Trail Log 2000-2004 Holmes Rolston, III Summary 2000 Antarctica, January February Tierra de Fuego, Argentina, Drake Passage, Half Moon Island, Port Lochroy, Peninsula, Lemaire Channel, Hovgaard Island, Bismark Strait, Bellinghausen Sea, Amundsen Sea, Ross Sea and Ice Shelf, Mt. Erebus, McMurdo Station, hut from Scott’s Terra Nova expedition, Cape Bird, Cape Adare, Auckland Islands, Christchurch, New Zeland Yellowstone and wolves in winter, Old Faithful in winter Congaree Swamp, South Carolina; Bibb County Glades, Alabama; Prairie State Park, Missouri. Backroads China, May. Kunming, Yunnan Province; Li Liang, Stone Forest; Dali; Erhai Lake; Lijang; Tibetan borderlands; Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yangtse River; Shudu Gang Lake;. Chengdu, Sichuan Province; Dujiangyan City; Wulong Panda Center and Reserve. Scotland and Ireland. June-July. Shetland and Orkney Islands; birding on North Sea coast below Aberdeen. Cairngorms; Conference and tour in Ireland.. Yellowstone, teaching Environmental Ethics;Absaroka/Beartooths, backpacking, Bob Marshal Wilderness, trip aborted by fires, riade out over Gateway Pass, and Crazy Creek, July-August. Brazil: Campo Grande and Pantanal. November. II Congresso Brasileiro de Unidades de Conservacao (Second Brazilian Congress on Conservation Areas). Fazenda Rio Negro and Pantanal, tapirs. 2001. Churchill, Manitoba, and northern lights, March. Asheville, North Carolina, and Mt. Mitchell. Ocala National Forest, Florida. Red Rocks and Llamas, llama packing, Escalante Canyon, Utah. Guam and Inter-Pacific Science Congress. Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, Colorado, backpacking. Wycliffe College, Oxford, England. Satulah Mountain, Highlands, North Carolina. Rocky Mountain National Park, Mirror Lake, backpacking. Pawnee Buttes, Colorado 2002. Wolves, Yellowstone National Park, March. Fossil Track State Park, Texas. Cranberry Glades, Cranberry Botanical Area, West Virginia. Backpacking, Lone Eagle Peak and Crater Lake, Indian Peaks Wilderness, Colorado. Yellowstone Institute, Lamar Ranch, teaching Environmental Ethics, and backpacking Beartooth Absaroka Wilderness. Spain , south Coast, Gibralter, Tangier, Morocco and International Society for Science and Religion. Granada, Alhambra Palace. Edinburgh and Ifgene Conference, Royal Botanic Gardens. Wooly mammoth fossils, Fort Collins area. Captured mountain lions, Colorado Division of Wildlife, Wildlife Research facility. 2003. Texas Hill Country, River Region. Rolston receives Templeton Prize from Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace, May 2003. Arches National Park, with philosophers. Ethiopia and Uganda. Gorillas and chimpanzees in Uganda. Backpacking, Bear Lake to Grand Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park. Bob Marshall Wilderness, North Chinese Wall, July 2003. 2004. NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, and moon rocks. UK Templeton Lecture tour, Oxford dinner with Roger Bannister, four-minute mile. Aberdeen, Scotland, Stonehaven and Dunottar Castle. Taiwan, March 2004. Conference, Taipei. Fu Shan Rain and Mist Forest. Macaques, barking deer. Yuan-yang Lake Nature Reserve. Taroko National Park. Chin-Hsin-Tan, Seven Star Lake. Visit to Bunun, Bei-Nan, Pei-Wan tribal areas. Baishan Cave area. Guandu Nature Park. Teaching, spring term, Washington and Lee University. Lexington, VA, and visits, hiking, in surrounding Shenandoah Valley. James River Face Wilderness. Backpacking, Rocky Mountain National Park. James Peak Wilderness, Colorado Orange City, Iowa, and visits nearby in South Dakota, Oak Grove State Park. Yosemite National Park, and California Bar Association, Environmental Law Conference, fallen Wawona tree. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Law School, Med School, and Jeffferson Monticello gardens. Trail Log 2000 January 1, 2000. The new millennium!! Took a walk with Jane up the Spring Creek Trail, mild day. There was a little Erodium in bloom! Mild winter so far. Antarctica continued next page. Antarctica January 27-February 21, 2000 with Gray and David Hampton General notes. Antarctica is the least known part of the planet, at least above ground and water. The continent is 98% covered with ice, up to 10,000 feet thick. The bedrock under the ice is mostly in East Antarctica. Most of West Antarctica is really below sea level. If the ice melted, it would be reduced to three islands, though if the ice melted the water would rise substantially all over the world and it is somewhat difficult to say where sea level would be. Around 70% of the world's fresh water is here, iced up, over tens of thousands of years, though the continent averages only about a foot of snow a year, some of it crystallizing out of thin, clear air. Another source says 90% of world's fresh water is ice, and 90% of ice in world is in Antarctic, and 80% of fresh water in world is here. East Antarctica is pre-Cambrian granites, somewhat like the Canadian Shield. There is a range of Trans-Antarctic mountains, sedimentary rocks from the Cambrian. West Antarctic has sedimentaries from the Permian to