Urban Park Health Value

Welcome back. When I departed academia, the remote sensing courses I taught were double-listed in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Agronomy, but they had always attracted an eclectic mix of students.

Occasionally we hired some of those students to support projects, especially in their areas of study. Through Landscape Architecture students, for example, I became familiar with landscape design and why I was attracted to a recent study even if it went way beyond design.

Researchers with the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development applied an ecohealth valuation framework to estimate the potential economic value of health benefits of a proposed urban park.

The ecohealth framework was developed to support decision makers in understanding the economic returns of health benefits resulting from investments in urban parks and greenspace. The approach was developed under the leadership of Canada’s EcoHealth Ontario and Green Analytics.

Proposed Urban Park Health
The Waterloo researchers applied the framework to the development of a proposed park in Peterborough, a city on the Otonabee River in Ontario, about 78 miles (125 kilometers) northeast of Toronto. The city’s population was 83,651 in 2021. The proposed park is a 1.2 acre urban square to be developed on land used as a parking lot.

Annotated image of proposed park in downtown Peterborough (Fig. 1, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/6/4815).

The landscape architect’s plan for the park had trees on the perimeter and near water geysers, seating in the trees’ shade, a public art display in the northwest, winter ice skating on a hard surface in the south, and space for a refrigeration building, change room and public washrooms.

Landscape architect’s plan for urban park; plan is oriented 90 degrees from annotated image of park (Fig. 2, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/6/4815).

Ecohealth Framework
Health improvements contribute to economic savings by avoiding health system costs. The researchers focused on three areas where evidence linking urban parks to health outcomes is strongest: higher levels of physical activity, improved mental well-being and reduced exposure to air pollution.

Increased park use would support higher levels of physical activity and improved mental health; increased vegetation cover would reduce exposure to air pollutants.

Ecohealth framework applied to development of a new urban park, availability of park space, access to park amenities and increase in park use and vegetation (from Table 1, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/6/4815).

Frequency of Park Use
The frequency of park use was derived from the population of the park service area and ease of access. The proposed urban park was designed to serve the community within 800 meters of the park, 5900 people of mixed age. Ease of access was estimated from literature and target distances commonly adopted by Canadian jurisdictions, equated to three distance measures--very easy, easy and more difficult access.

Calculating Economic Benefits
Drawing upon all available data and previous analyses, the researchers estimated:
-The economic value of increased physical activity by multiplying the increased number of people engaging in moderate to vigorous physical activity on a weekly basis by the avoided health care costs.
-The improvement in mental health condition by multiplying the population in the park service area by both the percentage improvement in mental health conditions attributed to the park and the avoided economic burden of mental illness.
-The economic value of the health benefits attributed to air quality by multiplying the tree canopy cover within the park by the annual health savings per unit area of cover.

Summary of annual economic benefits of proposed urban park (Canadian dollars, 2019). (Table 2, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/6/4815).

Wrap Up
Competing land use pressures and costs of operation and maintenance can make it challenging for decision makers to support urban park development. Applying the ecohealth framework provided the economic value of health benefits linked to the proposed park.

What’s more, the case study included only a subset of known benefits. Future research could consider such benefits as respite from hot temperatures and noise pollution, increased biodiversity and both social benefits resulting from stronger community cohesion and improved life satisfaction.

I hope you were as impressed with the approach as I was. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Ecohealth economic framework: static1.squarespace.com/static/5c3cebfd45776eee4408f72d/t/5ecb445972e6a72aac117171/1590379619631/FO_8.5x11_EH_REPORT_FA_4WEB+%281%29.pdf
Ecohealth study of urban park in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/6/4815
Article on study on EurekAlert! website: www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/989501

Transparent Wood

Welcome back. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea that wood could be made transparent.

