Memorial Day/Birthday Camping Trip

David and I went camping this past weekend to celebrate my birthday, and it was amazing.

My first stop was to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Driving through, I encountered a snapping turtle crossing the road. I also saw water snakes, a garter snake, painted turtles, frogs and probably the most amazing thing was this:

I think this is a crab spider....and it's trying to eat an inchworm. Pure awesome-ness.

After that I met up with David and we drove up to the School of Conservation at Stoke State Forest, in Sandyston, NJ. It's a field resource station owned by Montclair State University, and a lot of professors do research there. I've done a few small scale research projects myself there for some different classes. I ran into a doctoral student at Montclair that I know, Paola, and she was there to collect treefrogs, so David and I accompanied her that night. She caught two northern grey treefrogs.

The next day we went to High Point State Park. On the way there I encountered another snapping turtle crossing the road. I was super excited to discover once we got to the High Point Monument that the obelisk was not closed for renovation anymore, and we could climb 291 steps to the top of the obelisk. The view was breath taking!

Our next stop was to the Mountaintop Road Fossil Beds to go fossil hunting. We had trouble finding the described "outcrops of shale and light colored rocks on the ground" that were supposed to have fossils. I managed to find a large chunk of shale sticking out of the ground, and David was able to hit it against another rock to cleave it along a seam, and WE FOUND FOSSILS!!!

Later that afternoon we were exploring around the School of Conservation, and we stumbled upon two turtles who appeared to had just finished laying eggs.

And then I stumbled upon THIS:

The skeleton of some sort of canine... AWESOME!

The next day (my birthday!) we went to Tillman Ravine Nature Preserve and hiked along the stream, and then went to see Buttermilk Falls.

Buttermilk Falls

All of this in the good ol' state of New Jersey- it's not just smelly factories and guidos at the boardwalk!

The Clean Water Act- Forty Years Later

In my opinion, heavy, detrimental polluting of our waterways started with the Industrial Revolution. The dumping of industrial waste was unregulated, and lead to some severe pollution in many areas. One of the things that helped spark a revolution with water laws was in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Yes, you read that right. The river was so polluted with oil and God knows what else that it actually caught on fire. And I was surprised to learn, from my research for this article, that the river didn't catch on fire just once. The Cuyahoga River had caught on fire nine times since 1868. I wonder why it was the fire in 1969 that broke the camel's back. Perhaps that fire came at a time when the environmental revolution was starting to pick up. After a lot of regulation and clean up, the river's water quality has improved, and the Cuyahoga river is now one of the American Heritage Rivers. And of course, there are no more fires on the river.


One of the laws inspired from the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire was the Clean Water Act. The original statute was passed in 1948, but there have been many amendments and additions (another thing I learned!); a major one and the one most people people refer to is the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Clean Water Act set quality standards for surface water and set down regulation for discharging pollutants.


So how much of an impact has the Clean Water Act had, at least here in New Jersey? 


The state's waterways are definitely better than they were, as there is no more widespread and rampant pollution, but are New Jersey's waterways clean at all? 


According to a report by the Asbury Park Press, no. Except for one that is. The Big  Flat Brook, located in Stokes State Forest in Sussex County (Funnily enough, the School of Conservation, the field station owned by my school, is also located in Stokes State Forest and really close to the Big Flat Brook) is the only waterway in New Jersey to pass all of the water quality tests. Apparently is is safe to drink after basic treatment (which I assume is to filter out the suspended solids). You can also swim in it and eat the fish with no restrictions.


I'm not saying that the Clean Water Act has been useless. It just isn't having a big enough impact. There are too many variables when it comes to things that affect water quality. All of those variables need to align correctly to ensure good water quality. And as we all probably know, Murphy's Law usually prevails. 


So what should be done to allow the maximum benefits of the Clean Water Act? First of all we need better enforcement. That proves to be tricky however, because that requires more manpower, time, and money. Perhaps we need to create incentives for offending companies to follow regulations closely?


Another thing is to stop passing stupid laws like the one that allows waivers to be granted for homeowners or businesses to pollute on a case by case basis. The law is the law, so why are we creating exceptions?


And lastly, we need more public education. Getting the masses to cooperate with environmental regulation and become aware of problems is the key to making lasting changes, in my opinion.


