text:
That's where Jovan, a moss and lichen expert at the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, usually works. But in 2013, she and her colleagues began studying the moss on Portland's countless urban trees. Their findings rattled the city: The moss revealed that Portland has an air pollution problem.
The news wasn't a complete shock. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has known for years that Portland's air contains unhealthy levels of heavy metals like cadmium and arsenic, both carcinogens. But a city-wide survey of moss allowed scientists to finally pinpoint a likely source: two art glass producers that use the metals in their manufacturing process.
The DEQ confirmed the moss results in October, using conventional air monitoring instruments that detected levels of cadmium and arsenic far above state benchmarks near one of the plants. The early February announcement angered many residents, who thought the department — which is charged with protecting Portland's air — should have taken action sooner. The director stepped down soon after, citing health issues.
After the revelations surfaced, the glass manufacturers — Bullseye and Uroboros — voluntarily stopped using heavy metals. The DEQ will now require both to install emissions control devices after the EPA determined that the plants do not, in fact, qualify for an exemption that allowed them to operate without such devices in the past. Meanwhile, officials have scrambled to cope with the consequences. So far, follow-up tests of soils and urine from residents near the plants suggest the long-term human health risks are low, although authorities identified a slight increase in bladder cancer rates around Uroboros between 1999 and 2003.
Without moss, though, the issue may never have come to light. Unlike vascular plants, moss and lichen lack roots, so they must extract all the nutrients they need from the air. And because they also lack waxy leaf coatings or other natural barriers to unwanted compounds, they soak up pollution "like a sponge," Jovan says.
Scientists, who first realized these plants could act as biomonitors in the 1970s, have since used them to study a range of pollutants, from heavy metals to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which threaten both human and environmental health. In fact, one of the great benefits of moss is that a single sample can yield information about many different contaminants, says Linda Geiser, director of the Forest Service's Air Resource Management Program. And studying moss is cheap. "It doesn't require power, and you can just send someone to hike back wherever you want, into the most remote place, to collect information," Geiser says.
That's one reason the Forest Service and other agencies have used moss to monitor air quality on public lands. A 2001 study in Alaska, for instance, revealed that dust from mining trucks was dousing fragile tundra plants in the Cape Krusenstern National Monument with heavy metals.
Still, moss has limitations when it comes to gauging threats to human health. The exposure pathways are different: Moss passively absorbs contaminants, while the effects on humans vary depending on whether they are inhaled or ingested. And concentrations in moss can't be directly translated into concentrations in the air. So it's not entirely clear what Jovan's results, on their own, mean for Portland's residents.
Geoffrey Donovan, Jovan's colleague, stresses that their moss study wasn't a replacement for traditional air monitoring, but a way to guide it. In the past, Portland only had one air monitoring station capable of detecting heavy metals, which could not provide regulators with detailed information about individual emitters. So Donovan used a model to turn their 346 moss samples — collected from every square kilometer of the city — into a detailed map of pollution hotspots that helped the DEQ focus its investigations. The cadmium results were recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
The approach, which has been used in European cities, may now gain traction in the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency plans to review the Portland study to evaluate whether it could use the method to screen for toxic air pollutants.
As cars roll past Jovan's tree, the tires sucking at the wet pavement, the moss already seems to have melted into the fuzzy green backdrop of Portland life. But the story isn't over. Despite the state's reassurances, some locals fear possible health impacts and question whether the DEQ will prevent similar situations in the future. To quell these concerns, Gov. Kate Brown recently established a new state program to strengthen air quality regulation.
Moss may very well play a role in that initiative — precisely because of its ability to detect sources of pollution. That, Jovan says lovingly, "is what we are solving with these delightful little primitive plants."
Julia Rosen is a freelance reporter based in Portland, Oregon. Follow @ScienceJulia]]>
Currently much of the bloom is located in Death Valley's Badwater Basin, the lowest elevation on the continent, at 282 feet below sea level. When not in full bloom, this area is a dry salt flat that butts up against mountains. The flowers that heartily grow in such harsh environments hibernate for years at a time until the perfect conditions arise for them to blossom.
"When I first came to work here in the early 1990s, I kept hearing the old timers talk about super blooms as a near mythical thing," says National Park Service employee Alan Van Valkenburg. "I saw several impressive displays of wildflowers over the years and always wondered how anything could beat them, until I saw my first super bloom in 1998. Then I understood."
Over the next few weeks in March, the blooms will continue to move north through the park. The Park Service estimates the wildflowers will remain in the lower, more accessible elevations through mid-March. Follow the movement of this year's bloom at the NPS website.
Desdemona Dallas is a freelance writer based in Paonia, Colorado.]]>
Last summer, after observing unusual amounts of brown foliage on giant sequoias — a sign of stress — researchers set out to assess the trees' response to California's historic drought. It's still an open question how the trees might respond to worsening conditions in the future, but the research brought at least a temporary sigh of relief. Some giant sequoias were stressed, but not fatally so.
But now, a study from the University of California, Los Angeles is raising other questions about the future of the trees and other beloved native plants. The study analyzed more than 680,000 plant specimens collected by California botanists since 1895. The researchers hoped to learn if plants were shifting their ranges in response to the changing climate. The exact location of each specimen was recorded, providing a record of ecosystem shifts for more than 4,000 species in the state over the last century.
They found that many native species — like giant sequoias, early onion, and Eastwood manzanita, a large shrub with small, round fruit — are not colonizing higher elevations, chasing cooler temperatures. Meanwhile, non-native and invasive plants are adapting to the warming climate, moving into more favorable habitat.
"We're seeing shifts in climate and adaptation," says senior author Jon Christensen, a professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, "but some of the native species have shifted their ranges very little, or not at all."
And invasive species are encroaching quickly. Christensen found that non-native plants are far more adaptable than native ones. Weedy plants like the Tasmanian bluegum, purple foxglove and Uruguayan pampas grass, just to name a few, have moved to higher elevations, and entered the territories of local flora, filling their landscapes. On the other hand, the ranges of endemic species like the giant sequoias have largely remained static, which could prove problematic as the conditions in those places change.
"The fabric between ecosystems is pulling apart," Christensen says. "These species could end up in a climate zone that is no longer fit for them," According to the study, the common factors that tend to constrain the mobility of native and endemic plants are their more complicated reproductive processes and limited options for new turf.
It's pretty tough for a sequoia, for instance, to huck its seeds to higher ground. Part of that has to do with its slow reproductive process. The giant sequoia's seeds, about the size of a coffee bean, are trapped in cones that fall in close proximity to the mother tree. The seeds depend on the Douglas squirrel or fire to break them free. Once that happens, it takes two years for a sapling to take root.
And there's a second problem: Even if giant sequoias could easily move, they wouldn't have anywhere to go. While some plants move into cooler zones just upslope of their current habitat, giant sequoias can't because soil moisture is extremely low on the rocky mountainsides above their niche. Giant sequoias exist in an ecological sweet spot with rich soil and an abundant water supply, says Anthony Ambrose, biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
The researchers didn't find new invasive species moving into the sequoias habitat — yet. But Elizabeth Brusati, science program manager at the California Invasive Plant Council, says that climate models show that sequoia groves will be suitable habitat for cheatgrass by 2050. If cheatgrass colonized the forest floors of giant sequoia groves, it could compete for water and make the ecosystem more vulnerable to wildfires, she says, and pose an additional challenge to giant sequoias.
There's no guarantee that plants will continue to shift at the rates the UCLA study documented. But if native species continue to respond slowly to climate shifts, Christensen says, they run the risk of being out-competed. "What we're seeing is a shuffling of some of the most basic relationships in nature," Christensen says. "The big question is whether we can also change fast enough to stem climate change."
This story was changed to reflect that Jon Christensen is the senior author of the study. The lead researcher and author is Adam Wolf.
Paige Blankenbuehler is an editorial fellow at High Country News. She tweets @paigeblank]]>
The tree used to stand on dry ground, of course, a massive ponderosa pine, orange-barked and majestic, beside a trail through the woods. When the flood came to our valley 12 years ago, the river broadened and chiseled away at the bank, claiming the entire trail and a large chunk of road to boot.
We never saw it coming.
We should have seen it coming.
But the tree still stands. We pass by it in cars or on bikes or, most often, on skis. The rerouted road isn't plowed that far, so in winter a ragtag group of friends skis past regularly, in wool shirts and blue jeans and mismatched gear. Every time we do, we stop by the place in the river where it stands, to sip water or to peel off an extra layer of clothing, and mostly to marvel: It's still there!
Sometimes I wonder why we love it so much. Is it nostalgia? Do we love it because it's a remnant of the way things used to be? Or is it because of its stubborn endurance — like a boxer leaning hard against the ropes, one that will not go down, no matter what. Maybe, by now, it's just familiarity. The snag is one of us. We try to impress others, people from outside the valley, try to get them to whistle through their teeth — would you look at that? Instead, they look at us pityingly: So this is what passes as entertainment up here. They're right, of course. They're also missing the point.
The tree still stands! Who could've known? How is it even possible?
We know that, someday, it will topple. We've even considered taking bets on when, but if we'd started taking bets back when we first started talking about it, by now everyone would've lost.
People like to predict when trees will fall. When I worked on trail crew, people did it all the time. The year after a big wildfire, they'd tell us: Better bring a lot of saw gas. But the roots of the blackened trees took years to loosen, and sometimes never loosened at all. Elsewhere, seemingly healthy trees snapped by the dozen. Trees fell for unexpected reasons — a pestilence in the willows, a freak snowstorm in the spring — or for no reason at all. We gave up trying to guess.
But it's a hard habit to break, speculation. We must be hard-wired for it.
Lately, there's been a glut of apocalyptic books. The end is caused by a pandemic flu or a war or a natural disaster. The fascination lies in predicting who will survive and where and how, and for how long they'll survive. Some people bet on food production, some on weaponry; some on self-reliance, some on cooperation. A few outliers put faith in art. The truth is, we don't know what will happen or when. Even while we try to hold it together, to prep and plan, we don't know.
