We spent the day in Yellowstone National Park today. It is home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states. Sixty-seven different mammals live in the park, including Grizzly Bears (Ursus arctos) which are starting to awake from their winter hibernation.
There are estimated to be between 280 and 610 Grizzly Bears in the National Park. I suspect there are 10x that number of cameramen trying to capture them awaking from their winter slumber.
Capable of exploiting a variety of habitats, the grizzly or brown bear once occurred throughout much of western North America. Since European settlement however, grizzly bear populations have been eliminated from more than 98% of their historic range in the lower 48 States. Despite their decline the State of Wyoming has moved to cull the Grizzly Bear population and open a Grizzly Bear hunting season.
Above and Below: This pair don't seem all that worried. As long as they're in a National Park, they are protected despite what the shortsighted Wyoming legislature might pursue. The lighter colored bear is a female. She played much rougher with the male than vice-versa.
They were a joy to watch as a light snow fell. We drove on as far as we could into Yellowstone toward the Northeast and encountered many other large mammals (see more at Phillip's Natural World 1.0.3).
Science Not Silence
Earth Day 2017 takes on special meaning and importance as a regressive regime in Washington attempts to dismantle generations of scientific progress. The March for Science is the first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health safety, economies, and governments.
The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.
The March for Science is a celebration of science. It's not only about scientists and politicians; it is about the very real role that science plays in each of our lives and the need to respect and encourage research that gives us insight into the world.
Nevertheless, the march has generated a great deal of conversation around whether or not scientists should involve themselves in politics. In the face of an alarming trend toward discrediting scientific consensus and restricting scientific discovery, we might ask instead: can we afford not to speak out in its defense?
In Orlando the March for Science will be held around Lake Eola, in downtown. Traffic will be killer because of crumbling infrastructure (I-4, ahem, how many $billions did regressive Florida Gov Scott refuse for improvements of I-4? It was $2.4 billion in 2011 alone), so arrive early. Check out the official event page for Orlando's March for Science (March for Science, Orlando, April 22, 2017). Rally begins at 10:00 am in the field at E. Robinson St. and N. Eola Drive. March beings at 11:00 am.
Education is the foundation for progress. We need to build a global citizenry fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet. We need to empower everyone with the knowledge to inspire action in defence of environmental protection.
Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.
In Honor of Earth Day
Our First National Park
“Our national heritage is richer than just scenic features; the realization is coming that perhaps our greatest national heritage is nature itself, with all its complexity and its abundance of life, which, when combined with great scenic beauty as it is in the national parks, becomes of unlimited value.” — George Wright, Joseph Dixon, and Ben Thompson, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States (1933)
Established in 1872, it was the first national park in the United States, and perhaps the world. Its geological and biological wonders have led international groups to declare it a world heritage site and a biosphere reserve. Yellowstone National Park captures the spirit and purpose of the National Park Service, blending modern and ancient human history with nature in its raw complexity.
Covering 3,468 miles² (8983 km²) in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, Yellowstone National Park is larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island. It is a place of superlatives, sheltering the oldest and largest bison herd in the United States and the largest supervolcano on the planet.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite acquired a natural-color image of Yellowstone. In the images above, the Landsat data have been overlaid on a digital elevation model created with data from the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite. The model gives a three-dimensional sense of the landscape. The photograph below from the National Park Service shows a section of Yellowstone Canyon.
The region is pockmarked with several calderas, many of them now filled with lake water. The volcanic plumbing beneath the park is still active, giving energy to more than ten thousand hot springs, mud pots, terraces, and geysers—most famously, Old Faithful.
The Yellowstone, Snake, and other rivers have cut deep channels and canyons through the volcanic deposits over thousands of years. The rugged, mountainous terrain gives rise to at least 290 waterfalls taller than 5 meters (15 feet). The largest is the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, where water drops 94 meters (308 feet).
Much of the park is covered by subalpine forests, mostly lodgepole pine. Sagebrush steppe, alpine meadows, and grasslands also provide food and habitat for more then 360 species. The most charismatic are the elk, bighorn sheep, and bison, which run in some of the largest wild herds in the world. Grizzly bears and wolves also make homes in the park, a relative rarity in the lower 48 United States.
Humans have enjoyed the fruits of this land for at least 11,000 years. Digging through more than a thousand sites, archaeologists have found evidence of the Clovis people and other Native American tribes. Tools and arrowheads made of rock from Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliff have been found throughout the park, but also throughout wide swaths of North America, suggesting an ancient trade in these tools created in Yellowstone.
In the summer of 1988, fires caused by lightning and humans consumed vast stretches of Yellowstone. An estimated 793,000 of the park’s 2,221,800 acres burned in that brutal summer. You can view a time-series of images showing the evolution of the park after the fires in World of Change: Burn Recovery in Yellowstone.
Related Reading
National Park Service (2016) Yellowstone National Park. Accessed April 16, 2016.
NASA Earth Observatory (2012, January 4) Fire and the Future of Yellowstone.
NASA Earth Observatory (2011, December 8) Satellites Track Yellowstone’s Underground Heat.
NASA Earth Observatory (2008, November 30) Old Faithful.
NASA Earth Observatory (2005, September 5) Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming.
We've Read
Scientists and science advocates are expected to fill the streets of more than 500 cities across the world on Saturday in support of scientific research, which thas increasingly come under attack, especially from the regressive regime in Washington.
Groundwater conditions as reported by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as of Wednesday, April 12th indicate groundwater levels for most observing locations are less than 25% of normal. River and Stream Flow conditions reported by the USGS show the majority are reporting levels much below normal, or less than 25% of normal.
In the blink of a geological eye, climate change has helped reverse the flow of water melting from the Kaskawulsh Glacier in Canada's Yukon, a hijacking that scientists call "river piracy." This term refers to one river capturing and diverting the flow of another, a process that would ordinarily take thousands of years—or more—happened in just a few months.
Much of the meltwater from the glacier normally flows to the north into the Bering Sea via the Slims and Yukon Rivers. A rapidly retreating and thinning glacier—accelerated by global warming—caused the water to redirect to the south, and into the Pacific Ocean.
What will they call this place once the glaciers are gone? A century ago, this sweep of mountains on the Canadian border boasted some 150 ice sheets, many of them scores of feet thick, plastered across summits and tucked into rocky fissures high above parabolic valleys. Today, perhaps 25 survive. In 30 years, there may be none.
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