Connecticut Windows On The Natural World

Dinosaur comes home to East Windsor

2007-10-02T16:54:00.000-04:00

East Windsor, CT--As discoveries of dinosaur bones go few are more distinguished. Yet, if not for folks like the local residents who gathered here at the Library at Warehouse Point on Sunday, The Bones from the Well might just as well be buried all over again.

Nancy Masters (above) stands next to the new display of casts of The Bones from the Well and a wooden sculpture of Anchisaurus that were unveiled at the Library at Warehouse Point on Sunday. The displays were dedicated in recognition of her twenty-five years of service as a member of the library's board. Ms. Masters resides at the site where the bones were first discovered nearly two centuries ago. She hopes that in addition to its new library display, East Windsor will one day have road signs commemorating its dinosaur as well. (Photo courtesy of Charlotte Foley.)

Few in Connecticut--and for that matter the world--have ever heard of The Bones from the Well. Even among paleontologists there are those who are ignorant about East Windsor’s fossils and the role they continue to play in the progress of dinosaur science.

Fragments of the forelimbs of a small plant-eating dinosaur that lived early in the of the Age of Dinosaurs, The Bones from the Well stand as the earliest verifiable discovery of dinosaur bones in North America. They remain as little more than chalk marks in the sandstone, but have been the subject of continual study from the time they were first unearthed in 1818.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 1896 that famed Yale Peabody Museum curator O. C. Marsh first pronounced the bones to be those of a prosauropod dinosaur—a delay that contributed to the bones languishing in obscurity ever since.

Despite the fact that Benjamin Silliman first published accounts of the discovery of the bones in his American Journal of Science in 1820, and that the latest in a long series of studies of the bones was published by paleontologist Adam Yates just three years ago in 2004, The Bones from the Well have until now been largely forgotten.

The glory of having made the first scientific description of dinosaurs went instead to Sir Richard Owen--an Englishman with the disdainful countenance of a mad scientist and a personality to go with it. Owen first coined the term dinosaur (fearfully great reptile) in 1842, based on fossils found in Britain.

That’s not to say that Owen, who was renowned for his ability to reconstruct previously unknown animals, as he did with a six-foot tall extinct bird known as Dinornis with nothing more than a six-inch fragment of its leg bone, doesn’t deserve recognition for many extraordinary accomplishments.

Rather, it is to argue that the impacts of many local discoveries, and the contributions of local scientists such as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock are too often unrecognized—or even unknown.

If not for the interest of folks in East Windsor, the facts about how Connecticut Valley dinosaurs shed light on the greatest beasts ever to walk the earth might not see the light of day.

Few would hear about how the dinosaur-bird connection has its roots in the valley and the work of local scientists such as Edward Hitchcock. We might not recognize that proof that birds are dinosaurs came from New Haven with studies made by former Yale Peabody Museum curator John Ostrom or that Ostrom's findings were confirmed by his successor, Prof. Jacques Gauthier, using modern methods.

Thanks to The Library Association at Warehouse Point and its supporters, such as Nancy Masters, (casts of) The Bones from the Well can be found in East Windsor again--for the first time in nearly two hundred years. If you ask, they’ll be happy to tell you the story.

Editor’s Note: Casts are also on display at Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, near the side door to the auditorium. The actual fossils are in the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, identified by the catalog number YPM 2125.

New CT Amphibians Video!

2007-06-16T11:48:00.000-04:00

We've just released a new video documentary that provides a view of Connecticut's frogs and salamanders that has never been available before! Clips and information are available at cttrips.com.

Taped entirely in Connecticut, Between Land & Water documents the lives of native amphibians over an annual season. Beginning with the thawing of vernal pools in spring, this documentary follows native frogs and salamanders to depict critical times in their life cycles such as spring migrations, calls and breeding seasons and developmental phases from larval forms to new “metamorphs” to adults.

Videotaped and narrated by Connecticut naturalist Brian Kleinman, Between Land & Water also describes aspects of vernal pool, stream and woodland habitats and amphibians’ roles in the functioning of local ecosystems.

Insightful and informative, this DVD provides a new resource for educators, libraries and museums—and for parents and families. It makes familiar calls such as those of Spring Peepers, Gray Tree Frogs or American Toads into invitations to explore native wildlife and habitats.

Visit cttrips.com to order your copy. Educators and libraries get a 25% discount.

NetSquared Innovation Award Vote

2007-04-09T09:02:00.000-04:00

CT EarthNet has been nominated for a NetSquared Innovation Award and your vote can help provide a powerful network resource to community environmental groups around our state.

CT EarthNet is proposed as a dynamic portal for connecting community-based environmental organizations in Connecticut.

The NetSquared Project is seeking projects that utilize the technologies, tools and communities of the web to create societal impact in a sustainable fashion. Winning proposals will be chosen this week based on the vote being held at its web site.

To vote, click here. You must register, which is free and quick, and vote for a minimum 5 projects. Guidelines are on this page. Voting closes Friday!

To view the CT EarthNet proposal click here.

NetSquared Project hosts include Cisco, Symantec, Yahoo, Microsoft and bright, exactly the sorts of organizations that can help us build a robust and vital environmental network for Connecticut.

Please forward this blog post to all those you feel might be interested in CT EarthNet and the NetSquared Project.

Amphibian enigmas

2007-01-30T16:43:00.000-05:00

Stamford, CT--Ask Dr. David Skelly how Connecticut’s frogs are doing and he’ll tell you there are more questions than answers.

Horrific deformities have become increasingly common among frogs over the past decade or so--to the point that missing, deformed or shrunken limbs (and worse) have now been reported among frogs in 46 states across the US. According to Dr. Skelly, no such deformities have shown up in Connecticut (except for a 1997 incident where a boy collected 60 deformed frogs from Porter Pond in Sterling), but cases elsewhere in New England ought to get our attention.

Originally a local kid who grew up fascinated by frogs, Dr. Skelly has made the search for causes of amphibian deformities a major focus of his work as an ecologist and professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Dr. Skelly spoke about his work at the Harry Bennett Branch Library in Stamford recently for members of the Mianus River Watershed Council.

“TV frogs:” A nature-horror show

Frog deformities became front page news in 1995 after a group of school kids in Minnesota went on a field trip to look at pond ecology and found nearly a dozen leopard frogs with twisted, missing or extra limbs. The sight of such monsters led many to wonder if whatever was causing frogs to grow extra legs and withered stumps might have similarly freakish effects on people.

A healthy Leopard Frog photographed in Connecticut last summer. Photo by Brian Kleinman.

Scientific research into the phenomenon has since focused on fungal infections, microparasites, human environmental impacts and pollution (i.e. “something in the water”) as possible causes. A notably innovative study pointed to several quite nasty little parasites, flatworm type things whose life cycles conjure up sci-fi imagery, and led to the worms being tagged as the leading pathogens causing frog deformities.

The parasites look for ways to crawl inside potential hosts. Once in, they lodge in the host’s internal organs. When the worms find their way into frog tadpoles, they can block normal limb development or prevent kidney function--to produce sideshow oddities biologists in Dr. Skelly’s lab dubbed “TV frogs,” infected frogs that in their wretchedness have a shock value perfect for televised news.

Were the worms acting alone?

The parasitic infection theory offers a surprisingly neat account. It’s based in part on lab tests that showed how parasitic worms can cause deformities in young frogs like those occurring in situ in wetlands around the country. Another component is that environmental effects associated with human development of natural landscapes can favor worms and increase the “parasitic burden” in impacted habitats. In may ways, it seemed scientists had their worm.

But, the theory also begs a question: why is it that in the 400 million years or so since amphibians first emerged from primordial seas to inhabit terrestrial environs frogs should all of a sudden succumb to worms trying to crawl up their cloacas (the all-purpose opening found near the base of the tail in many amphibians, birds and reptiles)?

One has to imagine that parasites have been after frogs’ guts across the ages--and that frogs learned long ago about the need to keep things watertight. As tight a case as has been made, it was hard not to wonder if some other factor or combination of factors might also present threats to frogs and amphibians.

Amphibians under pressure

As awful as six-legged frogs appear, deformities are only part of an increasingly bleak outlook for amphibian populations worldwide. So-called “cryptic” or “enigmatic” declines among significant numbers of amphibian species have been reported around the world—as well as in Connecticut.

Worldwide, over a third of amphibian species are in decline. The first global assessment of 2004 found that amphibians are “more threatened and are declining more rapidly than either birds or mammals.”

Last year, the Connecticut Wildlife Conservation Strategy found nearly half of the state’s amphibian species were in long-term, non-cyclical decline.

Is it nature’s way?

Potentially the most seductive aspect of the parasite theory is the possibility it raises that frogs’ woes are a natural phenomenon--and simply indicative of the way of the world. If you can’t figure out how to deal with worms crawling up your butt you ought to be history.

On the other hand, it’s hard to look at wholesale changes in local and global landscapes over the past one hundred, fifty, twenty-five or even 10 years and not suspect that human activities are playing a role in recent and relatively sudden declines in the health and numbers of the world’s amphibian species.

Human impacts?

Studies Dr. Skelly and his teams are making of wetlands in eastern Connecticut suggest that local declines are linked with patterns of growth and urbanization increasingly apparent in the state over the past few decades.

Development has increased the amount of impervious surfaces, such as roads and driveways, reduced or removed natural buffers and shade from around wetland areas, and led to increased pollution of wetlands by fertilizers and septic system wastes.

Dr. Skelly’s team has evidence to support associations between such impacts and increases in conditions favorable to amphibian parasites. A strong predictor of a wetland’s parasite burden, for instance, is the density of snails found within (young parasites invade snails as well, growing bigger and bigger until the snail finally bursts from the insides out). Findings suggest that the more urbanized a wetland, the more snails it supports--and the more parasites there are to infect frogs.

The “missing” link…

But does an increase in a wetland’s parasitic burden result in an increase in the rate of parasitic infection among resident frogs? In the rates of frog deformities? Are observations made in the wild consistent with findings from lab tests?

To look for answers, Dr. Skelly and his colleagues began making surveys of wetlands in the Green Mountain State, where as many as 30% of frogs were found to be deformed. Given the high rate, the Skelly team expected to find significant numbers of a worm considered to be the most likely suspect, the trematode parasite Ribeiroia, in samples they collected from affected areas.

They tested ponds in undeveloped areas, around dairy farms, in people’s backyards--even beside the offices of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s. What they found--or didn’t find--came as a bit of a shock.

There were no worms. Anywhere. There were lots of deformed frogs, but no Ribeiroia worms.

The team went back over their data to look for clues. One observation stood out. Deformities they had recorded in the field differed in an important way from the results of lab experiments with Riberoia. In Vermont ponds, frog deformities were overwhelmingly of the shortened and missing limb varieties. Those produced in lab experiments predominantly resulted in extra limb deformities.

The team’s conclusion was the only one possible: In Vermont at least, Ribeiroia was not the cause of frog deformities in the state. Something else had to be going on. Something other than worms was responsible for TV frogs found there. A hypothesis not involving Ribeiroia had to be considered.

Something in Vermont’s water?

The case of the missing worm led Dr. Skelly and his colleagues to go back and reconsider other scenarios, including those in the “something in the water” category. Of these, Dr. Skelly says that some sort of chemical agent or agents need to be considered, perhaps agricultural fertilizers or herbicides, things running off farm fields and into local wetlands.

Dr. Skelly is quick to point out, however, that he is an ecologist and since frog deformities in Vermont turned out to be something other than a parasite-host story, he’s increasingly out of his element.

For help sorting things out, the ecologist reached out to a physician, Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, a specialist in the emerging field of environmental health. Dr. Skelly hopes that by forming an interdisciplinary team of biologists, ecologists and physicians, the team might come to understand the true root causes of frog deformities--and whether any associated environmental conditions also pose risks to human health.

Moving up the food chain

Dr. Rabinowitz has in recent years been cataloging an increasing number of scientific studies about environmental effects on animal health using a web-based, searchable index called The Canary Database. (See our earlier post about Dr. Rabinowitz and the Canary Database here).

The database takes its name from the birds that coal miners once relied on to warn them of poisonous gases that accumulate in mines. If a canary fell off its perch miners knew it was time to get out--fast.

The purpose of the Canary Database is to determine whether other such “animal sentinels” might also warn of other pathogens in modern day environments. For example, the database includes numerous studies of dead crows looking for what may be clues to threats posed by emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) such as West Nile Virus or H5 N1, the so-called avian flu or bird flu.

What goes around comes around

In addition to the usual suspect water pollutants, attention is also being paid to other man made chemicals finding their way into the water. Search the Canary Database, for example, and one will find numerous studies of reproductive deformities and failures affecting alligators in Florida and elsewhere.

So-called “endocrine disruptors,” inorganic chemicals and organic compounds such as hormones and related medications, are being studied for their potential to cause effects such as those found among Florida’s alligators.

Among potential pollutants under investigation are medications and metabolic by-products of medications that are finding their way into river, stream and wetland ecosystems from waste water discharges and faulty septic systems.

In Connecticut, concerns about medications polluting the water supply led to one community-based environmental management group, The Farmington River Watershed Association, holding a free unused medication collection day in Simsbury. In one weekend, the group collected nearly 60 gallons of pills and medications that would otherwise simply have been flushed.

The Association has joined forces with local clean water advocacy groups such as Rivers Alliance to muster support for a new bill before state legislators. Proposed H.B. No. 5292, an act prohibiting the disposal of medications by hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions to public or private waste water treatment facilities, is among protective legislations under consideration in the current legislative session.

A need to know more

If the thought of TV frogs isn’t enough to make us queasy, imagine the potential for worse. While Dr. Skelly says he has yet to find a frog with limb deformities in Connecticut, what he has noted recently is perhaps more chilling.

A Green Frog photographed near Granby, Connecticut. Photo by Brian Kleinman

Dr. Skelly says he doesn’t know what to make of hermaphroditic Green Frogs he and his team have begun finding in the state. These are individual frogs with characteristics of both male and female frogs. Dr. Skelly warns that the data is provisional, but that he and his colleagues have found cases of Green Frogs with ovarian tissue in their testes, perhaps as many as 1 in 8, or up to 12% of individuals in some populations being affected.

Scientific analysis of such a finding remains a way off, but it raises important questions about amphibian health and human health--which are, for now, in greater supply than answers.

Bottom-Up Environmental Planning: CT EarthNet

2006-10-08T09:36:00.000-04:00

Traveling around Connecticut one hears similar discussions in towns from Greenwich to Thompson, Stonington to Salisbury. More and more people are expressing concerns about the pace of change in their communities. In churches and synagogues, schools, libraries and meetings of community groups, the talk is about how local surroundings have enriched peoples' lives for centuries--and about how decisions we make today will determine the sort of place Connecticut will be in the future.

This series of posts describes an idea to establish CT Earthnet, a network to support community-based environmental management in Connecticut, to foster real change from the bottom up.

The network would serve to assist community-based groups with fundamental needs, facilitate the sharing of information, learning and experience, build political support and foster collaboration toward the accomplishment of shared objectives. It aims to benefit all groups in Connecticut involved with environmental education, planning and management in ways that government cannot.

I've spent the past three years traveling the state speaking to people about local natural history. Afterwards I have a chance to listen. I've heard what people have to say about what they feel is special about Connecticut. Many recall combing freshly plowed fields for arrowheads, turning over rocks to looke for salamanders and exploring nearby woods and streams as some of their most treasured memories. All wish for the state to remain the kind of place where their grandchildren can grow up having similar experiences.

There is a dissatisfaction with our current direction and a frustration that not enough is being done to protect what we have and change the way we're planning for our communties' and the state's future, and a real recognition that changes need to be made--and quickly.

"Countless residents have come to see their towns at a crossroads. So is the state. Sprawl diminishes open lands that support agriculture, water supplies, wildlife habitat and the character of the Connecticut countryside. It isolates poor and senior citizens, and limits housing variety…" Relentless, helter-skelter development is chewing up CT landscape, The Hartford Courant, editorial, October 10, 2005.

"It’s great to live in Connecticut; we have a quality of life that is the envy of much of America…but that quality of life is threatened…"As we held public hearings in municipalities across the state, we heard from Nutmeggers...We noted that expensive infrastructure is crumbling and going unused in our core cities while being rebuilt at great expense in formerly rural areas. Connecticut is losing open space at a rate twice the national average…"Growth management should come from the bottom up, not the top down…now is the time for a bold agenda for transportation and land use in Connecticut." Groundwork’s Been Laid For Smarter Growth,The Hartford Courant, commentary,July 9, 2006. By Lewis J. Wallace, Jr.Chairman, Planning & Development Committee, Connecticut General Assembly

"A wide variety of recent reports, polls and policy documents agree that Connecticut is at a crossroads...The overriding conclusion is that Connecticut must improve how it manages its public resources if it hopes to…maintain its quality of life. All types of communities—central cities, fully-developed suburbs, newly developing suburbs, and even affluent areas—are hurt by the way Connecticut is growing…Current land use, zoning and tax laws encourage sprawl, traffic, pollution, and poor planning, and contribute to increased segregation of poor people and racial minorities in a few towns and cities." Connecticut’s Future: An Emerging Consensus, CenterEdge ProjectOffice of Urban Affairs, Archdiocese of Hartford.

"The most significant threats to Connecticut’s land and waterscapes include habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation from development; changes in land use; and competition from invasive species. "Other threats include insufficient scientific knowledge regarding wildlife and their habitats (distribution, abundance, and condition); the lack of landscape-level conservation; insufficient resources to maintain or enhance wildlife habitat; and public indifference toward conservation." Connecticut Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy, November, 2005. State of Connecticut, Department of Environmental Protection.

In light of such local environmental debates, there are questions to be asked about what is the best approach to addressing environmental issues facing Connecticut. Will the answer be in top-down governmental regulation? Is it in bottom up community-based collaborations, or some combination of both? This series of posts aim to inform consideration of such questions.

Search For The Magic Bullet (10th in a series): Eco-Theology

2006-10-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

To find a bright spot in the otherwise gloomy outlook for the environment Professor Roger Gottlieb of Worcester Polytechnic Institute argues that advocates need to look at an historic and unprecedented movement underway in religious communities around the world. It is a movement that, according to Gottlieb, may be able to accomplish things secular environmentalism cannot.

Gottileb spoke before a group of a hundred or more people from religious congregations around the state who gathered at The Sacred Trust Forum in West Hartford Wednesday night. The forum was organized by the Interreligious Eco Justice Network, a coalition of local religious communities whose mission is "...to encourage faithful living that reflects a right relationship between humankind and the environment."

In his remarks, Gottlieb (above) described ways that attitudes among religious traditions towards environmentalism are changing rapidly.

"Anne Frank wrote in her diary about how as long as people can go outside and be alone in God's natural world things will always be all right," Gottlieb said. In recent years, he suggested, there has been a growing feeling among people that things are no longer all right and a greater realization that we are about to lose many of the vital things nature provides for us.

It has been a long time coming, Gottlieb said, but now religion is also responding. Religious traditions have begun to realize the crises of health, of social wisdom and of spirituality that are following on a half century or more of human degradation of the earth and natural environments.

Eco-theologians are thinking differently about long held beliefs to reinterpret old writings, critique traditions, and be inventive about how new ideas may be applied to old ways. Where old texts such as the Bible were read to give man dominion over the earth and living things upon it, new interpretations hold that the natural world has its own ethical, moral and spiritual standing.

Similarity between the Hebrew word for earth, Adamoh, and the name given to the first man, Adam, supports the view that Adam's name serves to remind us that we are little more than the dust of the earth, not masters of it. Rather than giving the garden to Adam, God's intent was that man should serve as steward for His creation.

Even more inventive interpretations are being put forth. Gottlieb described how some Jewish scholars are extending ideas about eating kosher to nourish one's body and soul to standards for environmental protection. To them, "SUV's are no more kosher than a ham sandwich," Gottlieb said.

"The idea that the human spirit is fundamentally different [from nature] is being questioned," Gottlieb said. New ideas say that nature matters, leading to changes in religious traditions' attitudes not only toward nature, but also towards who we are as people. "There is some dimension of ourselves that can feel an affinity, a kinship, with the rest of the world."

Gottlieb points out that the environmental justice movement in the US, "the idea that the way we treat nature connects with people and the way we treat people connects with nature," grew out of conferences convened by members of religious communities in the 1980s.

"It led to a kind of politics, a wonderful synthesis about environmental justice, where we now see that human justice, racial justice, civil justice and environmental justice are all one. It's not a special interest group brand of liberalism; it's about all of life."

It is a movement that Gottlieb argues has distinct contributions to make to meeting the challenges of modern day environmentalism. Religious tradition can be persuasive in ways nothing else can. It has a language of sin used to "express a certain depth, an ultimate kind of crime" that is compelling, a "rootedness," or a structure between government and family, and is a means for looking seriously at otherwise scary, intimidating problems and eventualities--attributes that have proven uniquely effective at getting people to change their behavior.

Perhaps most important is that religion "is a source of information about the positive values about alternate ways of life." According to Gottlieb, eco-theology offers an opportunity to inspire people for the greater good--rather than browbeating them with gloom and doom imagery often associated with secular environmentalism.

Grasslands & Green Snakes

2006-09-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Connecticut is home to a variety of snakes that are striking in appearance, such as the Eastern Milk Snake, Northern Ringneck, Worm Snake, Northern Redbelly, and the Smooth Green Snake. For the past two seasons, Brian Kleinman has been capturing images of these remarkable reptiles, working under the supervision of leading herpetologists and with the appropriate state permits.

Brian Kleinman holds the Smooth Green Snake he came across during a visit to a grassland area in Rhode Island last week. Photo by Brian Kleinman.

"After two summers of searching I finally found a smooth green snake for the DVD!" he wrote in an email, referring to the two videos about Connecticut amphibians and reptiles being produced by Perry Heights Press using scenes he has taped of the animals in the wild. The videos provide remarkable glimpses of the life cycles of local frogs, toads, salamanders, turtles, snakes and lizards and comprise one of the most remarkable portrayals of native wildlife available.

The Smooth Green Snake Opheodrys vernalis has declined in southern New England over the past half century according to Amphibians and Reptiles of Connecticut by Michael Klemens, State Geological and Natural History Survey, 1993. It "favors open, unforested habitats including meadows, pastures, fens, coastal grasslands [and] mountaintop 'balds.'" Today, they are most common in our region in southeastern Connecticut, into Rhode Island.

