Learning About River Mapping

 Did you ever wonder what path a raindrop takes when it falls past your window? Will it reach the ocean? WHICH ocean? I asked that question when we were living on a farm north of Edmonton in Alberta, and investigated with maps and online maps. Turns out, the stream on our farm trickles into a little river called Redwater, which runs into the North Saskatchewan River, out of Alberta, and many many kilometres of rivers and lakes later reaches Hudson Bay via the Nelson River. 

But that journey is not the path taken for ALL the water draining from land around that Alberta farm. About two miles north of the farm is Fairytale Creek. As my friend Billie Milholland confirmed during her mapping project, that creek is part of the watershed for Athabasca River. Many kilometres of rivers and lakes bring that water to the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Ocean. 

Billie's project led to the publication of Living In The Shed, about Alberta's North Saskatchewan River watershed. This is a fascinating book, not only for people living along that waterway, but for people wanting to know more about the natural world where they live. There are many photos and maps which make this book a tremendous resource for learning about rivers and recent history. Here is a link to read more about Billie's book https://www.nswa.ab.ca/resource/living-in-the-shed/ **which includes a link to look at a digital version of her book online!**  And here's another link to read a web page about her other writing https://billiemilholland.ca/

Not everyone is so lucky to have a friend who has mapped the local watershed so thoroughly, but there are many open source projects and datasets for people wanting to learn more about river knowledge. Public libraries and university libraries might have access to paper maps and computerized electronic maps, and online resources. Kayaking and canoeing groups can offer practical knowledge as well as the best maps for paddling and hiking adventures.

Here's a link to River Runner, a terrific website by Sam Learner and his team. Their project is still in beta, which means that though there are improvements to make, a person can have a lot of fun with it already. Check it out at https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com/ and see where a raindrop that falls anywhere on Earth might end up! They have over 20 interesting routes listed at this page.

If you're looking for more details about River Runner, such as the software behind this project, you can go to this link: https://ksonda.github.io/global-river-runner/ 

Good luck learning about your own watershed or interesting places around the world! Water resources are vital for humans and for the natural world.

Water, the Magic Act of the Universe

Water, the Magic Act of the Universe

by Nina Munteanu

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes it water and nobody knows what it is.—D.H. Lawrence

I’m a limnologist. Like other water scientists, I study the properties of water; how it behaves in a watershed. I help manage water in our environment; its flow, distribution, storage and quality. I look at how water changes the landscape, carving out huge valleys, forming deltas at river mouths, and polishing pebbles smooth on a lakeshore. I investigate the effects of its contamination by toxins, organic pollutants and disrespect. In its solid form, water has scraped out huge swaths of land and formed some of our largest lakes, dropping moraine in places and melt water from ice blocks elsewhere. In its gaseous form, water controls climate and weather.

And yet, what do I and my fellow scientists really know about water?

Water is the most common substance on Earth. Chemically, the water molecule is basically two atoms of hydrogen joined to one of oxygen. For something so “simply” made, water is pretty complex; the configuration of its building blocks produces a molecule with unusual and almost magical properties. Water scientists have been disagreeing for the past fifty years over how water molecules arrange themselves in a liquid drop.

Water is weird. It is the only natural substance found in all three physical states (liquid, solid and gas) at temperatures normally found on Earth. Water stores an incredible amount of energy and heat. It is a universal solvent. It can dissolve a large variety of chemical substances like salts, other ionic compounds, and polar covalent compounds such as alcohols and organic acids. It transports all kinds of things from the sediment of the Nile River to the oxygenated blood cells in your arteries. It is the most cohesive among the non-metallic liquids. Water is involved in the structure of DNA. 

 

Water has at least seventy anomalous properties and virtually all are life-giving. Its unique properties make water possibly the most important element of our existence and in ways most of us can’t possibly imagine. Water’s anomalous properties—such as its thermal density, high specific heat, and viscosity—are key to the existence of life. If not for these anomalous properties, north temperate lakes would ice up completely in winter, killing virtually all their aquatic life; lakes and oceans around the world would not mix and stratify, and would fail to provide essential nutrients to aquatic biota. As a gas, water is the lightest known. As a liquid, it is much denser than expected; and as a solid, it is much lighter than expected, compared with its liquid form. Water can be very sticky and very slippery at the same time. Its high surface tension and its expansion on freezing help erode rocks and create soil for plant growth and allow it to travel great distances up a tree to feed its leaves.

Water is a shape shifter. Water responds to and changes the properties of all kinds of things. Water changes all the time; and yet, it has stayed the same over eons. Since the dinosaurs quenched their thirst in the soupy marshes of the Triassic Period millions of years ago, to the rain falling on your house today, the amount of moisture on Earth hasn’t changed.

Scientific studies have begun to show some astonishing properties and behaviours of water. One is that water reacts to—and may even drive some—cosmic phenomena. Laboratory studies with water have shown that it is not always the same. Studies have revealed that water is influenced by shifts in the Earth’s magnetic field or by explosions on the Sun. Of course, most of us know about how the Earth’s great water bodies respond to the movements of the Moon around the Earth in the oceanic tides and the seiches of the Great Lakes. But we are learning that water is far more sensitive and responsive than most people ever imagined. And some suspect that water responds to and is interconnected in some way with all that exists in the cosmos.

