Environmental Geography

The Meadowlands

bkk15 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:37:10 +0000

First of all I just want to say that when I saw the title of the book I don’t even know what to expect and frankly I had to Google or to be specific I Wikipedia the word Meadowlands. I think its a kinda like a lake? This is what I found on Wikipedia “the site of large landfills and decades of environmental abuse” This can be compared to the word wilderness we discussed in class but with negative connotation to it but Sullivan uses the word urban wilderness instead. I like how Sullivan portrays the good and the bad of the meadowland as well as the history of it by talking to people who are involved. This way Sullivan helps raise awareness to people like us to help conserve and treat meadowlands better. It’s the battle between human and the nature. You can see that people still throw their garbage here. I visited the Everglades in Florida about two years ago and when I read The Meadowlands it makes me think of the Everglades. Having animals living there but its very dirty and the water was not clear at all.

I’m glad that there are people like Leo available who appreciate the Meadowland and trying to help the birds that are caught between the branches. He even wrote letters to a newspaper about this issue but nothing was done. In the last chapter Smith and Sheehan came up with many ideas and plans to make the meadowlands a better place for the society but none of it work so far. Therefore I think there should be a written law for people to not throw their waste here since it will destroy the ecosystem. It will be hard enforced but maybe it’s a start.

The Everglades

Questions to think about

Even though there were a lot of effort and campaigns to help fix the problem? What do you think we should do next? Where will the waste go then? It has to go somewhere.

Current Environmental Issue

demecsowu — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:49:50 +0000

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/column-fracking-climate-idUSL5E8CP2HL20120125

This article relates to this weeks readings because just like the meadowlands, people are using fracking to cultivate gas and oil, but are not fully conscious of what this process is doing to the environment. the warming of the environment is strongly correlated with fracking. yes, fracking will help to solve problems acquireing gas and peak oil, but at the cost of the environment.

Hunting with Toxic Shot

geog353swj — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:56:27 +0000

A current issue that I read about, in Field and Stream which is an outdoor magazine i subscribe to, discussed the trend for states and the national government prohibiting the use of Toxic Shot while hunting. In general Toxic shot refers to lead shot. Lead is known to cause poisoning in animals and humans alike. I believe in the 1980′s the US government made it illegal to use lead shot while hunting migratory waterfowl as studies revealed that waterfowl wounded by lead shot could get lead poisoning and when they died food chains in the marshes and bodies of water that they died in led to large levels of lead in water ecosystems. This I thought was quite relevant to the reading on the meadowlands, seeing how water ecosystems especially marshes and swamps, where a lot of waterfowl hunting occurs, are affected by human activity even inadvertently through hunting.

Since the ban on toxic shot for Waterfowl in the 80′s more and more states and regions are adopting this policy for other hunting especially with upland bird hunting, and other migratory game birds that are not waterfowl, and efforts are even being conducted to remove toxic shot from all types of hunting.

The article discusses how hunters view the ban on toxic shot, and to some it is a bad thing but as the author goes on to say, if the preservation of the land for hunting is wanted then those who use it should be the first to protect it. he went on further to say that although at this point in time non toxic shot is more expensive than lead it should change in years to come and non toxic shot will be less expensive than lead. Non toxic shot is also becoming more advanced and effective than lead when it comes to hunting leading hunters to choose it not only because they have too but because it works better.

To me these kind of changes are the ones that make a big difference and help people understand what the environment has to offer and how they can help preserve it.

This is a quote from the author of the article

“We never saw bald eagles when I was kid, but they’re a common sight along the Iowa River now that they no longer feed on DDT-laced fish and lead-poisoned waterfowl. While a lot of hunters will disagree with me, I really believe lead bans are not secret back-door attacks on guns and hunting but are acts of genuine, well-intentioned concern for the environment.”