Unbeknownst to me, various researchers have been working to optimize see-through wood. The products have promising properties for buildings and structural applications, including their renewable and abundant source, optical properties, outstanding mechanical performance, low density, low thermal conductivity and potential for multiple applications.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. A few years ago, I owned up to gaps in my material sciences education. If you recall, I blogged how amazed I was that a team of researchers developed a way to transform wood into a product that’s about as strong as steel (see reprinted post, Steel-Like Wood).

Well, some of those same University of Maryland researchers are back to amaze me again, this time with transparent wood. If you’re befuddled by what transparent wood is, don’t be. It’s just what you think it is.

Viewing the sky through a 1 mm (0.04 in) thick sheet of transparent wood (from Fig. 1 of Univ. of Maryland study, advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/5/eabd7342).

Making Wood Transparent
To understand how transparent wood is fabricated, it helps to know a bit about wood’s cellular structure, particularly the organic polymer lignin. In Steel-Like Wood, I wrote:

Wood cells consist of cellulose (about 50%), lignin (about 20% to 25% in hardwoods, 25% to 33% in softwoods) and hemicellulose (the residual). In general, cellulose is wood’s fibrous bulk. Lignin holds the fibers together, filling the cell wall spaces between cellulose and hemicellulose and conferring mechanical strength as well as a more hydrophobic barrier for water transport.

The usual approach to producing transparent wood is to remove the lignin with a solution-based immersion, then add a refractive-index matching polymer to the delignified wood matrix to minimize light absorption and scattering.

The problem, of course, is that removing lignin reduces wood’s mechanical strength. Moreover, employing a solution-based immersion is relatively energy and chemical intensive, lengthens the processing time and generates liquid waste that’s difficult to recycle.

More recent approaches, as exemplified by the University of Maryland study, have tried to address these issues by controlling the degree of delignification.

Solar-Assisted Chemical Brushing
Instead of immersing the wood, the Maryland researchers brush hydrogen peroxide across its surface to modify the lignin, then illuminate the wood with ultraviolet light (sunlight or artificial) to remove the lignin chromophores responsible for its color. Finally, they infiltrate the wood with a refractive-index matching epoxy. 

Schematic illustration of fabricating transparent wood by brushing with hydrogen peroxide and illuminating with sunlight to modify the lignin and make wood colorless, then adding an epoxy (from Fig. 1 of Univ. of Maryland study, advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/5/eabd7342).

Natural wood’s porous structure promotes rapid infiltration and diffusion of the hydrogen peroxide, ultraviolet light trapping and epoxy infiltration. The resulting product is a dense microstructure with low light absorption and scattering and high light transmittance (up to about 90%) whether the wood is cut longitudinally or transversely. The lignin-modified wood is some 50 times stronger than lignin-removed wood.

Compared with solution-based immersion processes, the chemical brushing and UV light approach requires fewer chemicals and less energy, greatly reducing the cost and liquid waste. One very cool benefit is that designable patterns can be easily added to the transparent wood.

Image of transparent wood patterned with a tree-leaf shape and word “Wood” (from Fig. 1 of Univ. of Maryland study, advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/5/eabd7342).

Wrap Up
The study demonstrated a rapid, cost-effective and sustainable approach to fabricating patternable transparent wood that has optical and mechanical properties favorable for energy-efficient building applications and light management. That the approach can use solar energy in the processing opens the application to large-scale industrial production.

As much as I appreciate advances in metals, polymers, ceramics and composites, there’s something comforting about advances in wood. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Study of solar-assisted fabrication of transparent wood in Science Advances journal: advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/5/eabd7342
Example articles on study:
phys.org/news/2021-02-wood-transparent-stronger-lighter-glass.html
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/energy-saving-transparent-wood-windows-b1795950.html
Examples of earlier reports on transparent wood:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adom.201800059
pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.biomac.6b00145
new.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/acs-twc021919.php

Trees for Climate Change

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due mostly to burning of fossil fuels, are responsible for about two-thirds of the total energy imbalance that is causing Earth's temperature to rise. Growing plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon sequestration) through photosynthesis. Why don’t we just plant lots of trees?

