"Earth's Internet" attempts to document, reference as much of the natural world networking abilities and strategies as possible. Such Scientific findings are at odds with industrial scientific approaches maintaining our planet. Be warned. If your learning approach it based on Memes with short clever quips, you may be disappointed here.
Think of all sorts of Pacific Salmon varieties including the endangered California Steelhead Trout species. But there's more. In the deserts southwest historically there were once large six foot long native fish once called the "White Salmon" (Colorado Pikeminnow) & the recovering Razorback Sucker. What do all these native fish have in common ? They desparately need meandering river floodplains
Image - Carson Jeffres
SierraClub.org - July 16, 2012
Back in the 1970s, I was intrigued by an article from the Arizona Highways magazine article which told about a Native golden Apache Trout which almost went extinct were it not for the efforts of Biologists working with the Apache Indian Reservation. But they also referenced other native fish, even mentioning that some 35 different species of native fish once occupied the desert aquatic environments of Arizona. That was almost hard to believe. Like California, Arizona has dammed up it's rivers and channeled much of their watercourses to faciliate agriculture and urban sprawl. Take the river channel in photo on the right which has large tall levees on both sides to prevent the ancient floodplain from reappearing and reclaiming it's former territory. This area of Northern California is known as the Yolo By-Pass region where the floodplain is allowed to prevail once a year. Here below is a video of a very long elevated freeway section of Interstate 80 which allows the floodwaters to do their former inundation of the former wetlands landscape.
Of course there have been times (like the recent 1016/17 winter rainy season) when wetter than normal rainfall events have caused the rivers near the delta region to burst these levees in numerous places and reclaim former territories which are now towns, cities and other farmlands. This ends up in the News and the Army Corps of Engineers are called back to the reign in the power of Nature, saddle break it and force it to do what mankind wants and needs it to do. Very little of human infrastructure actually works with Nature instead of against it. Unfortunately humans are learning (too late) the correct course to take, but sometimes things in many areas are just permanently lost. There's no going back. But maybe with a few exceptions.
Image - Yolo County Flood Control - 1993
Here's a prime example above of those horrific flooding events in California's Central Valley back in 1993. Traditionally, almost the entire valley flooded in one way or another. This only happens now after long periods of rainy years where many of the reservoirs overflow their spillways and rivers run again freely with nothing to really block their former historical flow. If the flow is intense enough and more rains come, then breaches in these levees like the one above are common. Take a look at an article about a research study from U.C. Davis where solutions to Salmon decline have been found in rasing them in former floodplains.
The Solution to Restoring the Native Fish populations is restoring the Floodplains
Photos by Jacob Katz
Image - Plos.org
Using Rice fields as floodplain Nurseries
“This study demonstrates that the farm fields that now occupy the floodplain can not only grow food for people during summer, but can also produce food resources and habitat for native fish like salmon in winter,” said lead author Jacob Katz of California Trout. “Our work suggests that California does not always need to choose between its farms or its fish. Both can prosper if these new practices are put into effect, mimicking natural patterns on managed lands. By reconnecting rivers to floodplainlike habitat in strategic places around the Central Valley, they have the potential to help recover endangered salmon and other imperiled fish populations to self-sustaining levels,” said Ted Sommer, lead scientist for the California Department of Water Resources and a co-author on the study.
Using Rice Fields as Floodplains
Since 2012, a team of scientists has been examining how juvenile salmon use off-channel habitats, including off-season rice fields. The experiments provide evidence that rice fields managed as floodplains during winter can create “surrogate” wetland habitat for native fish. The team suggests that shallowly flooded fields function in similar ways to natural floods that once spread across the floodplain, supplying extremely dense concentrations of zooplankton — an important food for juvenile salmon. Foraging on these abundant and nutritious invertebrates, the young salmon grow extremely quickly, improving their chances of surviving their migration to sea and returning in three to five years as the large, adult fish. Take note of the succees above of the fish size after being released within the rice field for a month. Representative juvenile Chinook salmon before (top) and after (middle) rearing for six weeks on the Knaggs Ranch experimental agricultural floodplain on Yolo Bypass. Bottom picture is of a tagged Knaggs fish incidentally recaptured in a rotary screw trap in the Yolo Bypass Toe Drain 13 miles downstream of the release site four weeks after the termination of the experiment. These small fish have no real chance of survival in a large river channel. Too many predators in the deeper river and not enough food trsources for them as would be the case in large shallow bodies of water where the zooplankton and insects thrive in warmer shallow waters.
Jacob Katz, with California Trout, says growing bugs in rice fields could be part of the solution for boosting salmon populations in rivers statewide. 😀
So many of the native species of Colorado River basin native fish have disappeared for the very same reasons that have troubled the Salmon. Some are making a comeback and their story is not so dissilmilar to the Salmon rebound of California. The native fish above is the Razorback Sucker, but it itself is not the top predator. That would be the Colorado Pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus lucius) which ranged throughout the Colorado Drainage Basin as far south as the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona into Mexico where old west historical accounts of six foot long fish were said to be common. In fact it could rival any large Salmon, even called at one time by the common name, White Salmon. But the deeper waters of the modern Colorado River which has been controlled by dams and channelization to keep it from flooding into former floodplains has hurt the reproduction efforts of many of the native fish which once dominated the river. Below is the story of the Razorback Sucker as seen in the picture above.