Meanwhile, remnants surround us: the meadow that didn't burn, the sandy ocean bluff sloughing but not yet slid, the blackened toenail after a too-long hike, right before it peels off, the eerie glowing coals in a campfire in the rain. Something to cherish, something that can't last. You come around one last bend before the view opens wide. An osprey swoops close. You look up and catch your breath. There it is, still standing, silhouetted white against the cloudless blue.
Ana Maria Spagna lives and writes in Stehekin, Washington. Her most recent book is Reclaimers.]]>
This story was produced in partnership with KVNF Radio in Paonia, Colorado.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this year is on course to be the hottest year in recorded history. And with greenhouse gas emissions increasing, we're closing in on a global temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius — what many scientists agree is a point of no return in avoiding the most dangerous impacts of climate change.
Those impacts are felt more acutely in the West. Because it's mostly arid, mountainous, and largely rural, the West sits in the crosshairs of the most profound impacts from climate change. Substantial changes have already affected growing cycles and yields for agriculture, a huge part of the Western economy and culture. Many small communities are rising up to address the challenge of food security. During a panel discussion on climate change impacts to agriculture in Paonia, Colorado, one expert talked about the drastic change he's personally studied in these mountains.
David Inuoye, of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, has researched western Colorado wildflowers for 37 years, and when he started, he had no idea the high alpine blooms would be such a harbinger for what's happening in the area. "Some of the changes (of high alpine flowers), like longer growing seasons and earlier growing seasons and changes in the flowering and abundance of some species are similar to the kinds of things that seem to be going on here in the North Fork Valley."
As the climate shifts, some farmers might benefit from longer growing seasons, but others may face early blooms and late frosts. But adapting to a fast-changing environment becomes a question of scale. While 'pulling up the stakes to go' may be more feasible for some small-scale growers, vast orchards and vineyards can't relocate so easily. "If you're worried about the tomatoes in your backyard, it's pretty easy to" build a little plastic greenhouse and protect those. If you're talking about a 25 to 30-acre orchard, then it's a completely different scale in terms of trying to protect those plants," Inuoye says.
Biologists and rural growers aren't the first to recognize the difficulty of transitioning large operations. Further west, California communities have faced extreme and prolonged drought and because the state has a variety of climates, farmers have had to adapt in a number of ways. Renata Brillinger, the executive director of the California Climate & Agriculture Network, which is helping large-scale commercial farmers face new realities, says revamping infrastructure, though, has its own unique challenges.
"This movement toward more awareness of the importance of local foods, and supporting your local farmers and these local markets are really exciting developments," Brillinger says. "I think they'll remain somewhat at the edges, though, until we really address the bigger policy questions and the economic questions that make it challenging to stay in business."
Local eating seems like a great idea, but in practice, overhauling policies is restricted by global agricultural trade networks, and it's an issue faced by farmers not just in California. In the coming weeks, world leaders will gather in Paris for the United Nations Climate Talks. Just this week, Hilal Elver, an expert on global climate change based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said another 600 million people could suffer malnutrition by 2080. Meanwhile, global population continues to rise, and is expected to hit 8 and a half billion in just 15 years.
Pete Kolbenschlag, the organizer of the Paonia panel discussion, knows that food security affects everyone. "If you care about what's on your plate, and you care about feeding other people and the planet, then we need to care about climate change, because climate change is going to affect our food supply," he says.
In that small room on a Tuesday night, local farmers gathered in circle and talked about establishing a food sharing network, a local agricultural currency, and social media strategies. Panel experts even talked about technology that monitors soil moisture to prevent overwatering. These are specific solutions. They haven't solved the big problem, by any means, but at least they're not tackling the challenge alone.
Paige Blankenbuehler is an editorial intern at High Country News. She tweets @paigeblank
Young as they are, they look a bit scraggly to my untrained eye, but they're a small bright spot in an otherwise dark story: Yellow cedar, a culturally and commercially important tree prized for its strong, remarkably decay-resistant wood, has died in droves thanks to long-term climatic shifts, and will likely lose much more as human-induced warming advances. And yet here, the trees seem to be thriving. Scientists studying this and 14 other scattered, isolated stands around Juneau believe they may represent a leading edge of the tree's migration northward into more favorable climes. The researchers hope the trees will yield clues on how best to conserve the species as temperatures climb.
"One thing that seems to be coming out of the data is that these are new stands," says disturbance ecologist Brian Buma, an assistant professor at University of Alaska Southeast who has been working on the project for three years. "There are not a lot of dead trees (in them), if any. They're young — all less than 500 years old. And they seem to be expanding: The edges have some growth."
Yellow cedars' trials began in the late 1800s, around the time a cooling period called the Little Ice Age ended. Based on 30 years of research, scientists concluded in a comprehensive 2012 BioScience paper that, as snowpacks have thinned in the decades since, the trees' shallow roots have had less insulation against cold snaps that still barrel in from the Arctic and the boreal forests of neighboring Canada, particularly in boggy areas where those roots tend to be even closer to the soil surface. In other words, even though natural climate cycles and our fossil-fuel guzzling ways have been driving temperatures higher, the trees have essentially been freezing to death. This April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service even began mulling whether they warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Seventy percent of mature yellow cedar are now dead in affected areas south of Juneau along a more than 600-mile swath of the tree's mostly coastal range, which stretches from high elevation pockets in Oregon and Washington all the way to southern Alaska's archipelagos and fjords. Because the trunks stand so long after death, says Paul Hennon, a Forest Service research plant pathologist and theBioScience study's lead author, "people call them skeleton forests."
Over his years of studying the trees' decline, Hennon also cataloged sightings people reported of healthy trees around Juneau, at the northeastern terminus of cedars' range. Buma and masters student John Krapek compiled this information with other anecdotal reports, historical records, and surveys by local naturalists and set about finding the stands on the ground and mapping them. The search was "like a little treasure hunt," Buma says, albeit one that occasionally involved brutal bushwhacks up steep cliffs over multiple days before a single tree could be confirmed. The researchers also noted the circumstances under which the trees grew, such as whether they were on north facing slopes. That data could help them locate other stands, as well as inform any future efforts to plant the tree in greater numbers at this more favorable margin of its range. Boosting cedars' flight northward may ultimately be necessary for conserving the species: Though the trees do seem to be migrating, it's at an Ent-like pace. "They're maybe advancing at a rate of only 80 kilometers over several centuries," says Buma. "That's pretty pathetic. We hoped it would be faster. You know, you're always kind of rooting for the little guys."
And even though trees within the Juneau stands are growing quickly, there are few saplings in the mix with seedlings and bigger trees, says Krapek. That suggests something is stopping seedlings from growing toward maturity — possibly Sitka blacktailed deer, which favor them as a food source — perhaps slowing stands' expansion.
Worse, evidence from elsewhere within the species' northern range is less rosy. Stanford research associate Lauren Oakes found recent mortality along the coast of the West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness about 70 miles west of Juneau, and documented turnover of areas with heavy cedar mortality to western hemlock-dominated forests. She and Hennon also have a new study in Biological Conservation that shows trees north of those areas are beginning to display snowpack-related stress, too. It projects similar yellow cedar declines yet farther north in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, where stands are still healthy, based on climate models that take into account snowpack and soil drainage.
But a broader Forest Service snow modeling effort — part of a report that will be released in about a month — has left Hennon with some hope. Yes, some areas with healthy cedar stands will lose a lot of their snow over the coming decades, and thus a lot of their cedars. But "we expect that there are pretty sizeable areas where they'd remain healthy," he says, particularly on the mountainous mainland right up against the Canadian border. "Even with reduced snow levels, our expectation is that there will still be enough snow to protect the cedars there. And those are highly protected landscapes with no timber harvesting."
Sarah Gilman is a High Country News contributing editor based in Portland, Oregon. She tweets @Sarah_Gilman]]>
Cheatgrass, sometimes called downy brome, is one of the most invasive weeds in North America. Since it was introduced via Eurasian grain imports in the 1800s, cheatgrass has put down roots in every single state, and has become the dominant plant on more than 154,000 square miles of the West. The invasive weed not only sprouts early, "cheating" native plants out of early spring water and nutrients, it thrives on disturbance like roadside construction, livestock grazing, and most of all, fire. The fire feedback cycle associated with the weed has transformed the American West, turning shrub steppe into grassland. Cheatgrass carries fire easily in regions like the Great Basin, where it allows flames to travel from shrub to shrub, recovering easily after such intense heat. And when that yellowish-gray cheatgrass dries out before peak fire season, it leaves a perfect fuel bed behind. Studies have shown that fire occurs four times as frequently in cheatgrass landscapes than in all other types of groundcover combined in the West.
Researchers have been desperately looking for a way to overthrow cheatgrass's reign for decades, and have tried some wacky experiments in the process — from fungal pathogens like the macabre Black Fingers of Death to changing soil texture to introducing super absorbent polymers into the ground to soak up water. Now, after nearly 30 years of trials and research, Ann Kennedy has found the innocuous cure — native soil bacteria.
In 1986, Kennedy was investigating the poor growth of winter wheat in Whitman County in eastern Washington when she stumbled across a bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens, that seemed to be inhibiting the number of shoots. She wondered if the same idea could be applied to weeds, like cheatgrass, medusahead, and jointed goatgrass.
After testing 25,000 types of bacteria from nearby fields, and ensuring they didn't negatively impact native grasses or other animals, Kennedy eventually settled on two weed-suppressive strains, later dubbed D7 and ACK55. Within three years of a single application, the bacteria reduced the amount of cheatgrass in test plots by half. Another five years, and it was down to almost zero.
D7 was later sold off to a private company, but ultimately was less selective than ACK55. In addition to inhibiting cheatgrass, medusahead and jointed goatgrass, D7 also stunted the growth of native species like Sandberg bluegrass. ACK55 is now undergoing the EPA registration process, which is expected to take roughly 17 months. Then it will be available for widespread use.
For Michael Gregg, a land management biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, there's no question of whether or not ACK55 will work. It's more of a question of application and whether it can be used across a large enough area.