Welcome back. Last February, I blogged about the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, “Davos 2020,” whose theme was climate and sustainability (see Davos Focuses on Climate). One meeting announcement I mentioned was financial support for the forum’s global reforestation initiative. 

I mistakenly referred to the initiative as One Trillion Trees; that’s another trillion-trees project. Unbeknownst to me, quite a few nonprofit organizations and governments have begun large-scale tree-planting projects for a host of social, ecological and aesthetic reasons.

A Trillion-Trees effort in Western Australia (from www.landcarewa.org.au/news/trillion-trees-has-inspiring-global-landcare-vision/).

Is Tree Planting the Way to Go?
While endorsing the benefits of well-planned tree-planting projects, a recent commentary in Science Magazine warns against a simplistic view of tree planting as a solution to climate change.

Coauthored by an environmental scientist with the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a forest scientist with the University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, Brazil, the commentary points out that tree planting can have negative as well as positive outcomes depending on how and where trees are planted. 

Negative consequences might include reduced water supply, destruction of native grasslands, spread of invasive tree species, increased social inequity, displacement of farmland and increased deforestation.

The authors emphasize the importance of involving stakeholders, noting that tree-planting projects imposed by governments and external investors without engaging stakeholders have repeatedly failed. The planted trees are not maintained, farmers use the land for livestock grazing or the land is re-cleared. 

Ethiopia celebrates planting 350 million trees in one day to combat climate change and desertification (from www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2019/0730/1066005-ethiopia-plants-350-millions-trees/).

There are many reasons to plant trees--reforestation, sequestering carbon, providing income from timber harvesting and more. It’s not uncommon for the goals to conflict. 

Planning Tree-Planting Projects
The commentary offers guidance for new tree-planting projects.

Reduce forest clearing and degradation: Protecting and maintaining intact forests is more efficient, more ecologically sound and less costly than planting or replanting trees.

Treat tree planting as one element of multifaceted environmental solutions: Enhancing tree cover is one of the best options to offset greenhouse gas emissions, yet it addresses only a small portion of the needed carbon reductions. The estimates of how much vary more than tenfold.

Balance ecological and social goals: Acknowledge competing land uses and focus on landscapes with the potential to generate large-scale benefits. As an example, they suggest the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, where regional planning of tree-planting initiatives can lead to three times the conservation gains at half the cost.

Plan, coordinate and monitor: Work with local stakeholders to resolve conflicting goals and ensure maximum long-term effectiveness. Simply planting trees is not enough. Millions of dollars were spent to plant mangrove trees in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. Some five years later, most of the monitored restoration sites experienced tree losses of more than 90% because of poor project planning and lack of seedling maintenance.

Wrap Up
Growing trees is a long-term endeavor. It is not a substitute for, nor should it overshadow, actions that have greater potential for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, such as converting from fossil fuels to renewable energy technologies.

We should also recognize that the direct and indirect effects of climate change on tree mortality make it difficult to forecast how much carbon trees will sequester in the future.

That said, I’m all for planting, growing, restoring and conserving many trillions of trees. Of course, it must be done right. Thanks for stopping by.

Reforestation in Burkina Faso (USDA photo from commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burkina_Faso_-_Tolotama_Reforestation.jpg).

P.S.
Commentary on tree planting for climate in Science: science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/580
University of California, San Cruz press release on commentary: news.ucsc.edu/2020/05/holl-trees.html
Study on planting 1 trillion trees in Science: science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76
Three different trillion-tree projects:
www.1t.org/
www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/home
trilliontrees.org.au/

Goats in Trees

What? Goats again? Yeah, I know. I just blogged about goats a few months ago (Looking at Goats). But there was a recent study that gave me the opportunity--ok, excuse--to write about goats that climb trees! 

Goats in argan tree, Morocco.
(multiple websites)

Welcome back. I hope you won’t rush off if I hold on the goats and begin with the trees the goats climb. They’re central to this story.