Image - Biographic
Image - Biographic
The fingerlings here have been captured by the researchers using a seigning net along the shallows where small fingerlings would be located. While you look at this bag of small fish on the right, only four were actually Razorback Suckers. The others were Bluehard Suckers and Flannelhead Suckers. Both native and that is good thing, but their main goal was the Razorbacks. Apparently these Scientists captured both adult Razorback Suckers and larvae in the canyon, but they didn’t find any juveniles or sub-adults. Just mature adults and larvae. These adults were living in Lake Mead and moving up the canyon to spawn. But again, beyond finding the Razorback larvae, there were no larger juveniles which indicated a problem.
Image - Biographic
The only way to tell Razorback Sucker larvae (at the bottom) from more common cousins like Bluehead Suckers (top) and Flannelhead Suckers (middle) is through a microscope, using diagnostics like the density of back speckles and muscle fibers. So the other sucker species were doing okay, just not the razorbacks. The Glen Canyon Dam made the Colorado River simultaneously more stable, by eliminating massive spring floods, and more volatile, by instituting unnatural tide levels in the river. By tides we are basically talking about higher and lower water levels fluctuating regularly, something unnatural to this river canyon. In the Arizona morning, millions of people in Phoenix and other desert cities flick on their lights and air conditioners, then the dam managers crank up flows through Glen Canyon’s hydroelectrical turbines to meet power demand. But then at night they power back the turbines. These water level fluctuations in the river are called hydropeaking, because they cause the river to rise and fall by several feet each day. This messes with the aquatic ecosystem's biological food supply, especially for the tiny fish. More on that in a moment.
Image - Biographic
At several days old, larval Razorback Suckers have developed little more than digestive tracts, leading some biologists to dub them, "squiggles with eyes." Doesn't such scientific intellect speak just make your spine tingle and hairs stand up on the back of your neck ? Whatever. What they found was that the Colorado River canyon was almost completely bereft of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, river-edge specialists whose eggs are most likely to be exposed and desiccated by this hydropeaking. Tiny blackflies, which lay eggs in open water, are relatively unfazed by tides, but they don’t compensate fish for the loss of the more nourishing prey. Scarce food, more than perhaps any other factor (like larger predator fish), is what's holding native fishes back from increasing within their native habitat.
During our second day on the river, we pulled over to run our seines along a cobble bar. Nothing. Healy knelt to inspect the lifeless rocks. “In every other river, that cobble would be covered with caddis and mayflies and all kinds of algae,” he said glumly. “Here you don’t see anything because these huge tidal fluctuations leave it dry half the time.”
Even in the pre-dam era, Healy added, the Grand Canyon’s tight confines would have challenged larval razorbacks, which prefer to grow up in wide, shallow floodplains. What little habitat the canyon had once afforded, hydropeaking now erodes and dries out. “Razorbacks need warm, stable habitats full of food to get out of that larval stage,” Healy said. “They’re not getting that here.”
Unfortunately other than giving honorable mention to floodplain shallows back prior to dam construction on the Colorado River and lack of shallows for pond insects and the zooplankton which would feed the little Razoeback Squiggles and other fish larvae, the Biographic article goes no further with it than that. Too bad because creating such artificial floodplain settings would probably go along way in making successful larval transition into larger juveniles and sub-adults. Like the farm/floodplain experiments which have proved quite successful in fattening up small Salmon fingerlings on zooplankton like that in the jar above right and later on aquatic insects who appear later. Below you can see the various forms of large aquatic insect life that help the California Salmon move up the food chain. The Grand Canyon Park Service quite often sings the praises with great enthusiasm about the canyon’s bizarre native fish, defending them against the complaints of the sport fish anglers who’d prefer to see the place given over to rainbow trout. And that's probably one of the biggest obstacles to recovery. The original intent of satisfying sport fishermen who were used to game fish from back east. Brian Healy, their lead fish biologist for Grand Canyon National Park, said this about the sport fisherman, “You always get that one guy who says, ‘Well, can you eat ‘em? No? Then what good are they?’” Such a typical response reveals ignorance of how an aquatic system actually works. If the average farmer has little understanding of how a natural ecosystem works in supplying plants with nutrients and in naturally maintaining checks and balances for keeping pests under control and trusts only what Industrial Ag Science tells him, then why should your average fisherman be any different ??? 😞
animated illustration - fcps.edu
And that is the other issue is humans having this need to see instant gratification in the way they view something's worth or value to them. In the Pacific Northwest and in California, it's much more easy to argue for conserving the Salmon, a fish that sustains the Native peoples and keeping the multi-million dollar commercial fisheries in profit. But here in the Southwest, it is considerably harder challenge to make the case for the humpback chub and razorback sucker, two species that support no industry, provide no tangible ecosystem services from the average person's perspective (which exposes their ignorance), and are effectively invisible to the overwhelming majority of park visitors. And yet this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. The California river systems and other native fish there like the Delta Smelt, while not being a sport fish, do provide a further food source for larger sub-adult Salmon. And yet the idea of saving and preserving the Delta Smelt habitat is something controversial because of large scale industrial agricultural business interests and industrial water aqueduct construction interests.
Image - Ben Kiefer/UDWR
Take special note here of a native Colorado River fish called the Colorado Pikeminnow. This one in the photo on the right was caught by Logan Johnson who is holding a Colorado Pikeminnow on the Middle Green River in Whirlpool Canyon which is a tributary river north of the Colorado River. From the historical accounts and oldest photographs in existence regarding this fish, the one Logan here is holding is a juvenile by comparison to old photographs of fishermen holding six foot long Pikeminnows from their head to the ground. Such sizes no longer exist, but this really illustrates how such a western fish could have been a large game fish which is supported by the smaller less desirable sucker species we've been discussing. Again, all of this aquatic life starts with small tributaries and floodplains.
