• Fire in Geyser Country Threatens Geothermal Power Plants
  
• European Satellite Data Helps Florida Hurricane Scientists
  
• Record Number of Tornadoes Swirled Across U.S. in August
  
• Fighting Bioterrorism by Decoding the Tick Genome
  
• Prairie Chickens and Trees Don't Mix
  
• Willamette River Water Trail Development Begins
  
• Sewage Found in Creek Motivates Bellingham Cleanup
  
• Six Million Years Ago Small Hominids Walked on Two Legs
  

Fire in Geyser Country Threatens Geothermal Power Plants

Several of the 21 geothermal power plants in the area operated by Calpine are threatened by the Geysers fire. Five of the power plants have been taken off line. Pacific Gas & Electric, which buys the geothermal power from Calpine, has shut down its transmission lines in the area.

Some 250 structures in the area are threatened by the fire. Firefighters evacuated more than 100 homes along Pine Flat, Red Winery, and Briggs Ranch roads on Sunday. A temporary evacauation center has been set up at Central Park in Middletown.

The fire has to date consumed four vacation homes, eight outbuildings and 12 vehicles.

Fire officials say that heavy fuels, extremely steep terrain, changing winds, and very difficult access are making for very slow progress in fighting the blaze Some 12,190 acres have been burned.

Nineteen helicopters are on the job along with 176 fire engines and 42 bulldozers. The stubborn fire has cost more than $3.3 million to fight so far, and it is only 35 percent contained.

An investigation into the cause of this fire is underway.

European Satellite Data Helps Florida Hurricane Scientists

Aboard the European Space Agency's Envisat, the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) and Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR), are proving useful as hurricane season gets into full swing.

MERIS returns detail on the swirling clouds at the top of the hurricane, while ASAR pierces through the clouds to show the wind tossed sea beneath the storm.

The University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) ground station has an agreement to acquire ASAR and MERIS data direct from Envisat, with ERS-2 wind scatterometer data set to follow in the near future.

Their access to Envisat data has come just as the third hurricane in less than a month is heading towards the Florida coast.

"With MERIS and ASAR, Envisat can image both the ocean and atmosphere pretty much simultaneously, which is a very useful capability during hurricane season," said Hans Graber, professor of applied marine physics at the University of Miami and co-director of CSTARS.

When Hurricane Frances was passing through the Caribbean on its way to Florida last week, Graber said, "Specifically in terms of Frances, the eye of the hurricane seems to be rolling a lot right now from the top of the clouds, looking quite unstable, the information from an ASAR image should help localize its size and position on the ocean."

"And wind fields around the eye wall can be derived from ASAR data. Right now all we have to go on are measurements from the hurricane hunter planes that fly right through the storm," he said.

"Our current activity is along the lines of a shakedown – we're investigating how this can be used," said Graber. "Our final goal is to get this working on an operational basis during hurricane season."

CSTARS has a deal to use radar data from the Canadian Space Agency and access to other satellite resources, now including the Envisat data.

Graber said, "The potential is there to extract a large amount of useful information which can help the U.S. National Hurricane Center increase the accuracy of their hurricane predictions and reduce danger to the public."

Record Number of Tornadoes Swirled Across U.S. in August

Fighting Bioterrorism by Decoding the Tick Genome

"From a bioterrorism standpoint, it's pretty clear ticks could transmit a number of diseases that intentionally could be introduced and conveyed to people," said Catherine Hill, a Purdue researcher.

A number of ticks in the United States spread pathogens that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) considers potential bioterrorism weapons. The family to which the deer tick Ixodes scapularis belongs, Ixodidae, carries many of the microbes included on the CDC's Select Biological Agents and Toxins list.

Among the diseases caused worldwide by these organisms are Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and tick-borne encephalitic diseases.

To find new ways to control ticks and halt the spread of the pathogens they carry, Purdue researchers and colleagues from the University of Connecticut Health Center, the University of Notre Dame and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are unraveling the genetic makeup of the deer or black-legged tick.