The decline in green snakes mirrors a decline in grasslands in general in Connecticut over the past century, as "agricultural lands was abandoned and reverted to deciduous forest," says Klemens. Many wildlife species, from plants to invertebrates to reptiles and birds, that were characteristic of native grassland communities have come under increasing pressure as habitat has been lost.

Like the Green Snake, their "survival is closely tied to land management practices which maintain fields and meadows," says Klemens. "Open fields and meadows in state parks, forests, and game management areas that contain smooth green snakes should be maintained..."

By protecting grassland habitats populations of these remarkably beautiful snakes will be protected, along with entire communities of wild things adapted to surviving in Connecticut's open field ecosystems.

Search For The Magic Bullet (9th in a series): Community Greenways

2006-09-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

Chaplin, CT--Rusty Lanzit is in his element here beside the Natchaug River where it runs past his Christmas tree farm. "There's something about living along the water that all of us can appreciate," he says. "Clean air and clean water are what people want."

He should know. As First Selectman of Chaplin, Rusty (above) has long been a leader in efforts that communities in eastern Connecticut are undertaking to protect local rivers such as the Natchaug and its headwaters, Bigelow Brook and the Still River.

Seven towns, Ashford, Chaplin, Eastford, Mansfield, Union, Windham and Woodstock marked a milestone earlier this summer when the river system became an officially designated Connecticut Greenway, the latest of about forty natural areas within Connecticut to be given special status by the state.

A view of the Natchaug River in late summer (above). The state describes greenways as corridors of open space that may protect natural resources, features, landscapes, views or historic sites and serve to connect protected areas or biotic corridors.

For a municipality to submit an open space corridor for designation it must formally endorse the greenway with a resolution or compact, include it in its Plan of Conservation and Development and agree to undertake improvements. Designation earns communities "bonus points" that can give them a leg up when applying for state grants for projects such as improving trails or habitat or acquiring open space within a greenway system.

Rallying points

While mustering votes for resolutions can be a daunting task, in the Natchaug watershed the process worked to rally support for community-based environmental protection, tapping what many describe as a groundswell. "Development pressure has made [land use] a front burner issue," Rusty says. "Our goal [for the greenway in Chaplin] is to protect and preserve it--and the time is right. We have all our boards involved."

"There has been a tremendous amount of grassroots support for protecting these resources," says Holly Drinkuth, conservation commission liason for the Green Valley Institute. Holly was the point person on the greenway application and coordinated the towns' efforts to protect the watershed for the past five years. "The designation creates a rallying point and serves to let people know what a wonderful resource we have in the river and what they can do to become part of its protection. Citizen involvement has been terrific."

Holly is well known in eastern Connecticut for her efforts to inform community land use boards and commissions here about landscape-level conservation. On any given day, Holly and her colleague, Steve Broderick, co-director of the Green Valley Institute, may be out surveying local forests, rivers, even roadway storm drain sedimentation around the Quinebaug Highlands region.

By night they can often be found at meetings at one town hall or another, sharing with people who volunteer to serve on local planning, zoning or conservation commissions what they have learned about managing and preserving the rural, pristine nature of the Quiet Corner.

Steve Broderick and Holly Drinkuth (above) pointed out features of the Natchaug River Greenways corridor on a map outside Ashford Town Hall on Thursday.

Waypoints

Community plans to protect the Natchaug watershed began taking shape in 2001 when local leaders such as Rusty and the Green Valley Institute set out to study conservation needs in the Quinebaug Highlands region. "We began to wonder how do we maintain quality forest land?" Holly says. "The quality of the water in rivers in northeastern Connecticut has always been high so another question was how do we protect the quality of our water systems?"

In 2004, Green Valley Institute partnered with The Nature Conservancy Connecticut to identify essential natural resources in the region and conservation tools that could be used to protect them. Based on findings of its staff scientists in the northeast region, The Nature Conservancy offered answers to key questions. "We began to recognize that you need to protect the rivers that run through the forests to keep the whole system working," says Nature Conservancy Connecticut Chapter Director Lise Hanners.

"What's critically important is that conservation plans are based on science," says Steve. "That's where The Nature Conservancy's ecologists have been so helpful. It's great to talk about protection, but what does that mean? That's what The Nature Conservancy and their scientific resources have been helping us to understand."

Lise Hanners (The Nature Conservancy Connecticut), Holly Drinkuth (Green Valley Institute), Leslie Lewis (Connecticut DEP/Greenways) and Steve Broderick (Green Valley Institute) at "Diana's Pool" a popular swimming hole on the Natchaug River in Chaplin.

Community-based: going beyond governmental regulation

Since the state officially designated the Natchaug greenway in June, the real work of protection has begun. "In the end it's up to the local communities to assume responsibility and take the lead on protecting the greenway," says Steve.

The reality is that the state designation by itself isn't enough to protect a natural resource or corridor. "It's voluntary," says Leslie Lewis, Greenways Coordinator for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. "It has no teeth. There are no 'shalts,' only 'shoulds.' I believe the real benefit is that designation can serve as a blueprint for plans of conservation and development without the negative impacts of government overregulation."

"There are opportunities for towns to integrate ideas in the plans with their zoning and conservation work," says Holly. "There is some potential to put in additional restriction such as setbacks, but the real opportunity is for towns to work together to adopt similar strategies and to promote informed, voluntary stewardship."

The idea is to provide people with relevant information, to inform landowners along the river about best practices such as maintaining buffer zones that help cleanse runoff and provide shade that helps keep river water from getting too warm. By fostering a stewardship ethic, a community-based approach can succeed where government regulation often fails.

"The hope is that the guy who has a pile of car batteries in his yard will be made to feel like the outlier," says Steve, "and that we can create an environment where peer pressure and community pressure work to protect natural resources on a voluntary basis.

"And that's a do-able thing, but you have to keep up the drumbeat. It's a continual process of outreach and awareness building. Outreach is a key part of a successful plan."

Steve's insights (and optimism) comes from seeing the results of the outreach work he and Holly have already done, and the knowledge that environmental stewardship has long been a part of the culture of eastern Connecticut. Standing at Diana's Pool, a spot along the Natchaug where legend has it that the forlorn sobs of a broken-hearted Chaplin woman "who jumped to her death in the icy waters" can still be heard, Steve talks about the real tradition of environmental conservation that exists here.

"This is an area that has its roots in private citizen conservation," says Steve. "It's a favorite spot that has been protected since the 1930s, when James L. Goodwin (for whom the state forest and conservation center in Hampton is named) bought the property downriver from an old mill and held it until the state could acquire it. Now we have an opportunity to continue that legacy."

Search For The Magic Bullet (8th in a series): Protecting Private Lands

2006-08-22T05:57:00.000-04:00

Brooklyn, CT—As a forester and conservationist, Steve Broderick knows better than anyone that it will be private owners who decide the future of much of Connecticut’s remaining undeveloped landscape, especially grasslands, farmlands and forests. He’s also smart enough to know better than to try and tell anyone what they should do with their land.

“The only ‘should’ is that [private landowners] should make informed decisions based on a knowledge of what’s out there on the ground,” Steve says. He’s learned over the course of his career with the UConn Cooperative Extension System about the power of providing people with essential information--and letting them make up their own minds about what to do with it.

You have to be in things for the long haul to be a forester. There’s a place for passion--and talking to Steve you come to know that he is passionate about conserving the rural nature of towns here in the Quiet Corner--but growing trees, and the work of protecting private land from development, requires patience.

Forester Steve Broderick (above) stands beside a sign commemorating the memorial forest he helped establish through his work with the property’s former owner, the late Lester Williams of Brooklyn.

Outwardly, Steve is controlled, thoughtful, articulate. He has an easy smile and easier laugh--qualities that make him unimposing, trustworthy and quietly effective. He is easy to listen to and many do, from individual landowners to conservation commissioners, to local environmental organizations. So many that since 2001 Steve and his colleagues at the Windham County Extension Center, Ruth Cutler and Holly Drinkuth, have facilitated the protection of 5,156 acres of privately owned land in eastern Connecticut.

The Process Of Protection

Owners can choose to protect lands by selecting from a number of different legal tools. Conservation easements that extinguish rights to subdivide and develop a parcel are among the most common tools used to protect family land. Alternatively, owners may choose to sell or give land to a town, state or an environmental organization and require it be maintained as they wish.

“When you own land you own a bundle of rights,” Steve says, “like a bundle of sticks. You may have one right to hunt, one to fish, one to mine gravel, one to grow and harvest timber, a right to subdivide and another to develop. As a landowner, you can pull one or two of these rights out of your bundle and extinguish them--burn those sticks in a fire. You still own the other rights. Nothing else has changed. A conservation restriction takes out rights to subdivide and develop and extinguishes these rights. All others, including how the land will be managed, remain.”

As a conservation strategy, private and family land protection is one that holds tremendous potential. According to Steve, 85% of Connecticut forestland belongs to individuals and families. Decisions the owners make about whether to conserve or develop their property will go a long way toward determining the character of the state in years to come.

In reality, private land protection is a process that often takes twists and turns and can get thorny. “No two situations are alike,” Steve says. “We’ve had success stories and heartbreakers, where somebody really wanted to do it, but the family couldn’t agree. That’s the way it is.” As much as a landowner may want to see their land protected, their retirement needs or wishes to provide for heirs often make it impossible for them to pass up gains to be had by selling to developers.

“Some people just can’t afford to,” says Steve. “I worked with a fellow who has been a hard working man his whole life. His job had no pension plan. He’s sitting on a beautiful hundred-acre farm--and this is his 401K. You can’t expect somebody like that to give land away, give development rights away. We have funding programs, but there is never enough to go around.”

Clearing The Path

“Half of landowners intend to protect some or all of their land from development,” Steve says, referring to results of a survey he conducted, ”but experience shows only a tiny fraction of landowners do it. Why? Lots of reasons. Some of it is money and family, some don’t get around to doing it, but the big reason is that protecting land is very complex. It’s not straightforward. It’s intimidating. Owners don’t know where to turn or how to decipher information.”

As a result, opportunities to protect a parcel come and go quickly. It’s essential to connect with landowners when they decide to sell and want to understand their options. “It one of those ‘teachable moments,’” Steve says. “People have to be ready. When they are they have to know where we are and how to get hold of us.

“That’s what got us involved with education. We offer a workshop called ‘Protecting Family Lands.’ It’s designed for people in this mode of ‘I’d like to know my land will be protected, but I don’t have a clue what to do.’ We also have a publication with questions owners can ask themselves to begin a protection plan and things they need to think about.

“We talk about tools for protecting land, bundles of rights, what a conservation easement is, and end with tax breaks and funding programs for people who want to protect their land.” Recently, they added a course for real estate brokers. “Other than owners, the development community has the most impact on the landscape. We can’t ignore them.

“We teach realtors to use natural resource maps to get a feel for environmental concerns. We teach about protection and development options from finding a conservation buyer, to writing conservation restrictions, on down to so-called cluster subdivisions that protect what my friend [conservation attorney] Fritz Gahagen calls the ‘integrity if not the entirety.’”

Listening To What Owners Want

Steve’s goal is to help people make their own, informed decisions. He offers assistance in navigating the process, but owners set the terms. “We ask owners ‘who do you want to see own the land when it’s protected?” Steve says. “Do you want to own it with reserved life use? Do you have heirs that you want to own the land? Would you rather a conservation organization own the land or would you rather your town or the state own it?”

In establishing the Lester Williams Memorial Forest, great care was paid to honoring the owner’s legacy, and his stewardship ethic. Together with The Wolf Den Land Trust, a subsidiary of a non-profit association, The Eastern Connecticut Forest Landowners Association, a plan was developed based on the owner’s legacy.

“Lester was a farmer, the First Selectman of Brooklyn at one point, and President of the Brooklyn Fair,” Steve says. “He cut wood on the property and sold pulp to the local mill. He was also an outdoorsman and ardent bird watcher. The Land Trust developed a profile of how Lester Williams managed his land and why. What motivated him? Then, a forester was hired to develop a stewardship plan built around Lester’s interests so that the property will be managed the way Lester would have wanted it managed.

“Every landowner is different, so every stewardship plan [written by the Wolf Den Land Trust] is based on a combination of two things: the particular forest and ecosystems on the ground, and the goals and interests of the owner. These are matched to create a good plan.”

Leading Change At The Community Level

It’s easy to see that helping protect land like Lester Williams’ is work that Steve finds personally rewarding. When asked he’ll recall other examples he cherishes. There’s the parcel in Thompson that preserves a bog and its unique Black Spruce tree and pitcher plant community, a case he worked on with Dick Booth of the Windham Land Trust.

There is the 140-acre former Boy Scout camp that straddles the line between Eastford and Woodstock that is now a park the two towns steward together. “It’s a beautiful property,” Steve says, “which is, in fact, a key part of a much larger block of protected open space. It’s just a stone’s throw from Yale Forest to the north, and the Natchaug State Forest to the south.

“It was a very nice success. The two towns and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection each came up with a third of the purchase price. The Nature Conservancy paid the closing costs and survey costs. It was a true partnership.”

Rather than dwell on individual successes, however, Steve keeps the bigger picture in view. “The scarcer land gets the more concerned people are,” Steve says, “but it’s hard to get people to perceive landscape fragmentation, a more nebulous issue, as the problem. The challenge is to mobilize them to protect land resources.”

In addition to working with landowners, he also works to inform communities about setting conservation priorities. Just as his experience can inform owners about their land protection options, he sees a need to inform communities about protecting parcels of larger, regional importance. Fit together like pieces of a puzzle, local decisions can protect wildlife or biotic corridors also imperiled by the pace of development in Connecticut today.

“We also work with land use commissioners at the municipal level. In Connecticut, responsibility for planning and regulating growth is delegated to towns,” Steve says. He works with the Green Valley Institute to provide information towns in eastern Connecticut along the Quinebaug-Shetucket National Heritage Corridor can use to make land use decisions.

“We’re working to make sure that people have good information on which to base their land use and environmental decisions, whether you’re talking about an individual landowner, a town, a land use board or commission, or whomever it may be.”

It seems there isn’t a part of land protection that Steve isn’t thinking about or involved with. “My role is that of a front man who gets things rolling,” says Steve. “I sweep the media. I bring in landowners who have interest, give direction and education. I connect them with conservation commissions or land trusts. Those folks get the deal done while I go on to the next case.”

Heat bugs: all the buzz

2006-08-04T17:02:00.000-04:00

"Heat bugs" may never show up on Google's list of top keyword searches, but in the last week we've had more hits on a post about cicadas we put up last summer (Heat bugs: the sound of money) than any topic to date.

It's typically on hot summer days that male cicadas produce their raspy, buzzing mating calls, earning this group of insect families their nickname, heat bugs. Given the steamy weather that came with the Bermuda High that stalled over Connecticut this past week it's easy to imagine why so many people were searching the net for information about them.

Above: The recently shed exoskeleton, or carapace, of a cicada or heat bug.

Cicadas come in two varieties, the so-called annual cicadas, generations of which generally emerge from the ground as nymphs, shed their skin, mature to adults and mate every couple of years, and the periodical, (also known as locusts) which have generations that emerge all at once, together, in cycles of between 13 and 17 years. Cicadas are harmless, unless you're a plant, in which case they may well try to suck the juice out of you.

A great site with lots of (useful?) information about cicadas (e.g. don't eat 'em because they're loaded with mercury!) is Cicada Mania by Dan Century.

One of the best sites for information about periodical cicadas is The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Insect Division site. Two UConn researchers, John Cooley (above left) and David Marshall (above right) and Mark O'Brien are the authors of the site. Cooley and Marshall were featured in Cicada Subtleties, an article about periodical cicadas posted on Science News Online.

So, the next time you're sweating out another heat wave and trying to figure out what makes heat bugs call on hot days, try visiting a couple of these sites. And if you find yourself really getting into it, check out UConn Professor Chris Simon's site for the skinny on cicadas and their broods' cycles around the world.

Heat, Humidity & Mushrooms

2006-07-23T11:57:00.000-04:00

Hot and humid weather is good for at least one thing: mushrooms. In the age of air conditioning some might lose touch with goings on during the dog days of summer, but for those of us who rely on open windows and thundershowers for cool air it's easy to recognize when mushroom hunting season in Connecticut has arrived.

After several nights of sticking to the sheets the boys and I looked for a place to hunt mushrooms. We decided to walk the Weir Pond Trail at the Weir Farm National Historic Site in Ridgefield and Wilton (below). The trail rewarded us with a fungi bonanza, the nearby woods strewn with spectacular mushrooms such as Red Chanterelle (above) and representatives of many mushroom families.

Armed with a dog-eared copy of "Common Mushrooms of New England", a wonderful guide and key to local fungi written by John C. Cooke and published by and available through the Connecticut College Arboretum, we did our best to try and sort out those that we might.

On our way in, at the margin where what were open farm fields when 19th century American painter J. Alden Weir lived here have yielded to deciduous forest, we found what seemed to be a Meadow Mushroom (Agaricus campestris), that grows in pastures (above).

Among nearby trees were other mushrooms, such as the one pictured above, that seemed from the scale-like patches on its cap to be an Amanita, perhaps Amanita pantherina, commonly called the "Panther" amanita, or Amanita virosa, with the ominous sounding common name of "Death Angel".

Even to our amateur eyes it was easy to pick out the many clusters of Red Chanterelles (Cantharellus cinnabarinus) (above) we found growing on the forest floor around the trunks of trees further down the trail. Bright orange, they stood out among the green ferns and grasses from at least ten feet away.

Perhaps most abundant in the forest were white and tan forms of milk caps (Lactarius piperatus) (above) that show funnel shaped caps that are depressed in the middle and have long gills underneath (below). The more of them we found, the more it began to rain, at time causing the lens of our trust Canon ELPH camera to fog over.

We found mushrooms similar in form to the milk caps, but showing different colorations, in areas around the forest floor. There were many Red Russula (Russula emetica) (below) scattered widely about along with groups of Green Russula (Russula virescens) off to one side of the trail where it approached Weir Pond (second photo below).

Along with the "gilled mushrooms" we found two varieties of "pored-fleshy mushrooms." These are distinguished by the pored surface they have beneath their caps rather than gills.

The first of these we found was a sort of two-colored bolete, with a red cap and stem (above), but a distinctly yellow pore surface (below).

Another tan-colored pored mushroom found nearby looked to us to be Bitter Bolete (Tylopilus felleus) (below).

Also in the area where the trail approached the pond, where grasses patches exploited areas not yet fully filled by trees, we found coral mushrooms, named for the way they resemble marine corals, of the genus Clavaria (below).

Many downed tree trunks decomposing on the forest floor provided ideal conditions for bracket fungi.

We found varieties of polypores that looked to us like False Turkey-tail (Stereum ostrea) (above),

and Chicken-of-the-Woods (Polyporus sulphureus) (above).

Of course, there were two mushrooms that we couldn't even guess at. One is common, and probably familiar to most, but had us perplexed (below). Yellow mycena, perhaps?

The other was a remarkable violet color, small and relatively squat, and apparenly just emerging (below).

Toward the end of the hunt, after a heavy summer rain had come and gone and cooled things down a bit, we were rewarded with two unexpected finds. The first was to the right of the trail on our way back from the pond, we found several specimens of a plant known as Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) just emerging (below). A ghostly white plant known for its lack of clorophyl, it could easily be mistaken for some kind of fungi.

In searching for more we also encountered several apparently newly metamorphosed Spring Peeper frogs (below) barely one-quarter of inch long. They were so small they almost seemed like some sort of jumping flea, but were already such accomplished hoppers they could launch their tiny bodies twelve inches or more in a single bound.

A truly remarkable trip we might have missed out on had we been spending our summer in the alternate reality that comes with cool, dry, conditioned air being blown into tightly insulated spaces.

A Forest Buried Alive

2006-07-17T16:30:00.000-04:00

Newport, Oregon—Beach sands come and go. Along the central Oregon coast recently, unusually low tides scoured beaches down to their lowest sand levels in years, perhaps centuries. So much was removed that remains of ancient forests, buried alive by building sands thousands of years ago, once again saw the light of day.

Fossil tree root masses such as those exposed at Moolack Beach, Oregon, (above) tell tales of ancient seaside "ghost forests" that thrived here thousands of years ago.

In Connecticut, we’re accustomed to tides and wave action reshaping beaches and sand spits at places such as Bluff Point State Park’s Bushy Point, but the erosion and pace of change along Oregon’s central Coast has been several orders of magnitude greater.

During our summer vacation, we found the Marine Gardens beach at Otter Rock, Oregon, practically scraped bare, down to the marine sediments underlying it, rocks normally buried beneath several feet of medium-grain sand. Finding it in such a state, with its headlands significantly eroded in the past six months and ordinarily abundant tide pool fauna such as anemones forced further seaward, was distressing.

“It looks like some unusual erosion is going on--erosion that has not happened much in 4,000 years,” geologist Roger Hart of the Oregon Dept. of Geology and Mineral Industries and an expert on central coast tree remains told the Newport News-Times.

At many beaches here, from Moolack Beach (above) to neighboring Beverly Beach, to others further north, such as Neskowin Beach, recent erosion has exposed very large root masses and great tree trunks, particularly where creeks excavated even deeper. Low “minus tides” of –1.4 feet resulted in extraordinary views of these prehistoric fossil tree parts and tree bases, some as much as thirty or forty-feet across.

The roots, stumps, trunks and cones are between 4,100 years old (based on radiometric dating) and 2,500 years old (based on archaeological studies of Native American sites around Newport’s Yaquina Head). They are the remains of what were great seaside forests of Sitka Spruce trees, titans of the primordial Northwest rainforests and ancestors of Sitka Spruce that dominate coastal forests today.

Following the retreat of glacial ice, forest trees had spread over Oregon’s Coast Range Mountains and down to the Pacific coast. Roger Hart says that about 4,000 years ago, vast amounts of sand (which Yaquina Head reveals to have been piled hundreds of feet high) came to quickly penetrate the forests and bury them alive. Dunes grew to entomb trees so completely they were protected from decay by oxygen and bacteria and preserved for the millennia.