Image - Tom Teske & Google Earth
Image - Tom Teske
The image above is Tom Teske's of El Centro novice attempt to show the lake level near the beach. The view is toward Fish Creek Mts. But I believe he's done a very good job of illustrating the expansive shallows of the ancient Lake Cahuilla shoreline. This area would have been a prime spawning habitat area of shallow floodplains along ancient Lake Cahuilla's western shore. Incredibly, the Cahuilla Indians constructed numerous shallow fish traps, for which several bones of native Colorado River fish were present possibly by the millions. These fish traps above right are up near the city of Indio/Thermal in the southern Coachella Valley. In both traps and camps sites where the Cahuilla peoples lived, many of these fish bones have been found. I have no doubt that the larger Colorado Pikeminnow (formerly Colorado Squawfish) were in present in Lake Cahuilla in the deeper portions of the ancient lake, but the Humpback Chub and Razorback Sucker were smaller and apparently spawning along the shoreline. Clearly the Cahuilla Indians would have easily observed this shallow spawning behaviour. I've also seen this Razorback spawning habit in the sandy shallow shorelines of Lake Havasu along the California and Arizona border. So have others. Who hasn't as a kid figured out how to trap fish with cobblestone river rocks in a small stream and tried to catch them in a bucket ? We use to devise simplistic contraptions like that. The natives would have also made some type of special reed basket fishtrap for scouping up their prey like the one below I referenced from the Oakland Museum.
Image - Tome Teske
These traps above are some other unique fish traps on the western edge of ancient Lake Cahuilla further south in Imperial county and are radically different from those of the Indio fish traps further north. Certainly the stones are much different. Altogether they have discovered around 69 of these traps on the shallow flats. I've posted an example of a common native American fish trapping basket that may have been close to what the Cahuilla would have built and used. Interestingly they have found the bones of native the Colorado River fish down here as well. Ninety-eight percent of the fish bones found at these archaeology sites are bonytail chub and razorback sucker which we discussed above. Both of these fish thrived in the warm, productive, plankton-rich environment of Lake Cahuilla. Remember, such shallows afforded these tiny delicate babies an opportunity to fatten up and move upwards in the food chain where insects would have become part of their diet. The reeds and other tules would have offered protection from predators, though many would have become food sources for many other lifeforms like birds. Still once big enough, they would have moved out into deeper water only to become prey for the top predator, the Colorado Pikeminnow. Also something else to ponder, with open access from the outflow of lake Cahuilla south of Mexicali to the Sea of Cortez by means of an extremely expansive delta, who knows what else may have entered the lake from the sea at one time. Perhaps the endangered almost extinct Vaquita porpoise and other fish we know almost nothing about. Some fish do migrate from sea to fresh water and back again. There is so much we will never know. But floodplains play major roles if only people will utilize them again. Fortunately the present system as it stands now has no future. Only then will things heal to the point of recovery and improvement far better than they were before.
What was once the Colorado Delta Floodplain once was (1905) and what it is today (2017)
How can responsible land stewards teach people how much more complex and sophisticated the designs found in Nature are compared to our own ?
Kew Royal Bontanic Gardens - Rhizotron Tree Museum
(Project grade 11)
Unfortunately, it's tough teaching new things to adults who have already been through an educational system where the green revolution industrial complex as mandated by the State has indoctrinated & moulded them into obedient little Soylent cracker eaters. Let's be honest, as you watch adults worldwide, they are having a tough time with the idea of "Multiculturalism" [even from it's supporters] let along understanding the true concept of biodiversity in Nature. You have to start with youth, who surprisingly grasp far more than adults give them credit for. I mean seriously, look how expert almost every child is using a computer as compared to adults ? Who are best at hacking these days ? Indeed, one of the biggest obstacles may well come from detaching kids from their electronic gadgets. But Children do love and thrive off challenges. So approaching things from a technological innovation viewpoint should help them visualize just how biological mechanisms found in the natural world actually work. Hopefully instead of hacking computer code, they won't try a hand atcracking the genetic code to find out what kind of mutated critters they can come up with. I can almost visualize the next #1 popular gift showing up under Christmas trees being a Bio-Rad GMO Starter kit. Ah yes, but I'm sure it'll be something that'll be fun for the whole family.