Argan Trees
Although argan trees (Argania spinosa) are found in Algeria and have been introduced elsewhere, the tree is largely confined to a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve of some 3000 square miles in the semidesert Sous region of southwestern Morocco.

Argan trees are long-lived (150-200 years), evergreen, thorny, reach a height of 30 feet, sometimes more, and have sturdy, knotty trunks, wide-spreading crowns and long, deep roots to survive the arid environment. The leaves are small, clustered and lanceolate; the flowers are small and greenish-yellow.

Argan tree fruit.
(multiple websites)

And then there’s the fruit. The ovoid fleshy drupes are similar to olives, though larger and rounder, with thick peels covering the pericarp and a hard-shelled nut, which contains up to three small, oil-rich seeds. That oil is used for culinary and cosmetic purposes and has become a high-value product for export. In the U.S., for example, the number of personal-care products with argan oil increased from two in 2007 to over one hundred by 2011. 

Dried argan tree fruit, nut inside fruit and seed inside nut. (multiple websites)

Argan Seed Dispersal
Which brings me back to the goats and the research study. When other available forage is lacking in autumn, these domestic goats may climb the argan trees to dine on the leaves and fruit after the fallen fruit is depleted. Goat herders may even assist kid goats new to climbing trees.

One benefit to the tree species of having goats consume the fruit is that the goats will disperse the seeds away from tree and thus give the seeds and seedlings a higher probability of survival. Endozoochory, the dispersal of seeds (or spores) via ingestion and passage through the digestive system, is the popular notion of how the argan seeds are spread.

Researchers from the Spanish National Research Council’s Doñana Biological Station were skeptical that endozoochory was the dominant argan seed-dispersal process because goats seldom defecate large seeds. The scientists postulated that the goats, which are ruminants, were regurgitating when chewing their cud and spitting out at least the larger seeds.

To demonstrate that goats could be spitting viable seeds from their cud, the researchers fed fruits of different size and structure, including five drupes or pomes and one legume, to Spanish goats. They were able to recover appreciable numbers of regurgitated seeds, though not all since the goats were not under controlled conditions.

As expected, they found that almost any seed could be ejected during chewing, spat from the cud, digested or defecated; however, the larger seeds, comparable to those of argan, were more frequently spat out during rumination. The researchers also confirmed that over 70% of the regurgitated seeds were viable.

More goats in an argan tree,
Morocco. (multiple websites)

Wrap Up
Establishing that goats spit viable seeds from cud has broad ecological importance if it is common among ruminants. Studies of ruminants as seed dispersers based exclusively on dung analyses may have underestimated a large fraction of dispersed seeds, especially seeds from plant species with fruit and seed traits, such as size, that differ from those of plant species dispersed through defecation.

And you probably thought I chose the topic just because of the goats in trees. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Natural history note on goat seed dispersal in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment journal: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.1488/full
Article on study on ScienceDaily website. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170524152555.htm
Example video of tree-climbing goats: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2YKwGtcMY8 (CBS news, 3 minute)
Background on Argan trees and oil:
www.feedipedia.org/node/54
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argan_oil
www.sheaterraorganics.com/Moroccan-Argan-Oil-Introduction-101_b_4.html

Habitat Fragmentation

Wisconsin farmland near my
walking and jogging route.
Note isolated areas of tree
and brush. (Google Maps 2015).

Welcome back. About a year ago, in a blog post about my new life in the Wisconsin hinterlands, I suggested one possible cause for the relative dearth of local wildlife encounters was the lack of contiguous cover (Settled In). Although there are trees and brush along many roads and around some houses or fields, for the most part, those stands are separated from one another by land that is farmed or cleared for other purposes, including housing.

I haven’t dug into the history of land cover in Wisconsin or this area in particular, but I’d feel safe filing it under habitat fragmentation, which describes the division of larger, continuous habitats into smaller, more isolated remnants or patches.