Italy risks worst environmental disaster in decades

cazeller — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:43:53 +0000

On January 19th a cruise ship, Costa Concordia, carrying 2400 tonnes of diesel and oil ran aground and capsized off the coast of Italy. This is around the same amount of oil that one would expect to find on a small oil tanker. This is located right next to one of the most renowned maritime reserves in the Mediterranean. It is currently lying on its side on the shelf right off shore. 11 people were killed and 21 are still missing 7 days later. This is the worst accident of this kind around Italy since 1991 when the Amoco Milford Haven sunk- an oil spill that they only finished cleaning up in 2008. There are fears that the ship might slip off the shelf causing more leakage into the water resulting in another lengthy and expensive clean-up. For now however, the tanks appear to be intact so there is hope that this accident will not result in the destruction of the marine life and coral that reside in this area. Leakage would not only kill many of the species but it would hurt the the economy of Giglio Island which draws in many divers to observe its 700 or more botanical and animal species, including turtles, dolphins and seals.

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/43886

Project Ideas

geog353swj — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:57:18 +0000

After looking over the project proposals I was most interested in the use of wind turbines and thought this might be a project I might want to continue from the previous years classes. I was also thinking that along with the Wind Turbine proposal one might also be able to incorporate solar energy along with it. Also I thought I might want to get the ball rolling on the documentation of air travel by the campus. This seemed like it would take little effort to do and that all it needs is someone to figure an efficient way to document the different times people fly. In the end though I am open to any of the project ideas as I feel they all have a place here at OWU

Silas

Introduction Silas Jolliff

geog353swj — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:51:42 +0000

Hi, my name is Silas Jolliff I am a Junior here at Ohio Wesleyan and am currently working towards a major in Geography. Along with my studies I Run track and Field here too, as a middle distance runner. I grew up in Cardington, Ohio which is about 17 miles north of Delaware on Route 42. I live on a small farm, and have always enjoyed the outdoors , and actively engage in hunting and fishing. Being raised in the country I have always been aware of the environment and in taking this course I plan to learn more about it and further my understanding of it.

Current Event

ethanperry — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:28:37 +0000

Although this article is short, I believe it is closely related to this week’s book; The Meadowlands. I was struck by how people try to keep the Meadowlands at such a distance (in mind, not physical distance) while having such a direct impact on it, and even dependence. This article points out that environments thousands of miles from cities and people is being directly impacted by our actions. Scientists have studied sediment samples in Norway in the far removed reaches of nature and found that fossil fuel usage and fertilizers for agriculture have increased nitrogen levels in the studies areas. Although distant from the source, the impact is nonetheless real.

People always want natural landscapes to call their own but don’t want to put in effort to keep them pristine and unexploited. Similarly, people first admired the Meadowlands but once it came polluted people continued to use it for their benefit but refused to witness firsthand the havoc they themselves caused. I hope that humans can learn to balance their resource consumption and environmental destruction in a manner that allows areas to continue their existence without heavy human intervention, intentional or not.

The Meadowlands

geog353swj — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:13:08 +0000

I found Sullivans book the Meadowlands to be quite eye opening. This was due mainly to the fact that so much activity had occurred in this place in just a short amount of time. For instance before industrialization it was a peaceful swamp, that was uninhabitable due to the skeeters (mosquitoes) then it started receiving the pressures of the rapidly industrializing City of New York, and soon it became uninhabitable because it had turned into what Sullivan calls the largest dump in the world and now its starting to turn into dry land with the abundance of phragmites growing there now. In just over a hundred years the place called the meadowlands has changed several times and is still changing and this can be attributed to the influence people have had on it.

This is a picture of the meadowlands that I found with one of the old Rail Road tracks and the wooden railroad ties are probably cedar from the old cedar forests.

This was probably the most profound thing of the book, that the change and everything that has took part in the meadowlands was done by humans. Sullivan spends the majority of the book describing the meadowlands, and you begin to feel as if this place is the scum of the earth or something like that. he paints a very battered up picture of the meadowlands. It isn’t until the last chapter where he introduces Don Smith and Bill Sheehan two men that are struggling to save the meadowlands, in part for thier love for it when they were younger (don trapped muskrat, and bill fished there), that we begin to understand what happened to this environment, per say. Smith makes a point on pg 197 that people created the problem in the meadowlands and that they need to fix it, form the very beginning where people needed to change the meadows to get rid of the mosquitoes, to the uninhabitability of the meadows making it prime candidate for a dump, and the site of factories that pumped chemicals into its ground. For the most part the meadows that are there today have been directly caused by the influence of people.

