Reviewer: Stewart Brand
Subject: Better than Whole Earth Catalog...
...because 1) it's current, 2) it focuses on real tools rather than books, 3) it's completely Web-active.Compulsive reading, eager shopping for real value, better living as a result.
Forest fires and the fire threat of conifers killed by beetles have been in the news. Earlier this year, when Colorado had a number of forest fires, a newscast said that of all the thousands of acres Colorado has lost to fires this year, 10 times as many have been lost to bark beetles, for which there is no control. What are bark beetles, should we care, and are they a problem here?
The ravages of these insects in the West are a problem of our own creation. Fire is a constant in the ecosystems of these pine woodlands, and for decades fires have been suppressed. Before fire suppression, Western forests were naturally very thin stands of trees that were widely spaced. The trees in them represented a great variety of age categories because they were really the few survivors of one or more fires.
Fire suppression changed all that. Now many of the forests are dominated by trees of a very narrow age range. They grow much closer together. They compete with each other for water.
When drought is a factor, as it has been for the past several years, trees are stressed beyond their limits. Enter the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. It attacks many species of pine under stress but is particularly fond of ponderosa pine, which happens to be the most widespread and adaptable pine in the West. The result is widespread death of huge areas of pine forest.
Horticulturist Scott Aker answers your gardening questions.
“This spectacular ‘blue marble’ image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public.” EO News: NASA Olympics Blue Marble Release; February 6, 2002. I’m minorly obsessed with images of Earth. I guess it’s the notion that observing ourselves from without can provide some perspective on within. Should we talk about the weather?