And you should care, why? Because a recent study of global habitat fragmentation by 24 collaborating scientists from 19 academic or research institutions in 6 countries, led by North Carolina State University, provided clear evidence of the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity and ecological processes. Combining that with their assessment of global forest fragmentation, they found, well, we’re not winning any prizes for global stewardship.

Synthesis of Ongoing Experiments

No one doubts that habitat destruction has a negative impact on biodiversity, yet there is disagreement regarding the extent to which fragmentation itself is to blame. Do fragment size and isolation have a role in biodiversity decline and ecosystem degradation? 

Landscape change chart presented by Andrew F. Bennett at 29 Jan 2009 Australian State Wide Integrated Flora and Fauna Team meeting. (bird.net.au/bird/index.php?title=SWIFFT_meeting_notes_29_January_2009)

To address that question, the investigators synthesized the findings to date of the world’s largest terrestrial fragmentation experiments--experiments running as long as 35 years and being conducted in disparate biomes on five continents.

Drawing upon experimental findings instead of observational studies was done to take advantage of the control provided by experimental replication, randomization and baseline data in separating the effects of fragmentation from those of associated habitat loss and degradation. Each experiment was designed to manipulate specific components of fragmentation--habitat size, isolation, and connectivity--while controlling for confounding factors.

Together, the experiments show fragmentation causes loss of plants and animals, changes how ecosystems function, and reduces the amounts of nutrients retained and the amount of carbon sequestered among other deleterious effects. Of note is that losses of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are continuing two decades or longer after fragmentation actually occurred. Understanding the relationship between transient and long-term dynamics is a challenge. 

Forest Ecosystem Fragmentation
 
To highlight habitat fragmentation of one ecosystem type, forest, the investigators analyzed a high-resolution map of global tree cover developed earlier from satellite image data (see P.S.).

The fragmentation analysis found that over 70% of the world’s remaining forests are within 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) of a forest edge, well within the distance of being impacted by human activities, altered microclimate and non-forest species.

Moreover nearly 20% of the world’s forest is within 100 meters of an edge (about the length of an American football field)--in close proximity to agricultural, urban, or other modified environments where impacts on forest ecosystems are most severe.

Wrap Up

While the obvious solution to mitigating the negative effects of fragmentation is to conserve larger habitat areas, the investigators recommend new experiments to better understand the dynamics of ecological and social systems for improved land management in fragmented landscapes.

Wildlife corridor over highway in the
Netherlands. (Multiple websites)

Other studies have shown the use of landscape or wildlife corridors to connect fragments can be effective. And most recently, supply chain intervention in the Brazilian Amazon has shown promise for reducing deforestation as more multinational companies agree to stop sourcing from farms with recent forest clearing.

Somehow it just seems reversed that I should encounter more wildlife on the streets and front lawns in the suburbs of northern Virginia than in the wide open farmlands of Wisconsin. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Habitat fragmentation study in Science Advances:
advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/2/e1500052
North Carolina State Univ. news release and example article on the study:
news.ncsu.edu/2015/03/bad-effects-shrinking-habitats/
conservationmagazine.org/2015/03/70-of-earths-forests-lie-within-one-kilometer-of-an-edge/
Background on habitat fragmentation:
www.eoearth.org/view/article/153225/
www.els.net/WileyCDA/ElsArticle/refId-a0021904.html
Paper on development of global tree cover map in Int’l Journal of Digital Earth:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2013.786146
Wikipedia review of wildlife corridors:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_corridor
Conservation Letters paper on zero-deforestation agreements in Brazil:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12175/full

Bracket Fungi Photo Addendum

As promised in the wrap up of last Friday’s blog post, Tree Bracket Fungi, today’s addendum features photos of other tree bracket fungi, all Ganoderma applanatum. There are three tree stumps with fungi along the road and none within sight off the road.

This tree stump, about a quarter mile from the one in last Friday’s blog post, also has multiple tree bracket fungi. I’d bow to a mycologist’s assessment, but none appears new or fresh, as you’ll see in the next six photos.