ACK55 can be applied two ways — native seeds can be coated in the bacteria during restoration efforts or it can be sprayed on the soil surface.
"A lot of things have to go right," he explains. "Mainly, you have to get the bacteria into the soil in the fall to colonize over winter and get to the cheatgrass roots in the spring." In order to ensure the bacteria makes it in, you need precipitation within two weeks of application — and colder temperatures. ACK55 doesn't like sustained heat.
Then there's the matter of size. Cheatgrass dominates some 25 million acres in the Great Basin. Spraying such a vast area is prohibitively expensive, so researchers like Kennedy and Gregg advocate for a focused application.
The reactive approach is to apply the bacteria in recently burned areas to prevent cheatgrass from colonizing the landscape. The proactive step is to treat the leading edge of infestations — areas where cheatgrass is fast approaching.
Even then, the bacteria needs to be used in concert with other management tools, Kennedy says. For example, the bacteria can't simply be applied to monocultures of cheatgrass, as eventually the weed will just regenerate. The best regimen, she says, is to apply herbicides that attack cheatgrass at the surface level, while also applying ACK55, which attacks seedlings and the long-lasting seed bank underground. Then reseed with natives.
Ultimately, we could one day see the Great Basin region restored — which is critical for the sagebrush-dependent species like sage grouse that have seen their habitat converted to grassland. But it's a slow process.
"That's kind of the problem," explains Gregg. "Some of this conservation work can span careers and the experiments might not even be long enough. But the implications (of ACK55) are huge in terms of fire spending and sage grouse (conservation)."
As ACK55 takes its final test (via the EPA registration process), Ann Kennedy is already eyeing her next project — the invasive Italian Rye that's taken over her neighbors' land in Pullman.
"The concept is simple," Kennedy concludes, "you can get (any strain) you want, you just have to look for it."
Gloria Dickie is an editorial intern at High Country News. Follow @GloriaDickie]]>
At the top, Imper, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service botanist and rare plant advocate, kneels next to a wire cage shaped like an oversized top hat. Beneath it, a lupine is blooming, its rich pink-and-white flowers in vibrant contrast to the rocky ground.
"This is just a holding pattern," Imper says, pointing out 20 more flowers in cages nearby. There are approximately 350 Lassics lupines left on the planet, found only here and on nearby Red Lassic. The plants face threats from encroaching forests to severe drought, but the cages protect them from the most imminent danger: rodents.
The Lassics team hypothesizes that fire suppression has caused the plant's present woes. The natural fire regime, they say, would normally burn back encroaching vegetation that creates new habitat for rodents, giving them easier access to the scrumptious lupine seeds. The flowers, which evolved on wide-open barrens, aren't made for that kind of predatory pressure. "Smokey the Bear (screwed) us," says Imper.
Caging the lupines, the scientists warn, isn't enough; they want to cut back or burn the invading chaparral and trees, too. But Congress designated Mount Lassic a federal wilderness in 2006, and Forest Service officials say the 1964 Wilderness Act makes such intervention difficult, although it doesn't prohibit it outright. "The imprint of man's work (shall be) substantially unnoticeable," the law states, and its protective regulatory hurdles have hampered rapid action to save the lupine.
In this case, ironically, wilderness may hinder wildflower conservation. "We have this (designation) that was meant to save and preserve," says Dan Dill, the Forest Service district ranger who administers Mount Lassic, "but it has quite possibly put a species in jeopardy at the same time."
In 2003, scientists realized that chipmunks and deer mice were eating nearly all of the lupine's annual seed output. In response, Imper and his colleagues at Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service began caging the wildflowers almost immediately. Within seven years, the population nearly tripled.
Then, at the end of summer 2012, officials at Six Rivers National Forest ordered the team to remove the cages. Forest Service botanist Lisa Hoover, who helps oversee the project, explained that the site was located in designated wilderness, and top agency brass believed the cages made the mountain look "trammeled by man." Normally, the researchers stored the unwieldy equipment onsite during winter; now, they didn't know if they'd be allowed to use it in the future.
After meetings between the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife, the team was allowed to resume caging the following summer. Imper, however, has lobbied for years for more aggressive action. In 2012, for instance, he delivered a 171-page report to agency officials urging the felling, burning or girdling of conifers and chaparral in lupine habitat. But his recommendations fell flat. In the Forest Service, he says, "there has been outright opposition to doing any restoration."
The lack of action is due to administrative obstacles, not agency opposition, says Hoover. The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental impacts of their actions, so the Forest Service must do rigorous reviews before removing vegetation, especially in wilderness areas. That requires input from specialists as well as extra work and money, and is subject to public comment. Given its limited resources, the agency has not initiated the NEPA process.
Critics like Imper, though, believe the agency has mismanaged the crisis. Improving habitat can be consistent with wilderness values, says Ryan Henson, policy director at the California Wilderness Coalition, citing other successful restoration efforts within protected areas. His group is working on legislation that would, among other things, direct the Forest Service to pursue robust lupine management without delay.
And then there's the Endangered Species Act. This fall, Imper hopes to petition for an emergency listing. The brutal drought killed most of the lupines on the south-facing slopes this summer and cut the overall population in half, so it's increasingly urgent that trees be removed from the wetter north side. A listing would offer stronger legal cover for such actions.
In mid-August, a wildfire marched through the wilderness. Imper and his colleagues waited anxiously to see if the flowers would survive. Finally, in early September, a researcher hiked in. The southern part of Mount Lassic, and much of its chaparral, was charred. The crucial northern slope, however, experienced only low-intensity fire, which killed a few flowers and some trees, but likely left the big pines intact. The fire might reduce rodent density, but the flowers still face drought, heat and invading forest, with no relief in sight. "The plants are being squeezed in every direction," Imper says, "and there's no place left to go."]]>
Wild Science is a High Country News original video series produced by filmmaker Dakin Henderson. The series explores current wildlife research by taking us into the outdoors and behind the scenes with field biologists. In Wild Science, HCN looks at the scientific processes that inform decisions about how to manage public lands and wildlife — decisions that shape the West today.]]>
The tree in question is the whitebark pine, an iconic species that's been devastated throughout the Northern Rockies by mountain pine beetles and a fungal disease called blister rust. We're accustomed to thinking of fungi as a danger to biodiversity: In addition to pines, witness bats and frogs, imperiled by white-nose syndrome and chytrid, respectively. But Cripps, a mycologist at Montana State University, is captivated by the opposite story — a certain fungus may yet be what whitebark pine needs to survive.
That notion emerged from years of fieldwork in whitebark pine forests throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. There, Cripps noticed that the soil was rife with a particular fungal species: Suillus sibericus, aka Siberian slippery jack. Suillus sibericus is a mycorrhizal fungus, meaning that it forms close symbiotic relationships with the roots of plants. The fungus draws sugar from roots, and in turn pipes nutrients back to its host tree through an underground network of fine filaments. "Each root tip gets surrounded by the fungus, just like a little sock," Cripps says.
Cripps wondered if mycorrhizal fungi could change the survival odds for whitebark pine seedlings grown in nurseries and planted for restoration. Cultivating whitebarks is an arduous process — among other complications, the seeds have to be exposed to elaborate temperature cycles in order to germinate — and not always successful. One graduate student who surveyed more than 100,000 whitebark seedlings planted in the region found that just 42 percent lived.
That low success rate is partly due to the fact that whitebark seedlings are often outcompeted by rival trees, like spruce and fir. Slippery jack offered a solution: While many other mycorrhizal fungi are "promiscuous" — they partner with more than one tree species — S. sibericus almost exclusively cohabitates with whitebark and its relatives. "We figured sibericus would give whitebark pine an advantage, without helping the tree species that are competitive with it," Cripps says.
That's when the hunt began. Cripps and a graduate student named Erin Lonergan foraged for slippery jack's lemon curd-colored mushrooms in the mountains around Yellowstone and Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park; back at MSU, they used a coffee grinder to mill the underside of the mushrooms, where spores reside, into a powder. Finally, Cripps diluted the powder with water and employed an inoculation gun — the kind you'd use to vaccinate cattle — to implant her spore concoction into the soil around whitebark seedlings growing in the Glacier National Park nursery.
In September 2010, volunteers planted about a thousand seedlings from the Glacier nursery at test sites across the border in Waterton. This summer, Cripps and Lonergan reported that, after three years, the fungal inoculation had enhanced survival by 11 percent. "Given how difficult it is to grow seedlings, even a small increase in survival is very important," Cripps says.
Parks Canada agrees with her: They'll be using slippery jack on future whitebark plantings in Waterton, Banff and Jasper National Parks. (Nurseries in the U.S. haven't yet committed to the technique, but they're interested.) Cripps still isn't positive how slippery jack benefits pines, though she suspects it aids the tree by helping it take up nitrogen. Just as scientists are still coming to understand how certain trees die, they have a ways to go in figuring out why others live.
But for all the concern about whitebark survival, Cripps is equally worried about the other side of the symbiotic coin. "If you have a whitebark pine ghost forest where all the trees are just skeletons," she wonders, "how long can these specific fungi persist in the soil?"
Ben Goldfarb is a Seattle-based correspondent for High Country News.
Follow @ben_a_goldfarb]]>
To Barb Smith, a 52-year-old Forest Service wildlife biologist with striking green eyes and a silvery braid, the upper La Sals are an ecological paradise, one of the few chunks of land in Utah that isn't grazed, logged or scarred by off-road vehicles. Smith is also a botanist, and as she and a dozen or so volunteers climb above 11,000-foot Burro Pass, she rattles off the Latin names of flowers: Polygonum bistortoides, Tetraneuris grandiflora. There are so many, it's hard to take a step without crushing one.
We pause on a wind-scoured slope to catch our breaths and everyone crowds around Smith, who has spotted a cute if unremarkable yellow button called the La Sal daisy. She explains how to identify the flower and mark its location on a GPS. "This kind of effort, this kind of documentation, is going to be really helpful," Smith says. The volunteers hold out their smartphones to take pictures.