Sources:  Ohio History Central, Digest of Federal Resource Laws of Interest to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Summary of the Clean Water Act, 

Sediment Analysis of Long Swamp Creek

For my Environmental Forensics class, we have to complete a mini research project. I choose to analyze sediment from the brook behind my house, Long Swamp Creek. Long Swamp Creek is a tributary of the Toms River, and is, according to the EPA, "moderately biologically impaired." There are a number of commercial properties and housing developments. Long Swamp Creek has looked pretty yucky from time to time, and I've seen a lot of garbage in it, so I am really excited to see what fun chemicals are lurking in the sediment.

So far only a few samples have been analyzed. I can preliminarily report that there are petroleum biomarkers, or as my colleague, Kevin, put it, "it looks like you had an oil spill back there."

I'll be sure to have an update with the full details of what was found as soon as they come in!

Hiding in Plain Sight

It seems that news articles come in with regularity about new species that are discovered in places such as the remote jungles of Indonesia, or the little explored dark abyss of the ocean. It's not often that you hear of a new species being discovered in an urban area. But that is precisely what has recently happened.

A doctoral student from Rutgers University, Jeremy Feinberg, heard a frog call that he was unfamiliar with back in 2009, in Staten Island. It was similar to the well known southern leopard frog, which has a repetitive nature to its call, yet the call that the doctoral student heard was not repetitive. After lab tests and field work, Feinberg and his team of other scientists have made the conclusion that there is a new species of leopard frog among us here in the tri-state area. Genetic analysis shows that the new frog is indeed a different species, despite looking so similar to the northern and southern leopard frogs that are known to inhabit the area.

The new species, which has yet to receive a name, has a range that is believed to be within the "commuting distance to mid town Manhattan."

Picture from the NYT

Original article from the New York Times

Earthquakes in NJ And Their Hazards

For the spring semester of 2009, I had a major project/term paper due for two separate classes- Soil Science and GIS (geographic information systems aka, digital mapping). I decided to pick a topic that could work for both classes to cut down on my workload- earthquakes in NJ and the related soil hazards. I was inspired to do earthquakes in NJ because of a conversation I had had with my dad about an earthquake he had felt in NJ many years ago. I was curious to find out more about the topic, and my research project was born. A week after picking this topic, a small earthquake hit northern NJ as I was chatting with a friend online. He described it as shaking the whole house as if a bomb went off nearby. Instead it was a magnitude 3.0 earthquake epicentered near Dover, NJ. 


The following is the presentation I gave on my project. All maps are made by me unless otherwise noted.

I love this picture for the title slide- it's so true! People don't normally think that earthquakes happen in NJ, or the East Coast for that matter, yet there are so many geologic features that indicate the area was seismically active.

Earthquakes are caused by the accumulation of stress in the Earth's crust. The  stress is caused by the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates. The tectonic plates do not all move together at the same rate, so strain accumulates in more areas than others. When the strain is more than the bedrock can handle, the bedrock breaks to relieve that stress and releases energy in the form of rapid vibrations- earthquakes.

Earthquakes are measured in two ways- magnitude and intensity. The most commonly reported is the magnitude. For example the Haiti earthquake in 2010 was a magnitude 7. The magnitude is a logarithmic scale, so a magnitude 2 is ten times stronger than a magnitude 1, and a magnitude 3 is ten times stronger than a magnitude 2, and so on. Intensity is the amount of shaking felt at the surface, and is affected by the hardness of the bedrock (harder bedrock transmits vibrations better than soft bedrock) and the distance from the epicenter.

The Modifired Mercalli Scale measured the intensity of an earthquake. The earthquake that struck Virginia in August this past year was probably an intensity of about VI to VII in the areas closer to the epicenter. That earthquake was felt ever so slightly here in NJ, so I would guess the intensity this area was II to III.

This is a seismicity hazard map from the USGS. The red and brown colors indicate areas with a high risk for earthquakes. The lighter colors show areas with low risk for earthquakes.  The dark red and brown in California makes sense- there's a tectonic boundary running through there; it's very seismically active. But what's with the dark red and brown in South Carolina and the Midwest? There are no plate boundaries there! You'll also notice a slight yellow area near the epicenter of the August earthquake in Virginia.