Image - Bio-Rad
If we look at things from a agricultural standpoint with older generation farmers, they are old school and the saying which goes, "cannot teach an old Dog new tricks" is certainly accurate for the most part. Not too many older farmers around like Joel Salatin or Gabe Brown who actually get to change later in life and become successful. Something else came out recently about how imperative it is to pursue biodiversity with regards to agriculture as compared to monoculture. Both the University of Californa Davis and Michigan State University came out yesterday with research on how crops grown as a monoculture attract a plethora of all kinds of pests. More pests mean more synthetic inputs into the farm field system. The only winners in that are Agro-Chemical companies. But I truly believe kids would all grasp the concepts of ecology and biodiversity if exposed to the right kind of education at a young age. Now both articles were extremely interesting and informative, aside from being logical. But how do parents and teachers communicate these important grownup things to kids ? Aside from dumping the usual intellect speak, use illustrations from familar situations common in every day life that can teach. Also, absolutely use Animation and videos
Animation - Mother Earth News
Braconid Wasp -- Caterpillar
Image - Julie Johnsen
Most of what nature does goes unseen to most people. Not just kids, but adults too. Take this Braconid Wasp in the animation above. These are not the common every day better known larger wasps we see building those paper or mud nests in the rafters of our cover porches or eaves of our homes. No, these wasp are so tiny, many of them would barely would fit on a U.S. dime. This tiny wasp at left is a Mason or Potter Wasp. Most of the beneficial work they do also goes unseen. Mason wasps are a predatory insect whose young feed on the larva of other pest insects and build nest with mud but at times will dwell in holes of wood for nesting purposes. They may capture and paralyze as many at 15+ caterpillars just to feed their egg or larva before they seal the chamber inside the wooden post or tree snag. They probably use preexisting holes for their nests, but they are not particularly harmful. Teach kids that they are beneficial as they prey on critters like tent caterpillars/army worms, and other problematic larva on your garden plants. Teach your kids how important it is for you to plant a variety of flowering plants to feed these tiny wasps. Explain that though the adults capture and sting other insects, they do not eat these as food, only their babies do that. Teach the kids that adult wasps need pollen or nectar from flowers to feed upon and benefit from a good diversity of wildflowers or flowering shrubs. Here is an excellent example by insct photographer, Marc Kummel, who photographed a mating pair of beneficial parasitic wasps on a California Fuschia (Epilobium canum aka Zauschneria californica)
Image - Marc Kummel (San Marcos Pass - Oct 2016)
Here is a mating pair of tiny "parasitic wasps" (Hymenoptera) on a new flower of California Fuschia (Epilobium canum aka Zauschneria californica) in the Onagraceae plant family.
Chaparral hedgerows are ideal in attracting all sorts of beneficial insect pollinators & predators. Replacing disturbed invasive non-native weedy fields with the original chaparral plant community will increase predators and decrease habitat for pests who thrive on weedy areas. Now let's focus on one particular chaparral shrub, California Coffeeberry, which is plant number one at beneficial insect attraction.
Image - Pete Veilleux (2008)
One of my native favourites for attracting beneficial insects is California Coffeeberry (Rhamnus [or Frangula - whatever] californica). Favourite cultivars are "eve Case" or "Mound San Bruno." In my personal experience, from a shrub satandpoint, this is the earliest bloomer of all the native california shrubs and mostly it goes unnoticed. Why ? Well, look below.
Image - Greg a. Monroe
Flowers of California Coffeeberry are admittedly not the most showy as compared to other well known popular garden variety flowers. So how does a parent or teacher instill appreciation for something considered, perhaps, even ugly (by flawed human standards) ? I've never considered these flowers ugly, just sort of neutral from an outward appearance standpoint. Humans by nature judge almost entirely by outward appearances first. They do this to each other starting as kids in school. But the teacher and parent has to counter this by demonstrating the Coffeeberry flower's main virtues. Unseen to us, these flowers manufacture a potent powerful cologne or perfume that only insects can sense. It's a pity that back in the late 1980s, I didn't document this more with photography.
image - Brian Marlow Insect Paparazzi
Of course, there were no digital cameras back then, everything was expernsive and old school compared to now. But gardeners planting and documenting this most beautiful feature of Coffeeberry's usefulness in Nature could be a fun thing when it comes to gardening photos. Planting a chaparral hedgerow, then documenting just how effective these coffeeberry flowers are at attracting mostly beneficial pollinators/predators into your landscape would not only be fun, but also provide something that even the researchers have yet to provide us with. Seriously, do a google and most references to this Coffeeberry insect relationship come from Master Gardener blogs or other private individuals. They do mention the chaparral plant's importance to wildlife & domestic animal browsing, but the importance of it as a pest control component is referenced only by a few. Usage in farm field hedgerows for pest control is being more researched, but it's not the kind of good science getting as much publicity as genetic engineering or other industrial versions of agro-chemical advances in science.
I've created this link above to an article I finished yesterday which further illuminates California Coffeeberry's insect magnet attracting abilities.. I've taken time to research as many beneficial insect photographs as possible linked to California Coffeeberry. I've also included some research being done by researchers from California State Berkerley's Kremen Lab Group on the potential for pest control by beneficial insects on a commercial farming scale by the creation of California Chaparral Hedgerows along all farm fields. Much like the one in the photo below.
Image - University of California - Agricultural Division & Natural Resources
This post and information above should go along well with the latest research news below on using biodiversity as an insect pest control. Children and all youth in general need to understand just how successful Nature has been for 10s of 1000s of years prior to humans coming along. Biomimicry should be considered a normal scientific pursuit. The articifical industrial conventional way of practicing agriculture with it's chemicals and genetic engineering should be the view as it truly is, abnormal. None of this junk was ever needed in the first place. Kids need to understand that and will with parent's and teacher's guidance.
BioDiversity as a Natural Pesticide
“Farm fields can create monocultures where pests may find the perfect nutrition to be healthy and reproduce,” said Wetzel, who conducted the research during his doctoral work at the University of California, Davis. “Planting fields with higher plant nutrient variability could contribute to sustainable pest control.”
Rather than my further elaborating on this subject at length, these two links below should be enough to get you started. Then in your mind's eye, simplfy the language to a point where a child would understand the biodiversity concept. It may be a challenge for you as most adults globally are often unaware themselves. If the majority were aware, our planet would look totally different.
Teaching kids these days is always easiest with video animation. Seriously, since I was a kid in the 1960s, cartoons and animated films shown at elementary school always captured my attention. So such animated video instructive technology can and should be used when teaching kids about the importance of biodiversity over the ecologically failed choice mankind's failed leadership has been mandating for over the past 50 years. Take a look below.