Hart and fellow researcher Curt Peterson have reported 14 fossil sites and 520 fossil stumps or root masses. They describe a three-part process of forest advance, sand burial and erosion/exposure. The cycle began long ago with the seaward advance of the forest; was followed by its burial and preservation by deep deposits of beach and/or dune sands; and brought full-cycle with the removal of the sand, and re-exposure of the forest, by wave action and the landward erosion of coastal headlands today.

It’s hard to imagine that geologic change can sometimes be so quick as to bury giant trees alive, but the pace at which surficial features along the Oregon coast have been eroded in the past six months reveals how such events can sometimes be as swift as they are catastrophic.

CT Wildlife Conservation Strategy

2006-06-04T07:34:00.000-04:00

Looking for the post about Connecticut's new wildlife conservation strategy that Peter Applebome wrote about in his column in Sunday's NY Times? You can scroll down to it (second post below) or click on the link above.

Read the other posts in our "Search for the Magic Bullet" series for more about environmental advocacy and community-based environmental protection.

Back To The Devonian Seas

2006-05-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

The boys and I had a chance to hunt for fossils in what 400 million years ago were mud flats beneath a shallow Devonian sea that have since become known as the Catskill Delta, courtesy of Fairfield Woods School teacher Vinny Carbone and University of Bridgeport geologist Dr. John Nicholas.

Vinny is well known to Fairfield students and parents for his love of the natural world, from the stars in the night sky, to local minerals, to the marine fossils of New York State. His passion translates into a magical ability to engage his students and to fill school buses with kids and parents for one of his now legendary field trips. Vinny and Dr. Nicholas, better known as Doc Rock, have been leading trips to this site in the Catskills area for years now, carrying on a tradition Doc Rock says began in the 1950s, when he was a student at NYU, and before modern geological concepts about continental drift, seafloor spreading and plate tectonics were fully accepted.

Doc Rock (above) pointed out a relatively narrow band of shale in a hillside with many different stripes of sedimentary layers and we quickly went to it. Clad in work gloves and safety goggles, the group of roughly 50 kids and parents were rewarded with many fine fossils of marine animals that existed not long after life began its great expansion in the oceans of the deep past. (Photo by Vinny Carbone.)

There were all sorts of clam-like shelled brachiopods (below), horned corals, and crinoids. Once we found a good spot the boys and I pulled out fossil after fossil in a sort of gold rush frenzy. (Photo by Vinny Carbone.)

A separate horn coral fossil shown to the right of one of the blocks of fossils we found (below). The boys decided to donate another particularly fine specimen of horn coral to a seventh grader named Aaron who had yet to find one, and had earlier contributed several of his best brachipods to our buckets.

A great day, made memorable by the experience of unearthing the remains of animals from a sea that disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago, yet still appear to be fresh from the mud.

Thanks Vinny and Doc Rock!

Search For The Magic Bullet (7th in a series): Where The Wild Things Are

2006-05-03T08:54:00.000-04:00

It was amazing to witness. Connecticut's leading experts on all things wild taking turns to report on the status of the state's wildlife--and what could be our last chance to preserve nature pushed to the brink.

Some 250 people, including wildlife biologists, government agencies, environmental groups, teachers, students and the public, came to UCONN Storrs yesterday for the First Annual CT Wildlife Conservation Conference. The day capped a multi-year team effort to answer a challenge from the US Congress to assemble our knowledge of the state's wild species, population trends and threats, research needs and tools and implement a new conservation plan that addresses urgent conservation needs.

For anyone with even a passing interest in wild things, the knowledge team members shared was both inspiring and stunning. Together, they told a story of the state's remarkable natural diversity with a passion that was often starkly revealing. Many habitats that have for centuries enriched our lives, and species that have long symbolized the best of wild Connecticut, now teeter on the brink of extirpation from the state, if not extinction from the earth.

On the dais were a team of biologists and conservationists who worked to prepare Connecticut's Wildlife Conservation Strategy. From left, Tom Savoy, CT DEP, spoke about marine fisheries; Chris Elphick, UConn, landbirds; Milan Bull, CT Audubon, waterbirds; David Wagner, UConn, invertebrates; CT State Environmental Conservation Police Officer; Bill Hyatt, CT DEP, inland fisheries; Jenny Dickson, CT DEP, bats and small mammals; Julie Victoria, CT DEP, freshwater mussels; Steve Broderick, UConn, community outreach; Hank Gruner, Science Center of CT, reptiles & amphibians; Chet Arnold, UConn/CLEAR, land use education and research. Not pictured: Paul Rego, CT DEP, large mammals; Nancy Murray, CT DEP, natural diversity database; Karen Terwilliger, challenges & opportunities.

Current Trends

Chris Elphick noted that one in three of Connecticut's landbird species for which data is available have declined over the past 35 years. Once familiar birds such as the Wood Thrush, Baltimore Oriole, Scarlet Tanager and Woodcock are a few that should now be given top priority in conservation efforts. Milan Bull spoke about how waterbirds such as loons, grebes, ducks, rails, herons, bitterns--key indicators of wetland health--are also of greatest conservation need.

Jenny Dickson described how bats are showing dramatic population drops, with seven of the eight local species in need of conservation. Hank Gruner spoke powerfully about the diversity of Connecticut reptile and amphibian species, the genetic diversity represented by several salamander species and hybrid salamanders, and the unique challenges presented by the conservation needs of reptiles such as bog turtles, wood turtles and timber rattlesnakes. Nearly half of the state's amphibian species show evidence of population declines, while more than half of native reptiles are of conservation concern.

David Wagner made an impassioned plea that invertebrates be given greater recognition by talking about the plight of tiger beetles at the ends of successional habitat continuums in Connecticut. He spoke about how tiger beetles have occupied the state's sand plains since the Holocene, a time at the end of the last Ice Age when Glacial Lake Hitchcock drained and left areas such as Windsor with wind-driven sand dunes 40-50 feet tall. Today, some species of tiger beetle cling tenously to existence in a few populations as small as a few hundred individuals. Wagner noted that glacial sand plain ecosystems have evolved into highly unique systems, devoid of plants, where invertebrates wage fierce struggles to survive, but are now among the state's most endangered habitats.

Wagner gave efforts to conserve butterflies a "D," noting that 25% of local species are now imperiled or gone altogether. As for the decline of honeybees, a "keystone taxa" for pollination services, the situation is critical given that many natural communities, as well as farmers, are dependent on bees for pollination of wild plants and domestic crops. Wild bee populations disappeared decades ago and pollination is now dependent on domestic hives and beekeepers.

Mobilizing Change

Following the presentations, Karen Terwilliger, who consulted with the team and the state on the development of the plan, led a discussion of key issues. "The greatest threats include habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and habitat degradation," said Terwilliger, with the aggressive pace of development in the state over the past several decades a culprit in each. "I also heard from practically everyone that there is currently not enough information available about conservation needs, and that we need to look for commonalities as we seek to gather more."

New approaches must be based around landscape-scale planning, such as the Biodiversity Mapping Project that the Farmington River Watershed Association has undertaken on behalf of its communities, based on research by biologists such as Michael Klemens and Hank Gruner. The project is featured in the book, "Nature-Friendly Communities, Island Press, 2005.

Steve Broderick suggested that putting such information about key conservation areas in the hands of local conservation commissions is essential to any plan to protect larger scale wildlife corridors. "They are among the least appreciated and under supported groups in the state," said Broderick. "We need to do more for them than print brochures. They need our ongoing support. We need to be there with them, in the meetings, when important decisions are made."

Chris Elphick spoke about the utility of tools such as GIS satellite images and modelling, methods which require fewer data points to make projections about land use and habitat changes, species distribution and population trends. Together with the progress the CLEAR project is making in using satellite images to track land use and land cover changes to inform decision making, GIS modelling could be invaluable to addressing informational needs.

Elphick also made a plea for greater cooperation between groups. "Coordination is critical," said Elphick. "There may be many agendas, but we all share one goal."

A Call To Action

"The time for us to act is short," Jack Barclay, Director of The Wildlife Conservation Research Center at UConn pointed out in his remarks, "ten years or less. We must make a commitment to implement a cohesive strategy to preserve ecosystems and all things wild.

"Can we achieve the levels of understanding and success of the environmental heroes of the previous century, such as Teddy Roosevelt, Aldo Leopold and Gifford Pinchot? I call upon each one of you to participate. We must listen, learn, care, take action and speak out. All voices are essential. We must be heard on all levels. The public needs to hear from us. The legislature needs to hear from us. We must give them the details and tell them with passion and meaning."

One night during salamander migration

2006-04-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

Early spring is a time when salamanders and amphibians wake from winter slumbers and migrate to upland wetlands where they lay their eggs. Once overnight temps get above 38-degrees and soaking rains come, you can expect local salamanders, frogs and toads to be on the move, and for herpetologist Brian Kleinman to be out with them, monitoring how the spring salamander migration is succeeding, and helping many across busy local roads to safety.

During one evening this month, Brian (above) had a night to remember. In a few hours, he watched as hundreds of migrants made their way across wet roads in northwest Connecticut. Equipped with a Handicam, he came back with some remarkable images of the animals he found moving during the first soaking rain of this spring.

An unexpected migrant was this Four-toed Salamander (above), the first Brian has seen in many years spent watching spring salamander migrations at this one spot in northwest Connecticut.

The Jefferson Salamander (above) is found throughout western Connecticut. Hybrid combinations between the Jefferson Salamander and its cousin, the Blue-spotted Salamander, (such as the one below) are also found in this range.

Hybrid Salamanders such as those found in Connecticut have evolved some of the most unique and intriguing reproductive adaptations in the animal kingdom.

The Spotted Salamander (like the one above that Brian taped as he helped it across the road) is one of the largest species found in forested areas, and can begin the breeding season by migrating in large numbers.

Moving along with the salamanders were other amphibians such as the Spring Peeper and Wood Frog. These frogs are able to tolerate partial freezing over the long winter, and in spring are among the first to emerge to lay their eggs. (Visit Dr. Ken Storey's page about freeze tolerant vertebrates.)

Also on the move this night were two rather cold and sluggish amphibians, an American Toad (above) and Green Frog (below).

Search for The Magic Bullet (6th in a series): Preserving Spirit of Place

2006-04-14T19:30:00.000-04:00

Drive into Granby east along Rt. 20 and you can't help but notice a couple of hand painted signs spiked onto two trees beside Salmon Brook (below). Their messages, "Cherish Granby--Resist Developmt." (sic) and "Celebrate Pristine Granby--Don't Develop" seem to sum up how many have come to feel over the past few years, not just here in this quiet old farm town northwest of Hartford, but around the state.

Like many in Connecticut, Granby is a town where residents share a strong "spirit of place," one that has developed over the past two centuries, since colonial days. It isn't something that towns usually put into words or write into official documents, at least before people such as the residents of Granby saw it as essential in their effort to preserve what is special about their town well into the future.

Views of Holcomb Farm and the West Branch of the Salmon Brook in Granby.

Last year, the Granby Planning and Zoning Commission appointed a subcommittee to draft a new Plan of Conservation and Development for the town. (The state requires towns update plans every ten years.) The subcommittee reviewed Granby's 1993 plan, held public workshops and facilitated an agreement about things that made Granby special and reasons residents chose to live there. The result was a statement of the Town's Fundamental Values, a new 10 Year Vision for conservation, preservation and development, and recommendations for implementation.

The view from atop the ridge west of Holcomb Farm looking southeast across Granby, toward the Barndoor Hills and the Metacomet Ridge. The hills and the ridge are the remains of lava flows in from The Age of Volcanism the Connecticut Valley some 200 million years ago, as described by geologist Greg McHone in his guidebook, Great Day Trips to Discover the Geology of Connecticut.

The plan begins with a "Statement of Granby’s Fundamental Values" that is refreshingly easy to read and understand and highly evocative: "Agricultural: Our Town’s rural character has its roots in…the small farm...Viewing the livestock, smelling manure, experiencing the changing scenery of the fields…is a treasure that will be missed if it is allowed to disappear. Residents: The residents of Granby apply a broad definition to the term “neighbor.” They show concern and offer help to one another during times of sickness, grief, unemployment or other difficulty…Granby residents cherish the natural environment and are willing to work for its preservation. Wildlife: We look to the sky when we hear the chatter of the geese and we quickly spot the familiar V pattern of their flight. We stop and listen to the chant of the morning dove, the hoot of the owl and the melodies of the songbirds…We catch and release, turn rocks in search of salamanders and shriek at the sudden movement of a snake. We choose to make our home among the wildlife and we are the better for it."

A view from one of Granby's Barndoor Hills (west) of the other (east). The hills are outcrops of once molten rock that intruded through sedimentary layers in the valley and have since exposed by the effects of erosion.

The plan also articulates a vision that is the basis for conservation goals and implementation recommendations:

"Based on this Plan…we believe that in 2015 we will find:
That the Town has remained a rural residential community with:
…A sense of community founded in our Fundamental Values...

"That the Town Center…will:
Offer pedestrian friendly areas
Maintain a village feeling
Ensure quality development...

"That Residential Development:
Maintains the Town’s rural atmosphere
Preserves existing neighborhoods
Creates new neighborhoods with useable open space and pedestrian linkages...

"That Quality Commercial Development:
Has grown in appropriate areas:
Adequately Serves the community
Reflects the character and makeup of the community
Provides increased employment opportunities for residents
Is the product of Architectural Review Guidelines...

"That the amount of preserved Open Space:
Has continued to increase, preserving vistas, views, and ridge tops
Has expanded using corridors or trails to link…parcels
Continues to serve Town residents while preserving habitat...

"That the Town’s quality of life has remained high."

Wild Red Columbine (Rock Bells) found growing among the basalt talus of the Barndoor Hills in Granby. A member of the Buttercup family, the Ranunculaceae, with the scientific name of Aquilegia canadensis, Red Columbine is a favorite of hummingbirds.

The values and vision statements were used to guide the subcommittee in drafting the plan's goals and recommendations in specific areas including population and demographics, environment, housing, budgeting, taxation & grand list growth, transportation, commercial and industrial development and Granby center.

In the area of environment, for example, the plan sets goals consistent with conserving residents "spirit of place:"

Promote Biodiversity
Preserve and maintain natural, cultural and historic resources.
Protect ground water resources.
Protect, preserve, promote, and create wildlife habitat and corridors.
Allow reasonable extraction of sand, gravel and other earth resources.
Encourage the preservation of existing farmlands, existing farm operations, agricultural

The plan is notable for many reasons, an important one being that its development fostered a productive dialogue among residents and was able to gain consensus about attributes of the town that Granby residents sought to conserve and protect, and how they wanted to manage growth, development and commercial areas.

Another is that the plan recognizes the value of open space for residents' use, recreational use, and its value to maintain biodiversity and natural resources. Just as the town seeks to preserve its wonderful ridgetop views it seeks to enhance habitat connectivity and wildlife "corridors" that are becoming increasing vital.

Finally, by first setting the vision, planners established a reference point for developing the specifics of the plan and for evaluating all future proposals for conservation and development. Its easy for anyone to read the plan and decide how a proposal fits with the communities fundamental values or conflicts with the long term plan.

It's an approach any town can integrate into its planning. Look into the last time your town updated its conservation and development plan and what you and your neighbors have done to describe your community's fundamental values. Even if your town has recently completed a plan, you don't have to wait ten years to provide your municipal government with your input. Towns can revise their plans any time they wish. If your town hasn't stated its values as part of a long term vision, you can get started right away.

Search for The Magic Bullet (5th in a series): One Planet Living

2006-04-10T14:47:00.000-04:00

It seems odd to talk about "One Planet Living" given that we have only one earth--and that no other celestial body in the universe is known to support life. Of course, when there is information to show that humanity is living beyond its means--beyond the earth's capacity to feed and clothe us--the discussion takes on new meaning.

According to Dr. Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network humanity already needs 1.2 planets to keep up with our consumption of natural biological resources and it's only a matter of time before the "ecological debt" we're ringing up comes due.

Source for above: Living Planet Report 2004. Published in October 2004 by WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Gland, Switzerland. © 2004 WWF. All Rights Reserved.

Dr. Wackernagel was in Connecticut last week to speak about The Ecological Footprint, an analytical tool he has developed to measure people's biological resource consumption. On Saturday, Network For A Sustainable New Haven hosted a workshop at the Yale Peabody Museum for local community groups aimed at exploring how New Haven's footprint or Connecticut's footprint might be calculated.

According to Global Footprint Network, "Ecological Footprint measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste. Today, humanity's Ecological Footprint is over 23% larger than what the planet can regenerate. We maintain this overshoot by liquidating the planet's ecological resources. Ecological Footprints enable people to take personal and collective actions in support of a world where humanity lives within the means of one planet."

Ecological Footprint studies suggest that rates of human consumption, left unchecked, will exceed the ability of natural systems to replenish themselves. We'll soon reach a point of no return where a last fish will be caught and after that there will be no more.

To live within our means, Global Footprint Network calculates that, on average, we need to live within a budget of about 2.2 global hectares or 4.4 global acres per person. "The question is, how can we all live well within this 4.4 acres," says Dr. Wackernagel (pictured above at the workshop sponsored by Network For A Sustainable New Haven), "and how much do we want to set aside for other species?"

A 2002 footprint analysis found that the global human population has been living beyond its means since about 1985, and has since gone overbudget, requiring an average of 5.4 acres per person. People in the United States required 24 acres to satisfy their appetites for biological consumables and to then throw out their trash. Others living large were Canada (18.5), Australia (17.3), France (13.8) and Japan (10.6). Those not yet eating their full share of the pie included China (4.0), Egypt (3.5), Ethiopia (2.0), and India (1.7).

The results leave open the possibility that there may come a time when the balance of power between nations of the world may revolve around disparities between ecological debtor nations and ecological lender nations, and a new economics based on dwindling biological resources could emerge.

Yet, "ecological debt" isn't a factor in current economic analyses, or that most economists even measure or track. The question that Dr. Wackernagel has spent the past fifteen years laboring to fix has been "How can we operate economies without measuring ecological debt?" As things are, the best anyone can do is guess at what percentage of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) needs to be invested in an effort to get us back on a budget for One Planet Living. "A rough guess is 5%," says Dr. Wackernagel.

Global Footprint Network has undertaken its "'Ten In Ten Campaign' to make the Ecological Footprint as prominent as the GDP, and by 2015 to have ten countries managing their ecological wealth in the same way they manage their finances." So far, it has gained the involvement of the Swiss government and a statement of support from the European Union.

Source for above: Living Planet Report 2004. Published in October 2004 by WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Gland, Switzerland. © 2004 WWF. All Rights Reserved.

More commitments from governments and individuals are needed. Even so-called "slow growth" plans have the world going deeper into ecological debt. Global Footprint Network projects that global consumption of biological resources would have to be cut in half to reach a balanced eco-budget of 4.4 acres, or 1960 levels, within the next twenty years. Even more than a financial investment, a balanced biological resource budget will require large-scale political and social change as well.

As a first step, try calculating your own ecological footprint.

Search for The Magic Bullet (4th in a series): Grassroots Giant Killers

2006-04-01T16:18:00.000-05:00

Fresh from crucial victories, leaders in the fight to "Save the 1,000 acre forest" in Old Saybrook came to Bent of the River Audubon Center in Southbury today to share what they learned about how grassroots environmental advocacy can succeed--even when faced with Goliath-sized opposition.

The giant killers have notched big wins recently, including one last month when the Old Saybrook inland wetlands commission rejected a proposal by River Sound Development, a subsidiary of financial services behemoth Lehman Brothers, to build 220 luxury homes and a golf course in an area of Old Saybrook, Essex and Westbrook dubbed by the developers "The Preserve."

Discussing formulas for success in environmental advocacy at the grassroots level were (from left) Charles Rothenberger of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Patty McQueen of Communications Strategies, and Jim Keaney of Alliance for Sound area Planning.

Organized by Sandy Breslin, Director of Governmental Affairs for Audubon Connecticut, the 2006 Advocacy Workshop gave tips about what to do when damaging proposals pop up in their communities, as more are all the time. Among the 30 or so people who attended the workshop, nine were municipal officials seeking to become better informed about how to respond to issues in their hometowns. Several others had previously held government office.

Workshop attendees seated around a table in the barn at Bent of the River Audubon in Southbury.

The overall message was to plan, envision a strategy for success, and get the word out. Charles Rothenberger emphasized that town commissions such as zoning & planning or inland wetlands have specific areas of authority, and that it's important for groups to know the difference between issues a commission can consider and rule on, and those that fall outside their authority. Where it may not be reasonable to kill a proposal altogether consider alternatives that might mitigate impacts. Realize that by providing your local boards with expert reports and testimony or alternative ideas you are arming them with the information they need to support your position.

Charles offered key insights with regard to how towns can manage the costs of responding to large proposals, and our rights to legally intervene. He said that more and more towns are requiring applicants to pay legal and expert consultant costs that towns must incur in order to evaluate and respond to development proposals by making these costs part of the permitting fee. If your town doesn't have such a requirement, work with your town officials to add it.

Charles also highlighted legal rights he said we in Connecticut are very fortunate to have, provided by state statute. The Connecticut Environmental Protection Act, CGS 22a-19, enables you to intervene to become party to a proposed activity that you can show to be "reasonably likely to unreasonably impair the natural resources of the state." This puts you in the loop with regard to important legal information, gives you the right to put on a case in court, and the right to appeal. These are rights Charles said give Connecticut residents a powerful tool that people in most other states do not have.

Patty McQueen offered tips on how to conduct media outreach as part of a community campaign, and to understand how newspapers and reporters work. She reinforced the idea that it's critical to focus on a goal, stick to it, and keep things short and sweet. Resist the temptation to get angry or insult people or risk losing all credibility. Above all, speak and write in plain english--language that's easy for anyone to understand.

Jim Keaney echoed many of these themes and added what he thought was essential. "There is nothing magical about raising awareness and stopping a huge project," he said. "It's the same doggedness you apply to any effort: 'the harder you work the luckier you get.'"

Eco: CT Wildlife Conservation Strategy

2006-03-23T10:01:00.000-05:00

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted approval to Connecticut's new Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy in January 2006.