How are intracontinental (within a continent) earthquakes caused? The most accepted theory is that the strain accumulated millions of years ago, and that the strain is still being released. The dark red and brown area in the Midwest from the previous picture is know as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and has historically produced earthquakes to rival those that occur in recent times in California. During the winter of 1811-1812, four earthquakes with a magnitude around 8 occurred there. It was so strong that the course of the Mississippi River changed (see insert, I did not make the map.) and the river temporarily flowed backwards. Large cracks opened up in the ground, and the landscape was devastated in areas. The earthquake was even felt as far away as Boston, MA, where church bells started ringing because of the ground shaking. There weren't a lot of people living in the area of the earthquake epicenter at the time, so the damage wasn't too bad.

NJ has a number of faults and folds in the northern section of the state (and none down south of Trenton). The rippling of the bedrock from stress accumulation is what causes these geologic features. In NJ, these faults are not currently active, but they still hold some stress that could potentially be released.

I looked at where earthquakes have been epicentered, at least since record keeping began. You can see that most of the earthquakes are occurring in the northern part of the state. The two bar graph show the frequency of occurrence of magnitudes and depths of epicenters. The tall bars at zero are the data points for which there is no magnitude or depth data. The magnitudes show a relatively normal distribution, with the peak around 2, which is nothing to sneeze at. It does trail off to the stronger magnitude side, with a few outliers at magnitude 5.  The same pattern shows for the depth occurrences. Most earthquakes are shallow, but that means they are stronger (felt more at the surface) than ones epicentered deeper.

There have been 3 instances of magnitude 5 earthquakes happening in NJ- in 1737, 1783,  and 1884. Damage was rather minor back then. But the number of people living here and the amount of infrastructure was no where near the levels it is today. This map shows a comparison of population densities around the times that these strong earthquakes occurred in NJ, and a map showing the population density as of the most recent census (which at the time of making this presentation was 2000). The population densities of NJ in 1790 and 1880 were rather low, except for a concentration near NYC. If you look at the population density recently.... its obvious that a LOT more people live here. Now add the fact that geologists estimate this area has a magnitude 5 earthquake about once every 100 year, and the last one was in 1884.... and that is very frightening.

One of the soil related earthquake hazards is liquefaction, which is kind of like quick sand, in which structures can sink into the soil. It happens when saturated, loose, sandy soils with uniform particle sizes are shaken. The water fills the pore space, and suddenly, the soil loses it's strength, and things can sink. If the particle sizes of the soil are distributed evenly, then when the shaking occurs, smaller particles will fill in the pore space, and strength is maintained.  For this map I identified the soils classified as sandy and loose. Most of those soils occur in southern NJ.

Landslides are another soil related earthquake hazard. Soil particles lose their strength between each other and gravity takes over, and large chunks of hillsides or cliffs come loose. For this map, I identified the types of soils that have already had a lanslide occur, and then found  the location of that soil in other parts of the state. The data points show where landslides have historically occured. One of them was actually caused by something similar to an earthquake. A landslide in Paterson, on Garret Mountain, occured due to the vibrations of the nearby railroad. Other notable landslides are the one that fell on top of an illegally parked car in  2002, and the landslide that destroyed a rock that looked like Hitler in 1947.

In conclusion, most earthquakes in NJ are not strong, though there is the potential for a large one to strike. If this were to happen, I cringe to imagine the effects. The infrastructure damage would be horrible and even if it were minor, would seriously snarl traffic and our day to day lives. What if a crack form in the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge? I expect pandemonium. Since most epicenters are in northern NJ, I put the risk of liquefaction at medium low for the southern part of NJ. I think northern NJ is in the clear for that one. Not so much for landslides, however. I put the risk of landslides from a strong enough earthquake at pretty high, due to the soil types and topography. And since most of the landslides occurred without the aggression of the soil caused from an earthquake I think its very possible for an earthquake to cause a landslide.

And of course, my references. What kind of scientist would I be with out them?

Another Earthquake? Listen To The Experts.

Reports on social media outlets have been pouring in from  all over the state of New Jersey of people hearing a boom and feeling shaking around 10 am this morning. A lot of people are convinced they felt/heard an earthquake. A quick check to the USGS website on recent earthquakes shows no earthquakes occurring around 10 am this morning. Despite this, people are still convinced it was an earthquake. Are you an earthquake expert? No? Then stop it.