Actually photographs are yet another venue to provide good teaching points and should also be used. I've written about these Chaparral Hedgerow and Biodiverse pollinator/predator strategies previously in these three posts below. This first one deals with the reasons why planting a biodiverse flower presence is so important to honey bee health. All plants create different types of pollen with unique chemical properties. These differing pollens are used by specialized nurse bees in the hive who apparently have a built sense of what pollen medicine to feed the sick worker bees with specific illnesses. Can kids really comprehend such scientific findings ? Absolutely, if you make the right real world illustrative comparisons that we humans can relate to:
This next link deals with actual planning, designs and construction of Chaparral Hedgerows along California's agricultural fields to provide habitat living quarters and variety of important food sources for pollinators/predators which would act an an important insurance policy against crop pests. The potential here is for greatly reduced or total elimination of synthetic (or so-called Organic) chemical pesticides. Could kids really grasp this reality ? Absolutely, especially with the beautiful colour photographs provided by the Xerces Society:
This final link deals with strategies in attracting good pollinators/predators to the landscape and commercial farming and how such strategies are not only a good business model, but also a good insurance policy. Can kids graps this concept of bugs being something good ? Absolutely, but then need adult attitudes to change and lead by example. Again the photos from the Xerces Society are very helpful in this learning process:
Aside from planting a diverse variety of native shrubs & wildflowers, here is a project parents or teachers can do with kids.
(This kind of stuff gets burned into young memories)
photo credit - Donald C. Drife (2016)
June 20-26, 2016 has been designated National Pollinator Week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Our yard is pollinator friendly. We use no insecticides. We provide plants that produce pollen and attract pollinators to our vegetable garden.
This year, we put up a bee hotel now called the “Buzz Inn.” Our plans came from a helpful guide, Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Beekeepers, Growers and Conservationists, SARE Handbook 11, NRAES-186 by Eric Mader, Marla Spivak, and Elaine Evans.
"No one will protect what they don't care about, and no one will care about what they have never experienced."
David Attenborough, conservationist
One final teaching point from your friendly neighbourhood Home Depot
Image - Susan Harris of Garden Rant
Home Depot front door display as you enter Garden Center
If you aren't teaching and illustrating at a hands on level with your children, then someone else will. The photograph above was take by Master Gardener author, Susan Harris, from the journal Garden Rant. The visual teaching going on here is their marketing strategy for indoctrinating their customers that for a beautiful successful garden, you need synthetic Chemical weed and insect killers to eliminate Nature's flaws. Here is what Susan Harris wrote about Home Depot's front entrance killer chemical display:
"The other day I walked into the Home Depot near me and noticed this enticement to enter the gardening part of the store – Kill, kill, kill those plants and bugs! Not a plant in sight but plenty of plant-killers. And this photo hardly conveys the impressive array of killing products extending as far as the eye could see."
"In this interview with Joel Salatin, Joel talks about how the regeneration of his family farm utilized the patterns discovered from observing natural grazing and migration of wild animals in native plant communities. This discussion unlocks the secrets of Nature to create a system of pasture based agriculture that actually builds soil, diversity and interdependent relationships between farming and God. In respecting the natural process of Nature, Joel and his family have built a thriving farm business, while restoring ecological integrity to the land. This method of farm management creates community amongst its workers and consumers and provides a spiritual connection to the land and its inhabitants."
By Karen Rybold-Chin
Here are a couple other video links from the Mother Earth News fair, West Bend, Wisconsin and videos featuring Joel Salatin who continues on about biomimicry of Nature as opposed to working against Nature.
More examples of biomimicry of nature regarding agriculture. Industrial agriculture's worldview is about feeding crop plants with unnatural synthetic fertilizers. Natures way of feeding the plant is rather feeding the microbiome which in turn feeds the plant. There is no money in this for the Industrial Agricultural business model, hence their vicious resistence. Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures down in Georgia, tells us about his movement away from industrial agriculture to regenerative farmer.
Nice video interviews and stories on Biomimicry with Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures and Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Swoop, Virginia which was released yesterday and this comes off the heals of a newly released research paper published entitled:
Overview: "Biomimicry, defined as innovation through the emulation of biological forms, processes, patterns, and systems, is particularly valuable for its focus on solution discovery, as opposed to solution validation. GOJO Industries, Inc., used biomimicry to drive environmentally sustainable product innovation. The approach proved both efficient and effective: in comparison to a historical new product development project with a similar objective and scope, the biomimicry-driven project produced double the intellectual property and, based on a preliminary assessment of lead product concepts, at least double the energy savings for just one-sixth the resource commitment. Biomimicry also showed potential to increase the overall speed of front-end innovation. This case study suggests that biomimicry may be a highly promising approach for driving innovation, and particularly environmentally sustainable innovation, but further investigation is needed to validate the conclusions of this single case study. The authors will discuss their study in more detail at an IRI-sponsored webinar, October 7, 2016, 12–1 pm EST. For more information, visit;
Other Designs in Nature for Inspirations in Technological Innovation
Photo by Gregory Smith via a Creative Commons license
The California Condor is North America’s largest bird. Their broad wings and massive bodies give them a powerful presence in the air.
