#Stop Soil Erosion

[queen-boudicca]

Me when doing my environmental science homework, at every available opportunity:

#wish there were a class discord or a chill teacher so i could share it #fr though I'm like “oh we're talking about freshwater? hey did you know that agricultural runoff is causing accelerated eutrophication?” #and that a lot of the runoff is bc of erosion caused by the destruction of ecosystems and their vegetation that would've kept soil in place #and the runoff is mostly compromised of fertilizer and bacteria and pesticides from the agriculture and sediment from the eroded land #and that crop irrigation is so inefficient that literally 40% of irrigation water never reaches the crops #and don't even get me started on the FUCKING CORN SUBSIDIES #god those fucking corn subsidies #“hey boudicca what's the worst policy choice the us government made in the 1930s–40s?” #“was it American isolationism? maybe increased militarization? the garbage treatment of women and minorities?” #wrong! it was not stopping those fucking corn subsidies #(this is a joke obviously those other things were worse) #(I'm not actually saying this silly little agricultural practice was worse than Japanese internment don't worry) #but i AM saying that at some point they should've fucking phased out those goddamn corn subsidies #do you wanna know why California grows so much corn even though it's an incredibly water intensive crop and California is dry as shit? #I'll give you three guesses #anyway sorry for rambling my point is fuck industrial agriculture #agriculture #described

[sassmill]

K I’m over the atmospheric river now

#can the rain stop? #we always tell visitors that there used to be a river going through where the parking lot is now #but it’s back #the parking lot is flooded #the river path is flooded #the soil erosion from light rain already shows you where the riverbed was #but now it’s like an actual creek again #so that’s concerning #climate change isn’t scary at all and everything is fine #museum musings

[reasonsforhope]

"Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favor of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertilizer, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Using better farming techniques to store 1 percent more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigaton gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.

The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30 centimeters of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organization that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images, and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.

“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertilizer, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier...

Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.

Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend meters into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers."

-via The Grist, July 8, 2023

#agriculture #sustainable agriculture #sustainability #carbon emissions #carbon sequestration #livestock #farming #regenerative farming #native plants #ecosystems #global warming #climate change #good news #hope

[headspace-hotel]

Proposed logging project in the Daniel Boone National Forest (South-Central Kentucky, USA)

I found out about this recently and Ive seen barely any discussion or attention about it in real life or on the internet, so hopefully I can attract more attention

The USA Forest Service is planning to log 10,000 acres of the Daniel Boone National Forest near Jellico Mountain, near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The plan includes around 1,000 acres of clear cutting.

We need mature forests to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere. This is disastrous from a climate change perspective.

The excuse being given (apart from the obvious economic incentive of logging) is that the tract is mostly "mature forest" and that the forest needs to have a "diversity of age classes" for wildlife. This is total bullshit, since less than 1% of old growth forest in the Eastern USA remains, and an 80-year-old forest is still incredibly young. This type of reasoning is greenwashing.

To make matters worse, the planned logging is on mountain tops, which will cause huge amounts of erosion and possible floods and landslides that endanger the people who live in the valleys below.

Kentucky experienced a deadly flash flood in the eastern mountains that killed 40 people last year. Forests help stop flash flooding by absorbing rainfall in a dense layer of roots and soil, draining it slowly into waterways; without them, mud and rainwater goes rushing straight into narrow mountain gullies rapidly, causing dangerous floods.

Mud and sediment rushing into streams also kills fish and aquatic life that need clear, clean stream water.

Kentucky has one of the most biodiverse freshwater ecosystems in the entire world, with only a couple states next to it having more freshwater species. Kentucky's forest streams have fresh water fish, crustaceans and other species found nowhere else on Earth.

The Southeastern USA has the most diverse freshwater life of any place on Earth, the most salamander diversity of any place on Earth, and the Appalachian Mountains are a global hotspot of biodiversity, considered one of the world's most biodiverse temperate deciduous forest habitats.

It is crucial that we begin building the old-growth forests of the future NOW!

Logging these forest tracts will facilitate invasive species to take over. Mature forests form buffer zones against invasive species. The forest will never grow back the way it was; it will be infected with Kudzu, Autumn Olive, Honeysuckle and other invasives that take advantage of the destruction and prevent the normal process of forest succession from happening as it should.

If you live anywhere near this area, talk to everyone around you about this, send them the links above and encourage them to do the same themselves.

Talk to your friends, your neighbors, people at your church, everyone you are in contact with or speak to in your day to day life. Tell them about the risks of flash flooding and landslides and the importance of preserving mature forest land. Any environmental clubs and organizations you know of, tell them as well.

Most people haven't even heard this is happening, and that's how they get away with it.

Public outrage protects priceless habitats all the time, so TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Tell people you don't know, even. Call and email organizations and people that might be interested, until you run into someone who has an idea of what to do. That's how change happens!

#boost #kentucky #conservation #logging #protect our forests #climate change mitigation #usa

[turtlesandfrogs]

One of the things I think about a lot is productivity comparisons between conventional and unconventional agriculture. Mostly because that's the first question you get asked when you talk about anything that's outside the norm*, but, on what metric are we measuring? Per acre? Per hour worked? Per cost of input? Are we measuring yields of product or dollars earned?

This question also, to me, rings of fear. Fear of food shortages, which are really a problem of greed & distribution, not the world's capacity to grow food. If we were really worried about calories though, I think we'd at least switch to pastured animals instead of sending so much corn and soy to livestock (for any non-farmers out there, you do not get nearly the calories out of a chicken or pig that you put in- you get much less**). Or we would put more effort into making cities great places to live so we stopped turning farmland into suburbia. Or we would be much more concerned with how to prevent erosion & loss of arable land. But we don't, and we're not.

I also think of the complexity of non- conventional farming, and how instead of it being a return to the past, it actually relies on new information and methods***.

Take the plot of land that I'm working to make into a market garden. It's soil is, from a farmer's perspective, crap. It's gravely, sandy, very little organic matter. If I were to farm it conventionally, I'd basically have till to open the soil and kill weeds, and then provide all of the plant nutrients through fertilizers, which would cause the plants to kick out their symbiotic fungi, leaving them vulnerable to pathogenic fungi, and more dependant on me for water. There would also be bare soil everywhere, increasing evaporation & providing plenty of opportunities for new weeds. My costs would be very high, paying for fertilizers, pesticides, & herbicides, and I would have to water, a lot. It probably wouldn't be at all economically feasible to grow food on this plot using conventional methods.

