Bioswales and Constructed Wetlands

Early this AM, I was looking for some information on native willows. There are a lot of them on the river banks behind my place, and they provide forage for Black-tailed Deer, and nesting sites for Yellow Warblers and several other bird species, including cavity nesters such as Black-capped Chickadee, Tree Swallow, and various woodpeckers.

Searching for "Scouler's willow oregon bird usage" I found a link to an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality PDF titled BIOFILTERS (Bioswales, Vegetative Buffers, & Constructed Wetlands) For Storm Water Discharge Pollution Removal . I glanced through it, and while it wasn't what I was looking for, I noticed the following on page 25.

Obtainable reductions of pollutants in bioswales are:Total Suspended Solids – 83 to 92%Turbidity (with 9 minutes of residence) – 65%Lead – 67%Copper – 46%Total Phosphorus – 29 to 80%Aluminum – 63%Total Zinc - 63%Dissolved Zinc – 30%Oil/Grease – 75%Nitrate-N – 39 to 89%
These results can be obtained for a bioswale at least 200 feet in length with a maximum runoff velocity of 1.5 ft./sec., a water depth of from one to four inches, a grass height of at least 6 inches, and a minimum contact (residence) time of 2.5 minutes. 

It turns out that some random roadside ditch might be an engineered bioswale. Their generic usage is pretty much anywhere there is a need to remove pollutants from storm runoff. While I might care more than some because of where I live, anyone who uses rivers or lakes for recreation, or simply likes the notion of a healthy environment, should care to some degree.

The benefits of wetlands have been written about extensively, but nearly all of what I have seen has been about natural wetlands. What might be regarded as unnatural (though native plants are used) wetlands provide a lot of benefits as well. Also, they aren't subject to the same regulatory regime as natural wetlands. It's not as if, once built, they have to be protected for all time. Hopefully that will tend to increase their usage. We are all downstream of someone.

Northern Flicker (intergrade)

The common race of Northern Flicker over most of the western United States is the Red-shafted. In the Willamette Valley, the eastern (Yellow-shafted) bird shows up occasionally, as one did this winter, and causes a minor stir among local bird lovers. It's not that exceptional, as the nesting variant in Alaska is the Yellow-shafted.

Intergrade birds are more common here -- so common that even I spot them once in a while. Here's an image I've uploaded via eBird, so it is reachable via Cornell University's Macauly Library.

EDIT 2016-04-14: Noticed that the image had become unreachable via Macauly. Possibly (though I doubt this very much) this was a privacy protection measure. Reason being is that location plot is still available from the original link; as is the checklist. It's only the image that is not available. As Cornell is attempting to develop photo recognition software, and has a long history of not being particularly citizen-science friendly (despite vast claims that are on the border of unwarranted and ethics violations) I'm changing the link to a Google share, and will no longer mention Cornell/Macauly in anything like a positive sense until they once again deserve it.

Google does not make image organization easy, in terms of grouping -- bird/sparrow, bird/owl, etc. They are a commercial concern, and this does not not seen to be a commercially useful thing for them to do. I'm fine with that -- if I wanted to be rigid about ontologies, I would put up a proper Web site.

         

Race	Wings, tail	Crown	Face	Nape crescent	Malar
Red-shafted	Orange-red	Brown	Gray	None	Red
Yellow-shafted	Yellow	Gray	Brown	Red	Black
Photographed	Yellow	Gray	Brown	Red	Red/black

Note that "Malar" refers to a malar stripe that some bird species have -- it's that mark next to the bill. The bird I photographed shows predominantly red, but also a bit of black. Depending on the species or subspecies (race), it might be limited to only one sex, might be colored differently, etc. In Northern Flicker, only male birds have it.

As you can see, the bird I photographed shows characteristics of both. The exact mix on any one bird can be pretty much anything.

Workstation Wallpaper, Courtesy of ESO

This is from The European Southern Observatory, specifically the VISTA Magellanic Cloud Survey view of the Tarantula Nebula. For the last several years, an edited version of it has been the wallpaper on my main workstation, which is always named feynman. I'm just a bit strange that way; the wallpaper on my phone is an image from the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Before that, wallpapers were slideshows, but that is an historic, and also somewhat biographical, note. But that is for another post, along with that workstation name, which rolls from machine to machine as technology improves.

I could leap from this to some ranty post about why various sorts of hamburger, skate boards, etc., are not awesome. That, too, should be in another post.

I find myself rather sad this morning. Last night I was looking for a bit of imagery related to the UA Mirror Lab. I've mentioned them over at G+. They are currently producing optics for another European effort, the Large Magellan Telescope. No link there, because I just found them trying to do some highly obnoxious Web tracking, involving HTML canvas. That might be another post, but one more suited to my security blog. Some days, the sadness just piles up.

On a brighter note, I found what I was looking for (and much more) by stumbling across, then doing a topic search, on a great blog. GMT4 Unveil, about casting the 4th GMT mirror. Here's the time-lapse video, on YouTube, but you should really read the blog post, and follow the link from there. Casting an 8.4 meter mirror -- a process which takes months, even at what is unquestionably the finest large-scale optical fabrication facility in the world, is a nontrivial process.

So, why so sad?

Because in the course of checking out that great Ketelsens blog, I found a couple of things. One was a mention of Bob Goff. That name rang a bell -- he was a friend of a friend, years ago. Now dead at an early age, as is the friend (Larry Forrest, founder of since-sold Glass Mountain Optics) who used to mention him. Larry died unexpectedly, also before his time. He and Sharleen, his wife of many years, Forrest are two of the finest people I have ever known. Notice my use of the present tense for Larry. That is intentional. In ways that seem important to me, Larry is very much alive; he's just impossible to contact. Which sucks, but there it is.

