by sp on November 13, 2011
The call for abstracts for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Ecological Engineering Society is now out. Abstracts must be submitted by January 31, 2012 .
The conference will be held in Syracuse, NY from June 7 to 9, 2012, with workshops June 4-6.
by sp on November 13, 2011
Oportunities for education in ecological design include:
Workshops offered by the American Ecological Engineering Society.
The School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon offers an Ecological Design Certificate. For more information about their program, click here.
by sp on November 4, 2011
Some time when I was young I read an account of the Pleistocene megafauna that roamed the earth up until about 10-12,000 years ago. Ever since then the image of “beavers the size of bears” has been lodged in my imagination. Now comes word that, shades of Rocky and Bullwinkle, we had sabre-toothed squirrels to keep the beaver-bears company. At least in my dreams because, according to an article in New Scientist magazine, these guys were companions of the dinosaurs rather than the megafauna, but still:
Truth is sometimes just as strange as fiction. Palaeontologists have unearthed fossils of a bizarre mammal that lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs and was a dead ringer for the sabre-toothed squirrel star of the computer-animated Ice Age films.
[The squirrel fossil] was dug out of rocks rich in the remains of giant sauropod and theropod dinosaurs. Its large eye sockets indicate it was possibly nocturnal, says Christian de Muizon at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, who was not a member of Rougier’s team. “The function of the long canines is difficult to assess,” says Rougier. “There is no real modern model for that.”…The shape of the squirrel’s molars suggests that it may have had a taste for insects…
Read the full post here.
by sp on October 29, 2011
Here is a new book worth checking out, an exploration of experience of lakes and the science of lakes. I met the author, Darby Nelson, at the 2011 North American Lake Management Society meeting in Spokane. Just by chance I set down with him and his wife Geri at the poster session reception and we started talking. Darby reminded me that one of the things Henry David Thoreau did was to sound Walden Pond and demonstrate to the locals that its depths were not infinite.
- Author: Darby Nelson
- Michigan State University Press, 2012
Available from Amazon.