"This will be the first time researchers have explored a tick genome in depth," said Hill, project co-principal investigator. "It's crucial to learn how ticks spread serious illnesses because of the global health threats these diseases pose.

The scientists involved in this project have formed the International Ixodes scapularis Sequencing Committee. "Once we begin to collect the genome data, we will analyze what the genes do and how they control tick behavior, including how they are able to spread disease," Hill said.

Stephen Wikel is co-principal investigator on the project, which is funded by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"The tick genome project will extend our search for molecules that are essential for ticks to feed and transmit pathogens," said Wikel, director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at the University of Connecticut Health Center.

The collaborators will investigate into how ticks find animals to feed on, feeding methods, blood meal digestion, development of disease-causing microbes within the tick, tick reproduction, transmission of infectious agents, new control methods and evolutionary biology.

Bruce Birren and his team at The Broad Institute at MIT will do the initial sequencing of the deer tick genome. The sequence data will be used to identify tick genes. When this step is complete, the multi-institutional research team and other scientists throughout the world will use the genome data to search for ways to halt tick-borne illnesses.

One outcome of the project may be development of vaccines to block transmission of microbes that cause tick-borne illnesses, said Hill, who spearheaded efforts to gain National Institutes of Health backing for the initial stages of the tick genome venture.

Prairie Chickens and Trees Don't Mix

They are removing the non-native trees that have become established in tallgrass prairie stands. “We’re not anti-trees,” said Jim Leach, area supervisor for National Wildlife Refuges in Minnesota. “Trees in the right places are desirable, but when trees negatively impact wildlife by encroaching upon, or taking over prairie grasslands we need to remove them.”

The scattered non-native trees, mostly Russian olive, Siberian elm and buckthorn, as well as trees native to North America like green ash and cottonwood, combine with other woody species to provide cover for predators that threaten nesting waterfowl, prairie chicken, pheasants and other non-game bird species that depend on large open grasslands to thrive.

“Tree nesters are doing okay, but grass nesters - including waterfowl - are not doing as well,’ said Steve Delehanty, project leader at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Morris Wetland Management District. “Nesting ducks and other non-game birds need all the help we can provide them, and that includes removing woody cover for predators that feed on them.”

The Service has been working with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, Brandenburg Foundation and other government and nongovernmental partners to restore and protect the vanishing northern tallgrass prairie in western Minnesota and northern Iowa.

Estimates place the original tallgrass prairie in Minnesota and Iowa at 25 million acres. Today, only about 300,000 acres remain in the two states, representing a greater than 99 percent decline.

Currently, only a small percentage of northern tallgrass prairie habitats are protected, making it one of the rarest and most fragmented ecosystems in America.

“Many people get focused on the missing trees," said Delehanty, "but they don’t realize that what we’re doing is important to the long-term survival of ducks and other grassland nesting birds."

Willamette River Water Trail Development Begins

On Thursday he joined state, local public and private partners to begin working towards his grand plan for the water trail. A water trail is a path for boats with facilities, interpretive materials and information for the public so they can make the most of their river experience.

When completed, the River Trail will connect communities from Peoria and Corvallis, to Independence, Salem, and Keizer, utilizing existing public parcels as places for visitors to rest, eat, and camp between stretches of paddling the river.

“Great communities and great rivers go together,” said Kulongoski. “Today marks the beginning of an exciting new public-private partnership that will enhance the recreational opportunities on the Willamette River, and provide a huge economic asset for Oregon’s communities and families by fostering a high quality of life that both attract new visitors and new business.”

Kulongoski the water trail has its first two major private sponsors – G I Joes and Columbia Sportswear. These Oregon based companies have both made commitments to support the Water Trail over the next few years so the River Trail can be open for business by Memorial Day 2005.