Take the design feature of the Californnia Condor. Giant wingspan and at the tips of wings something we call winglets. So what are they for ??? When human genius designed the first airplanes they imagined kool looking designs which appeared more streamlined and assumed to have less interference and resistance in flight. Much of this inovation came during a time of World War II. But in the era of big airline jets, price wars and cuttings costs, something had to be done about airline efficiency. But what ??? How appropriate we look at the wing and wingtip winglet of the German Lufthansa airline who actually uses the Condor as their company's logo. Human physics and the reality of physics found in nature are often two different thing. Only after painful experiences will humans acknowledge mistakes and look for change. In a nutshell this winglet design pattern after a reality found in nature with regards large soaring birds like Condors and Eagles, it was found that such a designed created more stability and airplanes encounter far less turbulance. But another wonderfull thing is that as a result of such efficiency in design, the airline industry as a whole saved billions of dollars in fuel costs every year. This is one of those, "Did it Evolve or Was it Designed ???" moments 😄
Nature-Inspired Biomimicry from the Sea!
image - Treehugger
Mercedes-Benz looked towards the boxfish for their bionic car concept. Noting the aerodynamics and efficiency of the boxfish's shape, the engineers decided to apply the characteristics of the fish to a car. The result is a very streamlined vehicle with a 65% lower drag coefficient than other compact cars out at the time (2005).
"The same applies to the intricate structural designs of cacti, which are exposed to a great deal of heat pressure in the desert. Their heat-reflecting capacity is low, since their surface is greatly reduced so as to cut down on evaporation. Nature has solved the problem by equipping many cacti with cooling ribs. These shade the cactus's surface against the scorching sun and simultaneously improve heat radiation. The alternating planes of light and shade of the vertical cooling ribs of the torch thistle produce rising and falling air currents, which improve heat radiation. And when the sun reaches its highest position, it hits the torch thistle from above, where it presents its smallest surface. A botanist discovered that torch thistles perish of burns when they are placed horizontally in the sun."
Kingfisher - Bullet Trains & Tunnel Speed
Image - 500 Series Shinkansen / Sam Doshi
Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life: 2008 Annual Checklist
Excerpt: "[W]e had another challenge that we pursued to the test run phase. Half of the entire Sanyo Shinkansen Line (from Osaka to Hakata) is made up of tunnel sections. When a train rushes into a narrow tunnel at high speed, this generates atmospheric pressure waves that gradually grow into waves like tidal waves. These reach the tunnel exit at the speed of sound, generating low-frequency waves that produce a large boom and aerodynamic vibration so intense that residents 400 meters away have registered complaints. For this reason, we gave up doing test runs at over 350 km/h.
"Then, one of our young engineers told me that when the train rushes into a tunnel, he felt as if the train had shrunk. This must be due to a sudden change in air resistance, I thought. The question the occurred to me - is there some living thing that manages sudden changes in air resistance as a part of daily life?"
"Yes, there is, the kingfisher. To catch its prey, a kingfisher dives from the air, which has low resistance, into high-resistance water, and moreover does this without splashing. I wondered if this is possible because of the keen edge and streamlined shape of its beak. The beak of kingfishers allows splashless entry into water due to the wedge shape it makes with the head that is round in cross section.
"So we conducted tests to measure pressure waves arising from shooting bullets of various shapes into a pipe and a thorough series of simulation tests of running the trains in tunnels, using a space research super-computer system. Data analysis showed that the ideal shape for this Shinkansen is almost identical to a kingfisher's beak.
"I was once again experiencing what it is to learn from Nature, seeing first hand that a solution obtained through large-scale tests and analysis by a state-of-the-art super-computer turned out to be very similar to a shape developed by a living creature in the natural world. The nose of our new 500-Series Shinkansens has a streamline shape that is 15m in length and almost round in cross section.
Take about 15 minutes here and watch Janine Benyus talk about biomimicry of designs found out in Nature. It's a 17 minute TED Talk where Janine Benyus provides a message for inventors. When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.
This video above is great as far as an explanation of why we should copy designs found out in Nature first. For exampe, one presenter named Janine Benyus who I commend for her work and efforts, makes an excellent point. She reference the idea that medicines from the Rain Forests and she clarifies this by saying it's not so much identifying some molecule for a cure, but rather an 'idea' for the cure. But the problem here is, ideas as we know them only come from an intelligent Mind, not blind unguided forces without purpose or goals. With that in mind there's a caveat or warning or proviso of specific stipulations, conditions, or limitations that come with such a statement. What Janine Benyus is saying is in direct conflict with the Theory of Evolution proponents who have for decades pushed the "Argument from Poor Design" strategy to pimp a worldview. The problem is that it's Nature who's been given the shaft, not the rightwinger fundies they are attempting they are targeting in debates. I appreciate many ToE followers here won't like this, but this biased religious outlook goes back all the way to Darwin and his writings which are loaded with metaphysical religious assumptions and asserted that, "If their were a God he never would have created things in such and such a way." Take note, I find this viewpoint question to be a legitimate one to ask, but it has nothing to do with Science. Science cannot answer what an intelligent entity it's believers say doesn't exist in the first place would or wouldn't do in any given situation. I mean seriously, what repeatable experiment have they offered thus far ? None! This doesn't mean that we can't practice biomimicry, because we can. But irrespective of how anybody on this planet thinks or believes how life's origins came about, the harmonious way life in all ecosystems operates is in no way flawed or badly designed as this world's elites have shoved down people's throats and coerced them to believe. What has resulted is the degraded natureal world we all live in now. Climate Change ? It's easy to blame humans as many scientists do, but maybe they should start pointing fingers first at their fellow bought and paid for corporate scientist brothers who have developed irresponsible technology which has brought natural systems to it's knees.
