Posts Tagged ‘Nature’


Dispatches From Cape Town – Table Mountain

Friday, May 17th, 2013

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There are many things to do in Cape Town, but no visit is complete without ascending to the top of Table Mountain. This mountain, one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature, along with Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head dominate the city, rising 3562 feet above the city. It is part of Table Mountain National Park which creates a wilderness with significant bio-diversity in the middle of an urban area of over 3.5 million people.

The mountain get its name from the seemingly 2 mile level plateau at its top.

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While it appears level from the ground, trust me it is not.

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There 5 well marked trails on the mountain top and many viewing platforms from where you can see Cape Town, Camps Bay, and much of the Cape Peninsula.

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There are numerous routes to hike up Table Mountain, none of them easy. We took the Cable Car, which been in operation since 1929. It ceases operations when the winds are too strong. Michelle and her friends had previously hiked up the mountain. She was kind enough to ride the cable car with us when we visited.

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One of the other fascinating things about Table Mountain is it’s biodiversity. It has over 2,200 types of plants that are unique to Table Mountain. The Cape Floral Region is one of 6 recognized Floral Kingdoms and contains many unique plants, found nowhere else.

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There is also much history surrounding the mountain. Including the original inhabitants who grazed their cattle on it’s slopes and the first European to climb Table Mountain (Jan van Riebeeck). Even bungee jumpers, para gliders and base jumpers have used Table Mountain. Needless to say, we took the cable car back down.


Beach Erosion – When It’s Man vs. Nature – Nature Naturally Wins!

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

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I just spent another week in one of our favorite places, Sarasota, Florida. The weather was great and everyone had a wonderful time. My wife Gail and I lived there from 1978 until 1983, and have been visiting there every year since then. There have been many changes, new developments, buildings, hotels, shopping centers, etc. We have lost many of the old family stores and restaurants to have them replaced by newer fancier ones.

However, by far the greatest change that I see from year to year are the beaches themselves. This year it was even more pronounced due to the effects of Tropical Storm Debbie that swept through the area June 26, 2012. Ten to 30 feet of sand were eroded from beaches in Sarasota County.

Erosion of beaches is nothing new. There has been several attempts to replenish the beach and there is an official presentation on the City of Sarasota’s website about the Lido Beach Restoration.

As much as I love the beach, the fallacy behind any beach restoration or replenishment is that we can “fix” a naturally occurring process, the ever changing relationship between water, wind and sand. According to the Center for Ocean Solutions, coastal erosion is a natural process along the world’s coastlines that occurs through the actions of currents and waves and results in the loss of sediment in some places and accretion in others. Erosion is considered to to be sporadic and episodic. There can be large scale erosion in only a few hours with a severe storm (episodic) and different areas can erode at different rates even during the same event (sporadic).

Here are examples of erosion in the Florida Panhandle at Navarre Beach due to two hurricanes. The upper photo was taken on July 17, 2001, the middle photo was taken on September 17, 2004, one day after the landfall of Hurricane Ivan, and the lower photo was taken on July 12, 2005, two days after the landfall of Hurricane Dennis. This is a clear example of the episodic nature of beach erosion. (Click image to enlarge)

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Scientific American stated in its EarthTalk column that coastal erosion in any form is usually a one-way trip. Man-made techniques such as beach nourishment—whereby sand is dredged from off-shore sources and deposited along otherwise vanishing beaches—may slow the process, but nothing short of global cooling or some other major geomorphic change will stop it altogether. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of the sandy beaches along America’s coastlines have been eroding for decades. In many of these cases, individual beaches may be losing only a few inches per year, but in some cases the problem is much worse.

According to Stephen Leatherman (“Dr. Beach”) of the National Healthy Beaches Campaign, building a bulkhead or seawall along one or a few coastal properties may protect homes from damaging storm waves for a few years, but could end up doing more harm than good. “Bulkheads and seawalls may accelerate beach erosion by reflecting wave energy off the facing wall, impacting adjacent property owners as well,” writes Leatherman, adding that such structures along retreating shorelines eventually cause diminished beach width and even loss.

