WBEZ | EcoMyths

EcoMyths: Emerald Ash Borer destroys millions of trees in Chicago and US

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:43:00 -0500

Slash and burn: Why so many trees are cut down in the Chicago area.

Say hello to a small unwelcome guest: the emerald ash borer.

This invasive wood boring beetle has killed tens of millions of ash trees in the US and millions more to come. Cutting down these trees is just one strategy to get rid of the pest and save the remaining ash forest, but as we learned here at EcoMyths Alliance, it’s not enough. For the next segment of our EcoMyths series, Kate Sackman and Jerome McDonnell talk with Peter Gordon, city forester for Lake Forest, and David Horvath from The Care of Trees - both are ISA Certified Arborists.

Emerald ash borer (EAB) is an exotic insect native to China and eastern Asia. The bug hopped a ride to the U.S. in cheap wood packing material more than ten years ago. First detected in Michigan in 2002, today EAB infestation is a problem in 19 states. Most recently in New Hampshire, the state’s department of agriculture confirmed detection on April 5^th.

Aside from feeding on leaves, the adult beetles do little harm. Ruin occurs when in larva stage, EAB

chew through trees and damage its vascular system – the tissue right under the tree bark that’s responsible for transporting water and nutrients from the roots to the top leaves and branches.

Scientists say its continued spread across the country is most likely due to the sale of firewood from quarantined areas across state lines. Even worse: Stress from climate change, namely drought, makes the trees more vulnerable to EAB. North American ash trees have no natural resistance to this foreign guest.

Arborists explain with such a large food source for the pests, the problem is only expected to grow. According to one of the nation’s largest tree care companies, The Care of Trees, Ash trees comprise 10 percent to 40 percent of local urban forests. Many ash trees were planted during the recent housing boom – creating a monoculture that makes them easy targets for EAB -- and they are natural reproducers.

So what to do? Initially, many communities took a wait and see approach, says Peter Gordon, city forester for Lake Forest, IL -- where 19 percent of the tree inventory is ash. EAB came to attention during the economic downturn, Gordon notes, and budget-strained municipalities had few resources for tree treatment.

“The strategy was to see how states, count[ies] and towns handled EAB where it was first discovered,” he adds. “But now we don’t have as many options.”

Indeed EAB is an epidemic and can’t be ignored, says Fredric Miller, a professor of horticulture at Joliet Junior College and a research associate with the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill.

“If you choose not to do any treatment, you will be overrun,” Miller says. “What communities have to come to grips with is that either you are going to manage this on your schedule, or the insect will dictate the schedule.” And that means, in part, cutting down lots of trees in our neighborhoods in an effort to stop or slow the spread of EAB.

Arborists explain the alternative for a badly infested tree – allowing it to die from EAB damage and then cutting it down – is worse, because it does nothing to prevent the beetle from paying a house visit to a neighboring tree. Also, Miller points out, dead ash trees are a dangerous liability and must be removed – they’re structurally weak and can fall during wind or ice storms. Many of these trees line walkways and paths in neighborhoods and forest preserves.

But some trees can, and should, be saved with proper insecticide treatment, explains David Horvath, an arborist in suburban Chicago with The Care of Trees.

Horvath says that homeowners and municipalities are now charged with identifying “valuable” trees – generally larger (greater than 12 inches in diameter) that provide environmental benefits such as shade to decrease energy demand, a deep root system that mitigates storm water damage or simply beauty to the property.

Overall, an integrated approach – treatment, prevention and some targeted tree removal – is the best way to put the brakes on EAB, and avoid destroying urban forest, say Horvath and the other scientists EcoMyths interviewed.

According to a 2011 article in the Journal of Environmental Management, prevention and treatment may make more sense economically, too. The estimated cost of treatment, removal and replacement of EAB in all affected states from 2010 through 2020 is $12.5 billion. Prevention tactics (such as destroying egg-laying EAB and targeted tree removal) could slash those costs by up to $7.5 billion, the authors concluded.

In the Chicago area, for example, municipalities spend up to $1,100 to remove and replace one tree, according to a 2012 survey conducted by Miller and his team. He notes that the same tree can be treated with insecticides for more than 50 years at the same cost.

