5 August 2020
Massive Ammonium Nitrate Explosions: Beirut, Texas City, and West, Texas
As Beirut struggles with the aftermath of an enormous explosion apparently caused by thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a dockside warehouse, it is notable that the world has seen such disasters before. What follows is a re-posting of an article I wrote and posted here in 2013 called “Deja Vu: Remembering the 1947 Texas City (Fertilizer) Disaster.” Why did the authorities decide to store such a massive …
17 May 2020
Nevada Earthquake Raises More Doubts about Yucca Mountain
On Friday, May 15, 2020, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked Nevada and portions of California. With the epicenter located about 22 miles west of Tonopah, NV, no serious damage was recorded aside from cracked highway pavement in the mostly remote surroundings, far from population centers. Reportedly, Nevada has not seen an earthquake of this size since 1954. Worth noting, the earthquake epicenter is about 100 miles away from the Yucca …
23 February 2020
Lake Erie is Nearly Frost-Free
For the past couple of days, we’ve been lucky to have some all-too-infrequent sunny days, giving us some sunshine to lift our spirits and send us searching for our sunglasses. The clear weather is also a good time for an updated MODIS image of the Lake Erie Basin. The image above shows the lake is nearly ice-free except for some narrow shoreline areas in the western basin. The surface water …
30 June 2019
“Fairy Rings” or “Hexinringe” and the Role of Fungi in Weathering and Soil Fertility
As our three-year old chocolate-golden Labrador mix looks happiest when he’s running, we try to get him out to a park once or twice a day. While he’s chasing noisy killdeer and attacking discarded plastic water bottles, I have a chance to look at the land and sky and assess the progress of the new growing season. In springtime, at one of the parks near our home in Lenawee County, …
19 May 2018
Prairie Woody Encroachment, Fire Ecology, and Implications for Regional Hydrology
Images of modern prairie burns near Council Bluffs, Kansas have been captured by venerable National Geographic photojournalist Jim Richardson. These fires aimed at maintaining prairie grassland ecology carry on a Native American practice that goes back centuries. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln hosts an online archive of The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in which George Clark, who probably never won a spelling bee, recorded this remarkable river scene …
16 February 2018
Chemical Cocktails Confound Phosphorus Management
It’s been fifty years since the Canadian government at the urging of the International Joint Commission set aside the Experimental Lakes Area near Kenora, Ontario in 1968 to conduct large-scale experiments in aquatic ecology. There, the young Director named David W. Schindler, who would go on to become a world-renown limnologist, and others conducted experiments with nutrient loading and produce one of the most iconic photos in the field of …
8 September 2017
Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Ag Programs Under Review
The Great Lakes Commission (GLC) has received a two-year $750,000 grant to evaluate the effectiveness of money spent on farm conservation programs by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). In addition to the GLC, Ohio State University and Michigan State University will play a role in the evaluation process. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration proposed to end funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and National Sea Grant programs. …
1 September 2017
Life in the Soil: The Lizard and the Fire Ant
After a slow, plodding climb up a steep hill in West Virginia, the miogeocline side of the Apallachian mountains, I sat down on a log to catch my breath when, soon, this gregarious creature skittered toward me and, seemingly, looked me straight in the eye. This eastern fence lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) was about seven inches long, and out in full sunshine near the edge of a clearing. It was a …
22 April 2017
Toledo March for Science
Off to Toledo to March for Science! Updates later this morning!
31 March 2017
Wetlands and Flood Mitigation: The 10 Percent Solution
Following the Great Flood of 1993, an official report called for more research to find ways to prevent flood devastation, apparently unaware the problem had been mostly solved, conceptually over a decade earlier. But taking action through the implementation of a national wetland restoration program has faced intractable political and economic obstacles.
John Freeland earned a PhD in Soil Science (Pedology) at North Dakota State University. John works as an environmental science consultant in the private sector and teaches Geology part-time at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is interested in science communication, the intersection of art and science, and soil-water-landscape processes. John lives in Michigan with his wife and three children and plays bass in a trio.