A closer view of the bracket fungi on one side of the tree stump. The next photo gets closer to the top two.

A view of one tree bracket fungus’s shelf-like attachment to the stump.

A top-down view of two other fungi on the stump. The next two photos view these fungi from different angles.

A more direct view of the two bracket fungi in the previous photo.

Looking up at the two fungi in the previous two photos.

There’s a cluster of bracket fungi near the ground on the other side of the tree stump.

This tree stump with bracket fungi is about midway between the stump pictured above and the one from last Friday’s blog post. Note the white fungus near the base of the stump and the dead bark-colored fungus at the top.

A view of the underside of the dead bracket fungus at the top of the stump in the previous photo. The “art palette” has deteriorated.

A view of the bracket fungus at the bottom of the stump, showing the shelf-like structure (and farm structures in the background).

Tree Bracket Fungi

Welcome back. Would you like to come along on my research instead of my review of published research?

A tree stump with one large and
smaller tree bracket fungi.

There’s a large growth on a roadside tree stump. It’s the kind of fungus you might want for an art project. Growing up, I used to see them painted or drawn on in shops and people’s camps when we visited the Adirondacks in the summers. Years later, I’d occasionally see them at craft fairs.

I’m not after a new hobby and I’m not partial to that kind of art; but I am curious about, well, everything to do with the fungus and process.

Any interest? If you’re already into mycology--the study of fungi--you’ve nothing to gain. If you come along, though, feel free to correct my mistakes.

What Is It?

I know it’s a fungus growing on a tree and online searching gets me to tree bracket fungus, shelf fungus, shelf mushroom, horseshoe shelf mushroom, conk, artist’s conk, fungal conk, shelf conk and more. From photos and field guides, I’m pretty sure all of the fungi on the tree stump are Ganoderma applanatum. 

A closer look at the large
tree bracket fungus.

Coming up with the genus and species was easy. Trying to lock down the higher taxonomy sent me on one tangent after another. (That’s often the interesting part of research.) The one botany course I took was long forgotten and whatever it may have taught me regarding fungi classification has changed anyway.

In those days, fungi were still classed as plants instead of having their own kingdom. Much more recently, scientists found through DNA sequencing and cell comparisons that fungi are more like animals than plants. Although the taxonomy is still not fully defined, the best choice for our tree bracket fungi seems to be the Fungi kingdom, the division (or phylum) Basidiomycota, the order Polyporales, the Ganodermataceae family, and again, the Ganoderma genus and Applanatum species.

What Else Do We Know?

Tree bracket fungi are inedible, perennial and parasitic, saprotrophic, or both, living alone or with others, possibly clustered, on dead and dying hardwood trees.

The large tree bracket fungus
with a 12 inch ruler.

They generally grow shelf-like in semi-circular shapes, in sizes from tree to edge of up to about 8 inches--sometimes much bigger obviously. Slicing the fungus in half should reveal layers, one for each year, like tree growth rings.

The fungi’s upper surface is hard, wrinkled or furrowed, and a dull white, gray or brown with a white edge. The bottom surface, the art palette, is white or graying and subject to staining where it’s touched.
 
Each bracket fungus produces an enormous number of spores, which are distributed by wind and may grow new fungi.

Collecting and Preparing the Fungus

Detaching the fungus from the tree is accomplished by cutting with a saw or hatchet if pushing down from the top fails. If art work is planned, matching the art technique with the removal schedule is recommended.

In winter, the fungus is drier and stiffer and in better shape for painting, though further drying is beneficial. In summer, the surface is usually moist and more suitable for pyrography--burning the design with hot pointed instruments--and that can proceed without drying. (My brother had one of those tools to burn names and designs in leather belts. All I remember is touching the tip before it cooled.)

If it’s intended that the tree fungus art will stand on its own, the base should be carved level before it dries further.

Wrap Up

Should you paint, burn or try some other medium? Do you need a primer or protective coating? I’ll leave all that to you. There’s no shortage of information and examples--including bronzed fungi door handles (see Etsy link below).

