Sunday, May 19, 2019

Since man first came to understand that animal skins could provide all sorts of essential clothing and footwear, hides were tanned using animal brains, dung, urine, ash and smoke".........."As man came to understand how chemistry could speed up and make more profitable the tanning process, trees and other vegetable and minerals became the ingredients of choice"............"Eastern hemlock trees played a crucial role in the early hide-tanning industry"................. "In the industry’s 19th century heyday, as many as 64 tanneries were operating in the Catskill region of New York, and estimates hold that 70 million hemlock trees were harvested for their bark".............."This story played out across the Northeast and helped shape the forest that we know today"............."The Dutch built New York’s first large scale tannery in 1638 in New Amsterdam, in an area later known as “The Swamp” near the present-day Brooklyn Bridge"............."This was an ideal location because hides could be shipped in from foreign sources and water was readily available"................"The area soon became concentrated with tanneries and leather-goods manufacturers, gaining its name from the large quantities of wastewater filled with organic matter and the constant odor of curing animal hides"..............."What New York City lacked, however, were large groves of hemlock, which grew farther upriver in the Catskills, Adirondacks, New England, and Pennsylvania"..............."Coupled with rising displeasure with the horrible conditions of “The Swamp,” this led to the development of tanneries across much of the Northeast"............."Up until the last 30 years, one could travel almost any road in Pennsylvania, New York, and across New England and spot the distinctive hemlock trees peeking out of a mixed northern hardwood forest"............. "Hemlock thrived in moist areas, where it was found in almost pure stands"..........."Its dense canopy blotted out the sun and sheltered mosses and lichens, brook trout and salamanders, among other species"............"A hemlock swamp was a familiar sight to anyone who hunted deer or trekked through the woods and mountain areas"............A real shame that Hemlock has been under siege from the non-native Asian Wooly Adelgid, a sucking insect without natural enemies to neutralize it in the USA............Like the American Chestnut and American Elm, the Hemlock that created jobs, wealth and optimized biological diversity could be heading to blink-out!

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https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/hemlock-and-hide-the-tanbark-industry-in-old-new-york Hemlock and Hide: The Tanbark Ind...
Thursday, May 16, 2019

In the USA east, Mountain Caribou went extinct in the late 19th century.................In the USA west, the last herd of these iconic browsers are now also functionally extinct.............Known as the Selkirk herd(Norther Washington State Mountians into southern British Columbia, Canada),), the final two remaining Caribou were rounded up over the past two years and transplanted into what is known as the North Columbia,British Columbia herd.................."This is the 11th hour for British Columbia's southern mountain caribou that had also occupied northern Washington State"............ "At the turn of the 20th century, scientists believe, there were between 30,000 and 40,000 caribou in BC"................"As of 2014, the federal government estimated the number of caribou at 5,800, in 38 subpopulations distributed among three groups: Northern, Central, and Southern"............"The Southern Group, which traditionally ranges in the Columbia Mountains from Revelstoke to the United States border, is globally unique"............"These deep-snow specialists are the only subspecies of caribou or reindeer that in winter subsist entirely on arboreal lichen found in old-growth forests"...................."caribou specialists have been put in the unenviable position of supporting the targeted killing of wolves and other predators to protect mountain caribou"............."However they all agree that predator culls are a stop-gap measure that will fail unless core caribou habitat is restored and protected"................ "Biologists are just starting to understand the importance of what he calls “matrix habitat,” or the land base around core habitat where forest practices can disrupt the predator-prey balance further threatening caribou"............... “Mountain caribou are in a very difficult situation because they require large areas of habitat and there are manyhuman-centric, competing interests that are incompatible with caribou"

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/can-canada-save-mountain-caribou-it-s-too-late&ct=ga...
Monday, May 13, 2019

So what is the purpose of Scales and Lateral Lines on Fish?................Scales are a type of "Cloaking Device" to make fish almost invisible to predators, a type of protective armor and additional "gear" to assist them propelling themselves through rough currents................"Note that fish are like delicate sensing devices, like a swimming antenna"..........."Their lateral line is a system of sensors and channels that run across the fishes’ head and body, controlled by the arrangement of the scales and the microscopic hairs between them that respond to flow, turning mechanical motion into electric signals"............."Fish are said to be able to detect earthquakes before the most sensitive of human inventions"..............."It’s the lateral line that shapes fish behavior, whether that fish is an ambush predator like northern pike or a fish like American shad that has to navigate fishways, falls, changeable flows from dams, and hot water plumes from nuclear power plants to spawn"..............."Further, A lateral line is a sense organ fish use to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water"............... "They use it to detect depth/water pressure, prey, pretators, sense current movement and orientation in the current, as well as to avoid collisions"............... "It essentially is a form of eyes, ears and sensory feelings combined into one organ"..................... "All fish have some form of a lateral line, some having a more developed one then others"............. "Lateral lines are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail"................ "Sometimes parts of the lateral organ are modified into electroreceptors, which are organs used to detect electrical impulses"................"It is possible that vertebrates, such as sharks, use the lateral organs to detect magnetic fields as well"

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Read Full Article Fish Scales and the American Shad by Tim Traver May 6, 2019 1 Comments Illustration by  Adel...
Wednesday, May 8, 2019

"Floodplain forests usually occur in the low, flood-prone areas along rivers, typically less than 20 feet above the river channel"............."They are often associated with oxbows (pools that have become separated from the river channel), temporary wetlands that dry up in summer (vernal pools), open meadows of grasses and wildflowers, and dense shrub thickets"..........."The tree species in this forest are flood-tolerant and thrive in the nutrient-rich sediments brought by floods"............"These periodic floods recycle sediment and nutrients, creating rich soil deposits".............."Floodplains create rich insect and amphibian breeding habitata"........... "In turn, the amphibians become prey for birds such as woodcock and barred owl, mammals such as mink and raccoon and reptiles such as smooth green snake and wood turtle".......... "Research in the Connecticut River region(state of Connectitcut) has shown that spring flooding thaws the soils of floodplain forests earlier than soils in surrounding areas"............"This early thaw means that insects become available to birds (as food) earlier, so birds will feed in, follow, and depend more heavily on floodplain forests than other forested habitats during the early spring migration"............."Floodplains also provide corridors that allow wildlife(black bears, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, fishers, raccoons) to move from one habitat to another, especially in urban areas where development has fragmented alternative travel routes"..............."The overhanging canopy in floodplain forests also helps maintain cool waterways in the summer, which helps species such as brook trout"............"For the beaver felling a tree, the oriole bringing a caterpillar to its young, the bear digging grubs out of a rotting log, and for people living in homes downstream, bringing back floodplain forests is certainly worth the effort"

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https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/floodplain-forest Visiting a Floodplain Forest by Susan Shea April 22, 2...