Now, I look at it and say, I'm going to do no-till. I look at the hard, weedy, depleted soil and there's no way a seed is going to be able to come up through that. But, I'm not just doing no-till, because I'm not looking at it from a conventional mindset and just trading out one practice. I'm doing basically everything different from above.

Instead of tilling, I'm laying down a thick layer of mulch, to shade out the weeds, increase soil organic matter (increasing the amount of water and nutrients the soil can absorb & good on to), and feed the soil ecosystem. By the time spring rolls around, the soil underneath will be much better, but I'll still add more compost in most cases.

Instead of fertilizers I've had to pay for, I'm using mulches that I got for free from my gardening work & composts made for free from restaurant kitchen wastes****. I'm going to use over crops, plants that fix nitrogen and also serve as perennial hosts to beneficial soil fungi, which will also form symbiosis with most of my crops, increasing their resistance to pathogenic fungi while also providing them with increased access to water and soil minerals.

Instead of bare soil, there will be mulches and cover crops every where. Instead of monocrops & pesticides, I'll be intercropping which will help by hosting beneficial native insects that will chow down on aphids and other crop pests.

From this framework, there's an upfront investment of effort and planning, but farming this land now seems feasible.

And the thing is, each of those choices is backed up by research. We know so much more now about soil and nutrient cycling and how it actually works than when conventional ag really got started. We know so much more, and so many practices are new, so growing non-conventionally isn't a step back into the past of how things were grown.

But at the same time, it's not exactly completely information either- other cultures have different ways of growing food crops, and if you broaden your concept of what cultivating plants looks like, there's examples everywhere. We're just studying it now and providing it scientifically.

*and I honestly think that it's a result of the extractive mindframe that comes from being the decendants of colonizers. Just look at the different perspectives between many western foragers ideas and Indigenous peoples' relationship with the land.

** chickens are one of the most efficient, with a feed conversion ratio of 1.6, which means for every 1.6 pounds of food you give them, you can expect the chicken to gain 1 pound (cows are over 4 pounds of feed to pound of live weight, and pigs are 3 to 4ish). That's the whole bird though, counting all the parts we don't eat- guts, feathers, bones, etc. Even so, a pound of chicken food has over 1300 calories, and is about 20% protein for starter/grower, where as a pound of chicken has about 500 calories and about 30% protein (for dark meat, you get fewer calories from white meat). I'm not saying everyone should give up meat, but I am saying that the amount of meat in mainstream diets has increased dramatically, much of it comes from cafos where animals are fed on grains & legumes, and if we're measuring productivity and yield per acre because we're worried about feeding the world, this is a huge factor. Look up how much of the corn & soy crop goes to actually directly feeding people.

*** from a western, colonizing prospective

**** is this a particular boon from my particular circumstances? Yes. But everyone has their own challenges and resources, there is no cookie-cutter solution to all agriculture, everywhere. You have to find the solutions that work for you.

#thoughts #permaculture #gardening

[sasusakucoded]

Team Taka is trying to find information on the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki. It's frustrating for everyone, especially for Sasuke, knowing that Kumogakure is able to hide the classified data from outsiders.

Nonetheless, his team continues to search for anything significant.

Sasuke: Ask around but don't hurt civilians.

Suigetsu: You know full well that we won't get any information using that tactic.

Sasuke: Then what do you suggest?

Suigetsu: Maybe terrorize the people? I really don't know. *chuckles*

Karin: *hits him* Are you dumb? That's the easiest way to blow our cover!

Suigetsu: Cover?? We're wearing Akatsuki cloaks. Do you think we don't look criminal enough?

Jugo: You two, stop. Let's just go and ask around. Maybe we should separate from each other.

Sasuke: Right. Let's meet again after an hour.

The three agree and they all disappear.

After an hour..

Karin: Really sorry, I didn't get anything—

Suigetsu: That's because you really look like a villain. *laughs*

Karin: Shut up!! *hits him* Why? Did you get anything at all?

Suigetsu: Of course!! I'm an accountable member of Team Taka, that's why!

Sasuke: Is that true? Because I also didn't get much information. I only learned that he's really strong.. As expected from a jinchuriki.

Suigetsu: Ugh. Maybe we should rethink about the team's leadership like—

Karin: Take that back!! Take! That! Baaaack!! *collars him*

Suigetsu: Relax!! I'm just joking!! Put me down, Karin!

Sasuke: Enough of that! I really couldn't care less.

Karin: *lets go of him*

Suigetsu: Okay.. Maybe we should hear from Jugo first.

Jugo: You're really proud of your intel, huh?

Suigetsu: Obviously.

Jugo: Well, I don't have anything. The people here are very cautious.

Suigetsu: Such a lost cause. *sighs* Hear me out..

Jugo: Go on.

Suigetsu: Are you ready for this juicy info?

Karin: Yes.

Suigetsu: Are you sure?

Sasuke: Yes.

Suigetsu: Are you—

Karin: We won't freaking wait! Sasuke, put him under genjutsu!!

Suigetsu: Hey, no need to rely on violence!! Fine.. Well.. I found out that he aspires to be the world's greatest rapper!

Sasuke: SHANNAROOOOOO! *almost punches him*

Suigetsu:

Karin:

Jugo:

Karin: *whispers to Jugo* What did he just say??

Jugo: Sha— something..

Karin: You're saying something, Sasuke?

Sasuke: *clears his throat* Forget that.

Jugo: Apologize, Suigetsu. He's red in anger.

Sasuke: /thinks/ More like red from embarrassment. Good thing they don't have any idea.

Suigetsu: S-Sorry, Sasuke! B-But what's the problem? That's such a good intel—

Sasuke: It's useless. What will we do with that info? *sighs* We should keep going and not waste our time here. Whatever he may be, we must do our mission and succeed.

Karin: Agreed!

Jugo: Agreed!

Suigetsu: *opens his mouth* Hey, that's rude!! Wait for me!! *runs behind them*

---

Fast forward to the current time..

Sasuke's old team is having a picnic with him and Sakura.

Sakura: Ahh, why is it so hard to fish today?

Sasuke: Right. I think there was some erosion that happened and it affected the flow of water.

Suigetsu: Why did we even decide to fish when we all can't—

Karin: *whispers* Shut up!

Sakura: What if I try to hit and remove the eroded soil?