Other key partners of the Governor’s Willamette Restoration Initiative include the Mid-Willamette Group, local governments, nonprofit groups, tourism organizations, and state and federal agencies representing interests from Corvallis to Newberg.Willamette Riverkeeper,

The water trail is part of the governor’s Willamette Restoration Initiative announced in April 2004. The governor’s initiative is based on three driving themes - Repair, Restore, and Recreate – and today’s announcement launches the Willamette River Trail project, which is the central component of the “Recreate” theme.

Sewage Found in Creek Motivates Bellingham Cleanup

Together with the state Department of Ecology (Ecology), the city studied Whatcom Creek and its tributaries and found plenty of pollution. The study found bacteria problems in all of the tributaries into Whatcom Creek and in Whatcom Creek itself below Whatcom Falls Park.

High bacteria stems from polluted runoff, called non-point sources, including pet waste, leaking sewers and failing septic systems, the researchers found.

High levels of fecal coliform bacteria like that found in Whatcom Creek and tributaries can threaten public health and lead to commercial shellfish closures.

The city collected water quality samples every two weeks from January 2002 to February 2003 in Whatcom, Lincoln, Cemetery, Fever and Hanna creeks. The data were consistent with less frequent samples collected in some of the watersheds since 1990.

The findings will support efforts to develop a cleanup plan for the waterways. Ecology and the city will propose a plan for public comment in 2005, then Ecology will submit the final plan to the federal Environmental Protection Agency for approval.

The city has ongoing programs to address fecal coliform pollution, including Hounds for Healthy Watersheds, a program staffed by volunteers and coordinated by the city to educate citizens about appropriate pet waste handling.

Dry weather source identification is a city storm and surface water program that finds crossed drain lines that discharge sewage into storm drains and fixes the problems.

And "Scoring Points Against Pollution," is an environmental education video the focuses on everyday things citizens can do to protect the water quality in lakes and streams. It airs on public-access TV and is available for loan through the library system.

Six Million Years Ago Small Hominids Walked on Two Legs

Dr. Robert Eckhardt, professor of developmental genetics and evolutionary morphology at the Laboratory of Comparative Morphology and Mechanics at the Department of Kinesiology at Penn State, led the U.S. research team responsible for analysis of the CT scans of the internal structure of the fossil bone.

Eckhardt says, "We have solid evidence of the earliest upright posture and bipedalism securely dated to six million years."

The evidence is detailed in the September 3 issue of the journal "Science" in the report, "External and Internal Morphology of the BAR 1002'00 Orrorin tugenensis Femur."

The fossil the team studied is part of a left thighbone unearthed nearly four years ago by Martin Pickford, who holds the chair of paleoanthropology and prehistory at the College of France and at the Department of Earth History of the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France and Brigitte Senut, his college in the Department of Earth History.

Senut and Pickford found the fossil at their dig in the Kenyan Lukeino Formation. The fragment includes the intact head of the left thighbone - the ball that is inserted into the hip socket joint - plus the bony neck that connects the ball to the thighbone shaft as well as part of the thighbone shaft.

Measurements carried out by Dr. Karl Galik of the Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, show that the fossil bone is about the same size as a chimpanzee's. But the telling evidence of two-legged walking comes from CT scans of the interior of the bone.

These images reveal that the neck of bone connecting the ball to the shaft is thinner on top than it is on the bottom, a sign, the researchers say, that the individual from which it came walked on two legs.

Eckhardt says, "In present day chimps and gorillas, the thicknesses in the upper and lower parts of that bone are approximately equal. In modern humans, the bone on top is thinner than on the bottom by a ratio of one to four or more. The ratio in this fossil is one to three."

The ratio in the fossil is evidence for transition to an upright posture and habitual bipedal gait, the researchers argue. In addition, Eckhardt notes, because walking upright is the essential mark of a hominid, the ratio is functional evidence that the bones fossilized at Lukeino were from hominids.