"The intent is to provide guidance and vision for wildlife conservation in Connecticut," the document states. "Accordingly, the strategy: Addresses the broad array of all fish, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrate species; Uses available funding to address the species in greatest need of conservation and their habitats; Identifies actions needed to conserve species diversity and keep common species common; Builds upon past efforts to conserve all species of wildlife; Encourages the creation of partnerships with conservation organizations at local, state and regional levels to enhance opportunities for implementation of actions to conserve wildlife."

Its worth a read. The strategy represents a fundamental yet critical opportunity for government, communities and individuals to collaborate on protecting local biodiversity and habitats. Given the limitations of "available funding," this effort will need the support the public and people's participation to succeed.

The Black Dog Posts

2006-03-19T08:09:00.000-05:00

Looking for the black dog posts that Randy Beach wrote about in the New Haven Register and Peter Applebome wrote about in the NY Times? There are two. The first (Jan. 6) tells the tale of the black dog of the Hanging Hills of Meriden. The second (Jan. 22) shows what may be the first ever photo of the black dog, by Michael Anastasio, who snapped it after the beast appeared behind him, as if out of nowhere, during a visit to Castle Craig, atop the hills, in 2004. Visit cttrips.com for our guides to exploring Connecticut's geology, dinosaur fossils, natural habitats and fishing.

Running Before The Blizzard

2006-02-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days when you didn't need a forecaster's warning to know there was a snow coming; you could just feel it. We decided to make the most of the quiet before the storm and were rewarded with the kinds of pleasures that only a day spent hiking up a cold mountain and beachcombing in the face of a building Nor'Easter can bring.

The chill we felt starting up the tower trail at Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden was gone before we'd turned more than a couple of switchbacks and reached the rock talus. The piles of broken rock here ring the edges of "the giant," a volcanic sill that runs east-west through the park. The sill was formed some 200 million years ago when the supercontinent of Pangaea rifted apart, and magma from the earth's mantle rose and forced its way through the sandstone. Today, the exposed traprock ridge has a profile resembling a giant slumbering on his back.

A view along the trail that crosses the Sleeping Giant's neck (above) and a plaque recalling how a spill one boy took here nearly 70 years ago led he and others to work to preserve this place as a park for all to enjoy (below). The quarry they "silenced" is around to the other side, at the top of the giant's head.

Icy patches made the bit of bouldering we chose to do near the top more exciting, and brought us quickly to the castle and its magnificent views of the Hanging Hills further north and New Haven to the south.

Once at the top, there was time to enjoy a lunch of apple slices, pretzels and juice, and to chat with others sitting around the picnic table inside. The sun managed to break through the clouds for a bit, but after a while the cold began to creep back in, and we decided to head back down, and to go on to the beach.

A half hour or so later, we were back in the car, on our way to the Connecticut Audubon Coastal Center at Milford Point to spend some time collecting sea shells.

By the time we got to the beach the Nor'Easter was stirring up whitecaps and blowing stiffly. Somehow, we mangaged to shed the wind and quickly became lost in our search for crab shells, periwinkles, jingles, slippers, arks, razor clams, mussels and oysters. A sand bank piled high with layer upon layer of every different kind of sea shell was irresistible.

We had the entire beach to ourselves, just the way we like it, and got busy picking around the tide flats looking to catch a glimpse of any sparkle of wampum.

Eventually we decided to give in to a cold ache that had soaked into our fingers and retreated inside, to the warmth of the interpretive center. Inside, the marsh here can be seen through the center's big windows and spotting scopes. A couple of Red-Winged Blackbirds hunkered down in a tree that offered little refuge, and seemed to wonder where the spring that appeared to arrive just a few days ago had since disappeared.

Also inside was a wonderful salt-water tank, stocked with various crabs and fish, that held our attention for another hour. By the time we got home the snow was very close and by the time we sat down to eat it began to fall, a perfect end to a perfect day.

Exploring The Ice Age During A Warm Winter

2006-02-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

Bouldering at the Ledyard Glacial Park is always a blast, and surreal when you go on a too warm winter's day, as so many have been over the past few months.

In a ravine here is an extraoardinary sight: hundreds, perhaps thousands of huge boulders, strewn about as if they had dropped from the sky. They all appear to be the same variety of stone, between five and twenty feet long and of comparable mass, share the same coarse texture and light gray color, and are finished magnificently with a patina of lichens and moss.

The park is a unique exposure of the Hammonasset-Ledyard-Queen's River recessional moraine, leftovers of the last Ice Age, from the time when the great Laurentide Ice Sheet that once covered southeast Connecticut began to melt out of the Ledyard area about 18,000 years ago (according to a new estimate by Greg Balco, of the University of Washington, and Joerg Schaefer, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University). This moraine is one of five recessional moraines along the state's southeast shore deposited more or less perpendicular to the direction the ice followed south. It runs along a line from Hammonasset State Park in Madison, slightly northwest through Ledyard, to Queen's River, Rhode Island.

The boulder field at the Ledyard Glacial Park.

The moraines record not just how the glacier retreated in starts and stops, but tantalizing clues about how the ice dropped the burden of rocks and gravel it picked up during its advance. How the boulder field here at Ledyard came to be, for example, is a bit more mysterious than how Hammonasset came to have its rocky beaches.

The story begins with the Laurentide Ice Sheet originating far to the north, near Hudson’s Bay Canada, and expanding until it came to cover New England and all of Connecticut sometime between 20,000 to 25,000 years ago. Along the way, mixtures of sand, gravel, rocks and boulders were frozen in the ice, picked up in the glacier and transported south. Where it reached its southernmost limit, the glacier deposited its terminal moraine to form large portions of our outer shoreline, from the south shore of Long Island, east to Block Island to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and Cape Cod. From there, the five recessional moraines periodically record the margins of the shrinking ice sheet.

The bedrock beneath Hamonasset Park is covered by a blanket of various and mixed glacial sediments, sand, gravel, rocks and boulders collectively known as till. The more finely-grained sediments, sand and gravel, were transported by meltwater streams that formed where the ice met warmer weather, and settled in the park's lower lying areas and depressions. According to the State Geological and Natural History Survey, “the campground east of Tom's Creek is underlain by sand, while west of the creek there is more till." Along the beach are boulders of banded metamorphic rocks known as gneiss, and large grained granites. "Finer materials near the water washed out into the Sound, helping to make the beaches, while the huge boulders remain.”

The Hammonasset shoreline (left) and glacial till beach material. Photos by Connecticut geologist and author Greg McHone.

The boulders at Ledyard Glacial Park are mostly huge blocks of gneiss and granite gneiss piled on top of one another, without much in the way of smaller-grained sediments or till. Despite their size, these very large-grained boulders are neatly rounded and smoothed, as you'd expect them to be if they were transported by ice. Unlike at Hammonasset, the bedrock at Ledyard is not deeply buried beneath till, but exposed as ledges beside the ravine and near the power lines just east of the park. The composition of the boulders and bedrock is similar, so it's reasonable to expect that most didn't come far, and that the source material is nearby.

Looking back up the ravine at Ledyard Glacial Park.

They are “presumably the result of widely spaced joints in the source outcrops, which provided a disproportionate number of large boulders,” writes Greg Balco. The following photo shows how the ice may have exploited existing bedrock faults and fissures to pluck large chunks. As for the clustering of boulders, Richard Goldsmith of the USGS described one possible explanation in a 1987 paper: “Sorting of this material by slumping was contemporaneous with winnowing by meltwater, possibly in a crevasse."

Cracks in a bedrock outcrop at Ledyard Glacial Park.

On the way out, don't forget to visit the kettle hole that is a short walk from a parking area on Avery Hill Road. Kettle holes were formed where glacial till came to be deposited over a mass of ice that became stranded or was left behind during the glacier's retreat. Insulated in an enormous cooler, the stranded block gradually melted away, leaving a large bowl-shaped depression, kettle, or hopper in the landscape. The kettles along Avery Hill Road were formed by blocks of ice that remained just north of the moraine as the front of the active ice retreated from the area.

Search for The Magic Bullet (3rd in a series): Measuring Success--And Failure

2006-01-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

Global environmentalism entered the digital age when the 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) was released at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week.

Developed by the Center for Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the EPI pilot study is the first to measure and analyze how some 133 nations around the world currently perform against 16 indicators of environmental protection.

Overall EPI Scores by country (higher scores reflect better overall performance on a scale of 0-100). Green: 78.8-88.1, Blue: 69.6-78.7, Yellow: 60.3- 69.5, Orange: 51.7-60.2, Red: 25.6-51.6, Gray: no data.

“The EPI centers on two broad environmental protection objectives: (1) reducing environmental stresses on human health, and (2) promoting ecosystem vitality and sound natural resource management,” the report says.

“It’s like holding up a mirror and having someone help you see what you couldn’t see before,” Daniel Esty, Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, told the NY Times. According to the report, “…policymakers in the environmental field have begun to recognize the importance of data and analytically rigorous foundations for decision making.”

The Best & Worst performers

“Top-ranked countries—New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom—all commit significant resources and effort to environmental protection," the report says. "The five lowest-ranked countries—Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—are underdeveloped nations with little capacity to invest in environmental infrastructure or aggressive pollution control and systematic natural resource management.”

The US (78.5) ranks well down, and despite its superpower status, barely manages to crack the top-30. The US performs 28th in the world overall, lagging many European nations, Canada and Malaysia. When viewed among the nations of the Americas, our performance on measures for agricultural, forest and fisheries management is dead last.

The Top 10 (Overall EPI Score) are: New Zealand (88.0), Sweden (87.6), Finland (87.0), Czech Republic (86.0), United Kingdom (85.6), Austria (85.2), Denmark (84.2), Canada (84.0), Malaysia (83.3), Ireland (83.3).

Russia (77.5) ranks 33nd, Brazil (77.0) ranks 34th, China (56.2) ranks 94th, India (47.7) ranks 118th.

Establishing A Baseline

The report’s release serves to put a stake in the ground from which policy and policymakers can be measured in the future. “By identifying specific targets and measuring how close each country comes to them,” it says, “the EPI provides a factual foundation for policy analysis and a context for evaluating performance.”

“Environmental health and ecosystem vitality are gauged using sixteen indicators tracked in six policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Quality, Water Resources, Productive Natural Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, and Sustainable Energy.”

Work In Progress

As a first effort, the index has its shortcomings, both in terms of methodology and utility. The report acknowledges that there is currently a lack of reliable data, gaps in existing data, and limited country coverage.

These remain as problems to be addressed in future efforts. As it is, the report says the EPI “falls short in covering the full spectrum” of environmental issues such as waste management, acid rain, heavy metal exposures, wetland loss and ecosystem fragmentation.

Methodology and results reporting can also sometimes mask underlying problems. “Among middle-ranked countries, performance is uneven,” the report says. “Russia, for example, has top-tier scores in water but disastrously low sustainable energy results. Likewise, Brazil has very high water scores, but low biodiversity indicators. The US stands near the top in environmental health, but ranks near the bottom in management of productive natural resources.”

“The Pilot 2006 EPI represents a ‘work in progress’ meant to stimulate debate on appropriate metrics and methodologies for tracking environmental performance, enable analysis, and highlight the need for increased investment,” the report says.

A Promising And Powerful Tool

Problems notwithstanding, the release of the EPI represents a great accomplishment and an invaluable tool with far-ranging applicability to addressing modern day environmental issues. Considering the magnitude of these issues, and the threat they present to the quality of life on earth, it serves as a model for a scholarly and systematic approach to bringing about positive change, and as a beacon for international cooperation and collaboration.

Search for The Magic Bullet (2nd in a series): Community-based Environmental Protection

2006-01-26T16:10:00.000-05:00

A Fairfield County publication, Wilton Magazine, recently "asked people at random for their thoughts on global warming and what government and citizens should do to address it." 9 of 12 respondents focused on what the government should do; just 3 emphasized choices we as citizens can make to bring about change.

The responses are too few to be representative, but suggest many see global climate change as beyond the local purview, and best left to an unspecified government. This at a time when many in politics, universities and think tanks say environmental protection ought to originate on the bottom rung instead, at the local community level.

"'Community-based environmental protection’ has been the poster child for the environmentalism of the future," says Stephen M. Meyer, Professor of Political Science at MIT, and author of a recent study "The Origins of Community-based Environmental Protection." "Everyone from federal officials to people in non-governmental organizations have touted place-based, local initiatives as part of a solution to environmental problems--not just in the US, but globally as well."

Stephen M. Meyer, co-author of the study "The Origins of Community-based Environmental Protection." Photo by Seth Meyer.

The idea is simply that citizens empowered to manage local resources such as watersheds do a better job of it than federal or state governments. Tack on the fact that many issues about global environmental change occur when control over resources is taken out of the hands of local stakeholders and given over to central governments or agencies many times removed, and the argument for community-based environmental protection (CBEP) becomes clear.

Its promise, Meyer writes, is that CBEP may achieve better outcomes than traditional regulatory approaches. The approach integrates local know-how, sensitivities and values; it's collaborative and enables stakeholders to participate equally and can address issues beyond the reach of governments.

"The argument is that local communities can do a better job than some distant bureaucrat in Hartford or Washington," says Meyer. "Of course, when an idea attracts acclaim, from both the left and the right, you have to wonder if there really is something there." Meyer and co-author David M. Konisky chose to look at wetlands protections in Massachusetts to see if CBEP efforts there proved effective.

"All things being equal, you’d think that if we gave decision-making authority to someone at the local level they could do a better job," Meyer says. "I just want to know if that’s true. We’re sort of 'throwing down the gauntlet' to say enough 'touchy-feely' discussion. It’s nice, but what is CBEP really doing for the environment? That’s where we think people need to go, and we’re trying to push that."

Meyer and Konisky compared "bylawed" towns in Massachusetts, which have stronger local wetlands regulations, with "non-bylawed" towns operating under state law, a minimum standard that conservation commissions must observe. "Was there a systematic difference that points toward better environmental outcomes? Yes. Does it makes a difference in the environment? Yes, with some caveats. It’s not huge, but it’s in the right direction."

It is a direction that supports the notion that compelling contexts and real action emerge first at the local level. Where global issues remain intangible and seemingly far off, local issues and occurrences will always draw attention and promise greater potential to stir communities to act. In the search for a magic bullet, a way to motivate public support for issues as expansive and difficult to get your arms around as global climate change, CBEP offers a ray of hope.

"Many problems are still fundamentally local in nature," Meyer says, "and need to be dealt with at that level. Whether or not there will be grizzly bear or buffalo for my grandchildren to see is not a global issue, but a decision to be made by people in Wyoming or Montana. That’s really where it lies."

Getting involved with CBEP is one way individual citizens can work with their neighbors and in their communities to solve environmental issues big and small, global and local, and not wait for "the government" to take action. "It's not an either or proposition," Meyer says. "I’ve noticed that my students are startled to think that they’re part of the problem, but personal responsibility and personal action plays a very big role, especially in the U.S. where consumption levels are extraordinarily high compared to other parts of the world. When you start thinking that the problem is fundamentally about personal choice--which I believe it is--the best solutions are also about personal choice, and are fundamentally local."

"While the government is sleeping, communities can play a very big role in choosing what they should do and how they will do it," Meyer says. "Communities always have the option of setting up and establishing their own guidelines for environmental protection and conservation." Not only will they likely be a whole lot better off, but the world may be better for it, too.

Upcoming talks: "Discover Connecticut's Natural Wonders"

2006-01-25T14:49:00.000-05:00

Connecticut may seem tame, but it's actually a place where amazing discoveries about geology, dinosaurs, and nature have been made for centuries. Here anyone can explore sites that reveal where continents collided, where communities of dinosaurs once thrived, as well as a great diversity of modern day natural habitats and fisheries.

If you'd like to hear more about the state's incredible natural history and amazing tales about the contributions local scientists have made to our knowledge of the world, come to one of the slide shows I'll be giving in the next few months. Each includes rarely told tales and seldom seen images that are sure to delight. For more information about the program, "Discover Connecticut's Natural Wonders," visit cttrips.com and click on "Upcoming talks."

Saturday, February 18th, Connecticut Audubon Eagle Festival, Essex, 1 pm.

Tuesday, February 28th, Windsor Locks Public Library, Windsor Locks, 7 pm.

Sunday, March 5th, OC Marsh Fellows Program, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, 10 am.

Tuesday, March 7th, Connecticut Junior Science & Humanities Symposium, UConn Storrs, 1:45pm.

Search For The Magic Bullet (1st in a series): The Environmental Revolution of the 21st Century

2006-01-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

In Connecticut, we enjoy wonderful natural places to hike, beaches to comb, minerals and fossils to photograph. On this site we like to talk about trips to do all these things and more. Our hope is that we may enable others to get out and enjoy the state's natural wonders and that by doing so, more come to appreciate the need to conserve them.

From now on, we'll talk also about the urgent search that has begun to find new ways to bring people together and to tackle the great threat to our quality of life: global environmental change. Imagine that the state we leave our kids and grandkids may be one where the shore has been drowned by rising seas, or where maple trees have been removed from the landscape by rising temperatures. Is this the legacy we would choose?

The fact is that if we don't immediately make vast changes in the way we consume materials, goods and energy the choice will be made for us. Patterns of global change seen today are far beyond any seen before in the more than 3 billion year history of life on earth.

"We need to trigger a response that in historical terms will be seen as revolutionary—the Environmental Revolution of the twenty-first century," James Gustave Speth writes in his book, Red Sky at Morning. "Only such a response is likely to avert huge and even catastrophic environmental losses."

A founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and advisor on environmental policy to President Carter, Speth has offered a unique and compelling perspective on the challenge before us. "An extremely important and authoritative book," wrote one reviewer, Simon Levin of Princeton University, the author of Fragile Dominion. "Gus Speth is one of the few people who has the credentials to integrate the scientific aspects of environmental decline with analysis of possible political solutions, and he does so brilliantly."

"One goal should be to find the spark that can set off a period of rapid change," Speth writes, "like the flowering of the domestic environmental agenda in the early 1970s. Part of the challenge is changing the perception of global-scale concerns so that they come alive with the immediacy and reality of our domestic challenges of the 1970s." During that time, key environmental problems were remedied by the passage of federal legislation such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

But the days of central governments simply legislating solutions to our environmental problems have more than likely passed. Nothing short of revolutionary changes in our ways of life, in our homes and communities, will suffice if we want to preserve for our grandkids a state like the one we inhabit today.

What can be done to effect change, to trigger what Speth calls the Environmental Revolution of the 21st century? We have some ideas. We'll talk more about our ideas, things that can be done here in Connecticut, and how to facilitate greater communication among local organizations and citizens in this blog. Please let us know your ideas as well.

Photo Proof Of A Ghostly 'Black Dog of the Hanging Hills?'

2006-01-22T11:40:00.000-05:00

It was said to haunt these hills, to foretell doom for some, but the dog had not shown itself for many years--until recently. "I was on top of that mountain when a black dog appeared out of nowhere," says Michael Anastasio, 31, a Meriden native and former US Marine.

"Things just don't sneak up on me without me being aware of them, but I swear this dog just appeared." In describing his encounter with a strange black dog at Castle Craig, the tower visible atop the Hanging Hills just east of West Peak, in 2004, Mike recalls details eerily similar to those of an ancient legend about a mysterious Black Dog believed to be a harbinger of death and disaster (as described in previous post).

"I was doing a panoramic," Mike says, "just taking a few shots of Meriden. When I came around to take a shot of the tower behind me--boom! The dog was there." (above; photo by Michael Anastasio). According to local legend, the Black Dog can be seen to bark, but make no sound. Where it trods the ground it raises no dust, in snow it makes no footprints. Ghostlike, the dog appears as if out of nowhere, and takes its leave just as mysteriously, as it roams over a large area around the hills.

The photo Mike took of the dog he saw in 2004 bears an uncanny resemblance to the image of the Black Dog that appeared in a classic account of two geologists’ ill-fated encounters with “a short haired black dog of moderate size” seen around West Peak written by WHC Pynchon and published in Connecticut Quarterly in 1898.

"I looked around the area, and there were no owners, no other people up there except me and my bro' George," Mike says. Nor did the dog appear to wear a collar or tags. "George said he didn't even see a dog at all, strange in itself because he was just ten feet to my left--very odd. I heard the story of the Black Dog shortly after that day. I've lived in Meriden since I was 6 and that was the first time I've ever been up to the tower."

The sighting of the Black Dog was also a first for Mike. Good thing, too. The legend warns that "if a man shall see the Black Dog once it shall be for joy; and if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time he shall die." Should Mike return to the Hanging Hills and see the dog again, the legend suggests tragedy could ensue. Should Mike return after a second sighting, he would be putting his life at risk.

"I've been back to the top since the photos were taken," Mike says, "and I suppose I did have the legend in mind. I didn't hike this time. I drove up to the top and never saw the 'Black Dog' throughout my visit."

And if he ever does see it again? "If for a second time, a 'Black Dog' just appeared within 6 feet of me, without making a sound, or vanished without a sound, I would avoid the area from that point on," Mike admits. "The one thing I do know about fate is that you don't tempt it."

Mike takes a more sensible approach to being the only person known to have encountered the dog in recent time--unlike the two geologists who dared tempt fate more than a century ago, only to later be deeply saddened by tragedy, and ultimately lose their lives.

Views from atop Castle Craig (above) and of Meriden (below) Mike took on the fateful day. Photos by Michael Anastasio.

For centuries, the Hanging Hills have been irresistible to geologists for the extraordinary details they offer about Connecticut geology, particularly about the Connecticut River Valley or Hartford Basin. The basin was formed some 200 million years ago, by continental rifting associated with the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangaea. The valley's sediments and traprock ridges, such as the Hanging Hills, reveal what must have been a violent time in the states past, when earthquakes shook the ground, and tremendous floods of molten lava poured over and through the surface of the earth here.

Whatever secrets the hills hold about strange phantasms such as the Black Dog, or how its sight can forever change mens' lives, remain mysterious.

The Hanging Hills of Meriden: Legend & Geology

2006-01-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

“It may seem strange that a man of science should believe a thing of this kind—an idle tale for the ignorant and superstitious you will say—but I do believe it,” a young geologist wrote in 1898. The tale warned about a curse involving a black dog said to haunt the West Peak of the Hanging Hills of Meriden, an apparition that spelled death and disaster, one some believe wanders the hills even today. “And if you would know why, listen…”

The peaks of the Hanging Hills of Meriden (above) as pictured in “The Black Dog,” a firsthand account of two geologists’ ill-fated encounters with “a short haired black dog of moderate size” seen around West Peak, written by W.H.C. Pynchon and published in the Connecticut Quarterly.

