Ecology III

With the impending weather explosion about to be upon us, I thought I'd better get out there and find something to blog about before it blows away forever! This storm is looking to be one of the worst in many years, so you never know what's going to happen in the ensuing days. After looking around for a while I decided to do this tree, the pinus virginiana:

I have many of these trees in my backyard, but this picture was taken last December when my family and I were out getting our Christmas tree. The tree is evergreen, resinous, and coniferous. It grows well in weak soil, of which there is a lot around Harrisburg. As an evergreen, it retains its needles all year, unlike deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the fall. The tree provides food and shelter for many different kinds of squirrels, chipmunks, birds, rabbits, and other small animals. These animals eat not only the needles, but also the cones and bark of the tree. The many branches provide ample shade, cover, and perching area.

The trees daily activities usually consist as follows: standing. And sometimes they are trimmed and chopped down by humans for holidays, firewood, just because we can, and a whole host of other reasons. Although I have listed much more extensive activities for my other blog posts, those were animals, they do things. Trees stand there and absorb sunlight, water, and CO2, and then emit O2 and 'eat' the sugar they also produce.

The Virginia Pine usually grows to heights of approximately 9-18 meters, but the ones most of us use as Christmas trees are more in the range of about 10 feet tall. At the ten foot height they have a base of about 5 feet in diameter. If allowed to grow naturally many live to be 65-95 years old. The Virginia pine is found in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and of course Virginia and West Virginia.

Trees are vital to the continued existence of life on earth. Without them we would quickly consume all the oxygen we have and then everything would die. Not a very good picture. We are killing our forests and we need to stop before we find that we can no longer replant all that we have destroyed. There are consequences to a more comfortable lifestyle, but dying should not be one of them.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine

http://www.2020site.org/trees/pine.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_virginiana

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/virginia_pine.htm

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_1/pinus/virginiana.htm

Presidential Debate

The Presidential debate on 10/16/12 was one to remember. Not only did President Obama come back from an awful performance against Mitt Romney on 10/3/12, but Obama arguably had his best debate performance ever. He was attentive, knew what he was talking about, and corrected Etch-a-Sketch Mitt on many occasions, one of which was before he even finished the sentence. Romney became flustered at points, he knew Obama brought his A-game today, this debate was not going to be as easy as the first.

They hit environmental issues early, with the second question being "Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it’s not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?" Obama responded by saying that the department focuses on meeting the energy needs of the country. We have the highest amount of gas drilling in sixteen years, we have more natural gas plants than ever before, and we are also working on wind, solar, and biofuels to help power America. Obama said that we have lowered our oil imports to a record low level, but didn't quite answer the question about lowering gas prices.

Romney rebutted by saying that under the Obama administration, the number of licenses for drilling have been cut in half. He also said that as president he will get America self sufficient in terms of energy. He will make sure there is funding for solar wind, renewable sources as well as coal, oil, and natural gas. To this Obama said that Romeny had once said as governor of Massachusetts in front of a coal plant and said "This plant kills?" and that now he's flip flopped to Mr. Big Coal.

It is clear that these two candidates can never agree on anything, even if what they both claim to believe in are the same things. After Obama finished talking, the two just kept speaking into their microphones until Candy Crowley finally had them stop and move onto the next question. Nobody knows for certain who will be the next President at this point but we all have a very strange next four years to look forward to.

PA Ecology II

I was driving home late after the game on Friday, and on a particularly dark stretch of road on Elmerton Avenue I saw a deer standing in the middle of the road. When I came home I looked it up and found that it was a Pennsylvania white-tailed deer. The white-tailed deer, or Odocoileus virginianus, is very common all across most of North America, but most people see them very infrequently.

They tend to hide during the day and come out at night in favor of easier camouflage. Deer are very comfortable living in woods or open prairie lands; they are very adaptable due to their large diet. They eat legumes, leaves, grass, cacti, mushrooms, poison ivy, acorns, corn and fruits. Like cows they have a four chambered stomach system which allows them to not only eat such a large variety of foods, but to digest said foods at more opportune times when they are not out and about or being pursued by predators.

         White-tailed deer fall prey every year to wolves, alligators, bears, wolverines, cougars, coyotes, and especially humans. To get away from all these things that would try to eat them, they can run up to approximately 47 mph, and can jump 33 feet lengthwise and nearly 9 feet vertically. They have white tails (duh), four legs with large muscles for bounding, a head designed for near all around vision with ears that swivel to pinpoint noises easier. They grow to weights 200 pounds, lengths of up to 87 inches long and a shoulder height of approximately 40 inches. These dimensions change depending on which subspecies of white-tailed deer you are dealing with, but these specs are close to deer in our area which are on the high medium to low large sized deer.

While I did not get the chance to take a picture of the deer myself, this is a picture I found which looks close to what I almost hit. I was on Elmerton Avenue at about 10:30 PM on 10/12/12 when I encountered the deer that could have cost me my car. As I slowed down it began to look at me, and after I flashed my high beams a few times it decided to turn and bound away into a patch of trees by the post office. I had only seen a deer this big once before, and that was at 6 AM when I was walking my dogs some months ago. Usually my dogs bark at whatever they see, but this time they stood stock still, not really sure what they were looking at or what to do.

Sources:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/deer/11949

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_deer

http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/whitetaileddeer.htm

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/white-tailed-deer/

http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/june/papr/wtdeer.html

PA Ecology

While wandering around my yard this weekend, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon several newborn baby rabbits. Through a bit of research I found that they are almost definitely eastern cottontail rabbits, or Sylvilagus floridanus. I have seen many of its adult counterparts in my yard over the years, and my dogs have seen even more! Many of them get away, but if we let our dogs out to run in the yard and the bunnies don't hear them right away, they sometimes have gotten caught. They have such soft fur; my brother used some of it to make the inside of his gloves warmer.

The eastern cottontail lives across a wide berth of the eastern United States, as its name suggests. They prefer to live in forests and fields where they can obtain cover easily, under bushes shrubs and the like. They'll eat just about anything, from grass to leaves to bark to dandelions to fruits. They give birth to litters about three to four times per year, with a maximum of approximately nine baby bunnies per litter. They give birth to so many young because they are very prone to diseases and predators, of which they have many. Like I said before, dogs will eat them, but also will cats birds snakes opossums owls and skunks.

They have it tough out there, so it's a good thing that their bodies are extremely well designed, or selected I should say, to their environment. They have large ears to detect predators easily, strong hind legs that let them leap up to fifteen feet, and a highly acute nose, just to name a few. Their bodies curl up very small so it is easier to keep warm in the winter, for which they also grow a thicker coat of fur. While the babies were only about 5-6 inches long, adults can grow upwards of 19 inches in length.

When I found these little guys they were just sitting in their makeshift den. They were just laying there keeping warm at approximately 2:00 PM 10/06/12. They were in my front yard, which is a really good thing because we let our dogs run in the back yard, but not the front. Nature showed a little bit of kindness to these barely week old babies.

When I began to search around my yard, I began to see more than when I usually did. I saw all different kinds of insects, many different weeds and grasses, and too many different kinds of animal droppings to walk outside barefoot again. But seeing it this way makes me appreciate it that much more, so I'll be more careful the next time I mow the lawn, dig a hole for a plant or just run around with reckless abandon, because who knows what I could run over or bury or stomp when I'm out there, nature has a lot to offer that many of us will never see.

Sources:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/cottontail-rabbit/

http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/easterncottontail.htm

http://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/naturetrail/speciespages/cottontail.htm

http://www.naturalresources.msstate.edu/wildlife/eastern-cottontail-rabbit.html