Devonian/Cretaceous, folded and faulted. These are really a continuation of the Andes. The Scotia Arc goes under the Drake Passage. Much of the Ice Sheet is featureless. The annual precipitation in the interior of the continent is less than in the Sahara. Elliott, p. 104 Ice accumulates about one foot or so a year. Ice pressures forces an ice creep of perhaps 30 feet a year. Most flows a few meters a year down deeper into the ice sheet and out toward the margins. Glacier ice reaches the sea and starts to float and breaks away, and floats off. This is the origin of all the icebergs. At several places, a number of glaciers flow together and into the sea and make up an ice shelf, such as the Ross Ice Shelf. The average annual temperature is - 10o C = + 14o F The record low temperature is -89.2o C = - 128.6o F, recorded July 21, 1983 at Vostok. Arctic means "bear". The North Pole star was in the constellation, Ursa Minor, the Small Bear. "Vostok" means "east" in Russian, as in Vladivostok. Antarctica is substantially colder than comparable latitudes north. The white continent reflects 90% of solar radiation, while in the Arctic, the dark polar water absorbs a lot of heat. The south magnetic pole is over water now, though earlier it was over ice. The south magnetic pole has shifted 800 km. in less than a century. Campbell, Crystal Desert, p. 197 There are two Longterm Ecological Research project sites in Antarctica. One on the Antarctic peninsula. The other is in McMurdo Dry Valleys, one of the few areas in Antarctica where the geology is exposed and where unique microorganisms have evolved. Of interest because here life approaches its environmental limits. The Dry Valleys in Victoria Land are ice free valleys. The land at their heads is high and blocks the ice, and the climate today is too dry to generate glaciers. The U.S. program is at three places. 1. Palmer station, which we later passed. 2. McMurdo, which we visited. 3. South Pole station. Lake Vostok is the largest, deepest lake in Antarctica, about the size of Lake Ontario. The lake is fresh, liquid water under a layer of ice three to four kilometers thick, isolated from the atmosphere for a million years. There are several liquid lakes in Antarctica. High pressure may keep the water liquid at higher temperatures. No drilling has yet penetrated to the water, but drilling has found bacteria in ice close to the lake, indicating that the lake is a microbial ecosystem, life at its limiting extremes. Some think the ice-water environments on Jupiter's moons Europa and Callisto may be similar; life in one might be some evidence for possible life in the other. The Russians have stopped drilling, lest they contaminate the lake with the freon and aviation fuel they use as antifreeze when drilling. Vincent, Warwick F., "Icy Life on a Hidden Lake," Science 286(1999):2094-2095, and accompanying articles. On hand. Antarctic Treaty, 1959, originally 12 signatories, now signed on to by 38 nations representing 90% of the world's peoples. Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCP's). Though see later. Seven nations have made territorial claims. Three agreements subsequently: (1) Agreed Measures on Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora, 1964. (2) Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals, 1972, CCAS, Pronounced C Cass. (3) Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, 1980. CCAMLR. Pronounced Cam Lar Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities. CRAMRA. Pronounced C Ram Rah. Mineral activities were to be safe, clean, and monitored. But this one never passed. The Australians and French vetoed it, and it led to: The Madrid Protocol. Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, 1991. This requires a comprehensive environmental evaluation (CEE) in Annex I, and Article 85 of the Protocol, for tourist groups. This is an example of the difficulties of securing environmental protection in a decentralized world of sovereign states. The Treaty privileges economic and political interests over environmental ones. State-oriented, competitive, zero-sum game. Other actions besides states might have more say, such as scientific groups, or environmentalist groups. precautionary principle intergenerational equity. the challenge of an alien landscape the crystal desert Antarctica is no environment for which I am likely to have any hardwired biophilia. Peninsula map: Antarctic Peninsula Ecomap. Zagier and Urruty Publications, Buenos Aires. [email protected] ISBN 1-879568-21-7. Later, managed to get a copy. Jan. 27, Thursday. Left home 8.45 a.m. Left Denver 12.30 flight to Miami, on an Airbus! Stayed in Wyndham Miami Airport Hotel. Met Gray on the limousine to the hotel. David was already at the hotel. Uneventful evening. Jan. 28, Friday. Breakfast in hotel. Walked around the edge of a golf course. 3.30 p.m., bus shuttle to the airport. 8.00 p.m. Takeoff delayed. We have 10,000 pounds too much gear and supplies on board. Not the passengers' baggage, but stuff being sent to the ship. Delayed 1 1/2 hours while they figured it out. Lockheed plane, a charter flight.