“When winter winds roar…when the rocks stand out black through the drifts…the West Peak (above, as pictured in Pynchon's account) has a look of menace hard to describe. Weird tales have sprung up…one is especially to be mentioned—the story of a black dog seen at times upon the peak.

“Many have seen him once, a few twice—none have ever told of the third meeting,” the young geologist wrote in describing the dog’s ethereal qualities. “Men have seen it bark, but have heard no sound; and it leaves no footprint behind it on the dust of summer or the snow of winter.” Its sight was said to mean certain death for anyone so unfortunate as to look upon it for a third time.

The curse of the black dog—geologists fall victims?

The young geologist encountered the dog, and years later its legend, during his first trip to West Peak made one spring in the late 1800s. “I was then a student at Harvard, and the work in geology I had taken up made it desirable for me to visit the locality.” Connecticut Valley traprock ridges, including West Peak, had held a special fascination for local geologists such as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock since the 1820s.

“Hoary evidences of ancient volcanic action,” was how the young geologist described the hills. “Countless years have elapsed since the great tide of molten lava rolled over the region. Years fewer, but still countless, have passed during which the shattered and tilted remnants of the lava sheets have watched over the land. Deep gorges divide the masses into separate mountains, lonely and desolate, and the most desolate and the most conspicuous of all is the West Peak.”

After the young geologist rode up to West Peak and started collecting samples of “vesicular” lava, the dog appeared to him. He greatly enjoyed the dog's company until dusk, when it “stopped, looked back at me a moment, and quietly vanished into the woods.”

Three years later, the young geologist returned to West Peak early in February with a friend, Herbert Marshall, a geologist with the fledgling United States Geological Survey. The night before, Marshall told about how he had also seen the dog, not just once, but twice before, and “laughed at the legend, saying he did not believe in omens.”

In the morning they made an ascent of the south face of West Peak in the cold and snow, until they reached “deep clefts” in the cliffs that the young geologist would later compare to the biblical “Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Marshall (above, as pictured in Pynchon's account) was in the lead when he abruptly stopped. “There on the rocks above us, stood a black dog,” the young geologist wrote. It was the second time he had seen it, but for Marshall, the third. “We saw his breath steaming from his jaws, but no sound came through the biting air.” Marshall turned white and uttered: “’I did not believe it before. I believe it now.’ And then, even as he spoke, the fragment of rock on which he stood slipped. There was a cry, a rattle of fragments falling—and I stood alone.” Rescuers later found Marshall’s body at the bottom of the ravine, bloodied and broken, and watched by a black dog.

After witnessing the death of his friend, and at the risk of encountering the dog for a third time himself, the young geologist felt compelled to return to West Peak and to carry on the work of the geological survey. “I must die sometime,” he wrote. “When I am gone this paper may be of interest to those who remain, for, in throwing light on the manner of my death, it will also throw light on the end of the many victims that the old volcanic hills have claimed.

Six years later, the young geologist went missing following a trip to the hills. It was several weeks before his body was found in the same ravine where Marshall had fallen below West Peak. According to a newspaper report, “the body was found on almost the identical spot where his friend, Herbert Marshall, met his death six years before…the fifth man who has lost his life on the range within thirty years.” Whether or not he had seen the black dog a third time that fateful day we will never know.

Some wonder if the black dog still prowls West Peak today, looking to claim yet more victims, perhaps such as the climber who lost his life on the mountain as recently as Thanksgiving Day, 1972.

Fact & Fiction

While the tale of the curse of the black dog is the stuff of legend, observations made about the geology of the Hanging Hills in Pynchon's account ring true. The hills, for example, are correctly described as "evidences of ancient volcanic action." Geological studies made in the past, as well as new work being conducted today, show the ridges formed during a series of three periods of volcanism that occurred in the region some 200 million years ago. Exposures of all three of the lava flows, the Talcott, Hampden, and Holyoke Basalts, occur in close proximity in the hills and surrounding areas.

A view southward from West Peak (above) photographed last October. The Sleeping Giant can be seen in the photo centered on the horizon.

"The ridges are all made of the Holyoke Basalt flow," writes geologist Greg McHone in his guide, Great Day Trips to Discover the Geology of Connecticut. Rocks of the Talcott Basalt can also be found along the hills' southern and western flanks; portions of the Holyoke Basalt can be found to the northeast.

Pynchon's account notes that "the cliffs are pierced by deep clefts" and valleys. These notches, visible from the hilltops and highways below, are the results of faults which have split and shifted portions of the old lavas, and made the hills more foreboding. "Since the flow tilts to the east," Greg explains, "yet reappears in several ridges, there must be faults between the ridges that have offset the ridges to lower levels as you go from east to west.

The faults (seen above as thin black lines) separating the peaks (red areas) are shown on the 1985 Bedrock Geologic Map of Connecticut (above) developed by renowned geologist John Rodgers of Yale University, and published by the Connecticut Geological & Natural History Survey.

In an area north of Meriden, faults split portions of the Metacomet Ridge. Since ancient time, water and glacial ice have worked to erode and deepen the ravines Pynchon described as separating the Hanging Hills. The large lake just north of Hubbard Park in Meriden, Merimere Reservoir, now fills one valley between East Peak and South Mountain. As Greg describes in his book, Hubbard Park today provides excellent access to the hills, for anyone interested to explore the hills, hikers and drivers.

Along the road that leads from the main area of the park and up to the peaks are examples of "vesicular lavas" like those Pynchon describes the young geologist collecting on the day he first saw the black dog. Small bubbles of hot gas trapped in the molten rock during the time the ancient lavas flowed remain today as pockmarks and small voids commonly seen in local basalt and known as gas vesicles (below).

If you make your way to the top of the peaks there are other interesting features of the basalts that can be seen. Narrow lines, raised and irregular, are apparent in the surface of the ridge tops. These are evidence of polygonal columnar jointing. These natural designs formed first as the lavas cooled in columns perpendicular to the direction of flow and shrunk and cracked. The vertical cracks, or fractures, later filled with minerals during the long periods of sedimentation in the Connecticut Valley that followed.

Evidence of much more recent glacial erosion of the ridges can be recognized as scrape marks seen in the rocks running north to south. The gouges were worn in the rock by glacial till, stone fragments and sediments that accumulated in glacial ice as it spread southward, worked to scour the traprock ridges and surrounding landscape.

Of course, exercise caution in making any exploration of the Hanging Hills. Whether you see the black dog or not, West Peak is a hazardous place under the best of circumstances.

Eco: Has the canary keeled over?

2005-12-16T09:13:00.000-05:00

Coal miners once took canaries into the mines to serve as sentinels and warn them about underground hazards such as poisonous gas. If a bird wobbled on its perch miners knew it was time to get out. Today, a group of scientists led by a Yale physician is working to understand how other animals may be used to warn us about current risks to human health, including many associated with patterns of environmental change over the past fifty years.

“It’s clear that animals can be useful as sentinels,” says Dr. Peter Rabinowitz of the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, “the question is how to interpret what we see.” Dr. Rabinowitz is the primary investigator assembling an online research library called “The Canary Database.” The database organizes scientific studies about the health of wild animals, domestic animals and pets in an effort to learn whether effects that chemical, biological and physical hazards in the environment have on animals also warn about human health risks. It is a cooperative effort between Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Dr. Joshua Dein of the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, The Yale Center for Medical Informatics, and the Consortium for Conservation Medicine.

Dr. Rabinowitz (above) says it was through his practice of environmental medicine, where he investigated how patients’ living or working environments made them sick, that he became interested in animal health trends. “Seven or eight years ago, there was a lot of concern that animals were becoming sick from persistent chemicals in the environment,” Dr. Rabinowitz recalls. “Animals were having birth defects related to man-made chemicals. A related issue was frog deformities. These were seen as a sort of warning call to human health professionals. Are these problems related to something in the water or in the air? What’s causing them? Should we worry?

“Years later, we’re still not sure why animals have these problems, what’s causing them, or if human health care professionals should worry. Right now, we don’t routinely do things differently if a patient lives near a pond with deformed frogs. It doesn’t come into our medical decisions.”

The idea for the Canary Database grew from the group’s curiosity about what evidence was being collected about trends in animal health, its desire to look for any possible links to human health, and interest in determining what conclusions the facts would support. It seemed like a reasonable approach. “We use animal studies for lots of things in medicine,” Dr. Rabinowitz explains. “I was interested to see if we could get information about animals such as frogs in their environments—and figure out if there was a message for human health.”

A Sea Change

More recently, the spread of infectious diseases and the risks they pose—such as the potential for the outbreak of a deadly pandemic—have given new urgency to questions such as several the Canary Database team has set out to explore. Viruses such as H5N1, the so-called “bird flu,” with its potentially devastating implications for human populations, have increased interest in monitoring and analyzing trends in animal health.

“The emergence of these diseases has brought about a sea change,” notes Dr. Rabinowitz. “It took a while for people to realize that when birds are dying around us we should worry about things like West Nile Virus. Since West Nile, other things with similar messages have hit us. One was Monkey Pox. Another was SARS, an animal disease that broke out in the human population. Was the outbreak related to environmental change in China? Was it something we hadn’t detected before? We don’t know.

“Physicians are not trained much in thinking about sick animals. That is a challenge outside the medical model of ‘what’s the diagnosis and which medication is indicated?’ The care model we’re investigating would have us looking more broadly at patients’ environments. We thought we’d put together a scientific database to look for connections [between animal and human health], evaluate how good the connections are and provide a resource for animal health and human health professionals.

Combing Through The Evidence

As ambitious as his aspirations may be, Dr. Rabinowitz appears firmly grounded. The first challenge for the Canary Database is to make muster scientifically, and he is both serene and accepting when it comes to the implications for what could be his life’s work. “We’re trying to get a foothold on huge questions,” Dr, Rabinowitz says, retaining his focus on a few, specific human health issues the group has identified as places to start. “Medicine is evidence-based. We say ‘show us the data. Show us that this is really something to worry about—because we have lots of things to worry about.’”

The group has identified areas to investigate, where animal health data may provide warnings that have specific applicability for human health professionals. A primary focus is to understand how information about animal health might be used to respond to and manage human health risks associated with emerging infectious diseases.

“We’re starting to take for granted that animals can be an important link in tracking emerging infectious diseases (EIDs),” says Dr. Rabinowitz, “but in 1999 it was a big deal to think that dead crows in the Bronx should mean anything to human health. At that point, it was not an easy sell.” Since West Nile, more and more physicians have come to recognize the eerie similarities between a canary falling off its perch in a coal mine and crows dropping off phone poles.

Besides EIDs, the group is investigating whether animals might also provide early warnings about terrorist attacks involving biological or chemical agents. For example, one study in the database found that an inadvertent release of the biological agent anthrax in the Soviet Union in 1979 was more lethal, over a greater range, for livestock than humans. Another area of inquiry has to do with the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals that today pollute many natural environments. The chemicals have been associated with reproductive system abnormalities and failure in animals and environments such as alligators in Florida swamplands, but little is known about what these occurrences may foretell about human health.

Finally, the group is also looking into how the health of household pets’ may warn about hazards in domestic environments, such as lead poisoning caused by exposure to lead paint or cancer risks linked to household pesticide use. As is often the case with environmental medicine, the questions are complex, and the group is methodical in its search for answers. “We can make two mistakes,” Dr. Rabinowitz explains. “One is that we ignore animal signs that we should be worrying about. The other is that we get too excited about things that may be natural occurrences, and not actual hazards to human health. We’re trying to show what the evidence is, so we can determine the right approach.”

Health & Global Environmental Change

In the search for links between trends in animal health and warning calls for human health the elephant in the room is global environmental change. Have man-made (anthropogenic) changes over the past half century, such as pollution, deforestation and wildlife habitat degradation, led to increases in environmental risks to human health? Are we contributing to the emergence of infectious diseases? Do animal health issues such as birth defects and reproductive failure foretell of human health problems to follow?

Today, it is practically impossible to know what the effects of human impacts on the environment will be for human health, but where our impacts were once local, they have grown to the point where patterns of anthropogenic environmental change are recognizable around the globe. Impacts humans are having on animal populations are apparent practically everywhere.

In his book, Red Sky At Morning, (Yale University Press, 2004) James Gustave Speth details the progress of human activities, human impacts and environmental change during the 20th century, especially since the 1950s. A co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and an environmental policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Speth catalogs a broad spectrum of environmental changes that have occurred and links them with possible effects.

Speth draws connections between anthropogenic environmental change and declines in biodiversity, as tracked by species’ extinction rates, which are off the charts compared to any other period in the 3.5 billion-year history of life on earth. He writes that the extinction rates today are “100 to 1,000 times the normal rate.” Even a mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Permian Period of some 250 million years ago, a time when up to 90% of all living families on land and in the seas disappeared, and until now the greatest mass extinction known, may pale by comparison with the declines in biodiversity occurring around the globe today.

Speth argues that the issue goes deeper than species loss, to the point where global ecosystems are being pushed to the brink. He writes that patterns of ecosystem change pose “far greater practical consequences for human livelihoods and U.S. interests,” and that within our lifetimes we are witnessing sharp declines in “the ability of these systems to meet human needs...Many now believe that the strong back on which to put the case for conserving biodiversity is ecosystem services, by which they mean the valuable goods and services that human societies derive from natural systems,” Speth writes. “The best way to save biodiversity, they contend, is to convince people that healthy ecosystems provide societies with a huge array of benefits.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) is also warning of the consequences of ecosystem degradation in a report released last week, "Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Health Synthesis."

The report warns that the consequences to human health are already being felt—and could grow significantly worse. "Human health is linked to the health of ecosystems," said Maria Neira, Director of WHO's Department for the Protection of the Human Environment. "We in the health sector need to take heed of this...together with other sectors."

Sentinels for global environmental change?

When asked whether the Canary Database might one day identify specific connections between ecosystem health, biodiversity and human health, things policy advocates such as Speth might use to develop the kind of broad-based political support that will be required to begin to remediate man’s impact on the environment, Dr. Rabinowitz remains stoic.

“In environmental medicine we make links between environmental factors, like drinking water, and human health. Our premise is that it’s sometimes harder to get a clear picture if you look at humans and ignore other organisms in the environment. Animals do not move around as much [as humans]. They may be more susceptible. They may have shorter life spans, so you may see things in animal populations that may take longer to appear in human populations.

“But you don’t want to overreach and say there are connections if there aren’t. We want to be able to find the most important things, like avian influenza, and get people to focus on them.” Dr. Rabinowitz says the group has a long way to go before it can offer evidence or draw any connections between global environmental change, declines in biodiversity, and human health effects.

“There is some concern,” Dr. Rabinowitz explains, “that as biodiversity declines you have greater chance for outbreaks of infectious diseases in wild populations. Infectious disease ecologists are really interested in these types of questions, but right now this kind of work often falls between the cracks of defined medical or scientific fields.”

Opening lines of communication

Trying to close those cracks is yet another challenge the group hopes to tackle once it makes progress on building a case for the use of animals as sentinels. “We’re trying to pick up on the effects of things like biodiversity and deforestation,” says Dr. Rabinowitz. “Very little linkage work has been done yet on that, but as it goes on, animals are usually in there somewhere.” As things are now, infectious disease research is typically done in medical school laboratories by researchers looking at a specific bug, or pathogens. “They may have an ecologist somewhere who is an expert on biodiversity,” Dr. Rabinowitz explains, “but we find that bringing together physicians and veterinarians and ecologists is always a bit of a job.

“We are seeing epidemiology [the study of factors that lead to the occurrence and spread of disease] as a common language that can help bridge [scientific and medical] disciplines working on different aspects of ecosystem health, animal health, and human health. It’s one way we can open up channels of communication so that we can get a clear signal of what’s important and what’s not. There’s been a change in the past five years, communication has started, and is ongoing. There is a lot of good cross-discipline work that is now starting to happen.

“Have diseases broken out of animal populations in the past and caused widespread disease in human? Yes. Is there more of that happening now at a faster pace? It’s certainly possible. We’re still figuring it out. We’re saying that animal health epidemiologists and human health epidemiologists and ecologists should be using epidemiology as a common way to identify the most important factors, how we can pick them up, and decide what to do about them,” Dr. Rabinowitz explains. “I think we have something to learn from animal health professionals and ecologists.” And perhaps, most of all, from animals such as the canary.

Connecticut's Fossil Hunter

2005-11-17T13:02:00.000-05:00

Fossils have cast a spell over people since early humans first dwelled in caves. In Connecticut, it's fossil fish that many find irresistible and few know more about the history of local fossil fish discoveries—and secret places where they may still be found—than paleontologist Nick McDonald of Simsbury. "Nick is probably the person who knows local fossil sites best of all," says geologist Dr. Brian Skinner of Yale.

Nick McDonald holds a favorite fossil specimen of Semionotus, a fish that was abundant in Connecticut Valley lakes in the Early Jurassic of 200 million years ago, one of many he has collected over the past nearly half century.

Nick's passion for Connecticut Valley fossils, and for the history of geologic inquiry here, is apparent from the moment you meet him. He gave me a tour of a few of his favorite fossils and geology books on Wednesday afternoon and it wasn't until hours later, when darkness finally fell, that I realized I'd lost all track of time.

"Look at this one," he boomed at one point, while sliding open a cabinet drawer. "I call this one 'The Ghost Fish.' There isn't anything left of the fish at all, really. There's just this sort of stain around where it had once been." He has fossils in all different sorts of preservation, from those that remain only as an outline, like "The Ghost Fish," to others where practically every bone, and details from eyes to bony ridges above their jaws, are preserved as a shiny black film of protein on slabs of shale.

He went on to tell a story about how he got started on what has become his life's work, reading centuries old descriptions of fossil site locations found in early American scientific literature. Too general to be of much help, he and palynologist Bruce Cornet spent weeks hiking larger areas that corresponded with early descriptions until finally stumbling on the mother lodes. In this way, he was able to find several long-lost locations such as one where the renowned paleontologist Edward Hitchcock made many discoveries of fossil insects and insect traces in the 1830s and 40s.

The tools of a lifetime spent poking around rock outcrops and searching stream bottoms for fossils and geological specimens, all neatly arranged in a cabinet in McDonald's workroom.

Of course, Nick has collected rocks over the years as well, including a few that hold dinosaur footprints. There is one marked with the impressions of what Hitchcock once referred to as "thin-toed" birds, ones he named "Leptodactylus" footprints, tracks now seen as most likely the marks of small theropod dinosaurs.

Given that he works primarily with Connecticut Valley sedimentary rocks, his favorites are those that reveal aspects about how sediments were deposited, and variations perhaps influenced by everything from passing storms to swings in the climate from relatively dry periods to what he imagines may have been monsoonal rains.

Several are quite striking, revealing where periods of gradual deposition of fine-grained sediments were suddenly interrupted by layers of much coarser conglomerate, perhaps by an intervening storm or rainy period. Others show where layers of sloppy mud seem to have been folded over on themselves by similar sorts of events.

Somewhere in all of this he wonders if there isn't a book (or books) to be written. Earlier classic works about Connecticut Valley fossils and fossil fishes long ago went out of print or out of date, and McDonald would be the perfect person to update the records. Where earlier works were written for scientists and scholars, McDonald's storytelling could bring tales of local fossils to an audience of amateur fossil fans eager to learn more about them.

First record of Eubrontes dinosaur footprint in Portland Quarry

2005-10-21T14:55:00.000-04:00

Dinosaur footprints have been found in the Portland Brownstone Quarries for centuries, but until a few weeks ago one was strangely missing. It seemed odd that there was no record of the dinosaur footprint known as Eubrontes (or "true thunder") having been found in the quarries located along Brownstone Avenue. Elsewhere in the Connecticut Valley, the footprint is relatively common, one reason it was adopted as the official State Fossil by the Legislature in 1991.

Quarryman Mike Meehan may now stake his claim for being the first to make a verifiable discovery of Eubrontes footprints in the Portland Quarries. A former coal mining engineer, Mike reopened operations in the north quarry to satisfy new demand for brownstone that has grown over the past several years. It's not uncommon for Mike and his quarrymen to encounter dinosaur footprints as they work.

Mike joined a group of geologists for a discussion about Early Jurassic dinosaur footprints during a visit the scientists made to his quarry earlier this month. "One that hasn't been found here is Eubrontes," said Professor Paul Olsen of Columbia University, describing the footprint, probably made by a mid-sized theropod dinosaur some 200 million years ago. "I've found them," Meehan said matter-of-factly. "I have a couple over here."

Geologist Nick McDonald (foreground left) and Professor Paul Olsen of Columbia University (foreground center) get a look at the first Eubrontes footprints known to have been found in the Portland Brownstone Quarries, with their discoverer, quarry operator Mike Meehan (foreground right).

Meehan led the group for a tour of several different footprints he's found in the quarry, including a couple of footprints that showed the classic three-toed foot design, roughly 18 inches from heel to toe, typical of Eubrontes (photos top and below).

With his discovery, Meehan may have earned a place in the history of dinosaur science in Connecticut, along with quarrymen such as Charles O. Wolcott of Manchester, whose quarry yielded many prehistoric bone and trace fossils in the late 1800s.

Eco: CT Highlands Conservation funds

2005-10-15T08:18:00.000-04:00

The federal goverment plans to spend $100 million to protect natural areas in our region over the next ten years. The USDA Forest Service is asking for ideas about which places in Connecticut's northwest corner ought to be saved, and will hold public meetings this month to let anyone who wishes have their say.

A view of the Connecticut Highlands from atop Bear Mountain. The Highlands area of Connecticut is a triangle around the northwest corner bounded by the state lines to the west and north, and as the crow flies from Torrington southwest to Danbury. Photo by ecologist Dr. Robert Craig.

The Highlands Conservation Act of 2004 authorizes the US Forest Service to conduct a natural, recreational, and cultural resource assessment of the Connecticut Highlands. In plain language, that means the federal government is prepared to offer as much of half of the cost for states in our region to acquire and place in the public trust natural areas that this new study finds are of exceptional value and importance. The Act provides a total of $100 million over ten years, so it will have to be spent wisely.

