What is the world's largest urban area?

The Pearl River Delta in China

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86603&src=share

On deck for the week ahead

Work on Population and Evolution Lecture (BIO225) lecture and start to make the exam.

Work on Ecology: need to write up two labs (quantifying diversity in our forest samples and cemetery demography), work on lectures

Think more about a study abroad plan (going to create a budget for...?)

Scholarship: need to think about the book and start busting a move 

Grants: dust off previous NSF proposal and polish

I think I'm caught up on letters of recommendation and no peer review  

Worries about Trump

I read a Facebook post that said we should write down our worries about the consequences of Trump's election. Excellent suggestion. The comment that followed was that 98% of these worries would not manifest. We'll see on 11/11/2017.

Health Insurance 
- 22 million Americans will go off insurance
- increased costs 
- increased suicides (because the mentally ill are not covered and not getting treated)

Climate change
- "business as usual" carbon emissions or increased
- reduction in research (which are pathetic now)
- coal coal coal

Pollution
- more Hg in air and water (from burning coal)
- more overall pollution from decreased regs

Endangered Species
- lost protection

Public lands
- critical habitats sold off
- wilderness areas opened to development 

Basic Science
- reduction in NSF

Education
- loss of funding
- if Ben Carson (supposedly writing Organ of Species - a creationist text on the brain) becomes Sec of Education - then... I don't know.. but something stupid. 

Ecology Field Trip Part 2: Webb's Mill Bog

On Sunday the ecology class took a trip to Webb's Mill Bog in Manchester Township, NJ. This was part of a weekend long trip to explore the coastal plan of NJ, including the shore. There is something very cool about bogs that remind me a primordial swamp. 

Sarracenia purpurea

White cedar swamp bog

Closer look at the bog - note the sandy bottom

Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides)

Inkberry (Ilex glabra)

Pitch pine with scorched bark

Highbush Blueberry

Ecology Field Trip Part 1: Rutgers Marine Field Station, dune, and saltmarsh

Last weekend we took a field trip with the ecology class to the Rutgers Marine Station in Tuckerton, NJ. This was a kind of homecoming for me. I was there September 20, 1990 as an undergraduate at Rutgers. The class was Marine Animal Ecology and after a night of helping a graduate student (now a section chief at NOAA), I was offered a beer and the student suggested I consider graduate school. So I turn nearly 30 years later with my own class hoping to inspire the next ecologist. 

We found lots of interesting plants, birds, invertebrates, and fish. 

Late afternoon in a Spartina marsh

Spartina and Salicornia virginica 

Late afternoon at the station

Ensis directus

Geukensia demissa

Atlantic surf clam, Spisula solidissima

Immature Black-crowned Night Heron

Great Blue Heron (above and below as well)

Greater Yellowlegs 

Great Egret

Peregrine Falcon

Seining with a 100' seine in the Mullica River-Great Bay Estuary

The station

Tidal creek bounded by Spartina alterniflora

Solidago sempervirens (Seaside Goldenrod), phragmites,
and Ammophila breviligulata (beach grass)

Close up of dune

Spartina patens 

Sandy beach