The Scoop on Poop

 by Anne Munier

The scoop on poop

We all do it, most of us don’t like to talk about it, but perhaps we should get over that, because poop is not only fascinating, it’s also powerful stuff that may be a solution to at least a couple world problems! Let’s start with the basics:

What is it? Poop is waste from our bodies. We eat, our bodies take in nutrients, and then pass out what’s not needed. So poo is basically undigested food, along with bile (more on that in a moment), bacteria, parasites, and dead cells. Other names include stool, faeces, human waste, excreta, bowel movements, and a few more that are somewhat less polite.

Why the brown colour? Poo is usually brown because that’s the colour that bile- a substance our liver produces to help digest fats- becomes as it passes through the digestive system. Fun fact: bile starts out yellow-green. When we have diarrhea (which tends to come out extra quickly), the bile doesn’t have time to change colour as it passes through the intestines, hence diarrhea is often more of a yellow or green colour.

Why are we grossed out by poo? Evolution, of course! We’ve evolved to be disgusted by poo to reduce our chances touching the stuff. This reduces the chances of being infected by disease-causing microbes or parasites that it could be harbouring. The smell, which comes from the bacteria that break down food in our digestive system, probably helps as well. 

A proud manure producer! Photo by Ian Barbour

Is poo useful? Oh, my yes! Agricultural manure is basically livestock poop (often it’s been composted first), which helps crops grow by providing nutrients and bacteria, and by making the soil more rich and fertile. It also improves soil’s ability to hold onto moisture, and can reduce erosion. Yay manure!

Anything else? You bet, now we’re getting to the really exciting part. Let’s talk alternative energy.

But first, let’s recognize that every year we produce hundreds of billions of kg of poo worldwide (yeah, take a moment to think about that. Or…. don’t). Either way, that can be a heaping sanitation problem, particularly in areas that don’t have good quality infrastructure for dealing with human waste. When people are in close contact with poo, they can get sick from the germs and parasites, which can cause diseases like cholera, dysentery, or typhoid.

So- billions of people on Earth producing billions of kg of potentially harmful waste- that’s a problem. Meanwhile we’re looking for ways to make our energy system more ecologically friendly to reduce the impacts of climate change- another problem. A response to both problems: Biogas!

Biogas is produced when organic matter (like food waste, wood, agricultural waste, and yes, human and animal poo) is digested in a sealed container without any oxygen. The gas is then captured and used for energy, like cooking gas, fuel for cars and trucks, electricity, or heat. It doesn’t even smell bad!

The solids that are left behind are a great, high quality fertilizer that can be used in landscaping or farming. Another benefit!

 

Biogas plan: Organic matter goes in, biogas bubbles out the top, and "digestate" (i.e. fertilizer) is left over

It’s a simple concept, but please don’t try it at home; it’s not *that* simple.

Let’s check out some examples: 

This Sumatran orangutan is contributing to clean energy!

• The Toronto Zoo recently started putting the 2,000 tonnes of waste that their animals produce every year to good use. They combine it with thousands of tonnes of grocery store waste, and generate enough biogas to power 500 homes! In the process they’re reducing thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, those heat-trapping gases that are causing climate change!

• A primary school in Uganda is now able to cook student lunches thanks to human waste-derived biofuel.

• Poop power will soon be heating about 600 homes in the Vancouver area!

• England has “bio-buses” that run entirely on gas from human faeces and food.

Poo-powered buses in England!

And that’s just the start. The United Nations anticipates that human waste could power 138 million homes while improving human and environmental health. Companies investing in the technology to make it happen are popping up all over the world.

Suddenly, a waste problem becomes part of the solution to clean energy! And we certainly won’t be running out of the raw material (that is, human poop) anytime soon.

 

 

Bird Banding! guest post by Meghan Jacklin

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a biologist? It is a truly rewarding career, but it might not be what you expect! Read on to learn about what a career in biology can be like, in a post from our guest writer Meghan Jacklin.

My name is Meghan, and I am a biologist in Edmonton Alberta. I was first inspired to care about wildlife and natural areas from a young age through my love of wolves, and my family canoeing and camping activities. I struggled to find the right education, until I heard about the Environmental sciences program at the U of A. I got my bachelors degree in Conservation Biology, and then it was time to head out into the real world!

Meghan (right) and a coworker, birding despite rain AND mosquitos!

During my degree I started volunteering for a local organization called the Beaverhill Bird Observatory. That is where things got really interesting. The Beaverhill bird observatory studies bird migration through bird banding. But what is bird banding?

Bird banding means putting a lightweight metal band with a unique number on a bird's leg. If this bird is ever caught or found dead somewhere else in the world, we have learned valuable information about that bird and where it traveled!

 Neat! But why do this?

About 40% of the worlds 10,000 bird species are migratory, meaning they spend part of the year in one place and then undertake a large movement to another location for a different part of the year. This can make them uniquely vulnerable – if their habitat, the place that they live, is destroyed or damaged in one area, but not in the other, we may not recognize what the problem is without understanding where birds are migrating to and from.

A banded Dark-eyed Junco

What else do we learn from bird banding?
We also can determine whether a bird hatched this year or is an adult. This helps us understand whether problems are occurring at the breeding grounds (if not many babies are hatching) or if problems are at the wintering grounds (there are enough babies but not many returning adults). We can check roughly how fat a bird is! This is important because some birds migrate hundreds to thousands of kilometres, sometimes without stopping. They must put on lots of weight before starting so they have enough fuel to make it to their journey's end.