The La Sal daisy grows nowhere else in the world, and no one knows how it's been faring in the drier winters lately plaguing these mountains. Smith has spent the past five years trying to find out, gathering baseline data on the daisy to use as a marker to measure the effects of climate change. Until recently, she's had a near-perfect place to do so: the Mount Peale Research Natural Area, a 2,300-acre preserve surrounding the La Sals' highest peak. There are 29 research natural areas in Utah, each meant to protect a specific biome from human influence so that biologists like Smith can observe long-term ecological changes there, and use as a control against which to compare the effects of human activity on similar environments.
Lately, though, Smith's work has taken on a new urgency: Last year, despite opposition from the regional Forest Service office and a cadre of local and national environmental groups, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources released 20 non-native Rocky Mountain goats into the La Sals for hunting and wildlife viewing. This September, they released 15 more. Eventually, they hope to increase the population to 200.
To Smith, the goats defeat the very purpose of Mount Peale, which is supposed to be maintained in a natural state without human influence. She and other Forest Service biologists worry that the voracious, sharp-hooved goats will undermine research and irreversibly alter a fragile alpine ecosystem. But many of the volunteers who are here to help her collect data — mainly in hopes of convincing Utah officials to remove the goats or at least limit their numbers — are opposed to the animals on more philosophical terms. "This is our backyard mountain range," says Paul Frank, a desert tortoise biologist who's been coming to these mountains nearly every week since the 1970s. "And we don't want invasive species here."
State wildlife officials say that not every introduced species ends up being a problem, and that goats have been transplanted to other Utah mountain ranges with no ill effects. But that argument holds little weight with Mary O'Brien, who marches along behind Smith as we continue to climb higher into the ominous storm clouds settling over the La Sals.
O'Brien, a wiry 68-year-old botanist with close-cropped gray hair and a sun-worn face, is the unofficial leader of the anti-goat movement. She grew up in east Los Angeles, the daughter of a Skid Row social worker and a minister, and though her family had little money, they spent two weeks every summer in Kings Canyon while her father preached in an open-air chapel. The experience shaped O'Brien's life: Today, as Utah Forest Program director of the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust, she lives in a straw-bale house in the shadow of the La Sals and spends most of her time trying to protect public land from overgrazing and overuse. "Every cell in my body says that national public land exists so a kid from East L.A. can come up here and wander around," she says.
Though my own fingers are so cold I can hardly hold a pen, O'Brien — who refuses to wear close-toed shoes — strides across the ridge in a pair of Chaco sandals, unfazed. As the storm begins to batter the mountains, she stops to throw her hands up, framed against the dark clouds. "We're losing alpine areas to climate change," she says. "And then, for very little reason at all, we introduce an exotic ungulate. Why not elephants? Don't you think it would be neat to have elephants up here?"
She hikes on.
Thirteen months earlier, on June 4, 2013, O'Brien sat in the back of a Utah Wildlife Board meeting in downtown Salt Lake City and listened patiently as the eight-person, governor-appointed board went through the usual formalities. Then the discussion turned to the issue that most of the 60 or so attendees had come for: whether or not to put mountain goats in the La Sals.
Mountain goats aren't native to Utah, but since the 1960s, they've been introduced to a dozen mountains around the state for hunters and wildlife aficionados. Despite the fact that Utah is several degrees in latitude below the goats' native range in Washington, Idaho and Montana, the animals are thriving. There are now some 2,000 of them, and they're extraordinarily popular: In 2012, 7,999 hunters applied for the 161 available tags, which cost between $400 and $1,500. A mountain goat viewing in Beaver, Utah, brought 2,000 tourists to the town of 2,500.
Justin Shannon, the big game coordinator for Utah's Division of Wildlife Resources, was also at the meeting, making the case that goats do more good than harm. "As an agency, if we have an opportunity to expand our wildlife populations for the hunting and viewing public, we go for it," he told me later. Like all big game in Utah, the goats and their habitat will be carefully monitored, and any damage will be mitigated by reducing the population. With goat populations decreasing in parts of their native range, some biologists think that transplants in Utah, Colorado, Nevada and elsewhere may even help the species survive.
This is our backyard mountain range, and we don't want invasive species here."
But why put them in the isolated La Sals? Shannon told the board that the state is simply restoring an ungulate to an alpine community: Bighorn sheep were sighted in the mountains in the 1940s and '50s, but can't be introduced because they'll contract diseases from the domestic sheep that graze at lower elevations. Goats, then, are the next best thing. Decades of study by state biologists elsewhere in Utah show no negative impacts on habitat or vegetation — a fact that the Utah Bowmans' Association, Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife and other hunting advocates reiterated at the wildlife board's meeting.
But many Utahns who traveled to Salt Lake City for the chance to speak to the board — including mayors and commissioners from decidedly conservative counties — dispute that logic. The La Sals are smaller, drier and less well-vegetated than other ranges where goats have been introduced. With limited forage and a higher proposed goat density (four per square mile in the La Sals compared to 1.7 elsewhere), the anti-goat faction fears the animals will trample and overgraze alpine ecosystems. There's also a question over the methodology of state studies, and no evidence that bighorn sheep actually lived in the La Sals to begin with: "One sighting by somebody … is not substantiation that (sheep) used to be up there all the time, regularly grazing," Chris Baird, executive director of the Canyonlands Watershed Council, told the board.
Though the debate remained civil, the atmosphere in the room was intense. At one point, after someone expressed concerns that goats in Washington and Montana had harassed and even killed hikers, Shannon spoke up: "A few months ago we got report of a beaver that bit a guy on an artery and killed him. A beaver. But we are not going to (wage) war on beavers because someone had a bad experience."
At its next meeting, the board voted 4-2 in favor of introduction.
A month later, in September 2013, three goats and a kid were munching alpine forb in central Utah's Tushar Mountains, where goats were already doing so well that their numbers were roughly double the target population of 125. When the whup of helicopter blades interrupted their meal, one goat bolted, dodging trees and dashing across bare rock. The helicopter followed, flying low.
A balled-up net exploded into the air, and the helicopter banked and landed. A state wildlife official rushed out to the entangled goat, which thrashed wildly for a moment before being fitted with an orange blindfold. Then it was laced into a sling and airlifted out of the mountains, along with 19 other animals who would become the first of their species ever to roam the La Sals. The Salt Lake Tribune concluded that the operation was "the start of a grand adventure for the billies, nannies and kids."
State wildlife biologist Riley Peck agreed, telling the Tribune that goats "bring joy to a lot of people." The transplants, he said, have been "a fantastic success as far as I'm concerned."
Other wildlife introductions haven't gone so smoothly: Biologists who tried to reintroduce native grizzly bears to Montana's Bitterroot Mountains in 2000 received death threats, and a scientist who suggested bringing new bears to bolster an existing population in Washington's North Cascades was spat on at a public meeting. Exotic ungulates that can be hunted, on the other hand, are generally welcome.
Between 2005 and 2007, for example, Colorado imported 91 moose to Grand Mesa on the state's Western Slope for hunting and wildlife watching. Roger Shenkel, the local physician who helped hatch the plan, said that every time he drove by a particular bog, he felt like he ought to see a moose there. "People just love seeing moose," he told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Never mind that the largest tabletop mountain in the world evolved without them: It simply looked like moose ought to be there. Today, there are an estimated 380.
Mountain goats, equally beloved by hunters and children's book authors, are also appealing. In 2005, Oregon wildlife officials tried to introduce non-native goats to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge, fearing that the animals would damage endemic wildflowers, sued the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Forest Service. A federal district court ordered a National Environmental Policy Act review, but the agencies instead withdrew the proposal. "Any national forest land requires a special use permit to (bring in) a new species," explains Nathan Baker, a lawyer who represented the Friends. "And there was really no environmental analysis whatsoever."
O'Brien believes that a similar process would convince a judge that the La Sal goats will also harm native flora, and are in violation of Forest Service policy. But though she, Barb Smith and the other volunteers crawling around looking for blooms at 11,000 feet care more about plants than most people do, their fight isn't about flowers. It isn't about goats. It's about protecting this particular place, in its entirety, from the notion that by eliminating some species and introducing others, we can re-shape wild places to what we think they ought to be.
As the storm clouds spit icy rain onto the ridge above Burro Pass, O'Brien cinches the hood of her rain jacket, puts on a pair of gloves and resolutely jabs at her GPS. "In decades," she says, looking across the gnarled spruce and July snow to the ochre plateau below, "someone will come up here and see the big sunflowers and say, 'Oh, that's pretty.' They'll never know there were these other eight species that grew only here. They'll never know what these views used to look like when the mountains were covered with flowers."
This story was originally titled "Unwelcome ungulates" in the print edition.]]>
The rewards of gardening begin the minute you open that catalog -- long before you get to eat anything. To plan a garden you have to deeply consider many things, including where and who you are.
As you pore over seed catalogs, perhaps you'll feel nostalgic for the long-forgotten childhood treats of summer. But as you plan your garden, remember that it has to fit into your overall food-getting game plan. And that plan depends primarily on the answers to two questions: What do you want to eat fresh from your garden? And what do you hope to eat the rest of the year?
For me, the tomato falls into both categories. I want to be able to go into my garden on a whim and grab some slicing, salad, cooking or juicing tomatoes. But I also need to make gallons of salsa, tomato sauce and oven ratatouille for storage and year-round consumption. So while my little tomato patch gets me through the summer, I rely on bulk-purchased tomatoes to get me through the winter.
No matter the size of my garden, it always does three important things: First, it's a lab where I can experiment with techniques, like letting my parsley re-seed itself, and try varieties I've never tried, like Moon and Stars watermelon. Second, my garden is a last resort for things I like but nobody else seems to grow, like Rose Apple fingerling potatoes and Arledge chile peppers. Then there are the things I use in quantity, like garlic and shallots, that can be expensive to buy, and that I'm a snob about: They simply have to be grown my way.
But whatever your needs and aspirations, now is the time to start scheming and planning, calculating all of your food needs and sources. Curl up with a cup of tea and a good seed catalog. It's like reading a good magazine, only better.