Insecticides may sound nasty, but remember the alternative: cutting down the tree or letting it die anyhow, while giving that nasty beetle a free pass for its next meal. Plus, when used correctly and responsibly, experts say, insecticides targeting EAB are not likely to harm humans or the environment.

How else are government and science addressing the spread of EAB? Interstate regulation prohibits the sale of firewood from quarantined areas. Also any wood packing material used for international trade must be fumigated or heat-treated, explains Kerry Britton, a national pathologist with the U.S. Forest Service who studies invasive forest pests.

Another strategy: Britton notes that researchers are trying to breed ash trees with natural resistance to EAB by crossing Asian ash trees that fight off the pest with vulnerable North American ash species.

“By the time the beetle was detected, it could not be eradicated,” Britton says. “The goal now is to slow it down.”

One Green Thing You Can Do:

Don’t move firewood from quarantined areas. One study showed that EAB can establish on a credit card-size piece of bark.

Keep an eye out for EAB, whether in your yard or your neighborhood. Here’s a helpful guide to identifying ash trees and distinguishing between EAB and other problems. Realistically, your best bet is to call an accredited tree care company since early evidence of EAB damage occurs at the treetop level, where it’s not visible to most folks. Now is the time to act. Treating trees by mid-May minimizes the damage by adult beetles, which emerge in the spring. If detected early, trees can be treated with insecticide rather than being cut down.

Think you spotted one? Report it to your state’s agriculture department office or the call USDA’s EAB toll-free hotline at 1-866-322-4512.

Resources:

The unofficial EAB web site with background and treatment information, a collaborative education effort by state universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service

A map showing EAB detections across the U.S. and Canada as of December, 2012 (does not reflect the recent discovery of EAB in New Hampshire)

To save or not to save? A guide deciding when to treat EAB

Summary argument by Coalition for Urban Ash Tree Conservation on why ash tree conservation is preferable to wholesale tree removal

SLAM (Slow Ash Mortality) is a pilot project in Michigan – ground zero for EAB – to slow down beetle infestation.

EcoMyths: Why your coffee may go extinct

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:23:00 -0500

Sacré bleu! Scientists at Kew Gardens, London recently predicted that before the century's end, global warming could force into extinction the plant source of most of the world’s coffee. Two main coffee species create the coffees that most people drink: Arabica (Coffea arabica) and Robusta (Coffea robusta). Arabica is most widely enjoyed: about 70% of all coffee varieties consumed globally derive from the Arabica bean. So when we heard that the Arabica plant could go extinct where it grows wild, in the Ethiopian rainforests, we had to know more. We asked two scientists why wild Arabica, as opposed to cultivated Arabica grown on plantations, is so critical to the coffee industry.

Not one to take such threats to my morning coffee routine lightly, for our regular EcoMyths segment, I invited Nicole Cavender, PhD, vice president of Science and Conservation at the Morton Arboretum and Abigail Derby Lewis, PhD, conservation ecologist at the Field Museum of Natural History, to talk with Jerome and me about the future of the wild Arabica coffee plant. This also gave us the opportunity to ask our experts about biodiversity, what that high falutin’ word means, and why it matters.

Cavender, a PhD in horticulture and crop science, says that Arabica coffee grown in the wild is important because of its genetic diversity. By contrast, farm-grown Arabica is genetically fairly uniform and therefore more vulnerable to the impact of diseases, pests, and climate change. Because wild Arabica has a more diverse gene pool, it provides a fallback in case the cultivated versions of Arabica die off or are threatened.

“Biodiversity” describes the many different genetic variations of a single species of plant or animal, as with wild Arabica. The word biodiversity can also describe a variety of different species within a defined ecosystem, such as the number of plant varieties in a prairie. The more plants in a prairie, the more biodiverse it is; this makes the prairie more resilient to drought and other stresses and thus more likely to remain healthy in the long-run.