I'm not an earthquake expert either, but I do know enough about them to have people take what I say seriously. If there was an earthquake strong enough for people to feel or hear it, then the seismographs would have definitely picked up on it.

And then someone posted this on Facebook: "Also last night was a Lunar Eclipse .would that have anything to do with it ? Didnt we have one in the summer after a lunar eclipse ?" 


I am so flabbergasted. Wow. Seriously. That's what you think happened? Holy cow. No. Just, no. 


I can understand where her thought originates- the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon could have shifted some bedrock and caused an earthquake. But there are earthquakes all over the world everyday. The Sun and Moon don't cause them.
So then what is so special about the shadow of the Earth on the moon have to do with an earthquake? 


NOTHING. 






Leave the scientific speculation up to the people with scientific knowledge. 
I'm not discounting what anyone experienced, it's just that that it was not caused by an earthquake. Perhaps a sonic boom over the ocean caused it? 

Cool Place of the Week #3- Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area

Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Area is located in Morris County, NJ; not too far from New York City (in fact you can see NYC from a few of the scenic outlooks).  It has a really nice trail system that I was lucky enough to try out for myself this past summer. There are tons (literally and figuratively) of glacial erratics, which are rocks that are not native to the area, transported to their current location via the movement of glaciers. The must see erratics at Pyramid Mountain are Bear Rock, and Tripod Rock.

Before setting out on my hike, I had an idea of what to expect. Tripod Rock is balanced on 3 smaller rocks, and Bear Rock is much larger than Tripod Rock. So, I knew I was going to see big rocks. I went to see Bear Rock first, and  I was still quite a ways down the trail when I first saw it- my jaw dropped because I was astonished at how damn big it was:

This is me standing in front of Bear Rock. Told you it was big. For reference, I'm 5 feet 4 inches tall.

Next I went to Tripod Rock, which is a big rock balanced on three much smaller rocks. It looks lopsided and like it should fall over, but it's been this way for thousands of years:

There are some other glacial erratics scattered around the area, but none are as magnificent as these.

Our Newest National Park

When you think of cities, many things come to mind- a lot of people, a lot of buildings, smog, and traffic, among other things. You certainly wouldn't think of a large waterfall. However the newest addition to our National Park system is within walking distance of downtown Paterson in New Jersey, and its most prominent feature is a 77-foot waterfall.

Alexander Hamilton visited the Great Falls in 1778, and saw huge potential in the city of Paterson and in the waterfall (as a source for hydropower) for industry development. Paterson became a bustling manufacturing center for textiles, firearms, silk, and railroad locomotives. Some of these buildings still remain today. For more information on the history of the Great Falls, visit the Paterson Friends of the Great Falls website.

The waterfall is a magnificent sight to see any time of the year, but it is most spectacular after a lot of rain.

The Great Falls in May 2009.

The Great Falls in August 2011, right after the area received torrential rainfall from Hurricane Irene.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Late Saturday night I had been reading up on the magnitude 4.7 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks that happened in Oklahoma during the early morning hours of the same day. Besides freaking out a lot of people, knocking over items on shelves, and causing very minor structural damage (a few cracks here and there) there was no major harm done. About a half hour later I was looking through Twitter and saw "Earthquake in Oklahoma" trending, and I was curious since I hadn't seen that trend earlier in the day. I looked at the tweets and realized that another earthquake had struck Oklahoma, this one much stronger at a preliminary magnitude of 5.2. The magnitude has since been upgraded to 5.6, making it the strongest recorded earthquake in Oklahoma. I first thought, "Oh snap! That is starting to get up there in terms of strength. And with minor damage that hasn't been repaired...." So far I'm reading in newspaper articles that there are no reports of major structural damage or major injuries. A county road did buckle, but overall it appears that Oklahoma has emerged unscathed.

Even before the magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit, there was a lot of talk about the earthquakes in Oklahoma, because they don't happen very often. The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that hit Virginia back in August was felt up and down the east coast. Here in NJ a lot of my friends felt it; my mom was laying in the sand at the beach; and I was so disappointed that I didn't feel it! I think I was engrossed with playing StarCraft at the time. It reminded evenyone again, that yes, earthquakes are possible on the East Coast. I remember the excitement that ensued after a magnitude 3.0 earthquake was epicentered in NJ in February 2009. A lot of people didn't even realize that earthquakes were possible in NJ, and funnily enough, about a week prior to the earthquake, I had decided to do my projects for school about earthquakes in NJ (I'll follow up with another post on that project).