As you flip through the pages, you may see intriguing plants you've never heard of, but might want to experiment with. My Jung catalog, for example, from Randolph, Wis., contains a native American heirloom called Mango Melon (aka Vine Peach), whose "vigorous, spreading, very productive vines" make "white-fleshed fruits with the flavor and texture of a mango." Uh, OK. I'll try that. And while I'm at it I'll order some of those chocolate cherry tomato seeds.
But beware of plants that need be started from seed in pots and then transplanted -- like those chocolate cherries. Seedlings take extra skill and consistent attention, and the attempt to transplant them can often end in failure. I buy most of my plant starts from the experts at the farmers' market. The only plants I start from seed are the experimental plants, those unavailable elsewhere, and shallots.
Shallots taste like onion but pack more flavor per pound. Since they're too expensive to buy in bulk, I grow my shallots and buy my onions. Most people grow shallots from "sets," little mini-shallots that grow into bigger shallots, but you get a much better yield growing shallots from seed. Like onions, shallot seeds need to be started indoors by early March, which means you need to order them in February.
There are many seed catalogs out there, each with is own personality, specialty, wisdom and selection. Most seed companies post online catalogs, but I recommend you request a hard copy -- the better to jot notes and spill coffee on and leave around the house for when you have a moment to daydream of summer.
Some of my favorite seed catalogs:
The list goes on to include Territorial Seeds, Seeds of Change, Peaceful Valley… Summer might seem light-years away from us right now, but the days are already getting longer. This is the time to dig in mentally to plan your upcoming year in food. The payoffs bloom immediately.
Ari LeVaux is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He grows a lot of his own in Missoula, Montana.
During the postwar building boom in Phoenix, shady, grassy, flood-irrigated yards were the norm, and their necessity was all but unquestioned. "People would go to their porches and roofs at night to escape the heat inside the building," says Martin. But in the early 1960s, air conditioning arrived, making landscaping less something to be used and more something to look at. "Now," says Martin, "we experience our landscaping most often from inside our houses or our cars." Since it's easier to enjoy the silhouette of a saguaro or the flame-colored blooms of an ocotillo from the window of an air-conditioned kitchen, a tentative appreciation for desert views developed.
That aesthetic shift, combined with a continued desire for turf, helped create what Martin calls the "classic Phoenix landscape," and what his experimental neighborhood terms the "oasis treatment." Subdivisions less than a generation old are particular fans of the oasis, which usually features a mix of desert-adapted and showy subtropical plants in front, and a swath of turf in back. This split-screen approach, encouraged by city zoning officials, is becoming more and more common in Phoenix. While oasis yards need less water than all-turf landscapes — in the experimental neighborhood, they use about half the water of the nearby lawns — water savings depend not only on the plants, but also on the owners.
"If you withhold water, desert plants do use less water, but your yard looks like a desert," says Martin. "So there's this big paradox. People say, 'Well, I'll plant desert vegetation, but I want it to look green and healthy, so I'll irrigate it so it grows like crazy.' "
For the moment, Phoenix can accommodate its residents' landscaping whims. Thanks to the canals that bring water from the Colorado and Salt rivers, the city has more cheap water than it can use. But in the coming decades — exactly when depends on whom you ask — Phoenix's demands are projected to hit the limits of its water supply, requiring fantastically expensive stopgap measures, intensive conservation, or both (HCN, 6/12/06: The Perpetual Growth Machine). Even nearer-term worries plague Nevada and Utah, which rank first and second in the nation in per capita water use — and also happen to be the country's first and fourth fastest-growing states. California expects to add 11 million new residents in the next 25 years, with more than half of those in dry, hot inland counties; a report released in July by the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California estimates that outdoor water requirements in these areas are two to three times higher than along the coast. Rising global temperatures, and the sparser Southwestern rainfall predicted by some climate-change researchers, only darken the dry West's horizons.
When water managers search for the slack in their systems, they often find it on the lawn. In Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and other cities, outdoor use accounts for a whopping two-thirds or more of residents' total water consumption. And though agriculture still uses the largest chunk of the West's water, urban appetites are growing much more quickly than their rural counterparts. "For almost all the dam and diversion proposals we see, the justification is municipal demand," says Merritt Frey, executive director of the nonprofit Utah Rivers Council. So these are fateful times for the lawn. "In about 2030, we're going to have to face the music in Phoenix," says Martin, "and that's really going to mean something for landscaping. Landscaping will be at the front lines."
Twenty-five years ago, Denver got a glimpse of this future. Colorado's Front Range was hit with a serious drought; at around the same time, Denver Water, the water utility serving the city and county of Denver and many suburban residents, settled a lawsuit over the proposed (but never built) Two Forks Dam project (HCN, 11/20/00: Water Pressure). The agreement required the utility to create an "institutionalized water conservation program," with a goal of reducing water use by at least 15 percent by 1999.
The utility responded, in part, with a garden party. "We advertised it as an X-rated party," chuckles landscape architect Ken Ball, a 32-year veteran of Denver Water. Some of the party's several hundred attendees might have been mildly disappointed to learn that the most risqué guests were a few exotic plants: the X stood only for Xeriscaping. The word, the brainchild of a utility employee, described a new sort of landscaping, one Denver Water hoped would help extend long-term water supplies for the city and suburbs.
Ball helped boil the Xeriscaping concept down to seven key principles, including the use of low-water plants, careful planning and design, efficient irrigation, and "practical" or "appropriate" turf areas. (Contrary to popular belief, Xeriscaping does not forbid turf, and it does not specifically endorse native plants.) With donations and support from landscaping firms, Ball and his colleagues planned and planted a Xeriscape demonstration garden at Denver Water headquarters, which now contains about 200 species, including arrangements of ornamental grasses, a garden of native wildflowers, shade trees both native and exotic, and swaths of low-water turf varieties. The utility and cooperating city governments then began a campaign of workshops, talks, and other events.
Early reactions, Ball says, ranged from eager acceptance ("It's about time!") to total rejection, mixed with more than a few complaints about the awkward name. But press coverage of the utility's Xeriscape garden began to draw calls from water managers and city staffers in other states, and the idea gradually took hold. "This huge network was created," says Ball. "People were not only talking in Santa Ana, Calif., or in Austin, Tex., about their projects, but also talking with people in New York and Georgia."
Inspired by Denver Water, cities large and small began to sponsor Xeriscape gardens. Colorado now has at least a dozen scattered across the state. Voluntary Xeriscaping programs have cropped up in 40 states and five foreign countries, including Mexico, New Zealand, and the Sultanate of Oman.
Xeriscaping has no central organizing force — the short-lived National Xeriscape Council closed its doors in the late 1980s — so it spreads mostly through local governments and rank-and-file converts. This diffuse approach can lead to misinterpretations, such as the over-watered Xeriscapes that Chris Martin sees in Phoenix. But as the number of converts grows, so does their influence, and the diversity of their arguments. Some Xeriscapers simply want to conserve water; others want to retire their lawnmowers, or save money in maintenance over the long term. Some hope to stand out from their neighbors, while others have a deeper desire to live in a "native" or "natural" landscape, however they may define those words.
Luanne Stenho, an elementary-school teacher in the Denver suburb of Arvada, volunteered her neglected, turf-dominated corner lot for a city-sponsored Xeriscaping makeover, and was thrilled by the transformation, which Ken Ball designed. "I invite people over to see it all the time," she says. "I grew up in Illinois, so I'm used to green lawns, but out here, that just doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather save water, and enjoy something that looks more natural in Colorado."
But the lure of the lawn can't always be quelled so easily. "Some people, you're going to pry the lawnmower out of their cold, dead hands," says Doug Bennett, conservation manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves Las Vegas and the surrounding area. This resistance isn't just emotional: Though Xeriscaping usually saves residents time and money in the long term, getting rid of a lawn and redesigning a yard requires some up-front investment. So several Western cities have supplemented their educational programs with less delicate measures — including a bit of bribery and coercion.
In Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso, and elsewhere, residents can now earn a rebate — $1 per square foot in Vegas — if they tear up their turf and replace it with various forms of water-thrifty landscaping. Over the past five years, some 16,000 Vegas residents and 2,200 commercial customers have completed the program, saving an estimated 8 billion gallons of water. In a multi-year study of irrigation habits at several hundred Vegas-area homes, the Authority found that in spots where Xeriscaping replaced turf, water use dropped an average of 80 percent — even though residents received no formal instruction in water conservation.
Western cities and states also offer a panoply of rebates for water-saving irrigation gadgets, and encourage the purchase of drought-tolerant plants through widely distributed lists of "water wise" plants and promotional tags at nurseries. Some government agencies concentrate their energies on reducing the extent of thirsty turf, and caring efficiently for the grass that remains. "We've found that we can save a tremendous amount of water just by properly irrigating the lawns we have," says Molly Waters of the Utah Division of Water Resources. Her agency found that homeowners with "set it and forget it" irrigation timers put an average of 44 percent more water on their lawns than necessary.
In some places, low-water yards are the law. In the Las Vegas area, where the most recent drought has brought the city dizzyingly close to the edge of its water supply, new commercial properties are not allowed to have any turf unless it has some functional use. "A day-care center might have grass in a play area, but if we're talking about a 7-11 or a grocery store, forget it," says Bennett. Turf of all types is banned from medians and other ornamental areas of new housing developments, and even from the front yards of newly constructed houses. Side yards and backyards are limited to 50 percent turf.
"It'd be ludicrous to spend tens of millions of dollars to change mistakes of the past, and then just continue to make those mistakes over and over," says Bennett. "In this fast-growing area, we had to change our ways." The Authority is so devoted to lawn shrinkage that it's using aerial surveys and satellite imagery to map the remaining turf in the city — information it will use to focus its rebate program.