Scientific American
Ponder for a moment how much eco-friendly sustainable technological innovation has been held back because a Scientific Orthodoxy [every bit the mirror image of Christendom's Ecclesiastical Hierachical Structure when they ran Academia] with power and authority has controlled for 100+ years how mankind should view our natural world ? Take these present Biotechnology and Agro-Chemical Companies. Their worldview of Nature is that it's flawed, inept, inefficient and badly designed and the only way the world will be saved is through the superior genius of their guiding hand. Did you know, most of their geneticists generally have no clue as to how whole plant systems work in cooperation with other plants within any ecosystem outside the Lab ? Their belief about the informational content of DNA is that it's not information as we know it at all, but rather nothing more than copying errors, random meaningless patterns, most of which they insist is nothing more than Junk. But the latest scientific research is now proving otherwise. Take the findings of ENCODE. And there have always been other science disciplines which have revealed the truth, but they haven't always had the powerful backing and financial resources to move forward against the tidal wave of Industrial Science.
Responsible Scientific researchers have shown that Mycorrhizal Fungi and Beneficial Bacteria and a host of other critters living in the soil have been perfectly maintaining the natural world's soils for possibly countless milleniums of time. We really don't know for how long, other than the usual blind faith speculations of deep time thrown in for eye candy in a research paper. Those in power and authority and with a financial stake in keeping the status quo are bent on keeping things as they are. But their actions are in direct conflict with Science disciplines like mycology, ecology, entomology, soil science, etc, etc, etc. This creates conflict of loyalties for many environmental activists who are immersed in this culture of science, but fear to criticize industrial science because of being labeled an Anti-Science Luddite. At least biomimicry or biomimetics separates and defines itself. Take this graphic below. The historical pattern timeline shows us when the well known Biotechnology companies and Agro-Chemical corporations actually took power and control over food production in the early 1990s when they manipulated politicians and directly wrote the book on regulations of their genetically modifying organisms to work in conjunction with industrially produced synthetics which work directly against ecosystem designs found out in Nature. Now take a look at how far the superweed problem has become as a result of increased pesticide usage. This is wasn't supposed to have happened given all the public relations and damage control propaganda they spewed into the Media and it's all worldview driven folks.
Graph from Iowa State University
People are going to have to start making responsible personal decisions soon. Who's side on the issue of universal soverignty are you going to choose ? Science claims that life on Earth has been around for over 100 millions years and that's fine. But an article dealing with important research on the stability of all earthwide ecosystems showed that during all those millions of years life the natural systems were always stable. But it references human beings creating agriculture 6,000 years ago and from that point on as people spread out across the planet taking thier agriculture with them, they have been making bad decisions ever since and all life has been greatly effected in a negative way. And horrifically, it has been the past 100+ years of this imaginary enlightenment and free thought that has brought our world climate change, various forms of pollution and species extinction to the point of where many experts say it is irreversible. Unfortunately most of those "Culture of Science" people don't want to admit this flaw in the past few decades of Scientific thinking and practice. Keep watch, the latest phrase in many science journals being used more often now is "Beyond the Point of no Return." Take a look at the graph here below. This isn't my made up invention or research, this came from Scientists who are being forced to admit the flaw of a 20th century which has championed free thought and critical thinking.
None of the clearly negative effects of human leadership and present consequences should prevent any reader here from practicng biomimicry within their own personal sphere of endeavours with regards to habitat restoration, agriculture, urban landscaping and home gardening. Everybody has a choice. The main problem is everyone on the planet has to do this.
Clarification on the differences between Science and Corporations in creating intellectual property in the form of patented products for obscene profit.
Very little of what is being discussed with regards to the biotechnology industry is actually "Sciences" or even "one of the sciences". What we're really talking about isn't any of the sciences at all, but rather technology or to be more specific using their own words, engineering. Most all true sciences are about studying things out in the natural world and figuring out how they work. The "scientific method" deals with how we successively refine our understanding of natural phenomena. It does not say anything about how this knowledge can, could, or should be applied. The sciences are essentially analytic in nature.
It's our world's corporations who along with their lawyers have created this idea of intellectual property based on the scientific work of others. Their research engineers were more interested in creating products to be patented. Yet their work was all based on the information provided by researchers funded by Academia. Their researchers may even use scientific methods in obtaining their goals, but they are not so much interested in the discovery of knowledge and the wisdom in using that knowledge as they are in focussing attention on creating something for profit.
In the process of misusing abd abusing ´this scientific knowledge, our natural world has been introduce to genetically modified organisms, , Nuclear Weapons, BPA in drinking water. We now have climate change, destruction of the Ozone, melting Arctic & Antarctic glaciers, Chernobyl, Thalidomide, Fukashima, plastic pollution in the oceans and dead zones, etc. All of these symptoms and negative consequences are the result of various irresponsible technological innovation brought to us by modern industrial engineering. Yes, they used information obtained from science, but they cannot lay the fault at the feet of science which was always about discovery and wonder. Science simply enabled these efforts by providing the basic knowledge needed, but the downside from what they created has produced unforeseen and unintended consequences in their various attempts to use that knowledge to satify this economic thing called consumerism. Biomimicry is really not all that expensive. In many cases it's a matter of changing one's practices and management without purchasing products and that is what nakes biomimetics unattractive to corporations.