The book to me stresses a bigger point about the environment and about wilderness too. As Sullivan describes the meadows and the crazy and bizarre things it holds such as historical buildings like Penn station or a mob boss’ body, you never really think about what caused it, until the very end where he clearly states that it was humans that messed it up. In this i feel that the book stresses the idea of people becoming more environmentally aware of the places around them and that some places are meant for certain things; swamps are supposed to be swamps nothing else. All in all I found the book to be good and I am definitely going to be more environmentally aware in the future.

On a side note with alot of the garbage disposal in the meadowlands being stopped, and the meadowlands being cleaned up i have two questions; One; where is the cleaned up refuse going, and if the garbage isn’t being dumped in the meadows then where is it being dumped? To me this seems like a double edged sword in one respect the meadows are getting better, but somewhere else has to be getting a lot worse.

Rethinking Wilderness

cazeller — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:06:27 +0000

When I first started reading The Meadowlands I really had no idea what or where they were. I soon realized however that I have in fact seen them when flying back from Brussels last spring and I had a layover in JFK. As we were approaching our descent I was drowsily looking out the window of the plane and noticed that what we were flying over was not in fact city or even suburbs, as one would expect to find surrounding NYC, but what looked like marshes and streams. I had no idea what it was but from above it looked so serene and beautiful in the sunlight. Although I wondered what it was, I soon forgot about it and never gave it too much more thought other than, well that’s weird. It was not until reading this book that I remembered and really started to consider how it was that this massive expanse of land adjacent to NYC could remain so underdeveloped for so long.

I think that Sullivan does an excellent job in describing all sides of the history and present state of the Meadowlands, both the good parts and the bad. As I read this book I started to question what it is that really defines wilderness. It seemed like such a simple question and yet on first hearing a description of the meadowlands I doubt that I would have classified it as such. Now however, I feel that there is very solid reasoning for calling this area wilderness. I feel that a better definition of what wilderness is more related to something that to you is full of the unknown and unexplored. Where, as you travel through it, you are not sure what it is that you will find but often it is not what you might have expected. I feel that the definitions that we read in class now make a little more sense in all the negative connotations that they held for the simple reason that people often fear and treat with apprehension what they do not understand or are not used to. Not that you necessarily should need to be scared for something to be considered wilderness, but that there is something of the unknown about it. I feel in this sense the meadowlands fits the category of wilderness because even though they have a long history in the US there is so much that is unknown and forgotten about them and that in going out in them you are stepping outside that of the norm and comfort of the modern society that surround it.

I feel that beauty or at least grandeur are both something that I myself still associate with the wilderness but that does not necessarily have to mean that it is all untouched and pristine. Even with all that pollution and dumps and abandoned structures there can still something in a place that draws people into it and can capture them. This reminded me a little of the Cuyahoga River that flows through my town north through Cleveland and empties into Lake Erie. It was infamous in 1969 when it caught fire, for the 13^th time, due to the amount of pollution in/on it, which made it the butt of many national jokes for quite some time.

Since then, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park has been founded and the river has been cleaned up immensely. This area is by no means a wilderness in the like that we picture with huge unexplored mountains and endless forests; it is not pristine nor untouched, and you will find many things in the park that have been built and abandoned in the last few centuries. But it is, in its own way, a wilderness of sorts, you can get lost in it if you don’t know where you’re going, and there is a mystery about it, you might be surprised but what you find.

Song about the Cuyahoga River Burning: “Burn On” by Randy Newman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKMtRSKX-Pk

Artistic Recycling Bins

cazeller — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:45:46 +0000

I think that I am most interested in continuing the project that involves working with making recycling bins more ascetic and pleasing to look at that are at the same time made of recycled materials. As I am a Fine Arts major and the project deals with issues like design and building forms I think that I would enjoy the project and bring something to the work already completed by former students. I enjoy working to solve design problems simply in some of the pieces I create in my art classes and like the idea of trying to figure out the design problem of how to create structures out of this recycled material that will stand on their own. Although I do both 2D and 3D art work my favorite is 3D so this seems like fun. I have had Kristina as a professor before, as well as this semester, so getting in touch and working with her won’t be a problem in the slightest. I think that continuing the work that other students have done, being able to bring new ideas to the table will be challenging, but at the same time be make it possible to create something much more fun and thought out than if just one person had worked on developing the project.