The Forest Service is inviting the public to participate in "public listening sessions" to be held at the New Milford High School, 388 Danbury Road, New Milford, on Wed., Oct. 19th at 7pm, the UConn Extension Center, 855 University Drive, Torrington, on Thurs., Oct. 28th at 7pm, and at the Housatonic Valley Regional High School, 246 Warren Turnpike Road, Falls Village, on Mon., Nov. 7th at 7pm.

According to the The USDA Forest Service, "the Act is designed to assist Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania in conserving land and natural resources in the Highlands region through federal assistance for land conservation projects in which a state entity acquires land or an interest in land from a willing seller to permanently protect resources of high conservation value.

"The USDA Forest Service will identify lands that have high conservation value in the Highlands of Connecticut and Pennsylvania through a Regional Study Update similar to that completed for the Highlands of New Jersey and New York in 2002. Each year, governors of the four Highlands states may submit land conservation projects in the Highlands for funding not to exceed fifty-percent of the total cost; projects must be consistent with areas identified in the Update as having high resource value. The USDA Forest Service is responsible for doing the resource assessment and preparing the Update for the states involved; Department of the Interior has responsibility for project grants."

If you know of a place in the northwest hills you want to see preserved, this is your chance!

Geo: Time and place

2005-10-08T10:57:00.000-04:00

We never know when something extraordinary is about to happen, when streams of time might run together for an instant before parting. Listening to Jelle DeBoer lecture about the Age of Volcanism in the Connecticut Valley last Sunday, from atop the Hanging Hills of Meriden with the Sleeping Giant behind him was one such moment.

DeBoer (center) and Phil Resor (middle right with tan cap), professors of geology at Wesleyan University, led a field trip for a group of geologists from around the northeast, one offered as part of the New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference here last weekend. With them were geologists Tony Philpotts of UConn (middle left in tan jacket) and Greg McHone (not pictured).

Beloved as the Stearns Professor of Earth Science at Wesleyan, Jelle is an expert on the lavas that flowed over and through the Connecticut Valley some 200 million years ago to form our traprock ridges, such as the Hanging Hills, Sleeping Giant and Talcott Mountain, and rocky craigs such as West Rock and East Rock.

In recent years, a new theory about the origin of these rocks has emerged. Drs. Philpotts and McHone are testing the idea that local traprock ridges were a small part of volcanic events that flooded the center of the former supercontinent of Pangea with molten rock. They describe the area—which today stretches around the Atlantic, across parts of Canada, the eastern US, Europe, South America and Africa—as the CAMP, or Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.

An illustration showing the area of the CAMP by Greg McHone, after a map by Paul E. Olsen. The red area indicates the portion of Pangea (including New England) Greg McHone believes was overspread by flood lavas in the Early Jurassic.

Standing together there atop the Hanging Hills on that perfect October day, streams of time converged. There was Jelle DeBoer, standing confidently atop the ancient volcanic rocks, lecturing about events in the deep past he has spent a lifetime researching, and serving as a focal point for a stirring conversation about new discoveries still being made here today. Then, of course, it came time for all of us to go on to the next stop.

Public program: Discover Connecticut’s Natural Wonders

2005-10-08T10:56:00.000-04:00

If you’d like to learn how you can explore the natural history of Connecticut here’s your chance. This month, The Connecticut College Arboretum, New London, will present a special, four-session course about the nature of the state that will intrigue and delight. "Exploring the Natural History of Connecticut—and why it matters!" tells tales of local discoveries about geology, dinosaurs and wildlife, describes trips to places around the state where essential concepts of earth science are brought to life, and draws connections to events around the globe today.

The course will be presented by Brendan Hanrahan, editor of "Connecticut Windows On The Natural World," and the "Road to Discovery Series of guides to the natural history of Connecticut". The Arboretum has been publishing scientific bulletins about the nature of Connecticut for more than 50 years.

Open to everyone from weekend adventurers, to teachers, to parents, the course is scheduled for Wednesday evenings, Oct. 12, 19, 26 and Nov. 2, 6:30-8:30 pm. Teachers will be awarded 8 CEUs for the four classes. The fee is $75 for Arboretum members, and $88 for non-members. Call the Arboretum at (860) 439-5060 to register or email Assistant Director Kathy Dame for more information.

Paleo: New dinosaur found in New Haven

2005-09-22T17:10:00.000-04:00

A dinosaur not seen in 66 million years turned up on Whitney Avenue in New Haven today. Workers took advantage of the beautiful fall weather to install a newly created bronze sculpture of Torosaurus Iatus in front of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Torosaurus was a ceratopsian, a group of horned and frilled dinosaurs that included Triceratops, and lived in the Late Cretaceous, practically at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Built with a beak like a pruning shear, powerfully muscled jaws, and shearing teeth (like giant scissors), Torosaurus incorporated design improvements made to plant eating dinosaurs over 160 million years. By comparison, plant eating dinosaurs known from Connecticut Valley fossil bones, such as Anchisaurus, or footprints such as Anomoepus, were far more primitive. Connecticut's dinosaurs were early models, from much earlier in the Age of Dinosaurs than Torosaurus.

The Torosaurus sculpture was created by Peabody Museum Preparator Michael Anderson who examined Torosaurus bones from the Peabody collections, consulted with experts at the Peabody and Smithsonian, as well as other institutions, and used computer animation to complete the project. Anderson produced models and a wax prototype that were used to cast the final sculpture in bronze. It is 9 feet tall and 21 feet long and took nearly five years to complete. It was made possible through the generosity of Elizabeth R. and Stanford N. Phelps and their grandchildren Max, Garrett and Ford.

Artist Michael Anderson (yellow shirt) watches as the dinosaur he created is lowered onto a specially built granite foundation. Photos by Yale Peabody Museum herpetologist Greg Watkins-Colwell.

The Torosaurus will remain wrapped up under a tarp for the next several weeks while the final installation is completed. The cover comes off during the official unveiling scheduled for Saturday, October 22, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Yale paleontologist and Museum Assistant Dan Brinkman, one of the dinosaur scientists at the Peabody Museum who was a scientific consultant on the project, will be on hand following the unveiling to discuss Torosaurus fossil discoveries and the scientists who made them.

Geology, Hurricanes and the Floods of '55

2005-09-21T13:31:00.000-04:00

This year's catastrophic hurricane season brings back memories of 1955 for many who survived the floods that hit Connecticut during late summer a half century ago. On August 12 & 13, Hurricane Connie brought 8 inches of rain. On the 18th, Hurricane Diane brought more. The Hartford Courant reported “normally docile brooks were transformed into menacing monsters by relentless rain." The ground saturated by Connie, Diane caught people by surprise.

In a little over 24 hours, more than a foot of rain fell in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Rivers, streams, lakes and ponds spilled over, sending torrents of water through towns. A state record 14.25 inches fell in Torrington; Westfield, MA had nearly 20 inches. By the afternoon of Aug. 19, the storm passed. 87 people died, communities were wrecked, and losses were hundreds of millions of dollars.

The geology and hydrology of Connecticut show how the storms led to a catastrophe. The landscape has a decidedly north-south grain that goes back to continental collisions in the deep past. Since then, it's been water, flowing south toward the Atlantic, that has shaped local hills and valleys.

Today, the state's three major rivers, the Housatonic, Connecticut and Thames, are the primary watercourses that carry runoff to the Long Island Sound. They are fed by a great many smaller streams and rivers that drain upland areas across the northern two-thirds of the state.

Water gathers into bigger and bigger watercourses as it rolls downhill. In Connecticut, water streams down along erosional planes that slope to the Atlantic, as it has done for perhaps millions of years. Along the way, it gains speed, volume, and power. The volume of water that fell in August 1955 quickly exceeded the rivers' natural capacities, and the power of the runoff grew to be tremendous.

Nearer the shore, areas surrounding many shorter rivers were also affected. Along the southern third of the state, these shorter rivers drain an area referred to as the coastal plain. In many cases, these are also fed by adjoining streams and smaller rivers, and the effects of the flash floods on these watercourses were similar.

In most years, the state's streams and rivers work as an efficient natural drainage system, carved out over large spans of geological time. There are times, however, when the nature of Connecticut's watercourses leaves the possibility that they can be overwhelmed by extreme weather such as hurricanes and flash floods.

Controls such as the many dams that have been built since 1955 have been designed to provide greater protection and limit damage. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, these dams can be used to better control water flows. Forecasting and our knowledge of how hurricanes behave has also improved.

Yet, these improvements have still to be tested by a series of storms, back to back, as occurred fifty years ago. The geology and hydrology of Connecticut remains largely as it was, and damaging hurricanes can be expected to hit the state at least every hundred years or so. While many see a repeat of anything like what occurred in 1955 as unlikely, only one thing is for sure. There's no way to know what Mother Nature may have up her sleeve next.

Hammonassett Festival '05

2005-09-17T12:04:00.000-04:00

Hammonassett Beach State Park is always a wonderful place to visit, and the weekend of October 8th & 9th promises to be one of the best times of the year to head to Madison and check it out. October brings spectacular beach days and the park's annual festival.

The upcoming Hammonasset Festival 2005, put together by the Friends of Hammonassett organization, will offer programs and nature walks sure to delight families, and beach lovers. On the weekend of Oct. 8th & 9th, the festival will celebrate nature and Native Americans with a demonstration archaeology dig, birds of prey and primitive technologies programs, fly tying and casting demos, lectures on geology, turquoise and wampum and coastal ecology, museum exhibits, guided nature walks, storytelling and children's nature activities, traditional food and other refreshments.

Programs and performances will feature Kenny Merrick Jr. & the Mystic River Singers, Joseph Fire Crow (flute), CT State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, WINGMASTERS live birds of prey, Trout Unlimited, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, the Institute for American Indian Studies, and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Come and enjoy the festival—rain or shine!

Admission is $5, children under 10 are free. For more information, call (203) 318-0517, ext. 217, or email to info@hammonassett.org. Hammonassett Beach State Park is in Madison, CT, exit 62 off I-95.

The Cambrian Explosion—in the Farmington River?

2005-09-12T15:54:00.000-04:00

More than 500 million years ago, life on earth suddenly took a great leap forward. During the time known as the "Cambrian Explosion," multicellular life underwent a rapid expansion. The renowned Burgess Shale fossils record this as a period when many of the major groups of animals first appeared, including invertebrates such as corals, sea anenomes, sea stars, jellyfish, and soon after, bryozoans.

The bryozoan colony that herpetologist Brian Kleinman pointed out during a canoe trip on the Farmington River on Sunday was so strange looking I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't some alien invader, or a disembodied brain, like one Dr. Frankenstein's assistant Igor might have dropped after robbing a medical school cadaver.

Brian Kleinman holds the bryozoan colony he found in a mucky channel along the banks of the Farmington River.

In fact, it was an ancient form of life rooted in the deep past, when much of the world would have been unrecognizable to us today. Where the river spilled into an impoundment was an example of one of the few freshwater species of bryozoan, Pectinatella magnifica.

Around the outside of this gelatinous colony, we saw what must have been hundreds of smaller rosettes, each comprised of a dozen or more individual animals. The inner area is filled with water that can be forced out with a gentle squeeze. Each animal has tentacles and beating cilia it uses to filter food particles suspended in the river's turbid waters and move them into its mouth.

"I love them," says Marcy Klattenberg, an ecologist and earth science teacher in Durham. "They can grow to over 12 inches across and include thousand of individual animals. This is the time of year when the colonies will soon form statoblasts [nodules or buds], which will then fall off and drift to the bottom where they will overwinter before growing into a new colony next spring."

As strange and primitive as they are, bryozoans like those found in Connecticut rivers, or the salt water of Long Island Sound, offer clues to a very different world, when life began its first great expansion some 500 million years ago.

Eco: CT tidal marshes, good as gold

2005-09-03T17:15:00.000-04:00

The Hurricane Katrina disaster shows a need for municipalities to weigh short-term gains to be had by developing areas such as wetlands against the long-term benefits of a healthy environment.

The NY Times reported that the development of ports in the Mississippi Delta led to declines in marshes there, and a loss of natural flood controls. “People realized what a terrible bargain the region made when it embraced environmental degradation for economic gains.” (NYT, 8/30/05). The report, and another on CNN.com, echoed a 2004 National Geographic story about marsh losses in the Louisiana bayou.

That coastal wetland development comes at a price is an old story—with its own history in Connecticut. “[CT tidal] marshes have been viewed as expendable,” Richard Goodwin, of the Connecticut College Arboretum, wrote in 1961. “If the public recognized these areas as resources of importance to our welfare their destruction would be curtailed.” On Saturday, the boys and I walked the length of what remains of the tidal marsh at Sherwood Island State Park, along East Beach to the inlet, to explore the issues Goodwin wrote about.

In 1961, Connecticut tidal marshes were also in rapid decline. Practices such as the dumping of millions of cubic yards of construction fill, as was done to add parking at Sherwood Island State Park in 1956, obliterated CT marshes at a rate Goodwin projected would destroy 86% of them by 2000. (CT’s Coastal Marshes, CT College Arboretum, No. 12, 1961).

The view toward the marsh from the lot where we parked, atop 3.5 million cubic yards of fill. The parking lot replaced much of what was then the last publicly owned marsh west of the Housatonic, a wetland once enjoyed by kids, birders, crabbers and duck hunters, and that fed valuable seed oyster beds, clam beds and fisheries offshore.

An estimate by CT DEP found that between 1880 and 1970, the State lost an average 70 acres of tidal wetland per year, at times as much as an acre a day. At least a third, and perhaps as much as half, of all CT tidal wetlands were drained or filled. Stamford, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, New Haven and New London lost 60% of the marshes within their borders. (Wetlands of CT, CT State G&NH Survey, 1992. Tidal Marshes of LIS, CT College Arboretum, No. 34, 1995).

A view of the portion of the original tidal marsh that remains at Sherwood Island today. Out of frame to the left (but not out of earshot) are the Metro North railroad, and the CT turnpike (I-95).

Today, Goodwin's 1961 publication marks a turning point in the destruction of CT tidal marshes. His vision of protective acquisitions, controls, zoning changes, and education has since been enacted to stem declines. Some 17,500 acres of CT tidal marsh are now preserved, by legislation such as the CT Tidal Wetlands Act of 1969, the creation of national preserves such as the Salt Meadow and McKinney Refuges, the State's purchase of as much as 30% of tidal marsh areas, and the launch of the DEP restoration program in '92. Many municipalities and private trusts now also protect marsh areas.

The publication also marked a change in the economic value placed on wetlands in general. In 1992, the CT DEP published an itemized list of the values of wetlands (Wetlands of CT, CT G&NH Survey, 1992). These include resources such as fish and shellfish habitat, waterfowl and endangered wildlife habitat, environmental quality values such as water quality improvement and aquatic productivity, and socio-economic values such as flood and storm damage protection, erosion control, harvest of natural products, recreation and aesthetics.

CT's experience over the past 40 years might now be useful for estimating the economic cost of marsh destruction in the Mississippi Delta. There are fundamental differences. The Mississippi feeds freshwater marshes; tidal marshes in CT are governed by the ebb and flow of the sea. Yet, both have both environmental and economic value far too costly to overlook.

A view of the jetties beside the inlet to the tidal marsh at East Beach, Sherwood Island State Park, Westport.

Of course, with protection comes responsibility. There is more to do. The '95 CT DEP wetlands report notes that "coastal intertidal flats have not received the same protection, with tens of acres still dredged each year. Although tidal wetlands laws have been enacted to 'protect' coastal wetlands, stronger regulations are necessary to preserve all remaining tidal wetlands and mudflats for generations to come."

A large horseshoe crab shell the boys and I found along East Beach on our way to the jetties.

Want to dip a toe in the water? Try participating in one of the beach cleanups being organized by Save the Sound this month. They have posted a list of scheduled cleanups by town, up and down the shore. It's a great way to extend your summer beach season, and to teach kids to care for areas such as tidal marshes.

Eco: From eft to newt, the complex life of a CT amphibian

2005-08-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

Amphibian populations are in decline in many places around the world, and the reasons become clear during a trip to the Connecticut woods. Amphibians have complex life cycles, during which they may metamorphose from one stage to another multiple times, and rely on a network of diverse and finicky habitats, such as our vernal pools and forests, for their survival. They don't tolerate change well, and thus are early indicators of habitat degradation and pollution.

We went with herpetologist Brian Kleinman to the Enders State Forest in Granby the other day, and discovered a good example in one amphibian's remarkable adaptations. Brian gave us a tour of amphibian habitats here, and shared his knowledge of local inhabitants, such as the Red-spotted newt, along the way.

After years spent wandering the forest floor as a juvenile, the brightly colored red eft, the terrestrial stage of the Red-spotted newt (lower left), grows into a greenish-brown adult stage (upper right), and returns to the water.

Each stage of life is perilous for the Red-spotted newt, and it takes years for them to reach adulthood. They start life as eggs laid in weed choked aquatic habitats in late spring. Weeks later, gilled larvae hatch and feed on insect larvae and small aquatic animals. By mid-summer, many have grown into the red eft stage, and emerge from wetland pools to wander forest floors and colonize new habitats. They remain as efts for 2-7 years until they turn olive green, their tails begin to flatten to aid in swimming, and they return to the water as adult newts. Under some conditions, newts may even skip a life stage.

As we walked the trail at Enders, red efts of varying sizes were abundant in the leaf litter, and seemingly everywhere. Their bright orange color serves as a warning to would-be predators foolish enough to consider biting them. Far from appetizing, Red-spotted newts secrete foul tasting toxins through their skin that can cause severe reactions in amphibians and reptile predators.

Of course, this defense is of little use against human impacts such as habitat loss or water pollution. More and more Connecticut communities are taking declining numbers of native amphibians as dire warnings. Towns have begun to work with conservation groups such as Metropolitan Conseration Alliance and Conservation Districts of Connecticut to implement development plans and wildlife managment strategies that are effective at preserving amphibian habitats.

Frogs such as the Spring peeper (left) and Wood Frog (right) are among several other native amphibians commonly found in the Enders State Forest in Granby. Photos by Brian Kleinman. © Perry Heights Press, 2005.

Eco: Back to the bog

2005-08-16T17:07:00.000-04:00

The last time the boys and I were here at the Black Spruce Bog in the Mohawk State Forest it was a crisp, 20-degree winter day. The air was still except for the large snowflakes that were lightly falling. A thin sheet of clear ice covered the sphagnum moss and ferns on the forest floor like glass over a museum exhibit.

On our return in mid-August six months later, it wasn't our breath we could see, but the humid air of a 90-plus-degree day under a Bermuda high. Barely a half hour after our visit the sky burst and crackled with thunderstorms and lightning, but during the time we were there the sun shined through the tall spruces and tamaracks and sparkled on the shrubs and plank walkway below.

The Black Spruce Bog here is among the most rare of Connecticut’s critical habitats. This particular bog forest is the only one of its type found in the state. It got its start as glacial melt water ponded up in a bedrock depression some ten thousand years ago. This was a place where plants and aquatic life began to re-colonize the tundra as the last Ice Age slowly melted away.

Ecologist Dr. Robert Craig described the bog’s ecology in his book, Great Day Trips to Connecticut’s Critical Habitats. “In bogs, living components are involved in creating their own environment," Craig wrote. “Once a vegetation mat is established, decaying plant material accumulates on it, and plant debris rain into the pond below. Devoid of oxygen, the materials build into a thick layer of a semi-preserved substance known as peat.” (Today, over 40 feet of peat fill the former pond here.)

“On the surface of the bog,” Craig explains, “which is low in nutrients, a process of colonization events occur involving increasingly complex plants. In the beginning, it is plants like the sedges and thick, spongy mats of Sphagnum. A host of other herbaceous plants colonize as well, with grasses like Cotton Grass particularly conspicuous. As bogs age, their mat thickens, producing a substrate suitable for woody plants, like Creeping Snowberry.

"They extend out across the pond at middle age, and toward the edge trees become established. The blue-black spires of Black Spruce contrast with the open, lime-green crowns of Tamarack. In old age, the bog fills with peat, and the quaking surface of the young bog is gradually made more stable."

A truly magnificent and magical place, the bog is easily accessed via a very short hike, and a plank walkway out the to center of the bog. It's a journey many grandparents can make comfortably, and an adventure kids love.

Geo: CT Mining Museum

2005-08-15T09:53:00.000-04:00

Kent is always a beautiful place to visit, and a group of little known museums just north of the village offer unique experiences you won't find anywhere else. Tucked away off Route 7 are the Sloane-Stanley Museum, featuring the work and tools of Connecticut master painter Eric Sloane, The Connecticut Antique Machinery Museum, featuring an extraordinary collection of antique farm and industrial machinery, and the Connecticut Mining Museum, a true "diamond in the rough" for local mineral hounds.

The boys and I enjoyed bouncing around back and forth between the attractions on a trip up to Litchfield County and Kent Falls just the other day.

You can't miss them. Just look for the old steam locomotive parked along the railroad tracks north of the Kent village, just to the west of Rt. 7, and a few miles south of Kent Falls State Park. Turn in, and after crossing the tracks, bear right to follow the road to the Machinery Museum. Make the first left to reach the Mining Museum.

Mining has been an important industry in Connecticut since European colonists first settled in the region, and the state was in many ways the place where commercial mining in the US began. The mining of materials such as traprock and commercial grade marble remains a large and important industry in the state today.

All around the outside of the Mining Museum are specimens of many of the state's most noted and collectible minerals. In the back of the building are a collection of iron buckets that once rode the rails of special railroads used to transport ores out of local mines. Inside is a map of current and former rock quarries throughout the state, a recreation of an underground mine, and outstanding displays of Connecticut minerals.

Built by a former New Milford teacher, John Pawlowski, the museum features cases filled with fine examples of local minerals. There are specimens of quartz from New Britain, Malachite from New Milford, Corundum & Sillimanite from Norwich and many, many more.

There is a wonderful display of minerals associated with Connecticut traprock, an igneous rock known as basalt that formed from lavas that flooded the Connecticut Valley nearly 200 million years ago. Here are specimens of my personal favorite, Prehnite, as well as Amethyst and Calcite.

Also not to be missed is a piece of Verde Antique green marble from a quarry in Orange, Connecticut, that began to be worked in 1811. Verde Antique marble from the quarry was used to make the fireplace mantles in the East Room of the White House. There is also a wonderful display of minerals that show remarkable color under special light.