Remember the movie Jurassic Park and that lunch room debate scene where actor Jeff Goldblum plays this highly articulate four-eyed genius (Dr Ian Malcolm) who tries to warn everyone about the dangers of playing God ? Of all the scenes in that movie, this one sticks with me the most because it is so accurate in it's content and reflective of today's reality. The Jurassic Park Technicians did not actually research all the science behind the genetics, but they did they misuse and abuse the discoveries of others for creating intellectual property and patented products (Dinosaurs). Biotechs are the same, they engineer product for profit. If they actually cared about feeding mankind and becoming proper custodians of the Earth, they would have pursued more of a mirror of how Nature accomplishes this through biomimicry. Instead, they are infected with the ideological doctrine that Nature is flawed, imperfect and poorly designed. Only they can fix it and anyone who tries to get in their way is an Anti-Science Luddite. It matters not that these people in opposition to their business model are indeed interested in other responsible sciences like Mycology, Soil Biology, etc, etc, etc. Here's the story line below. See if you recognize it better now.
Dr Ian Malcolm: "Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun."
The Jurassic Park Lawyer, Donald Gennaro: "It's hardly appropriate to start hurling generalizations..."
Dr Ian Malcolm: "If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it."
Jurassic Park Owner/CEO, John Hammond: "I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before . . "
Dr Ian Malcolm: "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Pausing here for a moment to fast forward. After trying to justify his technology by saying he could bring back California Condors and hearing Dr Ian Malcolm's continued resistence to the Jurassic Park's genetic modification technology, CEO John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), uses the same identical cowardly strategy often employed by most biotech apologists against the opponents of their technology.
CEO John Hammond: "I simply don't understand this Luddite attitude, especially from a scientist. I mean, how can we stand in the light of discovery, and not act?"
Dr Ian Malcolm: "What's so great about discovery? It's a violent penetrating act that scars what it explores. What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world."
I read one article recently by a major GMO apologist, Henry L. Miller, who was championing GM technology for Climate Change and creating drought resistant crops. Hence the need to genetically manipulate crop plant genomes to better withstand heat and drought. Monsanto for example has already done this with their Drought Guard patented crop seeds. This is not biomimicry. Biomimicry would be utilizing Nature's toolkit which has existed for 1000s of years. Mycorrhizal fungi act as an extension of a plant's root system and increase water and nutrient uptake anywhere from 200% to 800%. And it costs far less, often if managed properly after the initial soil inoculation, it's free. And ultimately that is the major reason for the major stumbling block and why the Biotechs and Agrochemical Corporations refuse to go down that road. Opportunities for biomimicry are all around everyone in the natural world. The problem is that they are not opportunities for most of this world's giant corporations and the governments that support them. Their geneticists know very little about how whole plant systems work outside their Lab. There is still very little these biotechs and their engineers know about the very organism, Agrobacterium, they have in the past used to infect target crop genomes with the transgenes. There have been some concerns with their use of the Agrobacterium which is a naturally occcuring soil organism. In fact take note of what one research paper said about our scientific understanding of Agrobacterium:
"Many of the blockbuster discoveries on Agrobacterium-plant interaction have been cited briefly in this narrative. However, much remains to be learned. The chemical signaling between Agrobacterium and plants in the natural environment of the plant’s rhizosphere has yet to be fully explored. In addition, the trafficking of the T-strand from the inception of the transfer process to the plant cell nucleus provides an area of fruitful research opportunities for interdisciplinary investigations. The full potential of using Agrobacterium as a mutagen and a transfer system for genes into an ever expanding number of eukaryotic cells has yet to be realized. After 100 years, the tale of Agrobacterium is not yet finished."
So apparently after all this time, there is still so much they do not know about this organism, but they're using it anyway. But wait, this version of the technology has to be regulated and it's really imperfect because they really have no clue where the information of the transgene will end up within the genome. In other words, in what context of other genes does this gene end up working with ? No problem they say, CRISPR will save the day.
"It won't be long before CRISPR allows us to bend nature to our will in the way that humans have dreamed of since prehistory. When that will is directed toward something constructive, the results could be fantastic—but they might also have unintentional or even calamitous consequences."
Jennifer Doudna - Co-Inventor of CRISPR
Seriously, "Bending Nature to our Will" ??? It's being promoted as more precise and accurate and because the biotechs will only be editing and deleting genes instead of introducing foreign genes by means of a viral facilitator, they've now convinced the government it has no need of regulation. This ignorant worldview of the meaninglessness of informational content within DNA even extends here as well. Take the issue of deleting the gene which causes browning in the common white button mushrooms. Read the warning on this potentially irresponsible act by Mycologist Paul Stamets on how this fungi will be effected by not having this anti-viral gene and the consequences if this specific genome gets out into the wild.
Supporters of giant corporate entites need to stop pretending that Biotechs are all about Science, when their true objective is mainly politics, economics and promoting a worldview after their own image. Their hands are dirty in political advocacy. Their writings only have value if they are discussing observable, repeatable, testable facts about natural phenomena. That's how real science is defined. Even then, you have to watch closely the materials and methods being used here, and see if the conclusions logically follow from the data. A true scientist ceases to be a scientist when he leaves off the original ideals that science was built upon. The understanding of the cause-and-effect structure of the natural world according to testable hypotheses. Biomimicry on the other hand is the practice of science that takes rigor, integrity, and humility. It views nature as having great vakue in it's designs which in turn should be replicated, rather than being put out there for promoting a profit. They have always had a problem with bioethics. They actually work very hard towards preventing people from having the ability to know the truth about our natural world and food we eat and that ultimately is the true Anti-Science.