Derby Lewis, who for the Field Museum, studies the impact of climate change on biodiversity, has worked in some of the most biodiverse and threatened areas of the world. In Chicago, she leads the Climate Change Task Force for Chicago Wilderness. She was instrumental in developing the Chicago Community Climate Action Toolkit. Derby Lewis wishes biodiversity were a more commonly used term in the U.S. More people would understand the importance both of preserving habitat and the genetic bank. She encourages individuals to help preserve biodiversity in their own backyards and neighborhood parks by planting a wide variety of flower, bush, and tree species. Ideally, Derby Lewis recommends we use native plants - meaning species that have naturally grown in this region - for hundreds of years or more. Because of their naturally deep roots, native plants require less energy, pull more carbon out of the air, and store more water underground.

Cavender points out that in northern Illinois, native ash trees are an example of what could happen to the Arabica coffee plant as the climate continues to change. The emerald ash borer has attacked our Ash trees since 2002. The pest seems thrive due to global warming. As the climate changes, precipitation levels change and invasive species now threaten plants even in their native habitats. Protecting and maintaining a biodiverse population of plant species in its native habitat, such as the Arabica coffee plant, is one of the many ways we can improve species sustainability well into the future.

Cavender left us with this bit of wisdom: “Every time you take a sip of coffee, think about the importance of biodiversity”. Well said.

EcoMyths: The big reasons not to flush old medicines down the toliet

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:00:00 -0600

Over the years, you may have heard that the recommended way to dispose of unused pharmaceuticals is to flush them down the toilet or pour them down the drain - not anymore. The EPA and FDA backed off this recommendation for almost all drugs (exceptions are listed on the FDA website). Medicines are among the thousands of “chemicals of emerging concern” the EPA and much of the scientific community now monitor and study.

Today for our EcoMyths segment, Jerome McDonnell and I discuss the pros and cons of flushing medicines with two experts: Olga Lyandres, PhD of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, author of the paper “Keeping Great Lakes Water Safe: Priorities for Protecting against Emerging Chemical Pollutants”; and Commissioner Debra Shore of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD). Both had a lot to say about the dangers of and the solutions for the contamination of our drinking water by dissolved pharmaceuticals and other household products. See how we "flush" this myth at the EcoMyths Alliance website!

Why Dispose of Unused Drugs?

The “chemical soup” that Lyandres mentions is of concern because of the strange mix of chemicals that we dispose of in our waste stream. These chemicals show up in trace amounts in our drinking water, creating a potentially harmful cocktail of chemicals.

Source: http://www.jonbarron.org/article/aqua-horribilis

Common chemicals in the waste stream include Prozac, Viagra, and caffeine. As she explained, no one understands the chemistry that occurs when these and other compounds are mixed together. Nor is much is known about the potential impacts on human health. But studies show adverse ecological impacts of endocrine disruptors in our waterways, including “intersex fish” – that is, the male fish in the Potomac River Watershed bearing eggs!

Two really important reasons to properly dispose of unused medicines

To prevent accidental, and possibly fatal, use of the drug by people for whom the medicine was not prescribed.
To prevent environmental contamination in of our waterways and soils.

What Can a Person Do To Help?

First, it is important to note that using expired medications is potentially harmful to your health. Once a medicine expires, not only can it lose its potency, but also its chemical composition may have changed.

Over the past two years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has increased focus on this issue by instituting nationwide pharmaceutical “Take Back Days”. By making it easier for people to dispose of their medicines safely, the DEA has collected millions of pounds of drugs as a result of this program. The next National Drug Take Back Day is April 27, 2013 and will be administered by state law enforcement.

Commissioner Shore points out that sewage treatment plants do not have the capabilities to clean out the thousands of chemicals that get into the waste stream from home plumbing, storm water, and other sources. So we have to do our part to keep chemicals out of the water system in the first place.

Both Shore and Lyandres advise people to keep an eye on the expiration dates of their prescribed and over-the-counter medications. When the drugs are expired or unused, there are several safe ways to dispose of medicines to keep them out of getting into your drinking water. Below are our experts’ recommendations on safe disposal.

Disposing of Medicines Safely

Local Municipal and Other Agency Collection Sites: Commissioner Shore recommends finding a drug collection location near your home. The Illinois EPA lists medication disposal locations in by county on its website. The MWRD also participates in the DEA Take Back days at several of its water treatment plants in Cook County.