In addition, the Ketelsens Blog mentions yet another person who has passed far too early, Dave Harvey. They both worked at Steward Observatory, but Harvey was on the software development, as opposed to the optical fabrication, side of things. He apparently regarded himself as more of a photographer. This guy, I can only wish I had had some connection to. Yes, I would be even more sad right now, but I still feel that that was a connection I missed out on, to my loss. 

When I was a child, I messed around with telescopes. No surprise, right. I was mainly interested in the structure of our galaxy, probably because some of the more spectacular sights were accessible to my small telescopes -- the classic 6-inch f8 Newtonian reflector I owned at the time was very mainstream. And even then, what we were learning about something like the structure of the galaxy, or establishing the distance scale of the universe, set the standard for what might be regarded as awesome. An awesome hamburger? Yeah, right. Awesome was a reserved word for me before I even hit my teens, and this not subject to change. Period.

So here's this Dave Harvey guy, also a telescope and software guy, who is using small but drool-worthy gear to photograph to take some fantastic imagery. Such as the Rho Ophiuchus region (Go there. Really. He did it with a 5-inch astrograph.) of the Milky Way, the subject of another long-term wallpaper on feynman. He was also a general-purpose photographer who was deeply knowledgeable about his craft, and who put in a lot of effort to get things right. 

I loves me some birds. Always have. But there are a lot of bird blogs out there by people who do a lot of photography (with far better/heavier/bulkier gear than I am willing to carry) who seem more interested in being cool. I have no firm idea of how birding might be seen as cool, seemingly by the same people who might judge that a hamburger could be in any way awesome, but I digress. More importantly, they don't seem to get things like the time-honored wisdom of 90% of all images needing a border. Or they simply can't be bothered.

In the few images I have ever posted, anywhere, I have tried to follow that rule. But sometimes I got in a rush, or simply lazy, and didn't. I suspect that it would not even have occurred to Dave Harvey to do such a thing. That, my friends, is attention to detail, and dedication to your craft. So Dave Harvey is still around, too, if one appreciates the debt we owe to all of those who teach and inspire.

There is no deep wisdom, now becoming obvious, in all this. At some level we all realize that associating ourselves with smart, dedicated people, who are also willing and able to teach something of whatever it is that they do, is a useful guideline. But it was one of those weird moments, which we probably all have, when many seemingly-disparate things all became connected. 

So why even write this?

Two reasons.

1. The off chance that it might be my subconscious getting impatient and shouty. Which does happen to me. For instance, I have had great results from "sleeping on" problems.
2. Spreading the word about outstanding work by others is always A Good Thing.

520 days in space

Scott Kelly will be retiring from NASA on April 1. I can't help but note that date; he doesn't strike me as the sort of individual that would ever really retire. Retire from NASA? Sure. I can buy that. It might boil down to something as simple as, "At this point in my career, will I ever get another mission?" Or perhaps one really can become jaded to almost anything, and 520 days is quite enough spaceflight, thank you very much.

Obviously, this is all speculation; I am amongst that large collection of people whom Kelly does not call to meet for a beer, and talk about career plans. Duh.

That said, I suspect that Kelly is just _really into it_. Beyond the point of willing to be strapped to the top of an enormous of high explosives and fired into orbit. He has, after all, treated us to a remarkable collection of photos from the International Space Station.

NASA, in their https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/astronaut-scott-kelly-to-retire-from-nasa-in-april press release has managed to ignore this. As I write this, they haven't provided a collection of the photos https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html. That's to be expected, as the NASA Web site has always rather sucked.

That is unfortunate, as many Americans still regard NASA as a huge waste of taxpayer money. This is far from the truth: NASA gets 0.005 of the budget; for every tax dollar half a cent goes to NASA. This is a matter of public record, and can be checked. See http://www.penny4nasa.org/mission/.

Meanwhile, we still have a lunatic fringe who believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked. Dealing with that is an exercise in futility. Real questions, given that NASA can't even get a penny of the budget, seem more likely to involve tradeoffs between robotic vs. manned missions.

I want both. We don't have demonstrated technology to send humans beyond lunar orbit, and robotic missions have an undeniable track record of scientific success. But manned space flight is inspirational. I don't buy purely economic arguments against it. First off, because economists are famous for getting almost nothing right. Secondly, because even if economists had a solid bead on things, some things are worth doing for reasons that have _nothing whatever to do with economics_.

Back to those Kelly photos.

And bite me, NASA. Why do you provide nothing, from one of your own people, while ancient (and largely irrelevant) IT trade rags such as PC Magazine can manage it? Though they will drop a pop-under ad in front of you, despite your settings in popular browsers. Given the rate at which ad networks are currently being compromised, hence being used to compromise user systems, that's a problem. And even then, you still have another click to get to a slideshow. Not going to do a link.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160229-scott-kelly-nasa-astronaut-space-year-pictures-photography/ seems to be one of the more honest ones. You still have to click another link, and you only get 15 images, and there is a bit going on behind the scenes that seems a bit dodgy. As is the case with some mass-media, such as http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/coming-home-look-back-scott-kelly-s-year-space-n525226.

One might try scottkelly.com but will take you to a domain-squatter.

So, yeah, NASA continues to be it's own worst enemy, in both the PR/outreach and history departments. That is really unfortunate. I didn't save some images that I loved, and they don't seem to be available any longer. Articles that got some press about how they screwed this particular pooch in the past, such as http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/ seem to be lessons not learned.