The article I read mentioned that additional seismographs had been installed in the area due to an increase in the number of earthquakes occurring there. On average, the area gets 50 earthquakes, but last year, there were a little over 1,000 earthquakes recorded, which I found very interesting. Many people thought that there was an increase in large earthquakes worldwide following the devastating earthquakes in Indonesia in 2004, China in 2008, Haiti in 2010, and Chile in 2010.

On a side note- while I haven't experienced any of the earthquakes epicentered in NJ or the VA earthquake earlier this year, I did experience the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. I was staying on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands, doing research for one of my classes. It was right before dinner, and I saw Jamie, who is one of the directors of the camp I was staying at, stop on the stairs coming out of his office. He said "Do you guys feel that?" and looked around at us, not moving from his spot on the stairs. We said no, and Jamie replied "I think it's an earthquake." At this point, I was hearing a low rumbling noise, however I didn't feel any shaking (I was sitting on a picnic bench) so  I crouched down and put my hand on the ground. I still didn't feel anything, and Jamie then told us it had stopped. I was curious to see if we had in fact just experienced an earthquake and if so, where the epicenter was. After dinner I did a Google search on my phone for recent earthquakes, and I was shocked when I saw the most recent earthquake. I went to Jamie and asked him roughly how long ago the shaking and rumbling had occurred. He said it happened about 20 minutes prior, so I replied. "Oh, ok, so what you felt was an earthquake. Twenty minutes ago a magnitude 7.0 hit..... in Haiti." We just stared at each other, flabbergasted. Over the course of the next few hours, I was glued to my phone for updates on the earthquake, and the reports were rolling in about the damage, and we were all so shocked and saddened. I was so amazed that we had felt and heard the effects of an earthquake that was epicentered 500 miles away.

Point A shows the location of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, near the epicenter of the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Point B shows where I was when the earthquake happened. Despite being 500 miles away, I heard the ground rumble and others felt slight shaking of the ground.

So back to the public's perceived increase in earthquakes.... The earthquake in Haiti received a lot of attention, given the widespread destruction and loss of life. When an even stronger earthquake hit Chile, it was only natural that it received a lot of media attention. Times have changed- people didn't find out about the explosion of Krakatoa right away, if they heard about it at all. In my own experience, it seems I get braking news first on Facebook or Twitter, because information is spread and shared so easily and rapidly. According to the United States Geological Survey, there is no increase in earthquakes with a magnitude 7.0 or more, however, there has been an increase in the number of detectable earthquakes. This is due to increased sensitivity of the instruments used, and an increase in the number of instruments.

Is it just a coincidence?

It's Halloween Weekend, and it's..... snowing. Though this isn't the earliest arrival of snow on record, it is the earliest arrival of snow with such large snowfall amounts. This is so crazy.

This year (in NJ) we've had record breaking snowfall, record breaking temperatures, a hurricane with record breaking rainfall..... And the during the previous winter there was also record breaking snowfall.

Record breaking events happen often enough (the Blizzard of 1996 sticks out in my mind), but it's the sheer number of record breaking events that are happening in rapid succession that stand out to me. Maybe it's because I'm still young, and noticing things more now than I did as a child..... But even adults are noticing the trend in severe weather events. You don't need fancy statistics to notice this trend.

Add in the severe weather extremes around the rest of the country- flooding on the Mississippi River, huge drought in Texas, snow as far south as Alabama, a shortage of snow at the Vancouver Olympics- just to name a few.

What the hell is going on?!

I wonder if it might have anything to do with climate change.

My next mini-project is to go find some scientific papers to back this up, because as a scientist, I hate when people make claims without anything to back it up. So at this point, my conclusion is made solely off anecdotal evidence. Maybe these weather events are simply getting more media coverage, just as earthquakes did after the earthquake in Haiti.

It's interesting though, how climate scientists have been warning us about this sort of thing happening for years, and now.... it's actually happening.

(Click here for my follow up post)