Special Envelopes Sold at Local Stores: Major pharmacies, such as CVS and Walgreens, sell specially designed envelopes for mailing used medicines to safe disposal facilities.

Trash it as a Last Resort: If there are no local medicine disposal alternatives, the FDA recommends throwing away old medicine in a plastic bag after mixing it with kitty litter or coffee grounds. This is not the best option, since the bag goes into a landfill. There is a chance that eventually the package could leak and the drugs leech into groundwater. However, disposing expired medications in the trash is still better than flushing them down the toilet.

EcoMyths: Is organic food overrated?

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:59:00 -0600

As the mid-winter chill sets in, a tangy tasting ripe tomato with sweet fresh basil leaves can easily bring summer to mind. But often, grocery-store tomatoes don’t taste good at all times of year and fresh basil is expensive. So how do we find and choose good produce year-round? In this latest EcoMyths segment, Worldview's Jerome McDonnell and I talked with sustainability expert, Environmental Studies Professor Barbara Willard, of DePaul University. Barb knows the process of buying healthy, sustainable produce year-round can be confusing - there are so many factors we've been told to consider. She helped us explore the conventional wisdom and tease apart the variables, including: local vs. imported, organically versus conventionally grown, and purchasing versus growing your own. She simplified the process of sourcing fresh produce year-round to some key factors in your buying decision.

So why is it important to buy locally-grown foods? “Food miles” is the term used to describe the carbon generated in transporting produce to market. But Willard reminds us that it is not just transportation miles we should consider when calculating the carbon footprint of a pepper - it is also production: was a lot of heavy equipment used to plant and harvest it? Was chemical fertilizer used? Was the product transported by truck? Even if the produce was grown at a local farm, all these components can create a large carbon footprint. If food miles are important to you, it is good to know the farming practices of the grower from which you buy your fruits and vegetables. The lowest carbon footprint tends to occur with farms that do not use chemical fertilizer, minimize use of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, and travel the shortest distance to market.

Buying organic is widely understood to have environmental benefits too, but why? “Organic” simply means crops grown with natural fertilizers and pest-control methods rather than with synthetic chemicals. The benefit of eating organic produce is that it reduces or eliminates chemicals in both the food and the environment from the source. Only foods with the USDA seal are certified as having been raised using truly organic methods. Also, Willard reminds us that many people think organic food tastes better, due to the lower chemical content. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) provides a list of conventionally-grown foods to avoid due to chemical content - they believe these foods should be purchased in the organic section of the store instead. Produce myths are explored and the EWG tips can be found on the EcoMyth Alliance's website or on the EWG Shoppers Guide on their website. EWG also has an iPhone app (available here) that tells you what foods are best to buy organic: “The Dirty Dozen” and also those that are safe to buy conventionally grown, “The Clean 15”.

As with organic, many people feel that eating foods when they are in season is the tastier choice. Willard encourages us to grow our own vegetables, both for the fun of it and for better tasting food. She even gives us tips on what to grow in the winter months (kale, spinach, herbs) and how to do it (outdoors under a hoop house).

With these rules of thumb in mind: local, organic, and seasonal, I now feel inspired to go shopping!

For more information on these topics, see EcoMyths’ latest myth article: “Is Sustainable Food Out of Reach?” on the EcoMyths Alliance website. Other helpful resources are shown below:

-Michal Pollan Video, “Serious Sustainability”

-GoTo2040 Video: “Planning for a Sustainable Local Food System”

-Earth 911 Slideshow of Winter Produce, by region - http://earth911.com/news/2011/01/10/your-local-guide-to-winter-produce/

-Pick Your Own: List of crop calendars by state - http://www.pickyourown.org/US_crop_harvest_calendars.php

EcoMyths: 'Vampire Power' sucks out your energy and money

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:03:00 -0600

No, “Vampire Power!” is not a rallying cry created by "Twi-hards" camping out at premier of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. It's not even a blood-red energy drink. But if you use electricity at home, vampire power is a phenomenon lurking in your household at this very minute.

According to energy expert, Eric Masanet, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and associate professor of engineering at Northwestern University, vampire power is electricity loss by appliances in your house when they're not being actively used. For our regular EcoMyths segment, Worldview's Jerome McDonnell and I talked with Eric as he shared his passion for understanding energy demand and ways to reduce it.