Sasuke: I guess that's okay given that no other marine organisms will be affected.

Jugo: I agree with Sasuke. Consider the other organisms as well.

Suigetsu: Ahh, you two are too soft!

Sakura: Okay, please move backwards.. SHAANNAAROOOO!

Karin: *holds her mouth*

Jugo: *gasps*

Suigetsu: So, the decade-long mystery has been solved!!

Sakura: *happy because it worked* Hm?

Sasuke: What do you mean?

Karin: We've always been wondering what that word— What was it? Sha—

Sakura: Shannaro?

Karin: Yeah, that one!

Sakura: Oh, it's just my expression when I'm annoyed or too excited.. *giggles* What about it?

Suigetsu: Sasuke mentioned it before.

Sasuke: *sweats*

Sakura: Really, Anata? *blushes* When was this?

Jugo: It was a long time ago.. When we were still Team Taka..

Sasuke: Okay, enough of that.. Let's continue—

Suigetsu: Ah, that's why it looked like you were taken aback of what you said at that time!

Jugo: You were thinking about Sakura.

Sasuke: I just blurted that out. It wasn't intentional—

Sakura: So, you also used that expression, Anata? I thought you find it annoying..

Sasuke: It's not annoying.

Suigetsu: He just missed you, I guess.

Sasuke: Suigetsu.

Suigetsu: It's okay, you know!

Jugo: Yeah, just admit it, Sasuke.

Sasuke: I told you, it's not—

Karin: Sasuke, it's okay.

Sasuke: SHAAA— *covers his mouth*

Sakura: *laughs hysterically*

#sasusaku #sasusaku headcanon #team taka #from ask #ty anon #sscoded no 287

[pureamericanism]

Compared to ecologically and topographically similar regions of Europe or east Asia, the northeastern United States is unusually heavily forested. One might think "well, yeah, the U.S. hasn't been settled by agriculturalists for as long and is less densely populated, obviously there's going to be less percent land cleared for farms," but this is not so! Everywhere in the northeast, our forests rise from what were once old fields. In 1860, for instance, Maine was only 60% forested by land area. Today, that proportion is closer to 90%.

We owe our current landscape to two great waves (and several smaller ones) of farm abandonment. The first happened in the decades after the Civil War, when for various reasons* northeasterners (mostly from New England) packed up their pitchforks and decamped to the midwest. This had been going on before the war too, of course, but up until then it had not been in numbers enough that the northeastern farms stopped being worked. There was always a son or two left to till up more stones from the Vermont field. But that changed after the war, and the fields started to revert to oak and maple and pine. Indeed, much of the early formal scientific study of American forestry and ecology happened in these old Yankee fields and young Yankee forests, by outdoorsy young men from Harvard with names like a Lovecraft protagonist.

The second great wave was in the Great Depression and World War 2, when for various reasons** people from all the rougher sorts of terrain the east has to offer - from West Virginia to Indiana's Brown County to the Ozarks and back to the Catskills - left their farms to come down and seek work in the then-thriving industrial cities. Much of the hilly landscape of the east that had previously been dotted with small subsistence farms, full of exactly the barefoot gap-toothed hillbillies who captured the imagination of urban popular culture with their exotic poverty and folkways when they suddenly appeared in Cleveland, or wherever, in 1933.

These pulses of farm abandonment have left very specific patterns written in the ecologies of the northeast. For instance, the fact that the poor ridgetop farms that were once extremely common in Southern Ohio and Indiana were nearly all abandoned in the 1930s and '40s means that the forests that now grow there are uniformly approaching their first century (excepting, of course, where there's been logging in the meantime.) This is almost exactly long enough for the process of ecological succession to complete itself, and the forests to move into their mature phase.

And so you read books written in the '50s, '60s, or '70s about these areas, and you notice how common early successional species are, everywhere chokecherry and black birch. Whereas today the only evidence you may see of the forest's relative youthfulness is a few very large bigtooth aspens nearing the end of their lives, surrounded by tulip poplars and chestnut oaks that will endure for many years after all the aspens are dead.

*Young men returning from war with a restlessness and a desire to leave home again; those same young men posted far from home during the war and realizing just how awful the New England soil is, lmao; Republican government policy writtrn explicitly to favor small homesteaders heading west; the late 19thc. crash in agricultural prices (as, in a few short decades, the Great Plains, the Australian wheat belt, parts of the Kazakh and Siberian steppes, the plains of South Africa, and the Argentine pampas were all put under the plow for the first time, and during an era of global free trade) making many small farms entirely unsustainable.

**Years of erosion on fields carelessly laid out on steep terrain; the Great Depression making running a small farm, ah, difficult; economic modernisation making staying as a subsistence farmer a damn foolish thing to do; new roads and automobiles making fleeing to the city easier than ever; and the TVA and other federal land grabs displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

#Slightly scattershot post but that's why it's on tumblr and not somewhere more seruous #american history #Ecological history #economic history

[francology]

Coastal Guardians

Hello lovely reader! Before we get into this week's topic, I have something exciting to share HEHE .

I've had the opportunity to see some mangroves myself at Kuching Wetlands National Park last month! Also got to see dolphins but wasn't quick enough to whip out my camera to record. Overall, it was a nice break from staring at texts and numbers all day :]

If you're interested you might want to consider Borneo as your next holiday destination (specifically Sarawak).

ALRIGHT let's dive right in!

Mangrove is well-known as a salt-tolerant wetland species of tree that is easily identified with its aerial roots (Bahmanabadi 2022). It is a forest that is typically at the coast line beside land and sea. The weaken the force of waves and serve as a shielding medium, hence the nickname - Coastal Guardians. These unique ecosystems are primarily found in tropical and sub-tropical coastal regions (Bandh et al. 2023) and are considered the sole "blue carbon" forests, believed to have evolved approximately 114 million years ago (Bandh et al. 2023).

Protecting coastlines

In addition, they act as nature’s own sponges, retaining extra water to stop inland floods, releasing small droplets into the atmosphere to cool the temperature down (Expert Insights 2023). 

The mangrove ecosystem offers many essential environmental services, which include shielding coastline against wind, waves, and water currents; mitigation of damages done by hurricanes and tsunamis as well as soil erosion prevention and sediment accumulation (Expert Insights 2023).

In addition, mangrove forests reduce wave height by about 31% (Ahmad Mustafa Hashim, Catherine and Husna Takaijudin 2013), thus helping to prevent devastating floods that could otherwise damage homes, assets and infrastructure. In fact, several studies have shown that nearly 66% of the energy from waves is absorbed by the first one hundred meters of mangroves in a coastline (Mclvor et al. 2012; Menendez et al. 2020).

Supporting bio-diversity

Mangrove trees have unique aerial rooting systems that acts as nutrient cyclers and a breeding ground for fish and other marine life. The mangrove ecosystem has a huge biodiversity with many birds and other animal species. It also supports a unique community of fungi, microorganisms, plant species, with higher animals such as migratory birds (Kandasamy and Bingham 2001). 

Moreover, mangroves are essential nurseries to many marine animals such as shrimps, crabs, and different varieties of fishes. They serve as a vital interface between coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, providing support for a diverse range of species, including those from terrestrial, estuarine, and marine environments (Kandasamy and Bingham 2001). 

Mitigating climate change

Another remarkable feature of mangroves lies in their capacity to sequester carbon at a rate four times higher than that of rainforests. They draw in carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis which is stored within their biomass and sediment. In waterlogged mangrove habitats, decomposition is slowed down which allows it keep the carbon for longer periods of time (Chatting et al. 2022).

Even though we understand how important mangroves are for a healthy environment, they are facing a serious threat globally.

"My only wish now is that the government takes efforts to preserve the dwindling mangrove forests. They wrongly think developing forests is dead investment, that it fetches no returns. After decades of effort, people now realize the blessings these trees can bring. The mangrove trees in private lands also should be preserved.” - Kallen Pokkudan (Mangrove Man)

He was an environmental activist who was prominent in India’s mangrove conservation and was committed to conserving mangrove vegetation in Kerala region of the Indian coastline. His specialisation was to educate people about mangrove conservation and their significance in shielding coast regions from catastrophes including tsunamis and landfall hurricanes. These moves won Kallen Pokkudan recognition and respect as a defender of Indian mangroves. 

The latest findings from the Global Mangrove Alliance present a troubling scenario: 67% of mangroves have already suffered damage or vanished, and an additional 1% is disappearing annually. This ongoing pattern places mangroves in significant jeopardy of total eradication. An initiative taken by the Global Mangrove Alliance seeks to mobilise $10 billion in investments to reach their goal of increasing the mangrove habitat by 20% by 2030. These investments are intended to enhance the resilience of coastal communities and enhance the quality of life for an additional 10 million individuals through various restoration and conservation initiatives.

References:

Ahmad Mustafa Hashim, Catherine, SMP and Husna Takaijudin 2013, 'Effectiveness of mangrove forests in surface wave attenuation: a review', Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology, vol. 5, no. 18, pp. 4483 - 4488.

Bahmanabadi, Y 2022, Mangroves are powerful coastal guardians, Saratosa, viewed 14 October 2023, <https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/travel-and-outdoors/2022/11/mangroves>.

Bandh, SA, Malla, FA, Qayoom, I, Mohi-Ud-Din, H, Butt, AK, Altaf, A, Wani, SA, Betts, R, Truong, TH, Pham, NDK, Cao, DN & Ahmed, SF 2023, 'Importance of blue carbon in mitigating climate change and plastic/microplastic pollution and promoting circular economy', Sustainability, vol. 15, no. 3, p 2682.

Chatting, M, Al-Maslamani, I, Walton, M, Skov, MW, Kennedy, H, Husrevoglu, YS and Vay, LL 2022, 'Future mangrove carbon storage under climate change and deforestation', Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 9, no. 781876, pp. 1 - 14.

Expert Insights 2023, The vital role of mangroves in mitigating disasters, Tidal Basin, viewed 14 October 2023, <https://www.tidalbasingroup.com/the-vital-role-of-mangroves-in-mitigating-disasters/>.

Kandasamy, K and Bingham BL 2001, 'Biology of mangroves and mangrove ecosystems', Advances in Marine Biology, vol. 40, pp. 81 - 193.

Mclvor, AL, Möller, I, Spencer, T and Spalding, M 2012, 'Reduction of wind and well waves by mangroves', Natural Coastal Protection Series: Report 1, Cambridge Coastal Research Unit Working Paper 40, pp. 1-27.

Menendez, P, Losada, IJ, Torres-Ortega, S, Siddharth, N and Beck, MW 2020. 'The global flood protection benefits of mangroves', Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 4404, pp. 1 - 11.

WWF n.d., The global mangrove alliance: uniting to conserve and restore valuable coastal forests, WWF, viewed 14 October 2023, <https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/the-global-mangrove-alliance-uniting-to-conserve-and-restore-valuable-coastal-forests>.

#ecology #tropical #biotechnology #mangroves #entryoftheweek #science #yaymidsembreak

[happyk44]

Can I learn more about the freshwater babies of Neptune? their abilities, character, behavioral traits, and your original characters. It's so interesting, I want more.

Haha, sure! Let's start with the freshwater guppies! Some possible powers:

Creating and stopping rain

Advanced healing with water, so they have an easier time healing other people

Purifying any liquid they come across

Turning available fluids into water (reverse of the water into wine Jesus trick, lol)

Creating droughts (because droughts are oft linked to rainfall)

Obviously the stormy fingerlings can do all of the above as well, but the freshwater fry are the ones who are most instinctive to it, and vice versa. For example, with the rain - the stormchasers may have a harder time making it only rain without adding a turbulent element.

The non-saline alevins are typically more social, have softer vocal tones, and don't mind helping people. Not all freshwater is drinkable without treatment, so sometimes they're a little awkward upon first meeting, but consistent interaction can help make them palatable.

Where anger may be one of the more easily and commonly felt, and stronger emotion in the Poseidon kids and Neptune's mini tempests, it's less abrupt in the baby wells. They have a slower buildup to rage, tend to be more gentle. But when rage does hit them, it's a sudden downpour causing soil erosion and destroying crops. However, they're often more clear-headed than their volatile counterparts.

Under certain circumstances, they can become a vicious sea type of child, but it does not go the other way (storm into freshwater). Melpomene is an example of this! She started out as a gentle caring person, but childhood abuse pushed her into becoming a hurricane as a defense mechanism. She doesn't recall being potable, as a result. Of course, not all the potables grow into brackish waves.

They enjoy summer (Neptunalia!) the most. Mentioned before but in the past, they would travel from town to town at the peak of summer to help refill freshwater sources and clear up droughts. They'd do so by dancing and singing in honour of their father. On the day of the actual festival, they'd be revered and treated with utmost importance. As Neptune became more associated with the sea, this practice was seen less and less as they began to associate his offspring with undrinkable salt and became unnerved by their presence at a time when water was already lacking.

They're not the biggest fans of the sun though. Excess heat dries up water, and the sun blocks the rain clouds.

Like all Neptune and Poseidon children, they can be very stubborn (their father is represented by the bull after all). Even they have trouble in getting along with Jupiter's kids. Fresh water is reliant on being replenished by the water cycle, so the kids can be very "go with the flow" and chill. They get easily annoyed when people interrupt their flow, or if they feel they're being consumed faster than they can recover from (water scarcity, lol).

As for my OCs, I have a lot of them, haha. Currently I'm focusing on June's story but I've got a billion other things going on, plus writer's block, so the story itself is paused. Luckily it's pretty much outlined, but honestly if I don't get it all written out at some point I will probably explode.

Sometimes I ramble about my OCs (mostly Alex, I think 😂) and their stories in #happy talks about his stories, and you can scroll through goof posts in #oc shitposting. 👍

#this ask is really just me going how many puns and metaphors can i fit in to describe oceanic kids lol #i'd speak more on my OCs and the oceanic babies but rn i am. tired. and my brain hurts ha. so jsut gonna post as is and move along #seawavesglideacrossthesand #happy's asks #happy talks pjo #happy talks about his stories

[nagdabbit]

WRITE A BEAUTY AND THE BEAST AU, SHE SAID. IT'LL BE FUN, SHE SAID.

Anyhow. Please tell me some worldbuildy bits that aren't making it into the written story but are things you know to be canon in-universe.

LORE! WORLD BUILDING! MY BELOVED!

okay, so this one is small and i left it out of my past lore drops about why regal would have a nigel in the first place, and it's kinda vaguely alluded to but not fully. its pointless and it doesn't matter, except that it matters so much cuz its a thing that has exacerbated all of the shit that's flowed down from the mountain, and it's kinda one of the like. it was the keystone moment when the story got Too Big and became the heap of sadness it is today..

so, everyone knows the basic ag concept of fallowing. the idea of leaving land unsown for a season or so to help return vitality to the land to avoid having a shitty harvest, or in some cases to avoid having a surplus of crop that's gonna go to waste. also very common, and STILL IMPORTANT, in pasture grazing. very, very common farming technique in general, but p mush the default medieval times.

the use of cover crops also came into prominence at that time. cover crops are less about harvesting and more to manage erosion, soil fertility, pests and weeds, biodiversity and add a lot of nitrogen to the soil.

yuta and danny's village? they use neither of these techniques in their farming.

see, they have a mage to manage the fertility of the land. they have a bad season? oops, no they don't, nigel just has to touch grass and it's all better and everyone can eat. kings and counts may buy the services of a druid, so it's not an uncommon practice to have a magic man around, but regal having a war mage around to do a druid's work? suspect

so this is a town that either grazes away the remnants of old harvests, or burns it away, before planting the same crop in the same fields, with no healing time between.

so the curse? it wasn't just that it hit bryan and his people, it was an ecological disaster, and one that happened without the knowledge of the village below. the curse was cast, nigel was no longer in the business of keeping the land ripe, and over time that magic would fade. as the death rolled down the mountainside, the remnants of nigels magic would fade completely, and no one noticed until it was too late. by the time harvests grew worse and the drought dragged on, no one remembered a time before. no one thought to consult any records, see what they'd done before regal brought in a mage to keep things growing

all they ever remembered was burning, and when that stopped working, they kept on doing it because they didnt know any better

#asks! #a tale as old as balls #i love this shit i can always drop tale lore #drop of a hat honestly

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

illus: Steve Brodner

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Sept 21, 2023

The fight over how we conceive of our federal government was on full display today.

The Biden administration announced the creation of the American Climate Corps. This will be a group of more than 20,000 young Americans who will learn to work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience while also earning good wages and addressing climate change. 

This ACC looks a great deal like the Civilian Conservation Corps established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1933, during the New Deal. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for unemployed young men (prompting critics to ask, “Where’s the She, She, She?”) while they worked to build fire towers, bridges, and foot trails, plant trees to stop soil erosion, stock fish, dig ditches, build dams, and so on. 

While the CCC was segregated, the ACC will prioritize hiring within communities traditionally left behind, as well as addressing the needs of those communities that have borne the brunt of climate change. If the administration’s rules for it become finalized, the corps will also create a streamlined pathway into federal service for those who participated in the program. 

In January, a poll showed that a climate corps is popular. Data for Progress found that voters supported such a corps by a margin of 39 points. Voters under 45 supported it by a margin of 51 points. 

While the Biden administration is establishing a modern version of a popular New Deal program, extremists in the Republican Party are shutting down the government to try to stop it from precisely this sort of action. They want to roll the government back to the days before the New Deal, ending government regulation, provision of a basic social safety net, investment in infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.

Extremists in the House Republican conference are refusing to acknowledge the deal worked out for the budget last spring by President Biden and Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Instead, in order to pass even a continuing resolution that would buy time for Congress to pass an actual budget, they are insisting on cuts of up to 8% on discretionary spending that Senate Democrats, as well as Biden himself, are certain to oppose.

The White House has noted that the cuts the Republicans demand would mean 800 fewer Customs and Border Protection agents and officers (which, in turn, would mean more drugs entering the United States); more than 2 million women and children waitlisted for the WIC food assistance program; more than 4,000 fewer rail inspection days; up to 40,000 fewer teachers, aides, and key education staff, affecting 26 million students; and so on. 

House speaker McCarthy cannot corral the extremists to agree to anything unless they get such cuts, which even other Republicans recognize are nonstarters (those cuts are so unpopular that Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported today that Republicans are somewhat bizarrely considering changing their messaging about their refusal to fund the government from concerns about spending to concerns about border security). 

Meanwhile, the extremists are threatening to throw McCarthy out of the speakership. There are rumors that Republican moderates are considering working with Democrats to save McCarthy’s job, but Democrats are not keen on helping him when he has just agreed to open a baseless impeachment inquiry into the president in order to appease the extremists. 

“If you’d asked about two months ago I would have said absolutely,” Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) told Manu Raju, Lauren Fox, and Melanie Zanona of CNN. “But I think sadly his behavior is unprincipled, it’s unhelpful to the country,” he said.

As a shutdown appears more and more likely, even Republicans acknowledge that the problem is on their side of the House. Until the 1980s, funding gaps did not lead to government shutdowns. Government agencies continued to work, with the understanding that Congress would eventually work out funding disputes. But in 1980 a fight over funding the 1,600-employee Federal Trade Commission led President Jimmy Carter to ask Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti if the agency could continue to operate when its funding ran out. Civiletti surprised participants by saying no. 

Four years ago, Civiletti told Ian Shapira of the Washington Post that his decision was about a specific and limited issue, and that he never imagined that politicians would use shutdowns for long periods of time as a political weapon. And yet, shutdowns have become more frequent and longer since the 1990s, usually as Republicans demand that Congress adopt policies they cannot pass through regular procedures (like the 34-day shutdown in 2019 over funding for the border wall former president Trump wanted).

Many observers note that “governing by crisis,” as President Barack Obama put it, is terribly damaging and that Civiletti’s decision should be revisited. Next month’s possible shutdown has the potential to be particularly problematic because there is no obvious solution. After all, it’s hardly a surprise that this budget deadline was coming up and that the extremists were angry over the deal McCarthy cut with Biden back in May, and yet McCarthy has been unable in all those months to bring his conference to an agreement. 

Republicans appear resigned that voters will blame them for the crisis, which, honestly, seems fair. “We always get the blame,” Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID), a senior appropriator, told Katherine Tully-McManus and Adam Cancryn of Politico. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.” 

Meanwhile, the House extremists continue to push their vision for the nation by undermining the institutions of the government. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), today held what normally would have been a routine oversight hearing focused on policy, law enforcement, and so on. Instead of that business, though, Jordan and the hard-right Republicans on the committee worked to construct a false reality in right-wing media by attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland over his role in the investigation of President Biden’s son Hunter, begun five years ago under Trump. 

Glenn Thrush of the New York Times noted drily that “[m]any of the claims and insinuations they leveled against Mr. Garland—that he is part of a coordinated Democratic effort to shield the Bidens and persecute Mr. Trump—were not supported by fact. And much of the specific evidence presented, particularly the testimony of an investigator who questioned key decisions in the Hunter Biden investigation, was given without context or acknowledgment of contradictory information.”

Instead, Jordan and his extremist colleagues shouted at Garland and over his answers, producing sound bites for right-wing media. Those included the statement from Representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN) that the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually “good Americans” who brought “strollers and the kids.” Even as both Biden and Garland have prioritized restoring faith in the Justice Department after Trump’s use of it for his own ends, the extremist Republicans are working to undermine that faith by constructing the false image that the Department of Justice is persecuting Trump and his allies.  Their position was not unchallenged on the committee, even within their own party. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) defended Garland from their attacks, while Democrats on the committee went after the Republicans themselves. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused Jordan of making the Judiciary Committee into a “criminal defense firm for the former president.” 

Garland, who is usually soft-spoken, pushed back too. “Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” he told the committee. “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will add I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.”

“We will not be intimidated,” he added. “We will do our jobs free from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From an American #heather Cox Richardson #corrupt GOP #House Republicans #The DOJ #Merrick Garland #For the People #ACC #American Climate Corps

[brightgreendandelions]

oh, but the forest fires caused by the beautifully burning osmium-plushes-turned-meteorites cause forest fires, accelerating soil erosion around your city, and since all of the tetrapods are in your house they will be hopeless to stop it!

it was but a sneak attack!

oh no. i'm willfully unprepared to counter such an attack.

so i call upon the help of an educated and highly qualified soil scientist @nyxvero

#ask #anon #rock plushie #soil science

[headspace-hotel]

Is there something a lawnowner can do to de-compact their soil, or will they just have to wait for ecological succession to develop it?

Hmm...Planting things will likely require some digging or tilling, but apart from that I don't recommend breaking up what's already there too much. It will get better over time as plants establish themselves.

But the plants are the key part—if you try to aerate or till your ground and don't let plants establish themselves there, much will be lost to erosion.

Also: compost. Pile on the organic matter! Having plants there has the bonus of stopping it from washing away.

And of course, ants and small critters digging their holes aerates, too, so let those guys make their homes.

[leveragecreditrecovery]

The Media and Trump: A Dangerous Symbiotic Relationship

The media and Trump have undeniably played significant roles in shaping the political landscape and the state of democracy. However, their relationship has been far from constructive. In this article, we will explore the reasons behind Trump's reluctance to join debates and the media's failure to challenge him effectively. Both parties have contributed to the erosion of democracy, and it is crucial to address these issues head-on.

The Media's Love for Sensationalism:

The media, like a train wreck, thrives on chaos and sensationalism. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a focus on the negative aspects of humanity, neglecting the importance of highlighting the good. This trend has been decades in the making, with the media capitalizing on the ideal time in history to sow doubt in the minds of the vulnerable and neglected. Government, business, industry, and individuals have all played a role in perpetuating this cycle in the pursuit of power, money, and control.

Wealth Disparity and Questionable Leadership:

It is disheartening to witness the immense wealth disparity in our society, with a small percentage of the population holding more wealth than 90% of Americans. This raises questions about how unqualified, unpatriotic, and questionable individuals have been placed in positions of authority and influence by governments. Both sides of the political spectrum are to blame for this, as Trump himself acknowledged the Republican party's susceptibility to manipulation.

The Power of Ratings:

Trump has tapped into the power of ratings, which has become the lifeblood of media and the root of all evil. While money may be the driving force, it needs the soil of ratings to thrive. The media has inadvertently fueled the rise of Trump and those who aspire to be like him. As long as his antics bring in ratings, the media will continue to air them, perpetuating the cycle of train wrecks. This symbiotic relationship has allowed Trump to make a mockery of everything he touches, further endangering democracy and our way of life.

The Need for Media Course Correction:

The media, in all its forms, could have been a true ally for democracy. However, it has chosen chaos, misinformation, propaganda, disinformation, deception, and manipulation over truth, justice, the rule of law, ethics, and morality. It is disheartening to see that the media has nearly given up on humanity. The urgent question now is whether the media can course correct. Can it challenge those who have declared war on our democracy? Can it stop the ship from sinking, a ship for which it has drilled holes?

A Call for Serious and Adult Conversations:

While getting Trump to the debate stage may provide some entertainment, it is essential to challenge all those who are destroying our country and democracy. Blame falls on both sides, and it is time for a no-nonsense, in-your-face conversation about implementing real change and improving the lives of all citizens. Foolishness will not be tolerated. The media and the American people are ready to meet any challenges head-on. It is time to act, and the choice is yours, America.

Conclusion:

The media and Trump have had a detrimental impact on democracy. Their symbiotic relationship, fueled by sensationalism and ratings, has contributed to the erosion of truth, justice, and ethical journalism. It is crucial for the media to course correct and prioritize the values that underpin a healthy democracy. Only through serious and adult conversations can we address the issues at hand, challenge destructive forces, and implement real change for the betterment of all citizens. The time for action is now.

#democratic #democracy #rule of law #yonkers #day trading #whitehouse #biden administration #senate democrats #house democrats #we the people #election #new york #middleclass #workingpoor #full time working homeless #governing

[mariacallous]

Agriculture is a big source of emissions. In the US, about 10 percent of greenhouse gases come from livestock or crops—and for a long time, agriculture has lagged behind other sectors when it comes to cutting its carbon footprint. Since 1990, total emissions from agriculture have risen by 7 percent, while emissions from sectors like electricity generation and buildings have declined.

There’s a simple reason for this: Cutting emissions from agriculture is really hard. It’s not like the energy industry, which has readily available low-carbon electricity in the form of renewables. Reducing agriculture’s impact means making tough decisions about what gets farmed and how, and dealing with the notoriously tricky science of making sure carbon stays in the ground rather than being released into the atmosphere.

The US has started getting to grips with these tough decisions. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act included $20 billion to help farmers tackle the climate crisis. And in February 2022 the US Department of Agriculture announced $3.1 billion in funding through a scheme called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). The money was intended to fund projects that help farmers adopt more environmentally friendly ways of farming and create a market for what the USDA calls “climate-smart” crops and livestock.

According to the USDA, its plan has the potential to sequester 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents—the same as removing 12 million gasoline-powered cars from roads for one year. But some scientists are worried that the PSCS approach is the wrong kind of climate intervention. The government could be channeling billions of dollars to projects that are of uncertain benefit in terms of emissions—or, worse, actually end up increasing overall levels of greenhouse gases.

If the goal is to reduce overall emissions from agriculture, a good place to start is by figuring out where all those emissions come from. It turns out that over half of all agricultural emissions come in the form of nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas released when microbes in the soil break down nitrogen-based fertilizers. Overuse of fertilizer is a huge problem in agriculture, says Paul West, an ecologist at the climate nonprofit Project Drawdown. On top of being a huge source of emissions, excess nitrogen leaches into waterways, causing algal blooms.

Reducing the amount of fertilizer farmers use would be a big win. Remote sensors and machines can help farmers apply fertilizer only when and where it is needed, while smarter forms of fertilizers might reduce the amount of nitrogen that ends up digested by microbes. The crucial thing about these kinds of interventions is that they stop emissions being released in the first place, says Dan Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute. If you never put fertilizer on the ground, it’s impossible for microbes to turn it into planet-warming nitrous oxide. Getting smarter with fertilizer use is one of the biggest changes that US agriculture could make to its emissions footprint.

But fertilizer management plays second fiddle to a different kind of climate project in the PCSC. Of the 60 finalized projects for which the USDA has published summaries, only 12 mention nutrient management or fertilizer application. A much higher number of projects focus on cover cropping—a technique that involves covering fields with crops between harvests in order to slow soil erosion, capture carbon, and keep nutrients in the fields. Since planting cover crops takes time and expense, and can lower the overall productivity of fields, only a relatively small number of farmers use the technique. If the PCSC is successful, however, the number of farmers planting cover crops should shoot up.

Cover crops absorb carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into plant material as they grow, explains Deepak Joshi, an assistant professor at Arkansas State University and the author of a recent paper about cover crops. When the cover crops are harvested or left to rot on the soil, a lot of that carbon gets released back into the atmosphere, but a small amount can remain behind in the soil. If that soil remains undisturbed, then that carbon can potentially remain underground for years. Joshi’s meta-analysis focused on cover crops grown in cornfields around the world and found that, on average, cover crops increased carbon stored in the soil by about 7 percent.

So far, so good. But once you dive down into the details of Joshi’s study, things get more complicated. The research found that the amount of carbon stored varied widely, depending on location, cover crop type, plowing, and the amount of plant growth. A different review, this time examining cover cropping on US farms, found that, in lots of cases, fields with cover crops didn’t gain extra soil carbon when compared to fields that hadn’t been cover cropped. “In terms of climate benefit, it isn’t all that great,” says West.

One of the big limitations to cover cropping is that carbon added to the soil might eventually make its way back into the atmosphere. “What we find is that even where there is a build-up of carbon, once you plow those areas again you lose a lot—or all—of the carbon that has been stored up over time,” says West. If money for cover crops runs out, farmers may start leaving fields bare during off-seasons and plowing them more, which would mean a lot of that sequestered carbon would end up back in the atmosphere. And if the cover crops reduce the overall productivity of fields, there’s also the danger that the practice might encourage more land to be converted to agriculture, which is bad news for overall emissions.

Blaustein-Rejto and West both worry that the PCSC prioritizes sequestering carbon rather than stopping emissions from being released in the first place. One way to think about this is the difference between switching to an electric car today or continuing to drive a gas-powered vehicle while also planting a forest to sequester the carbon you emit. In both cases the overall carbon accounting may net out the same, but sequestering always carries the risk that the carbon might later be released if—for instance—that forest is replaced by a cattle ranch.

Robert Bonnie, the under secretary for agriculture for farm production and conservation at the USDA, says that criticisms of the PCSC aren’t entirely fair. “These are pilots. We’re actually going to go out and try some things. We don’t have all the information we need,” he says. He points out that a number of the funded projects do focus on fertilizer use. “We’re not scared of the math; we’re really interested in getting the math right,” he says.

Bonnie says that the real challenge is to persuade farms to get on board with climate-smart farming. A big focus of the project is to create a market for climate-smart crops and livestock, encouraging buyers to pay a premium for goods made in an environmentally friendly manner. A top-down regulatory approach might discourage farmers from taking part, he says.

In lots of the PCSC projects, the USDA funding is supplemented by money from food companies that buy beef, corn, soy, or other agricultural commodities. One PCSC project run by the Iowa Soybean Association includes $62.1 million in corporate payments from companies including PepsiCo, Cargill, Target, JBS, and Coca-Cola. This is a relatively new form of carbon accounting called insetting, where companies pay for carbon offsets within their own supply chains.

Insetting is rising in popularity, but it has a lot of the same problems as offsets, says Sybrig Smit of the NewClimate Institute, a climate policy and global sustainability nonprofit based in Germany. It might be difficult to assess whether insets deliver their supposed benefits, and sequestering carbon is still less desirable than cutting emissions at their source, particularly when it helps sustain industries that are bigger emitters of carbon. Livestock is the second-biggest source of emissions in US agriculture, so reducing consumption of meat and dairy products is an obvious way to reduce emissions, says Smit. “As a society we’re really scared to touch on our consumption patterns,” she says.

The USDA scheme is stuck in an awkward place. It is supposed to reduce emissions but seeks to achieve that in a way that keeps farmers on board and doesn’t fundamentally change the goods they produce. “We’re going to have beef production and dairy production for a long time to come. And our job is to figure out how to work with those producers to reduce the greenhouse gas impacts to the maximum extent we can,” Bonnie says.

In practice, that means that much money from PCSC will go toward farming soy and corn—a large percentage of which will end up as livestock feed or as ethanol for biofuels. Cover cropping is good for soil health, but its potential to lead to long-lasting carbon storage is uncertain at best. At worst, it could see the US avoiding the kind of fundamental changes to food production that could really bring emissions down.

[southwestern-witchery]

Wandlore: Tamarix ramosissima, AKA: Tamarisk, or Salt Cedar.

The science:

The Tamarisk, also called the Salt Cedar, is a shrubby, red barked tree native to some parts of Eurasia and Northern Africa. Tamarisk is known for sapping salt up from any water source near it into the soil around it, as its one of the only plants capable of surviving and thriving under those conditions. In the spring, it blooms a magenta, almost lilac pink in many places.

The Tamarisk tree was introduced to the Colorado River Basin in the late 1800s in an effort to stop soil erosion and keep trails clean. Unfortunately, the Tamarisk tree is Rhizomous, which means it can spread underground as well as through seed, and cuttings or fallen limbs from the tree can also root themselves. Accompanied by its tendency to increase the PH of the soil it lands in, the Tamarisk tree became a rapid menace to the southwestern ecosystem.

Because of this, if you take a river raft down the Colorado you are more than likely going to see hundreds or thousands of these trees along the banks. Places where native Cottonwoods or Willows would normally be are filled to the brim with salty earth and red tamarisk trees.

Luckily, there is a small glimmer of hope. The tamarisk beetle, a small golden yellow weevil, no bigger than the head of a pin, eats exclusively tamarisk trees. Careful introduction of the tamarisk beetle to these trees has begun to curb their expanse. Unfortunately, there are still precious few plants that can survive the salty soil the trees leave in their wake, and the thousands of dead trees alongside the river feel an awful lot like walking through a Grove of ghosts.

Ethnobotany and Mythology:

The tamarisk tree has a vast and ancient set of mythological and religious symbolism behind it. In its native range, the tamarisk tree has long been connected to death and rebirth through the story of Osiris's death in Egyptian paganism. When Osiris is killed, his body is hidden inside the trunk of a massive tamarisk tree, for Isis to find and revive.

This connection to hidden things is also noteworthy, as in the Iliad, Odysseus and diomedes hide some of their spoils from the war inside a Tamarisk. In another Greek myth, a young woman or girl is turned into a Tamarisk tree, along with her siblings. However, it should be noted that many diffrent women, girls, nymphs and goddesses turn into trees, plants and shrubs in mythology, and they are often mixed with each other at one point or another.

In abrahamic religions, many characters are said to gain important knowlage under tamarisk trees ( such as the ever present abraham) or have been buried underneath them (Samuel)

In Islam, they take on a more spiteful turn, as Allah converts the gardens of the saba people to Tamarisk and bitter fruits as punishment.

In the southwest, where they have taken root, they symbolize that same sort of spite as well as a stubbornness for life.

In both their native and invasive ranges, the tamarisk tree is used for making sturdy and durable goods. Things like furniture, wagon wheels, and boxes. The wood itself is beautiful, if occasionally difficult to work with. Medicinally, the tree has been used in traditional practices to treat digestive issues, gut problems, diabetes and dental issues to varying degrees of success. It has also been used in soaking and purifying baths well into ancient times, as its mentioned that gilgamesh's mother took a bath in a Tamarisk soak before sending her son and his partner on their quest.

The magic

Taking all of these sources into account, it's safe to say that the tamarisk tree would have a very specific arcane niche to fill: stubbornness, secrets, and toxicity. The protective aspects of the tree are numerous of course, but often come in unexpected ways. Wands or other foci made with Tamarisk would likely do an average job with standard protective magics, but astonishingly well at protecting those who are already dead, or secrets that one would wish to hide for eternity. These Foci will aslo do an excellent job with purifying Charms and intense purification rituals, perhaps even exorcism if done correctly.

It should also be noted that the high salt content of the Tamarisk tree is two fold: it will aid in its protectiveness, of course, but it may also be a sign that the owner of the foci in question may drive others away in their personal lives. They will be steadfast and stubborn, and good at what they set themselves to task over, but God's forbid they form a true lasting relationship with anyone who isn't exactly like them. This may present itself as a mild sort of closed mindedness at best, or outright hatred of others at worst. They may be xenophobic, religious zealots, or even simply abrasive. This isn't to say every person who possesses a tamarisk foci is an asshole in this way, but it would be fair to say they are more likely to hold their own opinions in the highest regard before any other.

These will be the people who work very hard at what they do, but never really make any real connections. The people you meet who will gruffly get the job done, but demand solitude or like minded individuals in order to work at all.

Let it be known that these individuals, no matter how strong they appear to be, will have at least one glaring weakness to them, and they may be extremely suseptable to failure if they confront it. Due to their stubbornness, this could very well be their downfall if they refuse help.

These foci will pair best with others who have connections to Tamarisk, and will likely pair worst with those who have willow, cottonwood, fruit tree, or other stereotypically sweet or less hardy woods.

#wandlore #hp headcanon #botany #ethnobotany #mythology #tamarisk #salt cedar #saltcedar #magic headcannons #Tamarix ramosissima