Snow?!? You've got to be kidding!

Over the past week, parts of Atlantic Canada have experienced one of the features ("It's not a bug, it's a feature!") of a Canadian spring -- June snow. In sympathy with the afflicted parts of the country, including those in the North where the winter's snow still lingers, we present this brief poem by Sci/Why contributor Margriet Ruurs - CE

Whether to Like the Weather or Not

Calm wind, clear sky, nice.

Shifting wind, scattered-cloud sky

Stratus clouds drifting by.

Cold front, sleet and ice.

Slightly drifting, shifting snow.

Freezing rain, snow and squall

I don’t like this at all.

Quick inside! Winter, go!

Photo by Margriet Ruurs

Cumulus clouds climbing high,

Cirrus clouds scatter

Back to sunny, warmer weather

And bright blue summer sky.

The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea

 Posted by Helaine Becker

We know the ocean is at risk. Rising global temperatures, deoxygenation, and increasing acidity are all serious threats to marine ecosystems. Knowing these facts, it’s easy to fall victim to despair.

But there is reason to hope – lots of it. And that’s one of the inspirations for why I wrote The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea, my new book from Kids Can Press.

It’s an experiment-based science book that teaches kids through first-hand exploration how different aspects of the marine system work – why ice floats, how currents form, how fish swim. It also gives kids a chance to explore environmental issues, like the enormous garbage island in the middle of the Pacific, or how an oil boom works.

But The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea is more than an experiment book. It’s also a primer on the threats facing the ocean. And most importantly, it’s a serious discussion of what people today, all over the world, are doing to protect the sea and minimize the impacts of human activity.

We all know that the media focuses on negative stories. They are immediate adrenalin-boosters, and feed into the human need to constantly scan the horizon for danger. But that focus on risk means we don’t really hear the other half of the story – we don't hear about the car that didn’t crash or the lost wallet that was retrieved.

This is true when discussing environmental issues too. We hear about the coral dying, the sharks being finned, and the Dead Zones expanding. But few ordinary people realize that Dead Zones have also disappeared. That corals can be regrown. And that new laws across North America are in place that will help protect our seas well into the future.

The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea presents it all: the facts, the risks, and the heartening stories of recovery.

Some of the facts may surprise you –like learning pearls are NOT caused by bits of grit that get caught in the oyster’s shell!). Some may delight you – like discovering how the beluga whales of the St. Lawrence River are no longer in danger of extinction, thanks to a concerted effort by Quebec’s citizens and business community. Some may even astound you. But in the end, you (and your students) will discover the ocean is larger, more complex, and more diverse than anything you could have ever imagined.

The truth is the ocean is under serious threat. We can’t be Pollyannas, pretending there are no problems. But we also can’t be Eeyores, seeing nothing but doom in our future. The reality is more nuanced. There are many reasons for optimism.

Optimism, I think, is a requirement for children’s non-fiction. To tell young people, “all is lost” is counter-productive. It negates them, and their future. It  also, plainly, is false; it's unsubstantiated opinion.

The facts point in the other direction. Where there is life, there is hope. And there’s lots of life in the ocean: More, in fact, than anywhere else on the planet.  Resilient, adaptaive, wildly creative life.

Shouldn’t that fact alone give us reason to hope?

Harvest Time in the Forest

posted by Claire Eamer

It's harvest time here in the Yukon, at the northern edge of the boreal forest. The leaves on the aspen trees are beginning to turn sunshine-yellow, the fireweed is crimson, and the high alpine bushes are showing red. People are out in the bush every weekend, picking berries and gathering mushrooms.

So, I might add, are the bears, so the wise human berry-picker makes plenty of noise!

The forest here can look pretty sparse -- spindly trees and a forest floor covered with tiny plants, mosses, and lichens. You'd think that by the time the big two-footers and four-footers were done harvesting, there wouldn't be much left for anyone else.

But you'd be wrong. A lot of little creatures depend on the foods provided by the boreal forest to make it through the long winter, and they're out harvesting too. If you look closely at the tiny plants that flourish beneath the trees and along the forest's edge, you'll find plenty of goodies to gather.

In the alpine, where forest gradually gives way to alpine tundra, pikas are building up their haystacks. A small cousin of rabbits, a pika can stash away 20 kilograms of grasses, leaves, seeds, and flowers over the summer, much of it in large piles just outside the entrance to its burrow. When the winter wind whips across the bare mountainside, driving snow before it, a pika doesn't have to go far for a snack.

Down on the forest floor, the voles are also tucking away winter groceries. They're less ambitious than pikas, and a lot smaller -- like tiny, delicate mice. Still, a single northern red-backed vole might store up to 3 kilograms of seeds, berries, and fungi near its winter burrow.

But voles and many other creatures of the forest floor don't just depend on food hoards all winter. When snow covers all that autumn bounty and the forest looks barren, many of the forest's smallest creatures are still out there, awake and busy.

They scurry around all winter under the snow, in an area called the subnivean zone where the warmth of the ground partially melts the snow above it. There, tiny animals search the buried vegetation or scoot through tunnels in the snow above, still harvesting frozen blueberries, bearberries, cranberries, rosehips, seeds, kinnikinnick berries, fungi, and all the other tiny jewels of the boreal forest's treasure chest.

If you'd like to know more about what people and animals are harvesting in the Yukon forest, Jozien has a blog called Yukon Wild Berries.

To find out more about the physics of the subnivean world, the Cable Natural History Museum of Wisconsin has a nice online article about Subnivean Temperatures.

And here's a nice article in the St. Albert Gazette (Alberta) about subnivean life a little farther south in the boreal forest.

Or you can check out the chapter about life in the cold -- "Ice is Nice" -- in my book Lizards in the Sky: Animals Where You Least Expect Them.

Best of all, go for a walk in the autumn woods, with your local guidebook and a berry bucket. Happy harvest!

http://www.claireeamer.com/