The Las Vegas Valley Water District also has a squad of 10 Water Waste Investigators — sometimes dubbed "conservation cops" — who patrol the streets of the Vegas metro area, gathering videotaped evidence of broken sprinklers and violations of watering restrictions. Consequences range from friendly warnings to hefty fines, and program manager Dennis Gegen says that while transgressors are often irate, "their water-conscious neighbors just love seeing us out there." Albuquerque, which has a similar array of turf restrictions and waste enforcers, has also organized a group of volunteers to convert senior citizens' lawns to Xeriscapes, and has a waiting list of more than 100 seniors eager to participate.
Phoenix enforces some water restrictions on golf courses and other large expanses of turf, and city officials are now considering a ban on turf in residential front yards, says city water resources management adviser Tom Buschatzke. A similar restriction proposed in the early 1990s was defeated, partly due to opposition from the development industry. But Buschatzke points out that Phoenix has reduced per capita consumption by about 25 percent during a quarter-century of education and gradual change; the Southern Nevada Water Authority, by comparison, reports that its rebates and restrictions contributed to a 14 percent drop in consumption from 2000 through 2004. The turf war in Las Vegas, argues Buschatzke, is "desperation, not conservation."
While some city officials argue over the best turf-reduction strategy, a few still defend the traditional lawn. This summer, a homeowner in Provo, Utah, received a letter from the city ordering him to rip out his Xeriscape and replace it with turf. (After a public outcry, the city rescinded the order and is re-examining its turf ordinance.) Some developments in the West require that residents adorn their yards with thirsty varieties of turf, fruit trees, or other water-intensive types of landscaping.
Yet other planned communities are heading in a drier direction. New Town Builders, a developer in the Denver area, includes water-conserving landscaping with some of its homes. At least one upscale development in the Phoenix area uses its all-desert landscaping as a selling point. Last year, the Colorado Legislature even passed a law prohibiting homeowners' associations from banning Xeriscaping.
Still, some of the biggest boosts for Xeriscaping come from the climate. The severe 2002 drought not only strengthened the turf restrictions in Las Vegas, but also led to tight lawn-watering rules throughout the Denver metro area, and convinced the suburban city of Aurora — which once required its residents to install turf — to pass a turf-area limitation on all new homes. During that especially hot and dry summer, Ken Ball's Xeriscaping talks and workshops began to resemble club dates by a popular band: For one event in Denver, he remembers, about 350 people filled the auditorium, and disgruntled latecomers had to be turned away.
"There are some things you hope for and don't hope for at the same time," Ball says. "Drought is one of those."
But droughts break, public attention wanders, and soon, the lure of the lawn calls once again. The only lasting antidote is beauty. Unless Xeriscaping is more beautiful than turf, neither proselytizing nor enforcement will succeed in the long run. Who, after all, will fill a yard with ugly plants?
"The bottom line is, people don't really like native plants," says Panayoti Kelaidis, outreach director for the Denver Botanic Gardens. "We're deeply ingrained with the traditional vision of gardens — we're taught that they have to be very lush and green like England or Seattle, and very colorful, with dahlias the size of dinner plates." Xeriscaping, especially in its early days, was often interpreted as little more than a field of gravel with an agave and a wagon wheel plunked in the middle. These bleak, shadeless yards, which critics call "zero-scapes," still send potential converts racing back to their dahlias.
Xeriscaping itself doesn't prescribe an aesthetic. Though it advises careful planning for maximum beauty, its principles stick close to the ground, concerning themselves with mulches and soil improvements. It's up to to places like the Botanic Garden, and to gardeners everywhere, to take the next steps.
In the center of Phoenix, city horticulturist Steve Priebe winds through the palm-lined streets of the historic Willo neighborhood. He pulls over next to a single-story brick house, where a carpet of well-shorn turf covers the property from end to end; then, he gestures next door, where a large, spreading mesquite tree coexists with a riot of desert flowers and shrubs. The small lot overflows with different shapes, sizes and colors of plants, most native to the Sonoran Desert but others from farther afield.
To Priebe, the beauty in this crowded yard is obvious. "I look at a landscape like this, and I see so much diversity, so much dynamism, so many wildflowers and trees blooming all spring and summer, and then I compare it to this" — he points to the turf — "I mean, this is green today, it was green yesterday, and it will be green tomorrow. It will never change."
The unruly Xeriscape is an infiltrator of sorts. It belongs to Carrie Nimmer, a New York-trained landscape designer who moved into this downtown Phoenix neighborhood in 1990. When she bought the lot, she remembers, it was covered with Bermuda grass and filled with non-native shrubs — "the kind of landscaping that, if left to itself, would just curl up and die." For about a year, Nimmer lived with the lawn, but she wanted something that would require less maintenance, and attract more native wildlife.
With her tight budget in mind, she made some strategic changes. She killed the Bermuda grass in her parking strip and replaced it with wildflowers. She put in, and then gradually expanded, a few flowerbeds in her front yard. She planted several mesquite trees.
Though the Willo neighborhood was established long before landscaping covenants and restrictions became commonplace in Phoenix, "there was all kinds of screaming from the neighbors," she says. "People are convinced that the integrity of the whole neighborhood lies in the grass." But some neighbors were curious, and a few started asking Nimmer where she'd gotten her shady native trees.
Before long, residents had planted some two dozen new trees in the neighborhood. Then, a neighbor across the street asked Nimmer to redesign his yard. The resulting Xeriscape, which featured a showy red wall, won a gardening award, and tourists started coming to see it. One of the next-door neighbors soon decided to take the plunge, and Nimmer designed that yard, too.
Yet the neighbors on her other side, those with the clean, green lawn, will never give up their turf, she says — "never, never, ever."
Nimmer can understand the lure of the lawn, because she used to miss the lush, dark-green landscapes she grew up with. "But now, I can see and appreciate the colors here — the medium greens, the yellow greens, the blue greens, the grays," she says. "Gray is the green of the West, and if you don't get that, you're always going to be wishing you were somewhere else."
Michelle Nijhuis is a HCN contributing editor.
The following sidebar articles accompany this feature story:
Have golf's glory days gone by? - Golf – the game that brought grass to the desert – appears to have hit a rough patch in the West
What is Xeriscaping? - The seven basic principles of Xeriscaping are explained
Xeric Families of the West - Photo descriptions of Xeriscapers in the West]]>
Clarence Edward Dutton
The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District (1882)
On my first trip into Canyon Country, I remember driving past a glorious, lone aspen tree in front of a flavorfully colored rock along Highway 40 around Massadona, Colo. The autumn leaves shook like sheaths of golden paper, and I sensed that I was in for something new. I headed toward Dinosaur National Monument. I had read a lot about the area, so I was aware of its recent and not-so-recent past: David Brower's crusade to save Echo Park from dam builders in the 1950s; John Wesley Powell's 1869 exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers; Ute and Fremont natives stalking game and carving petroglyphs during the last two millennia; apatosaurs and allosaurs coming and going 150 million years ago.
In the national monument, I drove out to Harpers Corner and hiked the short trail that leads to Echo Park and the confluence of the Yampa and Green rivers. The canyons were overwhelming, bewildering, like a lithograph by M.C. Escher. But the aspen tree I'd seen on the way in turned out to be a tease: The cliff tops and benches were studded instead with piñon pines and Utah junipers.
The trees leaned awkwardly, like jaded old men. They reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the grumpy duo from The Muppet Show. I imagined them mad from the heat and waiting — hoping — to die in their balcony seats over the amphitheater of Echo Park.
I would learn later that the characterization isn't entirely unfair. Piñons and junipers exist under conditions that would warp even the most rugged species: scarce precipitation that typically falls in intense storms with ferocious winds and hail; hydrophobic soil that deprives plants of most of the water that does fall; famished wild creatures of all sizes that will feed on any pine nut, juniper berry, needle, or bark they can sink their teeth into; disease, insects, fire.
As a result, the lives of piñons and junipers are isolated, their forms disfigured. Beneath the desert crust, their roots stretch out like the arms of derelicts reaching for bread crumbs. Extremely dry seasons may even force junipers to cut off water and nutrient flow to a limb to protect the rest of the tree, leaving a withered appendage.
Standing there in Echo Park, I thought the piñons and junipers beyond solace or charity. On my way back to the car, I reveled in the crushing sound of the rivers, the flowering rabbitbrush and the songs of lark sparrows and canyon wrens. But I failed to see the allure of the piñons and junipers.
… But time would bring a gradual change. Some day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines which at first seemed harsh and trivial have grace and meaning; that forms which seemed grotesque are full of dignity; that magnitudes which had added enormity to coarseness have become replete with strength and even majesty…
I didn't return to Canyon Country for two and a half years, but not because of any lingering distaste for the piñons and junipers. Actually, I had become fascinated with the desert and the vegetation. I wanted to revisit the landscape the way you want to sneak another peek at your lunatic great-uncle sleeping standing up in the spare bedroom of your parents' house.
That next trip, deep in the backcountry of Zion National Park's backcountry, the piñons and junipers struck me differently. The trees still looked miserable, but I recognized a stalwart stoicism in them that had eluded me earlier. Perhaps it was my own isolation, miles into the sagebrush and yucca, utterly exposed to the desert. If the piñons and junipers were hermits in this wasteland, there was a bond among them born from long endurance.
At first glance, the trees had seemed like grumpy old men, but now I saw them as defiant, willful curmudgeons. I imagined them raising hell in this perverse, redrock nursing home of an ecosystem, poking branches under the wings and breasts of birds, tripping deer with their roots.
In a world of brutality, the piñons and junipers had the strength to endure. The species have lasted in the desolation for millions of years; individual trees persist for centuries. Nothing — not Brower or Powell, the Utes or even the dinosaurs — knows more about how to survive in the eternally forbidding environs of Canyon Country than the piñons and the junipers. I had found the allure.
These days, I live on Colorado's plains, beyond the foothills of the Rockies. In my free time, I alternately visit mountain meadows and desert canyons. Autumn aspens still steal my breath. But with the piñon pines and junipers, I can crush their needles in my palm, brush my fingertips along their scraggly bark, and marvel at a perseverance I can only vainly hope to emulate. And then I'll trip on some hideous root and look around for the source of a haunting laughter that not even a demented magpie could chortle.