Me? I’ve learned what I was seeking, and I’d rather see the fungi on the tree stumps than removed for an art project. Come back next Tuesday and I’ll show you some of the others. Thanks for joining me.

P.S.

Tree bracket fungus background:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket_fungus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyporales
www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_nrs79.pdf
www.first-nature.com/fungi/~brackets.php
www.mycobank.org
www.edinformatics.com/math_science/living_kingdom_classifications.htm

Tree fungus art--how to and examples:
www.ehow.com/info_8043034_tree-fungus-art.html
www.ehow.com/how_7809772_paint-tree-conks.html
www.cabincreations.net/artist-conks.htm
www.etsy.com/market/tree_fungus

Rio Grande Bosque, New Mexico

Last Friday’s blog post was a travelogue, Scenic Geology--New Mexico, by Jim Baker. Jim takes us along on another drive today.

My wife, Marcia, had other obligations, so I invited my 88-year old neighbor, Sunny, to accompany me on a road trip to view the Rio Grande bosque cottonwoods, whose green was turning yellow with the fall season.

“Bosque” is Spanish for forest or woodland, and in the Southwest, bosque refers to the gallery forest along riparian floodplains of rivers or streams. According to the U.S. Forest Service, the Middle Rio Grande bosque is the largest cottonwood forest in the southwestern U.S., extending downstream some 160 miles from Cochiti Dam, north of Albuquerque, past Socorro to San Marcial (treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/35694).

A view of the cottonwoods from the east bank of the
Rio Grande, looking west across the valley toward
 the Magdalena Mountain Range.

Along the way, we passed through San Acacia, whose main
street is shown here in a photograph from last summer. Note
the vintage vehicles. The village was named for San Acacio,
patron saint of soldiers, but it was misspelled when the post
office was established. The residents still use "San Acacio."

San Acacia was largely destroyed in the great Rio Grande flood
of 1929. This church is one of the few surviving structures.

A view along an acequia (canal), running along
the Rio Grande at San Acacia.

The river road dips into the cottonwood bosque.
The road runs on the east side of the Rio Grande,
and you pretty well better know where to access it
and have high clearance and 4WD to traverse it.

The road emerges from the bosque and climbs into an area
called the Quebradas (breaks). The Quebradas Backcounty
Byway runs about 24 miles, cutting through arroyos and rugged
terrain. The pinkish stuff fronting the cottonwoods is tamarisk—
very pretty but a non-native, water sucking, invasive species.

At the southern end of our drive, we passed through the
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, a well known
sanctuary for migrating bird life. These residents, however,
are mule deer--note the huge ears.

A gaggle of snow geese in the Bosque del Apache Refuge.

Sandhill Cranes in the Bosque del Apache Refuge.
Endangered Whooping Cranes are often seen there,
but we didn’t spot any on this day.

Our reward at the end of the dusty trail: the award-winning
 amber ale at the Socorro Springs Brewery.

I hope you enjoyed Jim Baker’s views of New Mexico’s scenic geology and the Rio Grande bosque. Your feedback would be appreciated. Once again, I extend my sincere thanks to Jim. Thanks for stopping by. And Happy New Year!

Ice Storm Photo Addendum

I described two apartment-darkening incidents in last Friday’s blog post, Empowered! Here are a few more photos associated with one of the incidents, the ice storm.

Downed tree limbs.

Ice on the wires to the apartment.

Iced tree branches over the driveway.

Iced tree branches near the road.

A closer view of iced tree branches.

Tree Photo Addendum

As I mentioned in last Friday’s blog post, Going Digital, my switching from print to digital magazines should save a tree or two. Trees are generally renewable and always beautiful, as illustrated by these photographs from Rachel (www.rachelphilipson.com).

A fall drive on a back road in Danby, N.Y.

Admiring the fall foliage along a back road in Danby, N.Y.

A closer look at trees on a back road in Danby, N.Y.