Eco: Revitalizing the movement

2005-08-15T08:43:00.000-04:00

The shock waves that followed the release of The Death of Environmentalism, a report on the state of the American environmental movement presented by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in October 2004, continue to reverberate.

The report argued that a new vision for conservation and environmental politics is urgently needed, stirring a pot that had been on the back burner for decades. At first, many in the environmental movement's establishment, such as the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, responded as if put on the defensive.

Since then, several of Connecticut's local grass roots organizations and educational institutions have shown their willingness to embrace the authors' call for change and have begun searching for a new vision for environmental education and outreach.

The New England Environmental Education Alliance, a group of environmental educators from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, has planned its October 2005 convention, Raising our Net Impact: The Next Generation of Environmental Education, as a "face in the mirror" sort of forum on what's working and what's not.

Students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Sciences in New Haven, along with the school's dean, Gus Speth, hosted a forum with the authors in May. A video of the event is now posted on the school's web site, Post-environmentalism: Beyond “I have a nightmare” politics. The video provides an excellent overview of the report and the ensuing debate, and an opportunity to get up to speed on the new ideas that promise to reshape the enviromental movement in the future.

Besides making the report available online, the web magazine Grist.org, posts relevant articles and maintaints an online forum.

In my opinion, the critique Schellenberger and Nordhaus have offered promises to spark the most exciting period in the environmental movement since the late '60s, and perhaps its history. Think about getting involved.

Continental drifting: Vacation in Oregon

2005-08-11T14:23:00.000-04:00

We did a bit of continental drifting ourselves last week when we flew cross country to Oregon for a long overdue vacation. I took the boys for almost daily visits to the tide pools at Otter Rock (a beach between Lincoln City and Newport, Oregon) and was struck by similarities between the geology of the area and that of the Connecticut Valley.

Both this area of the Oregon coast and the Connecticut Valley are comprised of sedimentary and igneous rocks. The sedimentary rocks along the Oregon coast are comparatively younger and more clay-like than Connecticut Valley sandstones. Igneous rocks such as the basalts found along the Oregon coast are also much younger, dating from the Tertiary Period, or approx. 15-20 million years ago. By contrast, the Connecticut Valley's sedimentary strata and igneous basalts are much older, dating from the early Jurassic Period, or as long ago as 200 million years ago.

Layers of sedimentary rock, or strata, as well as evidence of subsequent tilting, can be seen in the headlands surrounding Otter Rock. The sunlit spots inside the shadow at the center of the photo are from a large bowl, Devil's Punch Bowl, eroded out of the sediments at the southern end of the beach. The Punch Bowl floods at high tide, with waves crashing well up and even above the top of the headland. It can be entered from beach level and explored at low tide, which is quite exciting after you've seen it from the top, boiling with waves and pounded by the surf.

To the north of the Otter Rock area, the headlands are exposures of volcanic rock known as basalt, similar to the basalts found in the Connecticut Valley and its traprock ridges. The columns and blocks are quite dramatic and distinct, even more so that what you see in Connecticut, perhaps because of their younger age. In places large sections of rock can let go all at once, loosing great piles of enormous blocks to build up in piles along the sea.

The Pacific is also working to rapidly erode the sedimentary rocks, creating many depressions in rocks in the subtidal and tidal zones. Some, like the nearly cylindrical depression pictured above, take on remarkable shapes (perhaps the result of a former cast or an area of softer or less well cemented sediments being removed at a higher rate).

Where these depressions hold water long enough to support colonization, tide pools support wonderful communities of marine plants and animals. These communities can grow to fill tidal pools with anemones, urchins, barnacles, mussels, algae and plants. You find anemones, for instance, lining pools and cracks right up to where they usually hold water at low tide, but no further. The green anemones, purple urchins, ochre and sunflower sea stars and seaweeds are spectacular, and endlessly fascinating.

Just a bit further back in the tidal zone we found lots of what we call "sand crabs," or small marine animals known as amphipods that commonly inhabit sandy beaches near the subtidal zone. Amphipods are also common along the Connecticut shore and east coast of the US. The gulls found them as well, and the birds were quite adept at using their bills to dig the sand crabs out of their burrows, peck their heads off, and gobble these morsels down like museum patrons eating shrimp cocktail at the opening of a new exhibition. The boys and I were fascinated to find many shells still wiggling around, literally "like chickens with their heads cut off."

Pictured above are the footprints of one of the marauding gulls. Seen in the lower left hand corner is one of the headless sand crabs beside the hole the bird drilled to extract and eat it. The footprint at center looks very much like the Connecticut Valley dinosaur footprint Grallator, revealing similarities in foot designs shared only by extinct dinosaurs and their modern day survivors, birds.

Above is a photo of sand crab or amphipod tracks. The round, "stirred" impression to the left is a place where the amphibod burrowed into the sand and buried itself. It's amazing how fast they can wriggle through wet sand!

Oregon beaches are typically crossed at least in one place by rivers draining out of the Coast Range mountains, and that spread out where they reach the sand to form wide, shallow streams to the ocean. These streams transport small grained sediments (on a much smaller scale) in a manner similar to the way rivers deposited sediments in large scale alluvial fans such as those found in the Connecticut Valley.

Heat bugs: The sound of money?

2005-07-25T12:18:00.001-04:00

Some of us know them as heat bugs, or "dog-day" cicadas. Whatever they're called, the rasping sound of cicadas in July is for many of us the sound of summer. If you're lucky enough to find a certain variety of periodical cicada in the Hartford area in the next five days, you might just be able to claim a $50 reward.

The cicada's familiar buzz is a sound male cicadas make to attract females by rapidly expanding and contracting a membrane found under their hind legs. There are over 150 species of cicadas in the US. Certain periodical cicadas, such as insects belonging to the genus Magicicada, emerge from underground burrows just once every 13 or 17 years.

"Magicicada septendecim" hasn't been found in Hartford, Tolland or Windham counties since 1954, and is thought to have gone extinct. John Cooley, Asst Professor at UConn, is eager for someone in the region to find and bring him a live specimen, but there are only five days left to claim the prize.

Even if you don't win, there are lots of great web sites available to tell you everything you want to know about cicadas. Check out Cicada Central or UConn Professor Chris Simon's site for more info.

Fish: Electric rays in Block Island Sound

2005-07-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

Mario Tirone, maker of Mario’s Squid Strips and fluke rigs, held on while Bob Sampson snapped this photo of the electric ray Bob hooked into off Misquamicut Beach, RI. Photo by Bob Sampson.

by Bob Sampson

Here’s a photo of a torpedo ray, or electric ray that I caught off Misquamicut Beach three weeks ago. This fish was about 40 inches long and weighed around 30 pounds. They can grow to over 100 pounds, but if you catch one, DO NOT TOUCH!

Torpedo rays are identified by their fish-like tail (not spikey like a southern ray or skate), round body that is very soft and blubbery looking, and their color, which is like chocolate pudding.

These fish pack an electric shock that one reference described as “benumbing” after a small one was handled by biologists. Larger fish had been measured producing 170 to 220 volts, quite a shock to an unsuspecting angler who may catch and grab one thinking it to be an big oddball skate.

We think of rays as being a southern migrant, and most are. However, this fish is a cold water species that travels south from the Gulf of Maine. They are seldom caught south of the hook on Cape Cod, but due to the cold water temps we’ve had for the past three seasons a few are making their way to the waters of Block Island Sound, so be aware!

Editor's note: Bob Sampson is renowned as the outdoors columnist for the Norwich Bulletin as well as his local radio and television programs. Regarded by many as the state's top angler, he is also famous as perhaps our top multi-species fishersman. "In Connecticut, there is a different fishing experience to be had everyday," he likes to say.

Bob's guidebook, Best Fishing Trips in Connecticut makes it easy for families and weekend anglers to experience the best fishing Connecticut has to offer, fresh water and salt, month by month, practically all year long. These are the trips Bob began taking with his kids years ago and that they enjoy sharing together even more today.

Eco: Five-lined Skink, CT's only native lizard

2005-07-16T10:54:00.000-04:00

Only one lizard, the Five-lined Skink, is native to New England. Skinks are rare throughout their range, including Connecticut. They are found in a few, isolated populations, leaving them vulnerable to localized environmental disturbances or catastrophes such as fire.

A Five-lined Skink showing the red coloration males take on around their jaws and head during breeding season. Photo by herpetologist Brian Kleinman, made in Connecticut. © Perry Heights Press 2005.

Younger individuals can show five, distinct, yellowish stripes or lines down their backs and tails. Juveniles can also show a deep blue color on their tails. During breeding season, males heads turn bright red, but skinks' colorations tend to fade as the season progresses, and as individuals grow older. Evidence collected by herpetologist Hank Gruner, of the Science Center of Connecticut, suggests skinks are insectivorous, and eat a variety of bugs such as flies, ants, and beetles.

Eco: Fungus Among Us

2005-07-15T08:14:00.000-04:00

The walk up to the Heublein Tower, at Talcott Mountain State Park in Bloomfield/Simsbury, offers great views, a castle-like tower to explore, and on this day in mid-July, many kinds of fungus for mycology fans to enjoy. Fungi such as mushrooms belong to a kingdom of life all their own, one defined by their unique forms, growth patterns, reproduction, and the functions they perform in forest ecosystems.

Summer humidity helps bring out the best in mushrooms, but partially obscures the Heublein Tower Trail's famous views. On the day the boys and I were there it was so hot and humid that even the rocks were sweating.

Fungi grow cells in string-like filaments, and when conditions are right, produce masses of these cellular strands such as mushrooms. They play an essential role in helping to recycle nutrients in forests. Many actually secrete digestive enzymes that accelerate the decomposition of plant and animal remains, releasing carbon dioxide and minerals that are absorbed by living plants or returned to forest soils. Fungi also form symbiotic relationships with the roots of plants, increasing the roots' ability to absorb moisture and nutrients.

Along with mushrooms such as varieties of gilled mushroom like the one pictured above, we found plants commonly known as Indian pipe or more formally as Monotropa uniflora. This plant lacks chlorophyl, the green pigment usually found in photosynthetic plants. The fact that it grows on the forest floor along with many mushrooms, and the plant's white color can lead hikers to think it's a fungus, but Indian pipe's unique beauty is unmistakable.

The forests and soils of the Connecticut Valley's traprock ridges, such as those at Talcott Mountain and Penwood State Park, support many different kinds of fungus. The remains of ancient lava flows that flooded central Connecticut and parts of the northeast some 200 million years ago, these basalt ridges today stand hundreds of feet above the valley floor, and offer some of the best views and most enjoyable hikes in the state. All along the trail we found gilled mushrooms, bracket fungi growing on fallen limbs, puffballs, and more.

The ridges seem to stir something in humans as well, leading to the construction of observation towers at several high points in Connecticut, such as the one Gilbert Heublein had built here beginning in 1911. Others can be found atop Castle Craig in Meriden, and Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden.

The Heublein Tower viewed from the picnic area, a great spot to sit and have lunch after hiking up, and ascending the tower to the observation room.

Eco: It wasn't always so dangerous

2005-07-06T20:52:00.000-04:00

Turtles have moved about according to their annual cycles for hundreds of millions of years. It's been only recently that crossing paved roadways has become so dangerous, and begun taking so heavy a toll on long established native populations. The painted turtle pictured above was run over and killed by a passing vehicle along a suburban road in Fairfield County.

Some of Connecticut's box turtles are old enough to remember when there were few roads and fewer motor vehicles, and their annual treks from a breeding pools to nearby woodlands were rarely interrupted by much activity at all. As more and more old fields and open spaces are developed, once safe turtle crossings are now more heavily trafficked, putting the famously slow moving animals at great risk.

Paleo: Wally the Stegosaurus

2005-06-07T10:36:00.000-04:00

"Wally," a famed, life-size sculpture of a Stegosaurus, as he can be seen today on the front lawn of The Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass.

While the creatures he was modeled after lived in the ancient past, Wally himself belongs to more recent history. According to Frank Leskovitz, Wally was constructed for the now legendary Sinclair Dinoland Pavilion at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair by renowned wildlife sculptor Louis Paul Jonas.

Paleontologist John Ostrom, former Curator of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, was one of the scientists who lended their expertise to the creation of Wally and the other dinosaurs that made Dinoland one of the most popular and now most nostalgic exhibits at the Fair.

He was given the name "Wally" as a reference to his walnut-sized brain. He is 26 feet long, 12 feet tall, and 7 feet wide, and weighs 1,200 pounds!

Geo: Bristol Hoppers glacial geology walk

2005-04-26T09:05:00.000-04:00

Connecticut geologist Greg McHone led a group of amateur geologists, hikers, and outdoors enthusiasts on a glacial geology walk through the City of Bristol's Hoppers-Birge Pond Nature Preserve Sunday. Hours after Saturday's downpours relented, the clouds parted to reveal a spectacular spring day, perfect for viewing the hoppers, eskers and glacial till left behind when the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted out of the area some 17,000 years ago.

(Greg McHone, the author of "Great Day Trips to Discover the Geology of Connecticut," describes the geologic history of Connecticut and the glacial geology of the City of Bristol Hoppers-Birge Pond Nature Preserve. Photos courtesy of Greg McHone.)

"This area is one of the best places in Connecticut to see some of these features," says Greg. Bristol residents voted overwhelmingly to establish the Hoppers-Birge Pond area as a preserve several years ago. The Mayor's Committee has been working to enhance its value to the community ever since. It cooperated with the State DEP to have the pond dredged, and also improves walkways and trails.

One of the most remarkable features of the Birge Pond Preserve is the glacial esker ridge running north-south along the area's western boundary. Glaciers melt from the bottom, Greg explained, and the melt water can form rivers that run beneath. As these glacial rivers flow beneath the ice, they can work to deposit a mix of the sand, gravel, and stones once frozen in the ice. This mix, known as glacial till, is laid down in a sort of "upside-down" river valley, or glacial esker, like the one that formed the ridge at the preserve.

(The "upside-down" river valley that formed the esker ridge at the Hoppers-Birge Pond Nature Preserve is clearly seen hiking the trail that runs along its summit.)

The name "Hoppers" comes from other large and dramatic features commonly found in and around the preserve. These large bowl-shaped depressions formed where sections of ice encountered physical barriers and became stranded. In places, large blocks of ice were retained and later came to be covered over with glacial till.

These blocks of ice have long since melted, but the spaces they once occupied, seen in the forms of large semi-circular craters known as hoppers or kettles, are unmistakable.

(A view from trailside across the top of one of the large "hoppers," bowl shaped depressions common in the preserve.)

(The mixture of sand, gravel and stones, known as glacial till, that comprises the esker and much of the Hoppers-Birge Pond Nature Preserve, and is seen along the esker hillside.)

You wouldn't ordinarily expect to find pieces of brownstone, a sedimentary rock some 200 million years old, in an area of older metamorphic bedrock like the preserve. Yet, rounded fragments of brownstone of all different sizes are common in the glacial till of the Hoppers.

The source of the brownstone is easily spotted by looking east from atop the esker ridge, to where the area of the state's central lowlands can be seen just a few miles away.

(The view to the east from atop the esker, across the Connecticut River Valley, toward its traprock ridges.)

As glacial ice rose up, out of the Connecticut Valley, it likely carried with it pieces of brownstone, eventually spreading these relatively young sedimentary rocks to the east and west of the valley, and across areas of much older bedrock, like that underlying the preserve, that is between 350 and 500 million years old.

Paleo: Dino guide is Book of the Year Finalist

2005-04-12T13:53:00.000-04:00

"Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley of the Dinosaurs" has been selected as a Finalist for ForeWord Magazine's 2004 Book of the Year Award, the magazine announced last week.

Known for its reviews of books by independent publishers, ForeWord says its mission is "to provide booksellers and librarians and publishing professionals with a source of reviews of independent and university press titles...ForeWord is a gathering place, in print, for the industry's leaders, grandest thinkers, most literate reviewers and young authors to watch."

The book tells the tales of two centuries of dinosaur fossil discoveries in the Connecticut Valley, studies made of them in the past, what the evidence reveals today, and field trips to sites where readers can make their own judgements about the fossils' true meaning.

"Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley of the Dinosaurs" is available online at cttrips.com.

Eco: Caution amphibians crossing

2005-04-02T15:42:00.000-05:00

Spring peepers could be heard for the first time this spring last week. Among the earliest of the frogs to become active each year, their distinctive calls are an early sign that local amphibians are on the move again, migrating from winter burrows to swamps, ponds and vernal pools to lay eggs.

Salamanders are in motion as well, perhaps a few weeks later than other years following the long winter and late snow. As overnight temperatures move closer to 40 degrees, and drenching spring rains saturate the freshly thawed ground, animals like the red spotted newt pictured below begin to move.

(A red spotted newt lays in a Connecticut road after having been struck by a passing car during the night.)

It can be a perilous time for salamanders, as they can cover hundreds of feet moving from woodlands to wetlands, and can often be seen crossing wet roads on rainy nights as they make their way from one place to the other. These days, increased traffic, especially at night when the animals are active, and modern road design, add to the hazards the animals face.

(On one side of the road a woodland where many salamanders had dug in for the winter.)

Dr. Michael Klemens, a well known Connecticut biologist who has studied the state's amphibians and reptiles for decades, suggests that the high curbs commonly used on local roads pose barriers that can trap amphibians in roadways. The result, he suggests, has been that not only have amphibians suffered increased mortality from cars, but more raccoons are found dead in the road each spring as well.

(On the other side of the same road, an upland wetland like many where local amphibians migrate to lay eggs.)

The raccoons, Klemens suggests, have grown accustomed to gorging themselves on the amphibian appetizers they find in abundance on local roadways each spring. Many salamanders are run over, others find it much more difficult to climb over curbs and out of roadways than it was for them to tumble in. As the raccoons fill their bellies with fresh salamander, they apparently forget about passing cars, only to meet the same fate as their table fare.

One solution would be for local municipalities to simply specify a different model curb, the so-called Cape Cod curb. Another would be for drivers to be on the lookout for critters while driving wet roads on rainy nights in the spring.

Geo: Connecticut minerals at the Peabody

2005-03-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

For anyone with even a passing interest in minerals, a trip to the mineral room at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven promises many surprises and treats.

The mineral room is one of my boys' favorite stops when we visit this wonderful museum (along with the collection of strong and sometimes foul odors to be sampled in the displays of animal musks and scents in an adjacent room), as we did yesterday.

Minerals are defined as inorganic chemical compounds with their own, distinctive crystalline structure, and that can be identified by their chemical composition, crystals and molecular arrangements. Rocks are usually composed of one or more minerals.

Many that seem ordinary under normal light can display remarkable colors when viewed under a different spectrum. Be sure to press the button to view examples in the case to the left as you enter the room.

Just past this display are cases containing Connecticut minerals. One includes a display of limestone and marbles, formed from minerals deposited in the mud of ancient seafloors as the shells of ancient marine animals. There are several from the state's northwest hills, including Diopside and Tremolite from Canaan.

Another case displays minerals associated with the ancient lava flows we recognize today as the traprock ridges of Connecticut's central valley. In it are specimens of Anhydrite, Aragonite, and Chalcocite from Meriden, and Amethyst and Calcite from East Haven. Copper ore is also associated with basalt, one of the primary types of rock associated with the traprock ridges, and there is a very large, 192-pound mass of copper also found in East Haven near the entry to the mineral room.

There is also a case dedicated to hydrothermal minerals. Most, including small deposits of gold, formed with heat supplied by ground water that rose from deep in the earth's crust. A spectacular specimen of Barite from Cheshire can be seen in the case in the entryway, labeled as number 10.

At the back of the mineral room is an astonishing collection of minerals, including a great many species known from Connecticut. Here are fine examples of pegmatites, igneous rocks characterized by large minerals, and that have been changed under the tremendous heat and pressure of metamorphism.

Many are from Branchville, a small Fairfield County locality (east of Ridgefield) where a great variety of minerals have been found, including Albite, Beryl, Columbite, Microcline, Muscovite, and Rose Quartz. Other Connecticut pegmatites on display include Lepidomelande and Quartz from Haddam. There is Ilmenite from Litchfield, Cordierite from Plymouth, Samarskite from South Glastonbury, and Stilbite from Thomaston.

Speaker: Family trips start with a plan

2005-03-27T10:57:00.000-05:00

It cuts into the time he could spend fishing, but Bob Sampson doesn’t mind. He loves to be out on the water, but likes talking about fishing nearly as much. Bob gives the kids who come to hear him special attention, and so far, lots of kids, parents and grandparents have turned out for the series of family fishing talks he is giving at Connecticut libraries and nature centers this spring.

The renowned outdoors columnist for the Norwich Bulletin, radio host for WICH, and a featured angler for the cable show “On the Water” on NESN, few people know local waters better than Bob. His guide to family fishing in Connecticut, Best Fishing Trips in Connecticut, from ponds to pounding surf, was written to make it easy for parents and grandparents to learn to enjoy fishing with their kids.

The secret to successful family fishing trips, Bob says, is to go with a plan. In his days as a fisheries biologist working for the state, Bob learned that those who are out “to catch anything” usually catch nothing. Anglers who go after a specific fish, and even with a backup species in mind, have little problem “putting a bend in the rod.”

With that in mind, Bob describes what he's found to be the best family fishing trips, month by month, to both fresh water and salt. He shares ideas about catching trout (and state run trout parks are ideal places for families and beginners to try their luck), large and small mouth bass, and striped bass in the spring, fluke in Long Island Sound in the summer, and pike and walleye in the fall.

Bob also brings a variety of rods and reels to help parents understand what they need to equip their family for a trip. He describes everything from basic rods and reels, to lines and lures, as well as what he has found to be good, all-around rigs for kids and beginners.

The real crowd-pleaser is when Bob pulls out a fiberglass mount he had made as a souvenir of a giant pike he caught in Mansfield Hollow. He kept the fish itself only long enough to have a photo snapped, and then released it back into the lake to catch another day. “I want to catch him again when he’s twice that size!” he explains.

One day, he probably will. The day after he spoke with a large group of experienced anglers, beginner parents, and interested grandparents at the Cragin Memorial Library in Colchester, Bob was back in Norwich Harbor on a quick trip to go after a striped bass or two. It wasn’t long before he had one worthy of a photo, or before he returned that fish to the water, where it could be caught again another day.

