

• Hurricane Irene - The Endgame (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Hurricane Irene: Experts Warn 'Expect the Worst' (abcnews.go.com)

Jane uploaded several photos from our field work to iSpot, and I've added my photo of Protea compacta. I plan to upload more photos over the weekend -- if Irene doesn't knock out my power and Internet connection. You'll be able to locate all of the photos from this summers fieldwork either by following the Photographs link from the project wiki or by going directly to the Dimensions research trip 2011 page on iSpot.

I'll post this link again when I've sorted through and posted all of my plant photos that are worth posting. There will also be a separate Picasa or Flickr album that has other photos, and I'll post a link to that when it's ready for viewing.

If you've been watching the news, you know that Hurricane Irene is coming. That's her projected track (as of 6:00am today). As you can see, central Connecticut is square in her sights. She may no longer be a category 2 when she gets here, but coastal counties are under a hurricane watch, and there's a good chance she'll be packing winds close to 70mph when she visits Coventry. We're stocking up on batteries, water, and food (that doesn't need cooking) -- just in case.

Over a year ago I noted that Pennsylvania State University cleared Michael Mann of charges that he was guilty of scientific misconduct. Mann was the lead author on the famous "hockey stick" paper and has been a frequent target of those who deny that humans are causing changes in Earth's climate (links to earlier posts here).

Now I can report that he's been vindicated again. On the 15th of August the Inspector General for the National Science Foundation released a report finding no evidence of scientific misconduct and closing its inquiry. In an interview with Bloomberg, Mann had this to say:

"It was a pretty definitive finding" that the charges "swirling around for over a year" were baseless. "I was very pleased."

Mann's work has now been more thoroughly investigated than mine ever will be. To stand up under the level of scrutiny it's been subjected to is evidence that his work is exceptionally solid. Reasonable people can disagree about how policy makers should respond to human impacts on the climate. Reasonable people cannot deny that humans are having an impact.

Related articles

• Yet Another Investigation Vindicates 'Hockey Stick' Climate Scientist Michael Mann (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Michael Mann Cleared (Again) (theatlantic.com)
• Michael Mann Cleared Again | The Intersection (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Federal Investigators Clear Climate Scientist, Again (scientificamerican.com)
• Case closed: "Climategate" was manufactured (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Federal Inquiry is Latest to Clear Assailed Climate Scientist (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Hockey Stick Data Tampering Investigation Concludes [Greg Laden's Blog] (scienceblogs.com)

Here's the photo of Protea compacta that I promised to post before leaving South Africa.¹

Protea compacta from the hill behind Kleinmond, 14 August 2011

After I've had time to sort through all of the photos I took on this trip, I'll post links to several galleries. We will also be setting up a Picasa web album for the whole project. It will include photos from many of those who were part of the Protea and Pelargonium teams as well as photos from the community ecology team.

Twelve hours from now I'll be on a plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg. About 37 hours from now I'll be landing at Bradley. It's hard to believe that this trip is coming to an end. Even though I know I've been away for nearly 4 weeks,¹ we've been working so hard and getting so much done that it seems like just yesterday I arrived. So far the database for this part of the project has data from 28 species of Protea at 29 sites and 55 species of Pelargonium at 47 sites -- and there are at least 3 species of Protea and another 3 species of Pelargonium that haven't even been entered yet. And there's the collections that will happen later this week and next week in the Cederberg. By the time all is said and done, we'll have data from nearly 40 species of Protea and 70 species of Pelargonium. It's been a very successful trip.

I've even had time to run some preliminary analyses of the data, and the results look pretty interesting. We find relationships between weather variables and stomatal conductance in both genera, but they're generally stronger in Pelargonium, and we find strong relationships between leaf thickness and specific leaf area. Neither result is terribly surprising, but the comparisons between the genera (and probably among clades within each genus) promise to be very revealing. Stay tuned.

And if you're reading this on the main page of Uncommon Ground, click through to the next page to see another nice Protea flower.

Related articles

• Off to South Africa (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)

I arrived in Cape Town almost three weeks ago, on the 22nd of July. I leave for home next Monday (the 15th) and arrive at Bradley on the 16th. It's been a busy and very productive trip so far. After a day of shopping for groceries and organizing in Cape Town, we left for De Hoop. From there we went on to Baviaanskloof, took a day off to look at animals at Addo National Elephant Park, and drove back to Oudtshoorn for a night on our way to Prince Albert (through Swartberg Pass). On our way to Riversdale, where we are now, we drove through Meiringspoort. The Pelargonium team stopped to sample in Huis River Pass, while the Protea team went on through Seweweekspoort to sample Protea sulphurea.

In addition to helping with the Protea team, I've been in charge of getting data entered into the computer. At this point, I'm actually caught up. But I'm informed that there are a bunch of data sheets with the last information being entered that I'll be handed when we get to Kleinmond later today. Here are some numbers to give you a sense of how many plants we've sampled. Keep in mind that these numbers are only for completed data sheets. My guess is that there are at least a couple of hundred more individual plant measurements, at least five or six additional species, and at least ten additional sites between the two teams. We have been busy.

Protea

• 200 individual specimen records
• 20 species
• 17 sites

Pelargonium

• 333 individual specimen records
  
• 40 species
• 30 sites

If you're reading this page on the main page of Uncommon Ground,¹ be sure to click through to see photos of a couple of my favorite Protea we've encountered on this trip.

Related articles

• Off to South Africa (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)
• A young botanist at UConn (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)
• Parallel Evolutionary radiations in Protea and Pelargonium in the Greater Cape Floristic Region (darwin.eeb.uconn.edu)

You may have heard of the Myers-Briggs personality test. I remember taking a self-administered version several years ago, but I don't remember what type I turned out to be.¹ This isn't a test, but Virginia Hughes has taken some of the same ideas and identified four types of scientists.

1. The Data-Driven Nerd
2. The Theory-Driven Nerd
3. The Data-Driven Adventurer
4. The Theory-Driven Adventurer

I wish I could say that I was one of the data-driven types, but the way the types are defined they don't fit me at all. Data-driven scientists in this view of the world are those who generate a lot of data. I get a kick out of analyzing data and discovering patterns, but I'm pretty much a klutz when it comes to generating it.² So that leaves me to pick between nerd and adventurer. Here are the descriptions:

Theory-driven nerd: These are big-thinking intellectuals who build systems and make wide-sweeping hypotheses. They love giving long keynote lectures at scientific conferences. They listen to classical music in their rich mahogany offices while writing up their papers, in which they're likely to quote philosophers or drop in bad poetry.

Theory-driven adventurer: They're problem-solvers, multi-taskers, broad thinkers. They love showing off their skills and playing with big, impressive toys. Journalists like labeling them as 'rebels' and, especially, 'mavericks'.

I don't listen to classical music when writing my papers,³ and I don't have a rich mahogany office,⁴ but I think it's pretty clear I'm more of a nerd than an adventurer.

Which type of scientist are you?