Other larger scale techniques like beach nourishment may have better track records, at least in terms of slowing or delaying beach erosion, but are expensive enough as to warrant massive taxpayer expenditures. Beach nourishment is the process of adding new sand to the beach profile in order to restore it to some former width. This is usually accomplished by dredge and fill operations with sand pumped onto the beach from an offshore source, such as sand bars or shoals. Beach nourishment is only feasible at the community level as large sectors (e.g., miles of the shore) must be nourished to be economical viable. In the early 1980s, Miami Beach was restored at the cost of $65 million along this 10-mile strand of shore.

There have been over 8 beach nourishment projects on Lido Beach at a cost of over $12 Million Dollars. However, the beach continues to erode. Here are pictures I took last week showing significant recent erosion on Lido Beach.

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With the expected rise in sea levels and the increase in both the frequency and severity of storms being attributed to global climate change, one can expect that coastal erosion will continue to increase. The U.S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency states that if sea levels increase by one foot, would erode most of Florida Beaches 100 to 200 feet. They also believe that sea levels could rise as much as 3 feet over the next 100 years. The cost to replenish the lost sand would be $8 Billion.

While it is understandable that areas with expensive homes and condominium projects and whose economic base is dependent on tourism will continue to spend large sums on beach replenishment projects. While this may be futile in the long run, short term it still allows for a wonderful beach experience as these photos from last week will show.

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Also, if you didn’t click the “sand” link earlier in the article, take a second to check out this cool slideshow. It gets up close with what our beaches are made out of, Sand of course!
Click here to view the slideshow.


Kayaking Sarasota Bay: EcoTour

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

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In past posts I have mentioned several of my favorite places. Another of my favorite places is Sarasota, Fl. I lived there in my late twenties and early thirties, and have vacationed there almost every year since we moved to Boston and then Michigan. Recently, the beach on Siesta Key (where I lived for a year) was rated the best beach in the US by Dr. Beach who is really coastal expert Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, Director of Florida International University’s Laboratory for Coastal Research.

This year we decided to do something different than just sitting on the beach or pool enjoying the warm weather. My daughter Michelle and I decided to take an environmentally oriented kayak tour of Sarasota Bay through Biotica EcoTours. Biotica EcoTours stresses the environmental and natural features of this important estuary.

Estuaries occur in areas where freshwater meets and mixes with salty ocean waters. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection call estuaries “The cradle of the ocean” because more than 70 percent of Florida’s recreationally and commercially important fishes, crustaceans, and shellfish spend part of their lives in estuaries, usually when they are young. The shallow water, salt marshes, seagrasses, and mangrove roots provide excellent hiding places from larger, open-water predators.

Estuaries are among the most productive ecosystems in nature. Rivers and streams drain into estuaries, bringing in nutrients from uplands. Plants use these nutrients, along with the sun’s energy, carbon dioxide, and water, to manufacture food. Florida’s estuaries, including Sarasota Bay, have been significantly degraded by development. Some of the most expensive real estate on Bird Key, Lido Beach, Longboat Key, Siesta Key and along Sarasota Bay, used to be covered with Mangove trees and sea grasses, before the dredge and fill development of the 1950’s to the 1970’s.

Here is a picture of Bird Key as it was.

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Here is a picture of Bird Key today.

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During our kayaking trip, we saw the rusted hulks of the original dredging equipment.

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Interesting it has become a nesting place for numerous birds and a place where coral and oysters live.

During our tour we saw all three types of Mangroves, Red, White and Black. We saw numerous bird species including the Double Breasted Cormorant, Great Egret, Great Heron and Osprey. We even saw a young Bonnethead shark that appeared to be injured. One of the most fascinating part of the tour was going through the tunnels that were made through the Mangroves in the 1950’s in a misguided and ill-advised attempt to reduce the mosquito population. In the tunnels we saw coral, oysters and mud crabs, among others. Here is a picture of the mangrove tunnel as our tour leader, Christine navigates her way in. (photo by Michelle Rubin)

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In all it was a wonderful, educational and exciting way to spend an afternoon. I highly recommend Biotica EcoTours and our guide Christine, who selflessly rescued me when I tipped my kayak and ended up in the refreshing and clean waters of Sarasota Bay. Here are some final pictures of Christine, my daughter Michelle and me kayaking Sarasota Bay.