Water is made of the first and third most common elements in the universe, hydrogen and oxygen. Water is the second most common molecule in the universe (the most common is hydrogen gas, H2). As ice, water is apparently the most abundant solid material out there, found on comets, planets and moons throughout the universe. 

 

Water arrived on Earth in comets and asteroids some 4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment. Some form of water was discovered in twenty-three places in the solar system, including the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, Saturn’s and Jupiter’s moons. An ocean was discovered under the ice crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Since a hydrothermal vent at the bottom of one of the Earth’s oceans is thought to be the best candidate for where life started on our planet, astrobiologists think Enceladus is a good place to look for alien life.

Water is fundamental to star formation. The sun and other stars like it create the equivalent of 100 million times the water in the Amazon River every second. NASA recently discovered the largest water vapour reservoir around a black hole 12 billion light years from Earth; It contains 140 trillion times as much water as all the water in the Earth’s oceans.

Theodor Schwenk suggested that flowing water acts like a sensory organ through which celestial influences enter the world.

“Water,” says William E. Marks, author of The Holy Order of Water, “may be the connecting interstellar intermediary between all matter in the universe. Just as a thrown pebble sends waves of energy rippling through every water molecule in a pond, changes in any planet or sun may also send waves of energy rippling through every water molecule throughout the universe.”

 

Magic surges with power and mystery. Magic hides in clear view; it ripples with intrigue. When you look at magic, you see only your reflection, while its depths veil immeasurable possibility.

 

Magic is water.

Some Cool Weird Water Properties:

• Water is sticky. The molecules stick to things, especially each other. This is what gives water its high surface tension and keeps you alive: water can pull blood up narrow vessels in the body, often against the force of gravity.

• Water should be a gas at room temperature—but it isn’t; all similar molecules, such as hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and ammonia (NH3), are gases. This is because water’s stickiness (high water tension and cohesion) holds molecules together as a liquid.

• Hot water freezes faster than cold water and no one knows why. This phenomenon is known as the Mpemba Effect (named after Erasto Mpemba in 1969).

• There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice. See the work by Martin Chaplin (ref below).

• At -120 °C water becomes ultraviscous, or thick like molasses. And below -135 °C, it becomes “glassy water,” a solid with no crystal structure.

• Water exhibits quantum properties such as “coherence” and self-organization.

• Water can dissolve more substances than any other liquid including sulfuric acid.

• Unlike most other liquids, water expands when it freezes. Water expands by 9% on freezing. This has been crucial to life: lakes and rivers freeze from the top down so even though the Earth has faced successive ice ages, there has always been liquid water for life to continue evolving.

Photographs by Nina Munteanu

References:

Ball P. 2008. “Water—an enduring mystery.” Nature: 452, 291–292.

Ball P. 2008. “Water as an Active Constituent in Cell Biology.” Chem. Rev. 108: 74.

Buzzfeed. “27 Fascinating and Strange Facts About Water.” Buzzfeed.com:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/fascinating-and-strange-facts-about-water#.yizEKPM8R

Chaplin, Martin. 2016. “Anomalous Properties of Water”. In: “Water Structure and Science”. Online:  http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_anomalies.html

Chaplin, M.F. 2003.“Thirty eight anomalies of water, Part 1”. Homeopath. Med. Panorama 11: 12–19.

Chaplin, M.F. 2003. “Thirty eight anomalies of water, Part II”. Homeopath. Med. Panorama 11: 22–28.

Cho, C.H.; S. Singh; and G.W. Robinson. 1997. “Understanding all of water’s anomalies with a nonlocal potential.” J. Chem. Phys. 107: 7979–7988.

Del Giudice E.; M. Fleischmann; G. Preparata; and G. Talpo. 2002. “On the ‘unreasonable’ effects of ELF magnetic fields upon a system of ions.” Bioelectromagnetics 23: 52–30.

Environment Canada. 2011. “Water Basics.” Online: https://www. ec.gc.ca/eau-water/

Marks, William E. 2001. “The Holy Order of Water.” Bell Pond Books. 256 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2016. “Water Is… The Meaning of Water.” Pixl Press, Vancouver. 586pp.

Schwenk, Theodor. 1996. “Sensitive Chaos.” Rudolf Steiner Press, London. 232 pp.

Szent-Györgyi, Albert. 1972. “The Living State: With Observations on Cancer.” Academic Press. New York. 124 pp.

Treehugger. “36 Eye-Opening Facts About Water”. Treehugger.com: http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/36-eye-opening-facts-about-water.html

Voeikov, V.L. and E. Del Guidice. 2009. “Water Respiration—the Basis of the Living State.” Water 1: 52–75.

vonRöntgen, W.K. 1892. “The Structure of Liquid Water.” Annu. Phys. 45: 91.

Xantheas, S.S. 2000. “Cooperativity and hydrogen bonding network in water clusters.” Chem. Phys. 258, 225–231.