At Northwestern, Eric teaches about energy and resource efficiency. His devotes his work to finding solutions to wasted energy. He explained a big source of energy waste is vampire power, also known as standby power, phantom load or plug load. Your household appliances that consume power when not in use include; your microwave oven, DVD, coffee maker, laptops, printers, televisions, and especially digital cable and satellite boxes. When turned off, many of these items remain in standby, ready for instant activation. Others continue to use power for their clocks (internal and external) or other displays. Actually, these items are never really "off" unless you unplug them. An average household has 40 appliances that use standby power when turned off. They unnecessarily consume up to 10% of total power used in your house! But also, energy lost through standby power accounts for 1 percent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Other than unplugging offending vampire appliances from the socket, Eric suggests two practical ways to reduce standby loss. One is a power strip, a very simple solution for your home computer and related equipment. When you turn off your computer, if you also turn off the power strip, the whole suite of equipment will be fully off. Another solution is more long-term: buy Energy Star appliances. These ideas are pretty compelling to me. No one likes to pay an electricity bill, or any bill, for something they don’t actually use. So I am thinking of creating a vampire power rallying cry of my own: “Save energy, save money, save our atmosphere”!

See how we bust the vampire power myth at EcoMyths Alliance. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has more info on standby power.

EcoMyths: Native Pollinators

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:39:00 -0500

Did you know that one out of every three bites of food you eat was created, at least in part, by the pollination of a bee?

Really, one third! I was startled to learn this and many other surprising facts from the bee scientists I have had the pleasure to get to know recently.

This summer I followed around an enthusiastic ecologist from the Chicago Botanic Garden, Rebecca Tonietto, who studies native bees. She is a PhD candidate in the conservation graduate program offered jointly by the Garden and Northwestern University. Her research focuses on how different restoration practices and landscapes impact different species of bees. Since there are more than 500 species of bees in Illinois, that is a tall order!

On our most recent EcoMyths Worldview segment, Jerome McDonnell and I talked with Rebecca and another passionate bee scientist, Sydney Cameron, a bumblebee specialist from the University of Illinois.

Having never really thought very much about bees before, I just assumed that all bees lived in hives, made honey, and would sting me if I got too close. As is so often true, I had based my assumptions about bees on my own experiences.

But, as Jerome and I learned from Rebecca and Sydney, most bees do not live in hives—they live in the soil or in old logs in the tiny holes that have been created and left empty by other creatures. Also, bees are much more interested in flowers than in people and only sting you when they are threatened.

So I should not have been surprised when our bee experts told us that only honeybees make honey. But then, how was I to know that there are 20,000 species of bees worldwide? Many of these species don’t even look like the yellow and black bees that we see in cartoons and in traditional artwork. One of these thousands of varietals of bee species are beautiful little iridescent emerald-colored bees that are as tiny as the tip of a pen. They are called sweat bees because they land on your skin and lick off your sweat! They are not interested in stinging at all, unless you trap them and they can’t get out, and then it is just a tiny pinch. Not at all like the sting of a honeybee. I was amazed to hear about the range of shapes, colors, sizes, and habits there are of the many bees, all of which are vitally important for pollination.

Because bees eat lunch, we eat lunch

Pollination occurs when a bee eats a meal. Bees fly to colorful flowers to drink the nectar and eat the pollen. The pollen also sticks to the tiny hairs on the bees’ body and legs. Then they fly to another flower to continue feeding, leaving behind some of the pollen from the previous flower, pollinating the second flower.

Most plants require active pollination by an insect and 99 percent of those insects are bees. Each of the bee species in the world prefers a different type of flower for its food. Some tiny ones pollinate squash plants; some of the bigger ones go to watermelons, tomatoes, etc. Without them, there would be no plant or food diversity.

Honeybees, which are easily transported because they live in hives they build inside man-made boxes, are trucked around the country to pollinate our industrial crops. But diseases and possibly also pesticides have contributed to population declines in honeybees. This phenomenon is called colony collapse disorder, but it is not yet widely understood. With honeybees under threat, there is growing importance of providing places for native (wild) bees to live. Habitat for native bees is dwindling, as there are fewer patches of bare soil and fallen logs in which to live, especially in developed environments. But with human help, we can create bee-friendly habitats. There are many things that can be done, even in urban environments to provide for native bee food and shelter, including planting native wildflowers and leaving bare patches of soil where possible.