Speaker: Painting Truth in Nature

2005-03-19T15:25:00.000-05:00

The place simply called to her. Barbara Lussier returned to a bog in Killingly many times this winter to paint the colors and patterns seen there through bare limbs and under the weather. She spoke at the Connecticut Audubon Center in Glastonbury recently about her experiences painting the bog, and natural setting around the state.

Barbara is not “weather-whipped,” as she describes other, more fair weather plein air painters. Connecticut’s landscapes call her in weather fair and foul. And so she sets out to tell of them what she can, driving a tan PT cruiser personalized with the marks and aromas of oil paint, and equipped with a seemingly spindly contraption of an easel, but one she can assemble to stand up even to nor’easters.

All this to search for what she finds to be the truth in nature. On good days, she is carried away by the work, the act of portraying moments like those she spends at the bog in Killingly, and the weather, rain or cold, rarely matters. When everything is right, she says, scenes paint themselves.

Her portraits capture more than just the beauty in our surroundings; the scenes are also familiar. We recognize in them our own experiences and interpretations of Connecticut places. The color of the snow can convey the feeling of a bite in the air. Pine needles appear to bend and whistle with a cold wind.

She is joined on many outings by her husband, Connecticut ecologist Dr. Robert Craig. Dr. Craig was one of two biologists who conducted the first ecological survey of the the state in 1975. Last summer, Barbara and Robert collaborated to produce their guide to the state's most extraordinary natural places, Great Day Trips to Connecticut's Critical Habitats, realizing a dream they had long shared.

The book includes Dr. Craig's descriptions of the ecology of 16 habitat types vital to sustaining the state's native wildlife, field trips to examples of each of the 16 habitats, as well as reproductions of the paintings Barbara created about each of the sites. Included among them are hikes to many different local forests, swamps, bogs, beaches, traprock ridges, and more.

Fish: A trip to the Burlington trout hatchery

2005-03-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

The boys and I enjoyed a trip to the Burlington trout hatchery on Sunday. Located adjacent to the Nassahegon State Forest, the water circulating through the hatchery's ponds and tanks is largely gravity fed, redirected from the large brook beside the complex, and then directed down from the higher ponds, through the tanks inside the hatchery building, through more ponds on the other side, until it is eventually returned to the brook.

The trout looked happy the day we were there, with the cold winter and nearly a foot of snow keeping the water nice and cold, just the way they like it.

Fish range in size from recently hatched fry, up to ten inches or so, the larger ones destined to be stocked in rivers and lakes around the state in coming weeks.

An apparently ravenous rainbow trout on display in a large tank was a big hit with the boys. The fish followed their fingers back and forth across the glass, ready to go after anything that moved.

Also popular were two mounts, one of a Kokanee salmon, a fish the state experimented with stocking for a few years, and above it an enormous brown trout.

This great fish was hatched at Burlington in 1961 and stocked in Wononscopomuc Lake in Salisbury after it reached 10" in 1963. By 1966, it had nearly tripled in size, to about 27". It measured three feet long and weighed nearly 27 pounds when it was found dead in July, 1969, either from natural causes or perhaps the stress of fighting to escape one last angler (they must have thought they had hooked on to a whale).

Speaker: Peering across time and space

2005-03-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

Every artist’s perspective is unique, and few have as unique a view of the Connecticut River Valley as Will Sillin. Will spoke recently about his experiences painting the valley as it appears today, and how it may have looked hundreds of millions of years ago, at the Connecticut Audubon Center at Glastonbury.

Will's talent may have come naturally, but in order to develop his skills Will Sillin hiked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, camped beside Alaskan glaciers, and climbed in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He learned to be resourceful, and fashioned special equipment to tote paintings while still wet, and rigged tent flies so they would dry.

Recording the marks time left on the land, nature made its impressions on him. Will became adept at painting landscapes on grand scales, with only minutes to capture fast changing conditions. He grew to develop his own sense of earthly shapes and forms, and the effects of light and shadow, as they interacted with his subjects.

By the time he returned to paint his native Connecticut River Valley he had mastered the plein air style of painting. Will has continued to portray its beauty by drawing from the many images, impressions, visual references and experiences he now keeps catalogued in his mind, and that give his work its enlightened perspective.

His paintings caught the eye of an Amherst College geologist who commissioned Will to apply what he'd learned about the earth in the present to paint a mural of how the world may have looked in the ancient past, during the Mesozoic, or the "middle ages" of life on earth.

Based on the success of that painting, Will had an opportunity to speak with Rich Krueger, then the supervisor of Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, about an idea Rich had to create a large mural of the Connecticut Valley in Late Triassic time.

Since fossils and rocks are all that remain of that times, Will began the mural by making field trips with renowned paleontologists Drs. Paul Olsen and Bruce Cornet, two leading experts on the Connecticut Valley of some 200 million years ago. The results of that research, seen through Sillin’s eye, are paintings like the magnificent mural seen at the park today.

Last year, Will began exploring a new media, creating computer generated, 3-D illustrations of dinosaurs known from Connecticut Valley fossils for our book, "Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley of the Dinosaurs."

These days, he is working hard at clearing his schedule to focus solely on his art. Where his work will take him next Will isn't sure. His next new experience may well be another journey into the past.

March fishing talks & book signings

2005-03-06T11:11:00.000-05:00

Connecticut's leading fishing writer, Bob Sampson, will talk about the state's best fishing trips and sign copies of his book, "Best Fishing Trips in Connecticut, from ponds to pounding surf," at several venues during March.

"Every day there is a different fishing experience to be had in Connecticut," Bob says. A former fisheries biologist, and lifelong enthusiast, he is an expert on all the state has to offer anglers, from beginners to experts. His book is perfect for parents who are interested to give fishing a try with their families, and filled with tips experts can use to put more bends in the rod as well.

It includes an annual calendar of Bob's favorite family fishing trips, to both freshwater and salt, month by month. All tried and tested by Bob himself, the calendar makes it easy to pick which trip you and your family want to try, and then plan to have a great outing.

Bob will be talking about the trips at the Cragin Memorial Libary in Colchester on Saturday, March 12th, at 2 pm, and at the Ridgefield Public Library in Ridgefield on Sunday, March 20th, at 2 pm.

If you're one of those parents who have it in mind to get out and try fishing in Connecticut, but are unsure where to start, here's your chance. Few know Connecticut waters better than Bob Sampson, so come and find out everything you want to know!

March earth science talks & book signings

2005-03-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

I will present my slideshow highlighting many of the most remarkable discoveries about geology, paleontology and ecology of Connecticut over the past two centuries at several venues in March. The talk is based on material published in our guides to notable geology sites, dinosaur fossil sites and natural places.

Earth science guides include "Great Day Trips to Discover the Geology of Connecticut," "Great Day Trips in the Connecticut Valley of the Dinosaurs," "Great Day Trips to Connecticut's Critical Habitats."

I will be interviewed on Connecticut Public Radio's Faith Middleton show to air on Monday, March 14th, and appear with Kristen Cusato on WTNH TV Channel 8's Noon Show the following Monday, March 21st.

That evening, the authors will be signing books following our program at RJ Julia Booksellers, on the Post Road in Madison, on March 21st at 7pm.

Barbara Lussier, one Connecticut's outstanding plein air painters, and the illustrator of "Great Day Trips to Connecticut's Critical Habitats" guide will present a show of her work and talk at the Connecticut Audubon Center at Glastonbury on Friday, March 18th at noon. Bring a sandwich, the Center provides dessert and beverages as part of their new, noontime, "Art in Nature" series.

On Thursday, March 24th, I will be presenting my slideshow for members of the Lillinonah Audubon Society and to the public at the CH Booth Library, Newtown, at 7:30 pm.

All are welcome. Please join us!

Eco: Ice water in their veins

2005-03-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

News that bacteria frozen in Alaskan ice for 32,000 years began to stir as soon as it was thawed created a stir among scientists from microbiologists to cosmologists recently.

The discovery of the new species, Carnobacterium Pleistocenium, in a brownish patch of ice dating from the days of Wooly Mammoths and Saber-toothed tigers, led to speculation that some microbes might be able to slowly metabolize locally available nutrients and maintain the viability of their DNA under extreme conditions.

“It greatly enhances the possibility that there may be life existing on Mars today,” NASA scientist Richard Hoover, who discovered the microbe in 2000, told CNN. “Unicellular bacteria might have remained alive, frozen in the Martian sea.”

Whether Hoover is on the right track, or his find was tainted by a modern contaminant, as some suspect, there are many other remarkable examples of life’s ability to adapt to cold environments that can be found on the earth today.

Here in Connecticut, we have several amphibians and reptiles with cold weather adaptations of their own. According to Dr. Ken Storey, of Carleton University, several "freeze tolerant vertebrates" are native.

Two of the first frogs to emerge following cold snowy winters like this year’s are the Wood Frog and Spring Peeper. Both are able to tolerate some freezing, but the Wood Frog is the amphibian Ice King.

“Frozen [Wood] Frogs have no heart beat, no blood circulation, no breathing, no detectable brain activity and cannot move yet miraculously all vital functions return within 1-2 hours when frogs thaw.” writes Storey. He says that as much as 65% of the Wood Frog’s total body water may be converted to ice, and they can survive days or weeks of freezing.

Grey Tree Frogs, which have the ability to change color while active, turn blue when frozen.

Painted Turtles are among local reptiles able to survive a freeze. Young turtles hatch in fall and have to be freeze tolerant to survive their first winter. Adults are able to survive several months under pond ice without breathing oxygen. Among other freeze tolerant reptiles Storey lists Box Turtles and Garter Snakes, able to survive a day or so outside burrows or dens at sub-freezing temperatures.

Whether there turns out to be life frozen in Martian seas or not, there are likely a number of species lying frozen under the snow and ice in Connecticut, waiting practically motionless for the spring thaw.

Eco: Ice, sea and sand

2005-02-28T17:56:00.000-05:00

We think of beaches as summer places, but a trip to the coast in winter promises its own rewards. I went with the boys to the Connecticut Audubon Coastal Center at Milford Point recently. We spent hours on the sandbar, chasing floating ice and poring over shells and old bits of horseshoe crabs.

After a cold wind forced us to retreat, we walked to the Center’s main building. Before going in, we climbed the tower at the corner to view two of Connecticut’s “critical habitats,” the tidal marsh to the west, and sandy beach to the east.

The Center is located between the beach of the Smith-Hubbell Wildlife Refuge and the tidal marsh of the Wheeler Wildlife Management Area, where the Housatonic River runs into the Long Island Sound, in Milford.

Shotgun blasts revealed hunters braving the cold in a small boat while (we imagined) they dreamed of duck for dinner. We headed inside, where the view through the bank of windows is nearly as spectacular, and where it is warm.

Tidal marshes are fragile places, where land and sea meet. On cold days it’s easy to imagine how they formed following the last Ice Age, and to see the threat that the homes, towers and stacks looming in the distance pose to their future.

During the ice advance of 20,000 years ago, the sea was lower and further out, some 70 miles south of Long Island. As the glacier retreated, water once locked in ice contributed to a rise in sea level that over thousands of years flooded the Atlantic coastal plain and “drowned” its river valleys.

Connecticut College Professor R. Scott Warren described how tidal marshes formed. “As the waters of Long Island Sound flooded coastal uplands they moved the shoreline inland, a process termed ‘marine transgression.’ Drowned coastal river valleys are our present day coves and tidal marshes.”

Grasses colonized coastal areas that filled with sediments. Plant remains accumulated as peat. Complex living communities arose, according to their elevation above the sea. Today, our marshes support a web of life—plankton, marine animals, birds, reptiles and mammals—in part due to tides that bring minerals and nutrients twice daily.

But, sea levels are on the rise again, at rates that now threaten to overwhelm our marshes. In the past, the marshes could move inland with the coastline. Today, there are buildings and highways in the way. As a result, tidal marshes are declining and in areas such as Greenwich, may soon disappear altogether.

Eco: Death of Environmentalism exaggerated

2005-02-25T21:10:00.000-05:00

“We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its…outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live,” write pollsters Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. (New York Times, February 6, 2005).

Similar to the way “ecological release” enables new forms of life to prosper from the extinction of the more primitive, their recent paper, “The Death of Environmentalism,” amounts to a call for the “political release” of environmental activism.

It’s a message that can be hard to hear, particularly among those who have given so much to conservation causes. Others see the value of retrospection. Adam Werbach, a former Sierra Club national president, has opened speeches by telling audiences, “I’m here to perform an autopsy.”

One would hope that before an autopsy is required every effort would be made to see what is ailing the patient. If the environmental movement has lost its way—and it’s hard to describe current declines in biodiversity as anything but a dismal failure—it has done so by walking away from its roots, or rather its grassroots.

In Connecticut, more and more municipalities are struggling to manage issues surrounding the pace of development, wetland protections, open space preservation, and more. Too often, administrators feel outmatched and isolated, when in fact there is a great deal of valuable information, and public resources available to assist them.

The real, immediate problem we face is organizing at the local level to assist people to make the ordinary, day-to-day decisions that could lead to real change, and improve our quality of life in the future.

Two who are in the trenches everyday, working with Connecticut towns and their administrators to empower them to represent communities’ interests, are Dr. Michael Klemens of the Metropolitan Conservation Alliance (MCA) of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Roman Mrozinski, Executive Director of the Southwest Conservation District.

Klemens ideas are straightforward and powerful, and in some cases even promise to save money. He advocates that towns make time to imagine the places they want to become in the future, plan accordingly, and pass local regulations that will enable them to negotiate successfully with large developers and their legal teams, who have the know-how to leverage every angle.

Mrozinski works with organizations such as MCA and the Connecticut DEP to organize workshops to train town administrators in planning techniques, and regularly drives throughout his district to assist in key environmental issues.

Together, they are promoting a vision for community planning that can support development and protect biodiversity at the local level. It’s exactly the sort of new thinking that needs to see the light of day.

Eco: Bewitched, bothered and Bog-gled

2005-02-25T20:59:00.000-05:00

If you ask me there is no better spur of the moment, get out and feel the bite of crisp late winter air field trip than a visit to a Connecticut black spruce bog.

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We visited the black spruce bog in the Mohawk State Forest in Goshen with the boys on a cold, snowy day, a wonderful time to be there. A plank walk leads into the heart of the bog, a magical place made even more mystical with its carpet of moss and ferns and majestic spruce trees draped in snow and frost.

Bogs, like swamps are among the many gifts the Laurentide Ice Sheet left for us after the last glaciation of some 20,000 years ago, but their vegetative mats grow to extend out over wetlands that fill glacial depressions. They may fill in entirely in just the next 5,000 years, so you need to get out to see them while they last.

Geo: Volcanic islands past & present

2005-02-25T17:37:00.000-05:00

2004 was the deadliest year for earthquakes since the Renaissance Age, according to the United States Geological Survey. The Indian Ocean tsunamis proved deadlier than any natural disaster since 1556, leading many to wonder if the earth has somehow become unbalanced, or if what we are witnessing is nature gone wild.

Look across deep time, however, and the events of last December can be seen as part of immensely slow geological processes that have gone on for billions of years. "An earthquake of this magnitude, in this part of the world, has probably occurred about a million times [in the last two hundred million years]," Christopher Scotese, a geophysicist at the University of Texas-Arlington, told CNN.

In Connecticut, geologists have described an area of bedrock that suggests similar sorts of earthquakes may have also occurred during the time eastern North America was being stitched together, nearly half a billion years ago.

The cause of the Indian Ocean tsunamis was a "megathrust" event, where a portion of the earth's crust known as the Indian Plate slipped along and under an adjoining portion of crust known as the Burma Plate. The forces involved in these "oceanic-oceanic" convergences are immense. This most recent megathrust caused an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean, generating massive waves that quickly spread hundreds across hundreds of miles of its surface.

Studies of the area reveal a deep oceanic trench, called the Sunda Trench, that marks a boundary where the Indian and Burma plates converge, forcing the Indian plate beneath, and into the earth's core. Adjacent is a string of volcanic islands, the island arc of Sumatra, formed as the tremendous heat and pressure of plate collisions press molten rock up to the surface.

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Look at the Bedrock Geologic Map of Connecticut and an area thought to be the remains of an ancient volcanic island arc can be seen just east of the Hartford Basin, the state's central lowlands. Known as the Bronson Hills, these islands are thought to have been formed as oceanic plates beneath a former ocean, Iapetus, converged perhaps a half a billion years ago.

Most of the state today is made up of what was once the seafloor beneath Iapetus, long since metamorphosed into gneiss and schist as the ocean narrowed and eventually closed. In between is another area of gneiss and schist believed to have been formed by the metamorposis of the Bronson Hills island arc.

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We will never know exactly what occurred during the time North America and our region were formed, but we are able to form a picture from events such as the tragedy of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis. It was the renowned geologist James Hutton who saw the present as the key to understanding the geologic past, and that insight still guides much of geological science today.

Paleo: You say prosauropod; I say sauropod…

2005-02-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

There are few places in the world where a few fragmentary pieces of dinosaur bones could command constant scrutiny for nearly two centuries. The Connecticut Valley is one of those places, and the bones of a small plant-eating dinosaur found here, logged in the Yale Peabody Museum collection as catalog number YPM 2125, are such bones.

Their true nature has been the subject of much debate from the time the bones were first discovered, during blasting for a well in East Windsor, Connecticut in 1818, right up until the present. They were found decades before dinosaurs were even known, and there was doubt at first as to whether the bones were animal or human.

The first accounts were published by Benjamin Silliman, a pioneer of geology in the New World, in his "American Journal of Science." Other descriptions and mentions continued to be published in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, by such renowned scholars as Rev. Edward Hitchcock and Dr. Jeffries Wyman.

It wasn’t until 1896 that the infamous bone hunter, O. C. Marsh, first declared “the Bones from the Well” to be dinosaurian—presumably a prosauropod similar to specimens of Anchisaurus and Ammosaurus Marsh collected from the Wolcott Quarry in Manchester, in an area that today includes the Buckland Hills Mall.

Early in the 20th century, the renowned paleontologist Richard Swann Lull made his own careful appraisals of “the Bones from the Well.” University of Bridgeport paleontologist Peter Galton published the findings of studies he made of the bones in the 1970s.

All reached a similar conclusion, that the bones listed as YPM 2125 were those of a prosauropod, an early form of plant-eater that was among the first to develop a body type later perfected by the huge sauropod dinosaurs of Late Jurassic time, beasts such as the giant Apatosaurus seen today in the Great Hall at the Peabody.

That was until British paleontologist Adam Yates published the newest in the long line of studies of “the Bones from the Well” in April of 2004. Yates argued that YPM 2125 wasn’t a prosauropod after all, but one of the earliest known of the sauropod dinosaurs instead.

The bones survive today as little more than chalky smudges in blocks of Connecticut Valley brownstone. While the debate as to their true nature still rages, one thing is for sure. The specimen Silliman marked with the initials “B.S.” nearly two centuries ago stand today as “the earliest verifiable discovery of dinosaur bones in North America.”

Geo: Come Together

2005-02-24T13:46:00.000-05:00

Is there another supercontinent—Pangaea Ultima—in our future? Christopher Scotese of the University of Texas at Austin is one geologist who thinks there is.

Connecticut was once smack in the middle of a vast former landmass known as Pangaea, when all of the world's continents were compressed together. Our central “rift” valley contains a record of a period of tumult that resulted as Pangaea later stretched and broke apart, over 200 million years ago.

New models of the motion of the earth’s plates suggest the continents are now slowing coming back together. Over the past tens of millions of years, Africa has migrated into Europe, raising the Alps and the Pyrenees, causing tremors from Italy to Turkey and compressing the Mediterranean to a fraction of its former size. Even Australia’s days as an isolated fragment of crust seem to be numbered, as it heads north toward Asia.

Scotese, renowned for the maps he has constructed of the earth in the deep past, can imagine a time, 250 million years in the future, when the movements of continental crust will assemble a new supercontinent, one he has dubbed "Pangaea Ultima." No word yet on what the effect may be on real estate values.

Fish: Get 'em while they're cold

2005-02-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Trout are at their best in cold water—and our rivers and lakes aren’t likely to get much colder than they will be come opening day, the third Saturday in April, which this year is April 16th.

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Can’t wait till then? Make a visit to a state trout hatchery. It’s a great way to shake off winter and get the kids ready for your first trip. The Burlington Trout Hatchery is located on Belden Road, off Route 4, across from the Town Hall in Burlington, CT. Phone: (860) 673-2340; Hours: Daily 8:00 am to 3:30 pm. Admission is free. The Quinebaug Valley Trout Hatchery is one of the largest in the East, producing over 300,000 pounds of trout each year. It’s located on Trout Hatchery Road, Central Village, CT. Phone: (860) 564-7542; Hours: Daily 9:30-3:30. Admission is free.

It’s never too early to visit the CT DEP Fisheries Division web site, and look over this year’s regulations and start thinking about how to make the most of warm weather fishing. This year’s Angler’s Guide can be downloaded in pdf format.

Once April 16th finally does roll around, think about taking the kids to one of the many Trout Parks, lakes around the state that the Fisheries Division keeps well stocked to tilt the odds in your favor and make sure no one goes home without their own fish story to tell.

Geo: So Bad He's Good

2005-01-29T16:38:00.000-05:00

"Looking at life from the perspective geology offers, which renders man insignificant, I find it difficult to regard man as anything other than a biological accident," Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa, an account of the Ring of Fire cataclysm of more than a century ago, told the NY Times Magazine (1/23/05).

Without wasting words Winchester goes to the heart of things: deep time, geology, life--humanity. This from a man who describes himself as a "bad geologist" because he couldn't find copper where there was none.

But geology was never so much about finding copper as it is about grasping time. What Winchester did manage to discover—as did many renowned geologists before him—was that that time runs too deep to ever be properly mined.

It’s a struggle for us to imagine the world one billion years ago, when tectonic events began piecing eastern North America together, much less the vastness of the earth’s 3.6 billion year history.

The last Ice Age of just 20,000 years ago seems impossibly distant, even though the reminders of that time, from stonewalls to sandy beaches, are found in abundance in Connecticut to this day.

Perhaps our near-sightedness is instinctive. It’s difficult to debate whether we’re “biological accidents” or not, as few of us are taught to look back past the end of last week. Attention is given instead to a future we are all racing to meet.