Teenage Water Science Technician

posted by Paula Johanson
What was your first job, fresh out of school? Something in retail, perhaps.
Or if you're still in school, are you currently delivering newspapers or mowing lawns?
Guess what job teenager Quentin Rae of North Spirit Lake First Nation has, right after finishing high school... has anyone guessed Water Plant Operator? Good golly, there's science technician work in northern Ontario!

Ninteen-year-old Quentin Rae has been hired by his community to operate their new water treatment plant. He is monitoring and maintaining water quality with the assistance and support of Northern Chiefs Council (Keewatinook Okimakanak). The council is getting Quentin specialized training which will enable his community to have clean drinking water, after fourteen years of a Boil Water Advisory.

You can read about it all in the CBC news article at this link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/teen-first-nation-drinking-water-1.3563110?fbclid=IwAR261xzPfTv1MQp6hAaYnHM6I7khFUeS1qAAaCmTSJvwuKPut0W_-qjv0Zs

Youth and Their Science Discoveries

Paula Johanson

There are a variety of stories from around the world, telling of young people using science to discover amazing and useful things! Many of their projects are of particular interest in a world facing climate change and resource emergencies.

Check out the story of Fionn Ferriera, described as an eighteen-year-old wunderkind. At the 2019 Google Science Fair, he took the top prize. His invention? Creating a way to remove microplastics from ocean water. Click here for a link to read more about Fionn and the Google Science Fair.

It's not so simple to tell you the story of a South African youth who was part of a resounding success at rescuing penguins, during the oil spill when a tanker sank off his country's coast in 2000. He learned of the difficulty rescuers were having in removing crude oil safely and completely from the feathers of sea birds. While practising at home with a couple of feathers and a sample of crude oil, this teenager ended up inventing a way to clean oil spills off penguins, using a combination of dish detergent and ... well, that would be telling. Dyan deNapoli tells all about this teenager and his dad as one small part of her terrific book The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World's Largest Animal Rescue. She's the penguin scientist who was present at this rescue, and you can learn more about her at this link to her website. Dyan deNapoli's book has so much to tell about professionals and volunteers working with animals, and solving this crisis. It's recommended reading for any family with a young person interested in working with animals, or worried about how people can cope with resource emergencies.

There's a family in Colorado that was learning how to test their drinking water. Their daughter, Gitanjali Rao, wanted to find a way to test water reliably and quickly. While browsing the MIT website, this eleven-year-old came up with an adaption for technology she read about in an article. Her portable device tests for lead in water, which is a problem for many people and places. This story is a terrific read for people who are upset by reading all the news articles about undrinkable water in Flint, Michigan or on First Nations reserves.

These three brief mentions are just a little of the great news that can be found about young people using science to make the world a better place.

Books to Inspire the Outdoor Kid

By Margriet Ruurs

Looking for books that will inspire children to learn more about science?
Here are some great titles that focus on the natural environment.

Water’s Children by Angéle Delaunois
Water's Children has as subtitle ‘Celebrating the resource that unites us all’. The poetic text takes the reader from rainy cities to thirsty deserts, from mountain tops to the ocean shore, and from rice paddies to rain forests. All around the world, children share what water means to them. A lovely way to discuss countries, cultures, and the importance of water.

Water's Children, by Angéle Delaunois, Pajama Press, ISBN 978-1-77278-015-4.


Watch Me Grow and Up We Grow, by Deborah Hodge

Any school that wants to have a garden or nurture children to take an interest in nature should have these two nonfiction picture books. The first title focuses on growing food in the city. From beets and tomatoes in back yards to balconies, and from bees on rooftops to urban chickens, the book shares photos of kids growing things.

The second title takes the reader along on a year on a small farm. Both books offer ideas for growing your own food, including recipes.

Watch Me Grow, Deborah Hodge, Kids Can Press, ISBN 978-1-55453-618-4
Up We Grow, Deborah Hodge, ISBN 978-1-55453-561-3, 


Safari by Robert Bateman
This gorgeous picture book shares the art of Robert Bateman with young readers. Each image is an impressive, realistic painting of an African animal. Part diary, part note book, the text and images take the reader along on a safari to meet such animals as lion, zebra, elephant, wildebeest, and more. It even includes rough drafts of the paintings so that this book will appeal to young artists as well as nature lovers. Text boxes give detailed information on each animal.

Safari, Robert Bateman, Little, Brown, ISBN 978-0670879700.


Wild Ideas, Let Nature Inspire Your Thinking by Elin Kelsey, illustrated by Soyeon Kim.

A nonfiction picture book needs more than interesting facts. It needs a strong voice and an angle that makes it different from other books. Wild Ideas does just that. The environmentalist author looks at animals around the world, and how they solve problems: otters and primates make tools, squirrels copy people, and an octopus can play tricks. How do animals deal with problems and how can you do the same? A fun book to discuss in science and environmental studies. The art adds a whole other level and will inspire many art lessons. For more about the book, check out: www.owlkidsbooks.com/wildideas

Wild Ideas, by Elin Kelsey, Owl Books, ISBN 978-1-77147-062-9