These practices are detailed more completely on the EcoMyths website: www.ecomythsalliance.org.

To learn more and get all the buzz on bees, listen to our latest Worldview segment!

EcoMyths: Asian carp's destructive impact on the ecosystem

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 08:50:00 -0500

Ecosystems are like People

When my life is in balance, I just know it. There’s no formula. What mix creates my personal balance changes over time and likely is not the same as how you find balance. Hopefully, if elements of my life become too demanding, I can adjust and put things back in order. Ecosystems are like that. They’re dynamic, like our own lives. Sometimes deer populations may eat more this year than last — or several young trees die because of drought. But somehow the ecosystem mends itself. It evolves with new plants and animals and finds new balance. The cardinals, the foxes and frogs make their way back to the garden.

But sometimes, balance is improbable because of a great shock to the system. Something essential is added, taken away or both: A prairie becomes an office building drastically changing the landscape; plants that fed deer and provided nesting places for birds vanish. A quote from the World Wildlife Fund website defines ecological balance as “a state of dynamic equilibrium…subject to gradual changes through natural succession." But sometimes, non-gradual change forces things to a tipping point and the ecosystem cannot adapt.

Lake Michigan Ecosystem: Asian Carp Threaten the Balance

For our monthly EcoMyths segment, Jerome McDonnell wanted to know if the hype surrounding the threat of Asian carp to the Great Lakes ecosystem is warranted. The answer was a resounding “yes!” Fortunately, our experts, Kim Rice of Friends of the Chicago River; and Jared Teutsch of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, have worked hard to prevent Asian carp from reaching the Chicago River and entering Lake Michigan.

The reason: the aquatic food chain in Lake Michigan is already so weakened by other invasive species, like zebra mussel, that adding a voracious plankton feeder such as Asian carp to the mix will likely push it over the tipping point. Meaning? Most fish other than the Asian carp will die. The carp will eat the fish at the bottom of the food chain, leaving very little for other fish to eat. Also, Asian carp reproduce quickly and are exceptionally fast swimmers. In the Great Lakes ecosystem, Asian carp will be the fittest, fastest, and fattest, but they’ll also be lonely because few other fish will survive once the carp move in.

Teutsch, says “It is a myth that we have dealt with other invasive species in Lake Michigan successfully." Because of the loss of plankton, whose population has been decimated by zebra mussels, the “Lake Michigan ecosystem is at a tipping point already”. Could we bring in a larger predator to eat the Asian carp? If only. Unfortunately, the carp swim too fast and have the advantages I mentioned above. So a big predator fish would more likely eat the slow, easy-to-catch smaller fish rather than the carp. If the Asian carp gets into Lake Michigan and the rest of the Great Lakes, it would likely devastate the $7 billion fishery industry.

Fortunately, experts have no evidence of carp in Lake Michigan yet. But the Chicago River, upstream of where the carp are seen further south in the Illinois River, is the most likely gateway to the Great Lakes. Several state and federal agencies, municipalities, and other groups, under the umbrella of the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, are doing what they can to prevent the carp from migrating north to Chicago. These measures include installing an electric barrier between the two rivers. Rice indicates that the most effective solution currently advocated by several agencies, is to completely separate the Chicago River from the Illinois River. “This would not only keep the carp from coming upstream and ruining the Chicago River’s ecosystem, it will enable commercial development and recreational uses to continue to improve on the river.”

Happy Ending?

So will separation happen? As with most projects of this scale, the decision is under consideration and will take time. But let’s hope that it will happen soon. According to a recent report by the Great Lakes Commission, Asian carp have been spotted as close as 5 miles away from Lake Michigan.

You can get involved by tracking the "Asian Carp Prevention Act of 2012" (H.R. 6348). Along with Friends of the Chicago River and Alliance for the Great Lakes, Teutsch recommends joining local groups like Healthy Water Solutions. Learn more about Asian Carp at EcoMyths Alliance.

