Melancholy Musings and an Update

I've been too sad and too busy with the current environmental meltdown here to blog. Mostly too sad. After gathering data on the human health effects, putting that together with some other concerned residents, and sending it out to everyone, including the governor, and attending various meetings, the upshot is...not much. The human health effects were deliberately ignored, as was a state of emergency, because key officials did not want to "scare away the tourists", and tourism is the biggest part of our economy. I don't think they realize that we now have extensive social media and all it takes is one unhappy, ill tourist to send images of the current horror all over the world. It's better to face up to our addiction to pollution and environmental exploitation and get into recovery! Now!

The only photos I have are so sad I can't even upload them from my camera. Maybe someday. I do have some links on the human health effects of cyanobacteria,which we have here. These "demons of the ancient world" are ironically the reason we are all here- billions of years ago, they created our oxygen-rich atmosphere! But today, they are back, and are quite a scourge to life on land and water:

http://epa.ohio.gov/Portals/28/documents/HABs/Publications/cynobacteriahabs.pdf

Interestingly, another species of cyanobacteria has been found in Greenland, on the ice, greatly accelerating the loss of that ice by making it dark, pockmarked, and mushy so it absorbs more sunlight.  Their little homes are called cryoconites, if you want to Google that. Maybe cyanobacteria are Gaia's way of voting us off the island???

I'll be back next week with proper posts on mesembs, including some new ones I am growing, and of course, the News for Tillies.

Pensive Tuesday: Diggin' In The Dirt, Again

For this Pensive Tuesday, I'm once again ruminating on the subject of dirt. Desert dirt, specifically. I've spent long stretches of time hiking through the desert on archaeological digs, and for other assorted reasons. The hard crust of desert soils has always intrigued me. What makes that crunchy crust? When that crust is disturbed, for instance, by vehicles, dust storms can erupt. And plants can no longer live there. So what is it about the crust in which so many Mesembs and cacti live?

Cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria (photo Wiki Commons)

They are so ancient, these little guys, that they have been around for practically all of Earth's history. They grow into vast collectives that stabilize soils, fix nitrogen, provide oxygen, and prevent erosion in arid and semi-arid environments. They make it possible for plants and animals to colonize harsh environments.  When they are destroyed, the soil is no longer hospitable to other plants and the animals that feed on the plants. Amazing!

Climate change is having an effect on these critters, but we don't know much about it yet. The main species that grows in hot deserts, Microceleus steenstrupii, should do fine for a time, but other species, equally important to the environment, might not. Hopefully, scientists are doing more research to find out what's going on in those crusts. And when you're walking over a soil crust, be sure to thank the tiny creatures that make it possible!