Hey everyone! It took me a while to decide on a geography related website to post in the blog. Ironically, the site I finally chose, sciencedaily.com, has been a favorite repository of random scientific facts and knowledge for a while now for both myself and my father (it is my dad’s homepage, so every time I use dad’s computer I am greeted with the latest interesting scientific news. My dad does not qualify as a scientist (he sells beer for a living), but every time he finds something cool on Science Daily he emails it to me. Like literally every time haha). Anyway, when you log on to Science Daily you immediately see the days top headlines in the scientific world. For example, today’s top stories include titles such as Ancient Stars Shed Light On the Milky Way, Whiskers: Milestone in Evolution of Mammals,  The Strange Rubbing Boulders of the Atacama, and Bats Can Rapidly Change Ear Shapes. Everytime that I log on I tend to unconsciously dedicate 15 to 20 minutes of my time sifting through novel discoveries.

Today’s most interesting topic was about the unique boulders of the Atacama Desert, which ties in nicely with out recent study of the lithosphere and weathering processes. The large , smooth boulders found in the driest desert on earth were dislodged from hills surrounding the various basins located in the desert. Due to frequent seismic activity and earthquakes, the boulders, which have been in the basin for nearly 2 million years, rub against each other many times over the course of geologic time which creates their characteristic smooth sides. This process of weathering is extremely rare, and can only be found in areas of extremely low rainfall and high seismic activity, two conditions characteristic of the Atacama Desert. A picture of the boulders taken from the article is shown below.

The website contains a lot of other cool features that allow you to find articles regarding specific topics. These topics vary temendously and include a myriad of topics associated with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. For instance, one of today’s articles, titled Evidence of Ancient Lake in California’s Eel River Emerges, credits a past catastrophic landslide with the creation of a lake that affected, and still today affects, the gene’s of the region’s steelhead trout. It is a fascinating study that connects changes in the lithosphere and hydrosphere dictating changes in the biosphere. This article could be found under 3 different tabs (Plants & Animals, Earth & Climate, Fossils & Ruins), further proving the interconnectedness of the science of physical geography. Geography itself is a topic tagged in many of the posts, including an article about the spatial distribution of long-term carbon storage in the Ganges Basin. This website is really interesting, and like I said, if you spend a couple of minutes searching through the varying articles you are bound to learn something really interesting!

About Project Noah: http://www.projectnoah.org/about

I came across the website through an advertisement on the National Geographic Website. Clicking on the link soon lead me to an interesting project that four NYU graduates have created. Entitled “Project Noah”, the experiment attempts to build a fun, location-based database mapping out wild-life intercations all around the world. The way Project Noah works is that anywhere at anytime, if you come across an organism, you take a picture of it, post it on the website, and attribute a location to where you spotted it. Oftentimes, members do not know the “official” names of the organisms that they take pictures of- but that is where the social networking aspect of Project Noah comes in. On the website, you can post and comment on the pictures by writing the name of the organism or general feelings toward the picture.

Another aspect of Project Noah is that it conveys the vast biodiversity around the world. With over 120,000 participants, and over millions of pictures uploaded, Project Noah serves as a catalog for speicies diversity and dispersion. Members can also participate in “missions”, which link all the classified organism pictures into a central location such as the National Saguaro Park. This helps scientists count and identify the certain species in the Park.

Project noah’s most notable feature is that it can be downloaded as an app, so pictures and categroizations can be uploaded easily and at any time. I see this whole project as a way to encourage people to reconnect with nature, documenting local wildlife, and creating “citizen-scientists”.

Despite the success of national legislation like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, pollutants still enter the environment at alarming rates. We can easily identify obvious sources of pollution—sulfur dioxide is bound to be coming out of a coal-fired power plant’s smokestacks—yet often less-obvious sources go unnoticed.

When pollution from any of these sources enters the environment, the substance likely enters either the air, local ground or surface water, or the soil; some of these substances may remain in these locations for many years. These chemicals have obvious effects: human and environmental health suffer in a variety of ways.

Nevertheless, the landscape of the region and the physical distance from a polluter means that some locations will experience only minimal levels of a pollutant. Wind and other weather patterns could transport a pollutant away from region and toward another; a city-dweller living next door to a factory will inhale many more toxic chemicals than will a rural farmer living kilometers away.

Luckily (or not, depending on your perspective) there is an online tool to determine which polluters exist in your locality. By visiting Scorecard, you can input your home or current zip code and get a list of polluters in your locality, the location of those polluters, how much pollutant they emit, and which pollutants are most prevalent where you live. For instance, I learned a company was emitting lead-based compounds from what I thought was an office building adjacent to the suburban neighborhood where I grew up! You can also see if any Superfund sites exist near you, determine the cleanliness of your local water, and learn what percentage of homes in your area have risk for hazardous levels of lead.

How many polluters are in your locality? Are you surprised at what you find out? Let us know in the comments!