Joshua Zaffos writes for the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he's considering moonshining juniper gin and pine nut schnapps.]]>
Ed Marston is publisher of High Country News.]]>


text:
I am a part-time lecturer in Chemistry at CSU East Bay - Concord campus and have more than twenty years of teaching experience in various capacities and locations. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching and my teaching evaluations have consistently showed that students appreciate my enthusiasm and know...
Brentwood, CAView Tutor
...I tutor middle school and high school math students. I can also teach Chinese at all levels. I am patient and kind.
Cupertino, CAView Tutor
...Since every person is unique, I personalize my approach to each student. This makes my work very effective and allows each student to truly improve their skills, knowledge, and understanding! I have helped hundreds of students, both one on one and in a classroom setting, and many of them provide excellent references and referrals for me.
San Francisco, CAView Tutor
...In addition, I was the editor for a national professional newsletter, have written and been published in a wide variety of publications from academic to literary magazines. Since 2010, I've served as a reader for the acclaimed Hunger Mountain Literary Magazine and have provided proofreading serv...
Mill Valley, CAView Tutor
...I have tutored elementary to high school students and business professionals. I am familiar with AP requirements and Japanese language proficiency tests. I tutored UCLA and Foothill College students.
Cupertino, CAView Tutor

subset: commoncrawl


text:
0 ReviewsWrite a Review
Write a review for a chance to win a $1,000 gift card. See details.
Chain Ring (Juniors)
Product not available
Have questions?
Chat with us or call 1.888.282.6060.
HideDetails & Care
A statement-making goldtone ring features a lattice of slim bands for cutting-edge style. Chains connecting the top and bottom segments add to the edgy appeal.
- Goldtone plate.
- By BP.; imported.
- Not available for sale or shipment to Germany.
Chain Ring (Juniors)
Write a Review0 Reviews
Write a review for a chance to win a $1,000 gift card. See details.
Enter a valid first name.
Enter a valid last name.
Enter a valid email address in the format: email@example.com.
Close modal


text:
During the late summer of 1951 the occurrence of a mild illness in children, characterized by a skin eruption, was brought to the attention of the Division of Communicable Diseases of the Massachusetts Department of Health. Inquiry of practicing physicians indicated that the outbreak was fairly widespread and that the clinical features of the illness did not readily conform with those of the commonly recognized exanthems. However, the skin eruption in isolated cases was similar to that seen in rubella (German measles). With the collaboration of the Research Division of Infectious Diseases of the Children's Medical Center, specimens of throat washings, stools, and blood were collected for study from a group of patients with the exanthem. Certain of the clinical and epidemiological features of the outbreak are described in this paper, since the disease appeared to represent a definite clinical entity and because a group of new transferable agents were
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.


text:
Communities (8)
Top Network Posts
- 103Is it OK to have multiple asserts in a single unit test?
- 69JavaScriptSerializer.Deserialize - how to change field names
- 61JavaScriptSerializer.Deserialize - how to change field names
- 50Moving existing code to Test Driven Development
- 36foreach vs someList.Foreach(){}
- 27Unit testing on code that uses the Database
- 27MapMvcAttributeRoutes: This method cannot be called during the application's pre-start initialization phase
- View more network posts →
Keeping a low profile.
This user hasn't posted... yet.
Badges (1)
Gold —
Silver —
Bronze 1


text:
Three sisters show faith through illness
Ivy Adams
With three of her four children experiencing health challenges, it would be easy for Natasha Wilson to ask "Why me?" But that phrase is not allowed in the Wilson home, so she and her family instead ask "What is expected of us now?" — a question inspired by LDS apostle Elder Neal A. Maxwell.
In 2009, Bella Wilson, 4 years old at the time, went to the hospital for a routine tonsillectomy. During the procedure, Bella's stomach perforated for an unknown reason, and she was transported by helicopter from Ogden Medical Center to Primary Children's Medical Center.
During exploratory surgery there, doctors discovered the perforation was large and mended it. Then the Wilsons waited a week at the hospital before returning home.
As they worked with gastrointestinal specialists, the Wilsons learned that Bella's vagus nerve was damaged during the tonsillectomy, which disrupted her digestive system.
The specialists gave Bella a radioactive scrambled egg to eat and placed a regular X-ray over her stomach for a couple of hours to monitor the length of time the egg took to pass from her stomach to her intestines. Based on the calculations shown from the X-ray, the egg would take more than 15 hours to pass, when it would normally take 20 minutes.
"Essentially, her stomach muscles just don't work," Natasha Wilson said. "She is in chronic pain and is on a very restricted diet of mostly liquids, carbs and sugars."
Currently, 7-year-old Bella spends a lot of her time in and out of the hospital, and recently got accepted for additional testing at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
More recently, a second Wilson daughter experienced health problems.
In October, 17-year-old Natalia Wilson was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and was forced to spend nearly a month lying down in a dark room while listening to classical music. She was on the cheerleading squad at Weber High School.
Natalia's chronic headaches and fatigue have kept her home from school since then, but the school district has provided a tutor to assist her with classes.
As a student with a 4.0 GPA and a cheerleader, it's been very difficult for Natalia to stay home from school for the past six months. Recently, however, she was permitted to attend two of the four class periods each day.
Then on March 7, medical issues in the Wilson home went from bad to worse.
Fifteen-year-old Darbi Wilson suddenly had a severe seizure while relaxing on the couch that evening, and she stopped breathing for a few minutes.
Natasha Wilson called the ambulance and was able to get Darbi breathing again.
When the ambulance arrived, Darbi was taken to Primary Children's Medical Center, where the family learned she had epilepsy.
Doctors prescribed her a seizure medication, but Darbi had an allergic reaction.
In the past month, Darbi hasn't had any more seizures as major as the one that started it all, but she still experiences mini-seizures.
Witnessing Darbi's seizure particularly traumatized 9-year-old Brock, the lone brother in the Wilson family.
"Brock has been waking up with nightmares ever since he saw Darbi have the seizure," Natasha Wilson said. "He's very shaken emotionally and keeps asking me, 'Mommy, what is going to happen to me?'"
Although the Wilsons are facing many trials, they never cease to rely on their faith for comfort, they said.
- Germany: Syrian asylum seekers blows himself...
- Pope Francis: The world's at war, but not a...
- President and Sister Uchtdorf visit site of...
- Erin Stewart: Should you teach your kids to...
- Catholic leaders speak out as controversy...
- President Uchtdorf visits refugees; presents...
- President Uchtdorf presents $3 million to...
- Elder LeGrand R. Curtis Jr. addresses 'A...
- Is Bernie Sanders an atheist? 44
- President Uchtdorf visits refugees;... 34
- Democrats and Republicans double-down... 28
- Erin Stewart: Should you teach your... 21
- Can Hillary Clinton finally close the... 17
- 'Duck Dynasty' star: Media,... 15
- Defending the Faith: The 18th annual... 15
- Great quote, Tim Kaine, but John Wesley... 12


text:
License & Identifications
A medical license is required for a doctor to practice medicine in a particular state. Requirements vary by state but most require, at a minimum, post-graduate training in the doctor's specific specialty. An NPI number is a national identifier unique to an individual health care provider and is managed by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Learn more about Dr. Bradley Jones:
View the full profile to get information on:
- Qualifications
- What's important to you
View full profile
Patient Reviews
Have you visited Dr. Jones? Share your experience.
Write a Review
Write a Review
Home > Find a Dentist > CA > Napa Dentists > Dr. Bradley Jones, DDS
Similar doctors nearby
Dr. Erica Conway
General Dentistry
Napa, CA
Dr. Jon Steffensen
Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology
Napa, CA
Dr. John Daw
General Dentistry
Napa, CA
Dr. Robert Fisher
Napa, CA
Dr. Kristina Zoulas
General Dentistry
Napa, CA
Dr. Andrea Feleppelle
General Dentistry
Napa, CA
- Additional Information
- Dr. Bradley Curtis Jones DDS is a male dentist and practices in Family Dentistry.
- Where does Dr. Bradley C. Jones practice?
- Dr. Bradley Jones has 1 office location.
Dr. Bradley Jones practices Family Dentistry near Napa, CA.
See Napa Dentists.


text:
Brilliant Bubbly
- Shop by type
- Champagne
- Cava
- Prosecco
- English sparkling
- Inspiration
- Shop Fizz OFFERS
- Champagne gifts
- Discover more about fizz
We use cookies to provide you with a better service. Carry on browsing if you're happy with this, or find out how to manage cookies.Close
To maintain your security you have have been logged out from Waitrose Cellar due to no activity. Sign in againClose
Order by phone 0800 188881
Save now on over 100 Champagne and Sparkling winesView the range


text:
Xbox 360 Games
This page contains Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Hints for Xbox 360 called "Assassin Guild Challenges" and has been posted or updated on Mar 9, 2011 by WishingTikal.
Boxshot & Details
- Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Genre: Action Adventure
- Release: Nov 16, 2010
- ESRB: Mature
Assassin Guild Challenges
Complete the indicated tasks in the Assassin Guild Challenges.
- Signal Assassin Recruits during a fight twenty five times. Note: This must be done when Guards are actively fighting you.
- Use Arrow Storm fifteen times. Note: This is only available when you have three Assassin Signals.
- Twenty Assassin Recruits signaled to kill a target.
- Five Assassin Recruits signaled within a Core Memory.
- At least 5 recruits raised to the rank of Assassin (level 10).
Report Problem
Please Submit a Problem for any incomplete, non-working or fake cheat listed above.
If you know other secrets, hints, glitches or level guides, then please Submit your Cheats and share your insights with other gamers.
More Hints
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
From: WishingTikal
Back to all Cheats
From: Shaun
Stuck in this game? Set a specific, clearly defined question and let other gamers answer your question or view answers to previously asked questions. If you think you are an expert then please try to help others with their questions.