How does it actually work?
We first have to get up reeeaaally early, because that is when the birds are around! We get up half an hour before the sun even rises – urg. It is worth it though! We then set up a series of very fine mesh nets, so fine that you can hardly see them. As the birds are flying through the bushes in the early morning, they don’t see the nets, and fly right in.

Can you see this songbird mist net?

Then the staff and volunteers get busy. We check the nets every 30 minutes and remove every caught bird, and place them in individual cloth baggies to bring back to our banding lab. It takes lots of training, and dexterity to carefully take the birds out of the nets! We also get our exercise in, seeing as the distance to check all the nets is around 1 km in length, and we need to walk that every 30 minutes.

Lots of birds in bags,waiting to be banded at the lab!

Once we get back to the lab, we start the banding process. We add the band using special pliers, and this part is actually pretty easy to learn. What’s harder is accurately determining the age and sex of the bird. That requires study and practise, and careful reading of the “bird banding bible” Pyle, the widely accepted expert in North America.

During the banding process, we also get pooped on… a lot! We learn a lot about birds and can help their species to thrive, but no wild bird enjoys being caught, and they let us know! We are covered in poop, and little scratches from beaks and claws by the end of a day. Most songbirds don’t hurt too much when they bite, but if we catch a bird used to cracking seeds – ouch!

An adult Great Horned Owl about to be banded.

 With all that said, bird banding is a very rewarding path for a biologist. Until you start to look and listen, you don’t realize the beautiful colours, shapes, and sizes of the birds right here in our backyards. With all the troubles that birds face, from window strikes, cat predation, habitat loss, and changing climate, it is wonderful to know I am making a difference.
If this sounds right for you, it’s never too early to get started. Many banding stations are open for the public to visit, volunteer, and learn about this important work. Look for one near you!

Why NASA monitors Penguin Poop (and Other NASA Stuff You Didn't Know)

Yes, they really doo-doo. Sorry. Yes, they really do. Back in 1966 NASA launched the Landsat program – a bunch of satellites which orbit the earth recording images at various wavelengths (blue, green, red, infra-red, etc.) The latest satellite – Landsat 8 – scans 11 different wavelengths at a resolution of 30 meters. Since Adélie penguins are mostly a lot smaller than 30 meters across, they can’t be seen individually. But where there's a will, there's a way. Male and female penguins take turns in incubating the eggs in their nests. With no bathroom breaks the penguin poo (called guano) builds up around the nest. From space, the area of the guano is easily measured, and from that the number of penguins can be estimated. It’s a lot easier, warmer and less smelly to do this observation using NASA pictures than by going onsite. 

A satellite image showing penguin poop, with a picture of the culprit in the middle.
Photo courtesy NASA.

Scientists have been concerned about a decreasing Adélie penguin population and have speculated that a change in diet may have been the cause, possibly from being able to eat less krill. Krill are tiny crustaceans which are a major part of the Antarctic food chain. Penguins (and seals and whales) are having to compete with commercial trawlers for krill. The colour of penguin poo varies from white (from eating fish) to pink or red (from eating krill). Landsat imaging was able to determine from space that penguin diets have had no long term pattern of change. 

Long Term Landsat Images

Over 50 years of data is enormously useful in tracking changes. 

The two images below show how part of the Exelcior glacier in Alaska has melted into a lake during the last 32 years.  Since 1994, Excelsior Glacier has retreated about 200 meters per year—nearly twice as fast as the previous 50 years.

This image was acquired in October 1986. You can see a darker blue area neara the bottom where melting ice has started forming a lake.
Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

This image was acquired in October 2018. You can see the lake is fully formed. It's more than five times the size of Central Park in New York City, and it even has a name!
Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

Short Term Landsat Images

Landsat images can also be useful for real-time action. A few weeks ago a cyclone devastated several cities in eastern India. The storm left millions of people homeless, and damaged or destroyed energy infrastructure, leaving around 3.5 million households without electric power for days after the storm hit.

The images below are data visualizations of where the lights went out in the city of Bhubaneswar. The two images show city lighting on April 30 (before the storm) and on May 5, 2019, two days after the cyclone. The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority requested the data from NASA for use in risk assessment and disaster recovery.

Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

More Landsat Images

You can find hundreds of other fascinating images at https://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

 

 Mars Mission

Next year NASA is planning to send a rover to Mars. Among other things it will look for any evidence that may show if any life has existed on Mars. Here’s an artist’s impression of the rover. 

Although you can’t go along on this flight, NASA is allowing you to send your name to Mars. You’re invited to submit your name at this site:  https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/

The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip. The lines of text will be smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be written on a single dime-size chip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover.

If you accept the offer to send your name to Mars, you’ll get a boarding pass like the one below, complete with a tally of your frequent flyer points.

 

It’s an open question whether any possible Martian life will be able to read your name, but we can hope. 

Finally: Everything Old is New Again

The second Orion exploration mission is currently scheduled for 2022 or 2023. It will be a crewed jaunt around the moon and back. This will the furthest distance from earth that any humans have traveled. It will be a significant step forward in NASA's plans to return humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and future missions to worlds beyond, including Mars.
Some of the tests for this mission are to demonstrate the capability of navigation in deep space. And how do you navigate in deep space if you have serious problems with the technology? It's back to basics in a worst-case scenario. In the 18th century sailors used a sextant to measure the angle between celestial bodies (sun, moon, stars and the horizon), so as to be able to calculate their longitude and latitude. Astronauts on Orion 2 will test the use of a sextant for emergency navigation. 

Astronaut Alexander Gerst calibrates and operates the Sextant Navigation device that is testing emergency navigation methods such as stability and star sighting in microgravity for future Orion exploration missions.
Photo: courtesy NASA.