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Ann Arbor’s Nichols Arboretum… “Peony Initiative” Recieves Federal Grant…

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

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There are many wonderful things about the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. I have many fond memories of my college days there. One of my favorite things both during and after my school days, is walking along the trails and enjoying the beauty of the Nichols Arboretum. For those of you that are not familiar with it, the Arboretum (or “Arb” as it is called by the students) the University of Michigan created a Botanical Garden and Arboretum in 1907 on the land between Geddes Road and the Huron River, just a few blocks from Central Campus on the site now known as Nichols Arboretum. At the time, the property consisted of approximately 80 acres. Today, more than 100 years later, the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum manages over 700 acres of gardens, research areas, and natural preserves around the Ann Arbor area with a complex of conservatory, greenhouses, laboratory, teaching and meeting spaces at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and the James D. Reader, Jr. Center for Urban Environmental Education at Nichols Arboretum.

For me, the Arb was a place to get away from the stress of my studies and take a long walk on a sunny spring or fall day. In the winter, we went sledding, tubing or “traying” on it’s many hills. One such winter afternoon lead to one of my many encounters with the U of M Health Services as they x-rayed a sprained thumb brought on by an extreme traying session. (For those of you who are not familiar with the sport, traying is the sport of sliding down a steep snow covered hill on a tray from the U of M Food Services (i.e. cafeteria).

In the summers, we held numerous picnics, Frisbee games, touch football games or just spent a lazy afternoon laying on a blanket and reading a book. The Arboretum never failed to enchant or excite as it changed with each season. Now, my wife and I, after visiting our daughter, take long languid walks in the Arboretum. We talk about the past, plan for the future and just relax in a beautifully maintained natural space. One of my wife’s favorite parts of the Arboretum is the Peony garden. We make sure to visit the Arboretum in late spring and early summer to see the over 230 varieties of peonies in bloom.

You can imagine my pleasure at reading the other day that U.S Senator Carl Levin (D–Mich.) announced in a July 26 press statement that the Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum are among five Michigan museums that will receive federal grants through the Museums for America program to preserve local establishments.

“Michigan’s Museums are home to many important state and national treasures, and these grants will help share those resources with more visitors,” Levin said in the release. “I am proud these museums were selected out of scores of applicants nationwide, reflecting the great work being performed by these institutions.”

According to the press release, the University will receive $79,658 from the Museums for America grant as well as matching funds provided by the grantee to be used on the “Peony Initiative,” which will provide information on the Internet about the garden’s various peonies. The money provided by the Museums for America grants is only one piece of the peony project, which includes restoration and expansion, among other improvements, that are already several years underway. The Peony Garden was donated to Nichols Arboretum in 1922 by Dr. W. E. Upjohn, founder of the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Peony Garden is home to historic varieties of peonies that were introduced into gardens throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Here is a slideshow of photos from Flickr that are tagged “nicholsarboretum” courtesy of cseeman

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I have written about two of my favorite natural places, the Coral Reefs off the coast of Eilat and now, the Nichols Arboretum, I would love to hear about some of your favorite natural places too?


Protecting the World’s Northernmost Coral Reef

Monday, June 13th, 2011

While vacationing with my wife Gail and daughter Michelle in Israel, I had the unique opportunity to snorkel among one of the most spectacular coral reefs I have ever seen.  In the Gulf of Eilat, or Gulf of Aqaba (near the Israeli resort city of Eilat) lays the northernmost end of the Red Sea’s coral reefs.

The water’s high salinity and the relative isolation of the area from other marine ecosystems, helps to make this coral reef unique. Though they are at the northernmost range for coral reefs, these reefs in the Gulf of Eilat have some of the highest coral species diversity in the world.

Coral Reefs are extremely fragile ecosystems and these like many others have been degraded over the last 30 years.  However, Israel created the Coral Beach Nature Reserve to preserve the reefs.

The Reserves staff limit the number of visitors, have marked no swimming areas, placed protected buoys and taken many other actions to limit damage to the coral, while making it available for both casual snorkelers and proficient divers.

We spent two wonderful days at the Coral Beach Nature Preserve. After renting snorkel equipment on site, we all had a chance to see the amazing diversity of coral and fish.  In the clear blue water, the visibility was astonishing.  The vibrant colors of the fish and coral and the variety of marine life were wonderful to see.

I give both the Reserve Staff and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority high marks for protecting this valuable marine resource and still making it accessible to the public.

Below are some photos of these stunning coral reefs, enjoy!

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