EcoMyths: Catching and using rain where it falls

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:29:00 -0500

About a decade ago, I started to notice that rain storms felt more violent, as if mandated by some mythical storm troll who controlled the skies. Weather had changed, yes, but not because of imaginary attackers, in spite of my paranoid delusions. In fact, extreme precipitation is a predicted consequence of the cumulative effects of climate change; these events are often accompanied by flooding. According to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, since the start of the new millennium, the Midwest region has endured seven of the top nine years of the most extreme storms. Many of these extreme storms (like in summer 2011) washed-out roads and flooded basements, and caused days-long power outages.

The misconception

We tend to think that it's the responsibility of local governments to deal with stormwater when it rains; individual efforts can’t make an impact.

The facts

The first line of defense is the property owner: Rainwater first falls onto someone’s property, then the municipality, then our public waterways. Individuals can reduce storm water flooding and make a big difference — by storing, slowing, or filtering rainwater. The cumulative efforts of whole communities has significant impact on the quantity and quality of stormwater that ends up in our lakes and rivers.

Who ya gonna call?

So who is responsible for collecting this water and preventing flooding? Many municipal governments and water agencies have great infrastructure to channelize and collect water. In the Chicago area, storm rainwater runs down streets and into storm sewers. This fresh water is then channeled into pipes collecting sewage from the region, but these sewage pipes often lack enough capacity to store the additional water. So the combined rainwater/sewage overflow goes into Lake Michigan, our source of drinking water. In the suburbs, stormwater systems aren't "officially" connected to municipal sewage treatment, but many storm drains are nevertheless connected mistakenly (or illegally) to the sewer systems. The result is combined sewage overflow into the lake, just as in Chicago.

That’s right — untreated sewage flows into our drinking water when stormwater overflow pours into Lake Michigan.

Green infrastructure is the flip side of the coin

What’s a person to do? Can one person make an impact? You bet! The City of Chicago encourages residents to get in on the act and implement “green infrastructure” to supplement the “built” infrastructure provided by the city. Creating green infrastructure means devising natural solutions. Then, plants and soil can absorb rainwater to prevent runoff, "capturing the rain where it falls."

Solving the flooding problem requires everyone to do their part. You can do this in many ways: disconnect your downspouts from city sewers; install permeable pavers on sidewalks and driveways; build a rain garden with deep-rooted plants; and, install rain barrels. A city pamphlet is available for Managing Stormwater at Home, along with a longer brochure with detailed how-to instructions called Guide to Stormwater Best Management Practices. This includes installing green roofs, drainage swales, and natural landscaping.

As you can see in the photo above, Chicago walks the walk — one of the most acclaimed green roofs in the nation was installed on top of City Hall in 2001. It's still a source of inspiration today. According to the Department of Tourism, as of 2010, over 350 designed and built green roofs make Chicago the American city with the most square feet of green roofs.

Asking the experts

For our regular EcoMyths segment, Jerome McDonnell (rain gardener extraordinaire) helped me hash out these issues with two landscape experts:

Julie Siegel is owner of the Evanston-based J. Siegel Designs. She also does sustainability work in Guatemala. Siegel believes we must make a collective commitment to changing behavior and valuing our great resource — Lake Michigan. This paradigm shift is part of the big picture in improving water management.

We also spoke with Cliff Miller, owner of P. Clifford Miller Landscape Artistry. He finds that people think rain barrels are more complicated than they are, or not worth the small amount of work required to install them. He also discovered that people worry about things like mosquitoes or algae bulid-up. Miller stresses that rainwater is better for plants than chemically treated tap water.

Sweet dreams

It's a good feeling to know that my neighbors and I can reduce flooding from these more extreme storms. You have so much more ability to make a difference to our environment than you may realize. Our efforts will cause ripples. Capturing rain where it falls is a great place to start. Learn more about water conservation at the EcoMyths Alliance website.

EcoMyths: Why eating bugs is good for your health and the environment

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:21:00 -0500

What would it taste like to eat a cricket? That’s what I wondered recently while watching a mother bird feed its fat, hungry babies. As it happens, Chicago's Brookfield Zoo has an insect chef serving crickets on the weekends this summer, so I had the chance to find out!