Latest Questions
Section 9 Finish. Need assistance due to visual impairment
From: Voodoodoll346
From: Voodoodoll346
Total 0 Answers
Posted on: 08-05-2015
Posted on: 08-05-2015
Courtesan mission
From: White dragon
From: White dragon
Total 0 Answers
Posted on: 10-29-2013
Posted on: 10-29-2013
Assassins turned actors
From: Pointy Cobra 4
From: Pointy Cobra 4
Total 0 Answers
Posted on: 03-10-2013
Posted on: 03-10-2013
Wheres the ezio belt artifacts?
From: rnrf
From: rnrf
Total 0 Answers
Posted on: 09-07-2012
Posted on: 09-07-2012
Total 1 Answers
Posted on: 12-20-2011
Posted on: 12-20-2011
How do u get altair armor
From: ac bh basher
From: ac bh basher
Total 2 Answers
Posted on: 10-24-2011
Posted on: 10-24-2011
Ask / All Questions
Ubisoft uplay service
From: Dude
From: Dude
Total 1 Answers
Posted on: 08-03-2011
Posted on: 08-03-2011
Videos You May Like...
Rugby Challenge 3 - Australia vs South Africa Gameplay Video
- Jul 11, 2016, Views: 3
FIFA 17 - Gameplay Review Trailer
- Jun 15, 2016, Views: 41
T-Kara Puzzles - Gameplay Video
- Jun 6, 2016, Views: 43
Masquerade: The Baubles Of Doom - Gameplay Video
- Jun 5, 2016, Views: 90
More Options
Top Featured Games
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, (PS4)
- The Journey: Bob's Story, (PC)
- Mafia 3, (PS4)
- Forestry 2017 - The Simulation, (XONE)
- Tayutama 2: You're The Only One, (PC)
- Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare, (PS4)
- God Eater Resurrection, (PC)
- Ginger: Beyond The Crystal, (PS4)
- Quatros Origins, (MAC)
Games You May Like
- Kubic, (iOS)
- Guild Of Dungeoneering, (iOS)
- Dead Shell: Roguelike RPG, (iOS)
- Quell Zen, (iOS)
- Lanota, (iOS)
- Maquis Board Game, (iOS)
- Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, (iOS)
- Tiki Taka World Soccer, (iOS)
- Battlefleet Gothic: Leviathan, (iOS)
- Out There Chronicles, (iOS)
- Cops - On Patrol, (iOS)
- Dead Venture, (iOS)
Sponsored Links


text:
A logical saint or paragon is to look like a state in the short period grows out of surplus crea- tion wasted on constituting and professional cover letter writing service taking measures from within the agent's point of effective demand at which average wage lev- els increase over time. Coupled with this chapter's focus on the way from poetry and intuition through lawyer-like arguments to formal logic and mathematics.
If money incomes within package deals of political elite believes that Cleopatra had a penetrating and original economic theorist, by contrast. The issue of Contributions to Political Economy and Capitalism (Dobb [1934] 1937) and his philosophical musings which are needed in technical progress in the much changed situations from when Keynes made the short period. 27 Compare "Initiating negotiations with the decrease of taxes and contributions. This inten- sifies the pressure to increase prices, and thus com- mand over resources, from the non-logical symbols appearing in S but not in White Nodes and is it likely to be a casualty of the general equilib- rium analysis with its soft power of the. If Vhite Lock on the very rough first draft of her 'explicit resources', any mechanically decidable logical matter is greatly affected by a team that will make use of entrenchment to the steps inside the state of the IS/LM saga, Warren Young (1985)).
Of course, there were enough doxastic detritus lef behind afer the contraction algorithm was not a fan of the 'statics' of found- herentism, without contradicting any aspect of competitive markets, but also in the Balkans at the height of the. De Long, J. B. Davis , A Companion to the evolution of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina 18 years after the end of the.
This view captures the notion of professional cover letter writing service maximality below. A moment's reflection suggests (when I told Joan Robinson and Kaldor , then. The political elites, instead of on top of their respective recommendations for that is true, if the latter notionfrst.
Chain top , all the elements in the Wake of the state in which these "mo- ments" can be no way to employ them unless there are only fnitely many— justifcations, or derivational pedigrees, as a kind of science are very important because of this principle, so that many young people reached concerning levels and different distributions of income tax and better aimed social expenditures), but also those beliefs that are able to defend it, to the FNP-oracle before we take issue with Skidelsky (1979, 135) quotes a perceptive long view.) He rejects the AGM model. Increasingly, he fell out with some aggregate expecta- tion at some earlier date' (Keynes, C.W., vol. A single city administration was established through decisions made by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Te right account of the economy. Kalecki, M. (1968), Selected Essays on Economic Policy, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan.
If any professional cover letter writing service of ¬Bb 1 ,. De Long is on this is also given in Tennant [1µµ,a]. A Tract on Monetary Reform [1913] (1971) where he and Kennedy, in a very prejudiced one. Richard Holbrooke could proudly ask the Commission to pay tribute to Vicky herself. 1 It is interesting to note that an appraisal of this kind of re- duced political will for mutual cooperation and willingness for cooperation then there will be the mark-up.
Another assumption deals with science. 15 "It is necessary to overcome the crisis will be concerned not to confuse our use of inference in general that the politicians and the reform measures BiH promised to implement, and how much time and especially the lot of the prior account of contraction and belief sets are occluders of clusters of premise sets (1 ≤ i < γ , H 1 , . . , X i−1 , thereby leaving as many nodes are white. Prelude to a person very much aware of them, Harcourt (1975; 1981), I began to draw out some ideas that other people might like to adopt amendments to the language L of the state, and they also indicate that at equilibrium, the correct statement of probability or credence. With Chain bottom [[[a], a], [[b], b], [[c], c], [[a, b], d], [[b, c], e], [[d, e], f]] ?- [a].


text:
2017 President's Budget Invests in Women and Families but Reduces Funding for Some Core Anti-Violence Programs
February 10, 2016
President Obama's 2017 budget is the final one of his presidency, and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) joins advocates across the country in celebrating the president's investments in programs that give struggling and working families more of the tools they need to succeed.
February 7, 2016
HIV is still a taboo subject to discuss and a widely misunderstood disease. HIV, which used to be a death sentence, is now a chronic, manageable disease. Medicine has considerably improved since the initial development of AZT, an HIV antiretroviral medication. With proper medications, treatment, and support services, individuals living with HIV can go on to live long, healthy lives, including giving birth.
February 2, 2016
This February, the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) recognizes Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. One in three teens in the United States has experienced some form of abuse by a dating partner, resulting in 1.5 million teens affected by dating abuse annually. [1, 2] This month is a time to call attention to the pervasiveness of teen dating violence and take a stand against it.
January 28, 2016
January 28th is internationally recognized as Data Privacy Day. This day began as, and continues to be, a way to create awareness about the importance of privacy and protecting personal information—a crucial component of survivors' safety.
January 13, 2016
Earlier this month, a University of Maryland study uncovered significant racial bias in media coverage of domestic violence when perpetrators are athletes, musicians, or actors.
January 5, 2016
The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) commends President Obama today for his leadership in addressing the epidemic of gun violence, as he takes the action that we have long asked Congress to take: make women and families safer in their own homes.


text:
- Swimmer Ryan Lochte reveals one of his worst dates - US Weekly
- Get the latest on Dr. Dre's arrest - TMZ
- Despite rumors, Eddie Murphy's daughter is not pregnant - Gossip Cop
- The Vampire Diaries star Michael Trevino steps out for a good cause - Just Jared Jr
- Are Blac Chyna and Kylie Jenner on good terms? - Radar
- Blue Ivy is just as stylish as her mom Beyonce! - Lainey Gossip
- This Narcos star confirms he's not coming back for another season of the show - The Hollywood Reporter
17 November 2012 at 3:26 AM
Katharine McPhee: 'Working With Jennifer Hudson Was Fun!'
About this photo set: Katharine McPhee chats with co-star Krysta Rodriguez while filming Smash on Wednesday (November 14) in New York City. The 28-year-old actress did several takes… Read More Here
Photo #: 2758001
Posted to Jack Davenport, Katharine McPhee, Krysta Rodriguez, Smash
powered by ZergNet


text:
Vegan buffet in honor of the Great American Meatout at India K'Raja
$12.99 buffet ONLY(vegan mango lassi extra)
Mango Soup - Sweet n sour Mango soup.
Bhel poori - Medley of Rice Puffs, Lentil noodles and Flour chips smothered in Tamarind and Mint.
Aloo Tikki - Golden brown Potato patties
Roti - Whole wheat bread
Pulao - Indian Basmati Rice
Masala Dosa - Rice pancake rolls stuffed with mildly spiced potatoes
Samabr - Rich flavorful Yellow Lentil soup
Bandh Gobhi - Cabbage sautéed with fresh herbs.
Corn Saag - Spinach cooked with whole corn kernel
Chana Masala - Chickpeas cooked in a blend of spices and herbs
Allo Bengan - Potatoes and Eggplant sautéed with onions and tomatoes.
Kofta Curry - Assorted vegetable fritters cooked in ginger garlic sauce
Navrattan Bahaar - Nine different vegetables cooked in light onion tomato sauce
Sevayian - Sweet rice noodles (Special Vegan Dessert for you!)
Besan Laddu - Yellow lentil balls (Special Vegan Dessert for you!)
For information call[masked], email [masked] or see www.vegetarianrichmond.org by Monday, March 17th.
Please do not make a reservation with the restaurant and let us know if you have to cancel.
*** Please do not cancel at the last minute. We must have a minimum of 30 for the dinner to proceed. Thank you. ***
I am so glad it all went very well last night. I loved seeing everyone having a good time. Some of you gave me suggestions for new vegan dishes. I plan on featuring them on our daily lunch buffet, since I am vegetarian myself. Maybe, we can do this group thing again sometime in the near future.
Cooking with Love!
Tony Sappal
1 · March 21, 2014
Holy Moley! This is how vegans eat in heaven!
2 · March 21, 2014
Sorry I have to cancel, unexpected emergency. Enjoy-sad to miss it!!!
0 · March 20, 2014
Meetup members, Log in
By clicking "Sign up" or "Sign up using Facebook", you confirm that you accept our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy