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Chico Mendes, Brazilian rainforest advocate, was born December 15, 1944.  Mendes was murdered three days before Christmas in 1988, the victim of animosity over his work to protect Brazilian rainforests from deforestation.

Francisco Alves Mendes Filho—always known as Chico—was born into a rubber-tapping family in the western border region of Brazil, in the state of Acre.  Rubber-tapping is the process of cutting shallow groves in a rubber tree and collecting the sap that oozes out of the wound.  Rubber-tapping began in the Amazon in the late 1880s, as uses of the sap as an industrial product became commonplace.  The sap was melted into round balls about the size of a basketball over an open fire by the rubber tappers and sold to local wholesalers to export to Europe and America.  The congealed sap—known as latex and later rubber—found worldwide use as the coating for waterproof clothing, insulation for electrical wires and the raw material of automobile tires.

The Brazilian state of Acre was the center of rubber tapping for many decades.  Acre’s unusually fertile soils grew rubber trees to larger size and at higher densities than elsewhere in the rainforest.  Mendes became a rubber tapper as a young boy, helping his family sustain a lifestyle based on tapping rubber, gathering Brazil nuts and subsistence hunting and farming.  Like others in the area, Mendes and his family were dependent on having access to large tracts of virgin forestland, guaranteed to them by Brazilian law.

But desires by the government to make the rainforest more productive led to misguided policies to give large acreages to ranchers who began cutting down the forest in favor of cattle-grazing pastures.  Mendes objected to this approach, and he organized labor unions of rubber tappers to fight what he considered illegal land grabs and logging.

As Mendes’ advocacy succeeded and grew, he organized peaceful protests—called “empates”—staged to prevent logging from occurring on local lands.  Along the way, he organized schools, medical clinics and other social improvement programs for rural communities, in concert with the progressive and liberal Catholic Church.  These activities gradually gained the attention of the U.S. conservation community, which was looking for charismatic leaders who could put a human face on the rainforest conservation message.  Chico Mendes fit the bill.  Under sponsorship of the Environmental Defense Fund, Mendes traveled to the U.S. and England to promote rainforest protection.

Within Brazil, he developed the idea of “extractive reserves.”  Rather than preserving the rainforest, Mendes opted for sustainable utilization, allowing rubber tappers and other rural residents to stay on the land and use it for traditional purposes.  He convinced the World Bank and other development agencies to include extractive reserves as an element of their programs.

However popular this idea was to conservationists, it was equally hated by land developers in Brazil.  On December 22, 1988, gunmen for an infamous Brazilian rancher and criminal shot and killed Mendes as he walked out of his back door to take a shower.

If the murder of Mendes was meant to stop efforts to preserve rainforests, it had exactly the opposite effect.  Mendes’ death made global news and thousands attended his funeral on Christmas day.  Extracted reserves are now a standard tool of conservation, and the nation of Brazil has adopted re-forestation, not de-forestation, as its official forest policy.

References:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies—8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, 255 pages.

The Baiji porpoise (Lipotes vexillifer) was a small freshwater aquatic mammal that lived exclusively in the Yangtze River, China.  On December 13, 2006, a group of scientists who had been conducting an intensive study to locate Baiji declared that the animal was extinct.

The definitive extinction of a species, of course, can never be totally confirmed, especially an aquatic species.  Because we cannot definitively survey every part of a large water body at one instant, the possibly always exists that a survey could miss some specimens of a species.  This particular survey, however, was performed according to exacting statistical methods using modern hydro-acoustic technology.

The Baiji has been known throughout recorded history in the Yangtze River.  It was a relatively small porpoise, about the size of an adult human.  It had a stocky body, with a long narrow beak.  Baiji generally lived in small groups of fewer than five individuals.  It was a predator, feeding on fish of many species and at all locations in the river.  Individuals generally lived in areas of slower current, such as eddies and the confluence of tributaries with the main stem of the Yangtze River.  It was the only species in its genus, the name of which translates as “left behind” in Greek, denoting the restricted range of the species.

It was called the goddess of the river in earlier generations, protecting the safety of fishermen and aiding their catches.  Unfortunately, accidental catches of Baiji during fishing for other species greatly reduced its populations.  This, along with the continued development of the Yangtze River for hydropower and river transportation, continued to drive Baiji populations lower and lower in recent decades.  The last confirmed sighting of a Baiji was in 2002.  The IUCN Red List categorizes the Baiji porpoise as critically endangered, but notes that extinct has already probably occurred.

The extinction of the Baiji represents the first extinction of a cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) at the hands of humans.  It is also the first extinction of a large mammal in the last fifty years.  But it is not likely to remain the last.  Another freshwater porpoise in the Yangtaze River, the Yantze River finless porpoise, has now been declared critically endangered as its numbers have fallen below 100.  And another small dolphin—the vaquita or Gulf of California porpoise—that lives only in the upper reaches of the Gulf of California is considered the next most endangered marine mammal.

References:

Arklive.  Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer).  Available at:  http://www.arkive.org/baiji/lipotes-vexillifer/.  Accessed December 13, 2017.

IUCN.  2017.  Lipotes vexillifer.  Available at:  http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/12119/0.  Accessed December 13, 2017.

Lovgren, Stefan.  2006.  China’s rate river dolphin now extinct, experts announce.  Natinal Geographic News, December 14, 2006.  Available at:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061214-dolphin-extinct.html.  Accessed December 12, 2016.

Turvey, Samuel T., et al.  2007.  First human –caused extinction of a cetacean species?  Biology Letters October 22, 2007.  Available at:  http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/5/537.short.  Accessed December 12, 2016

On December 12, 2015, the 197 nations that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change approved unanimously to proceed with the “Paris Agreement.”  The agreement represented a milestone in the word’s commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

In 1994, most nations in the world agreed to a collaborative approach to addressing climate change.  That agreement was called the UNFCCC—the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Since then, numerous related agreements have been established relating to various aspects of climate change, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.  Leading into the Copenhagen discussions, hopes were high that significant, binding action would be taken on climate change.  In the end, most observers considered the Copenhagen Accord a hollow victory.

That changed in 2015 at a meeting of the nations in Paris, France.  This historic agreement was stimulated by a bi-lateral agreement of the United States and China—the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, making up about 40% of worldwide emissions—that convinced others that together they could make a difference.  Although the Paris Agreement was created by acclimation on December 12, 2015, it required that 55 nations, covering at least 55% of worldwide emissions, ratify the agreement before it would take effect.  That threshold was reached on October 4, 2016, and the agreement entered into force 30 days later.  As of today, 170 nations have ratified the agreement.

The Paris Agreement includes the following specific items:

• The immediate goal is to seek changes in emissions that will keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
• A more ambitious goal includes attempting to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Centigrade.
• Individual nations make their own voluntary commitments to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, but these commitments need to be explicit, quantitative and monitored.
• Developed nations will contribute a minimum of $100 billion US to help developing countries reduce their emissions as their economies develop.
• Nations will work together to seek a peak in global emissions—and a subsequent long-term reduction—as soon as possible.

Most experts consider the Paris Agreement a major positive step in confronting the global impacts of increasing temperatures.  Most developed nations have joined the process with enthusiasm, recognizing that common action is needed and that a transition from a fossil-fuel economy is a necessary step in their further economic evolution.  Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister said the following:

“There is a clear moral imperative for developed economies such as the UK to help those around the world who stand to lose most from the consequences of manmade climate change. But by putting the UK at the forefront of efforts to cut carbon emissions and develop clean energy, we can also make the most of new economic opportunities. And by taking action to create a secure natural environment, we are fulfilling a duty we owe to the next generation.”

While former US President Barack Obama was a strong proponent of the Paris Agreement, current US President Donald Trump is not.  He has declared his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Agreement (under the terms of the agreement, withdrawal is not allowed until 2020).  Nonetheless, other nations of the world remain committed to the agreement, with French President Macron providing global leadership.  Many U.S. cities and major corporations have also pledged to continue acting in good faith with the ideas and ideals of the Paris Agreement.

References:

Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.  COP 15 Copenhagen.  Available at:  https://www.c2es.org/content/cop-15-copenhagen/.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

Domonoske, Camila.  2017.  So What Exactly Is In The Paris Climate Accord?  NPR, June 1, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/01/531048986/so-what-exactly-is-in-the-paris-climate-accord.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

May, Theresa.  2017.  It’s Britain’s duty to help nations hit by climate change.  The Guardian, 11 December 2017.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/12/theresa-may-uk-green-economy.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  2015.  Paris Agreement.  Available at:  https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/convention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Paris Agreement.  Available at:  http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

The United Nations has declared December 11 each year as International Mountain Day.  Celebrated since 2003, International Mountain Day recognizes the critical importance of mountain ecosystems for assuring the sustainability of the earth.

Mountains comprise about a quarter of the earth’s land surface outside Antarctica and are home to about 13% of the earth’s human population.  Mountains are much more important than those percentages, however, as they influence the resources upon which most of the earth’s ecosystems depend.  Mountains affect weather systems, creating both wet and dry ecosystems in their shadows.  Mountains are the source of 60-80% of the world’s surface supply of freshwater, which is cycled continuously due to the role of mountains in hydrologic processes.

Mountains are also the home for major sources of renewable energy.  Hydropower, which supplies about 20% of all electricity today, originates largely in mountains, where high-gradient streams are dammed to capture the kinetic energy of falling water. High winds that often accompany mountains are reliable sources of wind energy.  Mountains in dry tropical areas are also often major sites for solar power development.

Biodiversity is exceptionally high in mountain regions.  The compression of different habitat types as elevation changes means that many kindss of ecosystems are represented in a small geographic region and that pockets of unique habitats exist where special combinations of temperature, moisture, landform and exposure occur.  About 25 % of the earth’s total biodiversity occurs in mountains—but 50% of biodiversity hotspots occur there.  The alpine region, above the tree line, is especially diverse in unique plant species.

The vast majority (90%) of humans inhabiting mountainous regions live in developing countries.  Most live in poverty, occasioned by the isolation and low productivity of mountain ecosystems.  The local communities in mountain regions have evolved unique ways of life based on their native understanding of the local ecology, finding ways to grow food and produce exportable crops—coffee, honey, herbs, spices, dyes, medicine, cosmetics and handicrafts—to support their families.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization takes responsibility for organizing and promoting International Mountain Day.  A new theme is selected annually.  The 2017 theme is “Mountains under Pressure:  climate, hunger, migration.”  The theme recognizes that mountain ecosystems—and, consequently, mountain peoples—are highly vulnerable to climate change, climate variability, and climate-related disasters.  FAO is using the theme as the centerpiece for a global meeting on mountains in December, 2017, with the goal of generating a new approach to mountain sustainability.

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2017.  International Mountain Day.  Available at : http://www.fao.org/international-mountain-day/key-messages/en/.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

Spehn, Eva M., et al.  2010.  Mountain Biodiversity and global change.  Institute of Botany, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/i2868e/i2868e00.pdf.  Accessed December 12, 2017.

When Wikipedia lists a person born on December 10 as a “composer and ornithologist,” the entry deserves some further research.  And so, today, I report on the life of Olivier Messiaen, French composer and ornithologist, born this day in 1908 (died 1992).

Messiaen was born in Paris of educated parents.  That he was a musical prodigy became apparent soon.  By age 7, he was composing; at age 11, he entered the Paris Conservatory of Music.  He became a skilled organist and, at the end of his studies in 1930, became the principal organist for the Church of the Trinity in Paris.  He kept that position for the next 40 years, along with a long list of related teaching, composing and conducting commissions in France and around the world (for example, he wrote an orchestral piece for the American bi-centennial based on a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park).

He fought in World War II and was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis in a Polish war camp during 1940-1941.  While there, he composed what is considered his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time, which he and three others performed for 5,000 prisoners.  “Never,” he said later, “had I been listened to with such attention and understanding.”

Messiaen himself was a great listener, especially to nature.  He was always enchanted by birdsong, and he spent much of his time outdoors listening to birds and recording their song.  He often said that birds were the earth’s first musicians, and the best.  He could identify nearly any bird in Europe and many from other locations by their songs.  Although having no academic or scientific credentials in ornithology, he grew to be considered one of the world’s authorities on bird vocalization in the 20^th Century.

He incorporated what he heard into his compositions.  His music includes the songs of more than 250 birds.  In one piece, Chonochromie, composed in 1960, he scored 18 violin parts, each playing the song of a different bird, all at the same time.  During a rehearsal for this complicated piece, one performer was said to throw a shoe at Messiaen out of frustration!  Some compositions feature birdsong, but one in particular—his Catalogue of the Birds, composed for solo piano in 1958—is entirely built from birdsong.  Writing in The Atlantic, Matthew Gurewitsch described what Messiaen could do with the music of birds:

“Birdsong moves faster than human fingers; the first thing to go when an instrumentalist mimics a bird is tempo. Also, Western melodies are strung together from notes, well-defined pitches neatly arrayed on scales. Birds sing microtones. They phrase in arabesques that swoop and glide. Their staccato “notes” are more like jagged shards than human musicians’ points and beads of sound. The timbres and attacks are often energetic to the point of harshness, yet to our ears in the wild they may sound ineffably sweet. For the piano and for instruments of the orchestra Messiaen invented ways of clustering and combining notes to produce, often with uncanny verisimilitude, an impression of the real thing. Call it trompe-l’oreille.”

          Messiaen was not always appreciated but by the last decades of his life, he had become known as one of the century’s greatest composers.  And a true conservationist.

References:

Gurewitsch, Matthew.  1997.  An Audubon in Sound.  The Atlantic, March 1997.  Available at:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/an-audubon-in-sound/376810/.  Accessed December 120, 2017.

Kozinn, Allan.  1992.  Olivier Messiaen, Composer, Dies at 83.  The New York Times, April 29, 1992.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/29/arts/olivier-messiaen-composer-dies-at-83.html?pagewanted=all.  Accessed December 10, 2017.

McComb, Todd.  Olivier Messiaen.  All Music.  Available at:  https://www.allmusic.com/artist/olivier-messiaen-mn0001528006/biography.  Accessed December 10, 2017.

By executive order, President Calvin Coolidge created the Wupatki National Monument in central Arizona, on December 9, 1924.  The monument stands out for its exceptionally high density of archeological sites created by Native Americans of the desert Southwest.

The Wupatki region has been inhabited by Native Americans for at least 10,000 years.  Over the centuries, various Indian groups occupied the area, with fluctuations in population depending on specific climatic conditions.  The most recent major colonization occurred after the 10^th Century, when the Sunset Crater volcano, a few miles southwest of the monument, erupted and coated the entire region with layers of volcanic ash.  The ash nourished the soil and held water, improving the conditions for agriculture.  The low plains of the region were dotted with settlements of Native Americans, known primarily as the Sinagua people.

The Sinagua built large structures from stable red sandstone rock, held together firmly by mortar.  Consequently, they were able to build multi-story settlements with as many as 100 rooms.  The Indians abandoned the structures around 1250, for unknown reasons, but presumably because less favorable climate caused failure of local agriculture.

The monument was designated “…to preserve and protect thousands of archeological sites scattered across the stunning landscape of the Painted Desert and the grassland prairies….”  A survey during the 1980s catalogued an estimated 2700 archeological sites in Wupatki, and several thousand more exist in nearby areas.  Some are the large structures for which the monument is well known, but other are distributed throughout the monument’s 56 square miles (about 35,000 acres).  The museum contains nearly 500,000 catalogued archeological items, making it a highly significant historical research repository.

Wupatki National Monument also has significant natural resource value.  The large acreage is mostly undeveloped and at some distance from major human settlement (Flagstaff is about 26 miles away).  Consequently, the monument provides a wilderness-like setting (although not formally designated as a wilderness), with unbroken vistas of juniper woodlands, grasslands and desert scrub communities against a backdrop of sandstone cliffs and the looming San Francisco mountains.  More importantly, it provides dark night skies and natural soundscapes.  As the noise of modern civilization increases, the natural soundscape of Wupatki is a natural resource all its own, useful as a baseline for understanding changes in soundscapes across the region and nation.

References:

Desert USA.  Wupatki National Monument.  Available at:  https://www.desertusa.com/wup/du_wup_desc.html.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

National Park Service.  2015.  Foundation Document, Wupatki National Monument, Arizona.  May 2015.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/wupa/getinvolved/upload/WUPA-Foundation-Document-Web-Final-May-2015.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

National Park Service.  Wuptaki National Monument, Arizona.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/wupa/learn/historyculture/places.htm.  Accessed December 7, 2017.

The American Bird Banding Association was formed on December 8, 1909.  At the annual meeting of the American Ornithological Union at the Hotel Endicott in New York City, Dr. Leon J. Cole presided over the formal establishment of the association, with 34 founding members, and became its first president.  The purpose of the association was to conduct “…the banding of wild birds and the recording of accurate data on their movements.”

Cole, a Ph.D. trained geneticist, had been a bird enthusiast throughout his life (born 1877, died 1948).  He began advocating for a systematic approach to bird banding beginning in 1901, in a paper published by the Michigan Academy of Sciences:

“It is possible such a plan might be used in following the movements of individual birds, if some way could be devised of numbering them which would not interfere with the bird in any way and would still be conspicuous enough to attract attention of any person who might chance to shoot or capture it.”

Birds had been banded in various ways for hundreds of years.  Most accounts credit John James Audubon with the first recorded use of bands when he attached silver wire threads to the legs of fledgling Phoebes around 1800.  However, no comprehensive plan for recording the data—both the origin of banded birds and the location of their recovery—existed.  Under the guidance of Cole and the American Bird Banding Association, over 4000 bands were distributed to amateur birders in 1910—and the science of bird banding began.  Today, Leon Cole is credited as the somewhat-forgotten father of American bird banding.

The American Bird Banding Association spurred the development of regional banding groups throughout the country.  It remained the central organizer of bird banding until 1920, when the work was turned over to the U.S. Biological Survey.  With the passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the federal government took on the major responsibility for the health of bird populations—and had the greatest need for information about them.  The work was entrusted to Frederick Lincoln, who oversaw the program from 1920 to 1946.  Lincoln became famous for his genius as the architect of the modern bird-banding data management system.  Today, the national coordination of bird banding resides in the Bird Banding Laboratory of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, within the U.S. Geological Survey.

The most recent data provided by the Bird Banding Laboratory shows that over a fifty-year span from 1960-2010, 64 million birds have been banded following federal banding protocols.  The lab has recorded more than 4 million records of banded birds being recaptured or sighted.  Recently, more than 1 million birds have been banded and nearly 100,000 recoveries have been recorded annually.

References:

Bird Banding Laboratory.  A brief history about the origins of bird banding.  Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey.  Available at:  https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/homepage/historyNew.cfm.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

Cole, Leon J.  1910.  The tagging of wild birds:  Report of progress in 1909.  The Auk 27(2):153-168.  Available at:   http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4071108.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

McCabe, Robert A.  1979.  Wisconsin’s forgotten ornithologist:  Leon J. Cole.  The Passenger Pigeon, Wisconsin Society for Ornithology 41(3):129-131.  Available at:  http://images.library.wisc.edu/EcoNatRes/EFacs/PassPigeon/ppv41no03/reference/econatres.pp41n03.rmccabe.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

Wood, Harold B.  1945.  The history of bird banding.  The Auk 62(2):256-265.  Available at:  http://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v062n02/p0256-p0265.pdf.  Accessed December 7, 2016.

On December 7, 2015, Beijing, China, took the historic action of issuing a red alert for air pollution, the first time it had ever done so.  The city was responding to a heavy smog event that was expected to last for several days, endangering the health of Beijing’s 23 million residents.

In 2013, China developed a four-step air smog grading system, increasing in severity from blue to yellow to orange to red.  The system uses a number of criteria for judging severity, including visibility, humidity and the concentration of small particles, known as PM 2.5.  PM 2.5 are combustion particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, small enough to enter lungs and in some cases the blood stream.  China also has a more general air-quality alert system that uses the concentration of major pollutants (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone) to create an AQI—air quality index.

The AQI on December 7 exceeded 450, prompting the first ever red alert.  Levels of PM 2.5 also sky-rocketed. The World Health Organization considers PM 205 levels lower than 10 to be acceptable; the U.S. classifies PM 2.5 levels over 200 particles as “very unhealthy” and over 300 as “hazardous.” Concentrations in Beijing on December 7 reached 253, prompting the first ever red alert.  Environmental groups have termed this and other serious air pollution events as “airpocalypses.”

A red alert requires schools to close and reduces car traffic by 50%, allowing only vehicles with even or odd license plates to drive.  The alert lasted for several days, until weather conditions changed and disbursed the pollutants.

PM 2.5 concentrations in Beijing had exceeded those on December 7 many times in the past, but the government only issued orange alerts, the level below red.  Observers suspected that this first red alert was a response to public pressure, as China and the world’s other nations were actively negotiating the Paris climate accords at the same time.  Since then, Beijing has issued several other red alerts.

Air pollution in China is a major environmental issue in the world’s largest country.  China produces more air pollution than any other nation, much of it the result of heavy industrial manufacturing and electricity generation that relies substantially on burning coal.  The U.S. embassy in Beijing monitors air pollution at the embassy.  From 2008 to 2015, the embassy recorded unhealthy, very unhealthy or hazardous air quality on two-thirds of all days; air quality was good on only 2% of days.

China continues to make major commitments to improving air quality.  More than half of all new electricity generation in China is based on renewable energy; China installs new renewable energy at the highest level of any country in the world.  Despite these actions, turning around the devastating air pollution in China’s main cities will take many decades.

References:

BBC News.  2015.  China pollution:  First ever red alert in effect in Beijing.  BBC News, 8 December 2015.  Available at:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35026363.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Phillips, Tom.  2015.  Beijing issues first pollution red alert as smog engulfs capital.  The Guardian, 7 December 2015.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/07/beijing-pollution-red-alert-smog-engulfs-capital.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Wong, Edward.  2015.  Beijing Issues Red Alert Over Air Pollution for the First Time.  New York Times, Dec. 7, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world/asia/beijing-pollution-red-alert.html.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Yaoti, Ren.  2016.  A guide to China’s smog alert colors.  GB Times, Jan. 15, 2016.  Available at:  https://gbtimes.com/guide-chinas-smog-alert-colours.  Accessed December 6, 2017.

Eliot Furness Porter was born on December 6, 1901 (died 1990).  He became one of the most renowned nature photographers of the 20^th Century, compared in importance and skill to Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz.  Educated as a chemical engineer and medical doctor, he taught biochemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe College during the 1930s.

From an early age, Porter was fascinated by both nature and photography.  He was given his first camera at the age of ten and immediately began to photograph birds—a subject that became a lifelong obsession.  While teaching college he continued to refine his photographic skills, focusing on the black-and-white palette that defined artistic photography of the times.  In 1938, the influential photographer Alfred Stieglitz offered Porter a one-person show at his New York gallery.  The success of that show convinced Porter to abandon teaching in favor of a career as a professional photographer.  He moved to New Mexico and began to chronicle the southwestern landscape.

At the time, Kodak was marketing its first popular color film—Kodachrome.  Although color photography was scoffed at by serious photographers, Porter embraced the innovation.  He perfected intricate processes for printing color images.  His use of color ushered in the modern era of photography.  Ansel Adams described Porter as “master of nature’s color.”

Porter also brought a new perspective to the nature photograph.  Rather than the sweeping, majestic landscapes of Ansel Adams, Porter concentrated on the small, the familiar, even the insignificant.   A group of fallen leaves, a collection of pebbles gathered on a sand bar, or the pattern of mineral veining in a rock wall were the kind of subjects he admired and photographed.  He was particularly fond of lichens, the partnership of fungus and algae that colonizes rocks and tree trunks.  “Sometimes,” he said, “you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.”  A critic described his work this way:

“Mr. Porter’s eye is less for the grand sweep than for details of running water, iridescent pools, rock walls, rock textures, caverns, violent twists of sandstone, lichens, willows, leafy trees. He looks for the grand truth in the minute. It is the color that conveys the grandeur. Purples, blues, reds, yellows, oranges — all of them overlaid with metallic brilliance — compose natural beauty of overwhelming vitality.”

            He recognized that photography could be used for political purposes, and he put its influence to work on behalf of the burgeoning environmental movement of the 1960s.  “Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment….”  He formed a winning partnership with David Brower, the longtime leader of The Sierra Club.  In 1962, The Sierra Club issued a book of Porter’s photographs accompanying quotes from Henry David Thoreau—In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.  The book was an instant success, a masterpiece of photography, aesthetic design and printing technology; it virtually created the coffee-table book genre.  His second book, displaying photographs of the Glen Canyon taken just before it was flooded by closure of the Glen Canyon Dam, is considered the impetus for passage of The Wilderness Act of 1964.

References:

Amon Carter Museum.  Eliot Porter Collection Guide.  Available at:  http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/porter/about.php.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

Honan, William.  1990.  Eliot Porter, Photographer, is Dead at 88.  New York Times, November 3, 1990.  Available at:  http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/03/obituaries/eliot-porter-photographer-is-dead-at-88.html.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

International Center of Photography.  Eliot Porter.  Available at:  https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/eliot-porter?all/all/all/all/0.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

2016. Paul Getty Museum. Eliot Porter. Available at:  http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1426/eliot-porter-american-1901-1990/. Accessed December 5, 2016.

Solnit, Rebecca.  2002.  In Photography is the Preservation of the World.  Sierra Magazine, September/October 2002.  The Sierra Club, San Francisco, CA.  Available at:  https://vault.sierraclub.org/sierra/200209/porter.asp.  Accessed December 5, 2016.

The United Nations has declared December 5 as World Soil Day.  Noting that “soils constitute the foundation for agricultural development, essential ecosystem functions and food security and hence are key to sustaining life on Earth,” the United Nations General Assembly created World Soil Day in 2014 and additionally declared 2015 as International Year of Soils.

Each World Soil Day features a theme highlighting a particular aspect of soil health.  For 2022, the theme is “Soils, Where Food Begins.” According to the United Nations,

• 95% of our food comes from soils.
• 18 naturally occurring chemical elements are essential to plants. Soils supply 15.
• Agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050. 
• 33% of soils are degraded. 
• Up to 58% more food could be produced through sustainable soil management.  

December 5 was chosen as World Soil Day to honor the dedicated environmental work of the late king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was born on December 5, 1927.  At the time of his death in 2016, King Adulyadej was the longest serving monarch—70 years—and beloved by the Thai people for his humility and devotion to improving the lives of his fellow citizens.  He was particularly interested in soil as the basis of rural prosperity, recognizing that the work of thousands of years of soil formation could be destroyed by a single thoughtless act of improper use.

King Adulyadej was an advocate of using vetiver grass (Chrysopogon zizanioides) to control soil erosion.  Vetiver grass is a perennial with long vertical roots that is exceptionally useful for stabilizing soils on sloping hills.   Starting in 1991, the king led experiments and demonstrations to develop the use of vetiver as a “miracle grass.”  So promising was this work that The International Erosion Control Association awarded the king its International Merit Award in 1993.  Later that year, the World Bank presented him with a bronze sculpture of a vetiver plant “for technical and development accomplishment in the promotion of the vetiver technology internationally.”

World Soil Day is overseen by the Global Soil Partnership, established in 2012.  Their report on the “Status of the World’s Soil Resources” offers these sobering statistics:

• Over one-third of the earth’s ice-free surface has been cleared of natural vegetation, making it susceptible to erosion, loss of nutrients and biodiversity.
• If soil erosion continues at its current rate, by 2050 the earth will have lost the equivalent of the arable land of India.
• Increasing soil salinity has reduced productivity on agricultural lands the equivalent of the area of arable land of Brazil.

Fortunately, soil scientists and agriculturists know how to prevent further damage and reverse the damage that has already occurred.  It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it!

References:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2017.  World Soil Day.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/world-soil-day/en/.  Accessed December 4, 2017.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  2015.  Status of the world’s soil resources.  UNFAO, Rome, Italy.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/resources/highlights/detail/en/c/357163/.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  Undated.  Global Soil Partnership.  Available at:  http://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/en/.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Global Pulse Confederation.  Undated.  Pulses.  Available at:  http://pulses.org/.   Accessed December 4, 2016.

Office of the Royal Development Projects Board.  2000.  The royal messages concerning vetiver:  A miracle grass.  Bangkok, Thailand.  Available at:  http://prvn.rdpb.go.th/files/royal%20messgaes_book.pdf .  Accessed December 4, 2016.

Pacific Rim Vetiver Network.  Undated.  The King of Thailand and the miracle vetiver grass.  Available at:  http://prvn.rdpb.go.th/king.html.  Accessed December 4, 2016.

United Nations General Assembly.  2014.  World Soil Day and International Year of Soils, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 2013 (resolution 68/232).  New York, New York.  Available at:  http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/68/232.  Accessed December 4, 2017.