While at Brookfield's Xtreme Bugs exhibit, I tasted crickets prepared two ways: toasted with Cajun spices (tastes like crunchy sunflower seeds) and in sweet banana-cricket pancakes. No legs and no antennae tickled my tongue – just crunchiness. I could not bring myself to eat the mealy bug larvae cookies. But talking with the chef who prepared the bug delicacies gave me confidence, as she is also a trained entomologist (insect scientist). With her expertise, I knew she would only serve up safe and tasty bug food to a wary public.

Raising animals, especially cattle, to fulfill the human demand for meat, is costly both financially and environmentally (as explained further in our latest EcoMyths article). According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface” and are a major source of deforestation around the world. The livestock sector also produces significant levels of greenhouse gases, mostly from manure, including 65 percent of human-produced nitrous oxide, a much more damaging greenhouse gas than even CO2. So, could eating bugs replace some of our craving for meat? We think so.

Even Angelina Jolie and her kids enjoy crickets as snack food. So what is holding us back from relying more on insects as a food source?

For our latest EcoMyths segment, we talk about fear and loathing of bugs. Westerners just don’t eat bugs like other cultures around the world do. Our fears are based on experiences of biting and stinging, or the perception that bugs are ugly. And we tend to be unaware of the essential role of bugs on our planet.

“I think they are missing the boat because, really when people learn more about them they discover that bugs are actually really cool and do all sorts of interesting things,” says Dr. Margaret Thayer, a curator in the Division of Insects in the Field Museum of Natural History's Zoology Department. And she reminds us that bugs are essential elements of our earthly food chain: “If they all suddenly disappeared, everything would collapse.”

Andre Copeland, interpretive programs manager at Brookfield Zoo agrees. “Bugs are responsible for aerating soil, pollinating crops, and providing food to many animals. Many vertebrates – reptiles, birds, and mammals – wouldn’t survive if not for arthropods.”

So, what about humans eating bugs? Well, insects are part of the animal phylum called arthropods, which are all invertebrates that have external skeletons (“exoskeletons”) and jointed limbs, which includes insects, spiders, and crustaceans. In the U.S. we already eat many arthropods, such as lobster, crab, and crayfish. So we are already happily eating animals closely related to insects. Thayer reminds us that insects are “a concentrated source of protein and fat” which is why they are such a valuable food source in so many cultures. “If you live in a village where termites are flying from a giant mound, thousands of them flying around, you can just pick them up and eat them, or roast them.”

Margaret’s words rang in my ears as I crunched the Cajun-spiced crickets at the Zoo last week and asked myself, “could I get used to this?” If I close my eyes while chewing and block out the visual, I think I actually could. Care to join me for a termite taco?

EcoMyths: Can birds navigate around buildings?

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:15:00 -0500

It’s the middle of May, and that means we are in the teeth of bird migration season. In fact, International Bird Migration Day just took place over the weekend, celebrated by bird watchers the world over. But there’s a challenge that looms large for migratory birds, and not surprisingly perhaps, it’s put there by us humans.

According to experts we talked to, between 100 million and 1 billion birds die in North America every year due to building collisions, mostly in the fall and spring. (This number doesn’t even include collisions with wind turbines or communication towers.)

You’d think birds could just fly around buildings; you’d be wrong. As its name suggests, the website EcoMyths busts environmental untruths, like the one that suggests migratory birds know how to navigate their way through a city. For numerous reasons, navigating flight through a place like Chicago is far more dangerous for birds than flying through dense woodlands.

The Misconception:
Migrating birds know to fly around city buildings.

The Reality:
Navigating city buildings is far more challenging for birds than flying through dense woodlands, because:

A) Birds can't see glass and see it as an opening

B) Nocturnal migrants get confused by lights

C) Migrant birds aren't used to urban landscape, having spent the previous season in open areas and rainforests in South and Central America

EcoMyths founder Kate Sackman joins us Tuesday for Worldview's monthly myth-busting segment. They talk about saving and studying birds in harm's way with Field Museum Ornithologist and Ecologist Doug Stotz and Annette Prince of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.