Mo Lovegreen, Executive Officer for Geography, and Kathy Scheidemen, MSO for the Earth Research Institute (affiliated with Geography), got their sisterly heads together and came up with the idea of organizing a paper airplane competition for their staff members during UCSB’s Staff Appreciation Week. Staffers from both organizations were herded into the Geography conference room, presented with an assortment of papers, pens, scissors, paper clips, etc., and told to create a paper airplane.

After some serious plagiarism on the part of several female staffers, all of whom complained bitterly that making paper airplanes was a guy thing, everyone came up with a plane (of sorts), and each group’s efforts were judged on “beauty,” “flight time,” and “distance.” Yep, we all launched our creations from the fifth floor of Ellison Hall around 3:00 pm on May 15, 2012, and the results, like those of the Wright Brothers and their predecessors, were decidedly mixed.

Jose Saleta, Geography’s Student Programs Manager, was the bookie’s favorite, insofar as he has two sons and has spent a fair amount of time recently teaching them the art of paper airplane construction. Alas, his creation plummeted straight down, nearly impaling an innocent bystander on the ground below. Karl Antonsson, Geography’s Undergraduate Assistant, ended up taking honors for achieving the longest flight time of 16.9 seconds with a blunt nosed creation that kept on going and going and going--it turns out that he learned the arcane art of paper airplane construction from his father who is an engineer at Cal Tech. Connie Padilla, Geography’s Personnel Analyst, predictably, won the beauty award, and Beilei Zhang, Geography’s Contract and Grant Manager, cheated by using her powers of teleportation to take the award for distance.

However, the awards were hotly contested by Bill Norrington, Geography’s Editor. He sacrificed some of his own blood in the creation of his “Bloody Bomber” and felt that his unique decorative efforts were unappreciated. Furthermore, his masterpiece majestically sailed into a pine tree in the Ellison Courtyard and lodged there. Insofar as it stayed in the tree, Bill thought he should be awarded the prize for flight duration—however, it was pointed out that Beilei’s creation landed on the roof of Buchanan Hall, so she could technically claim the same honor. Bill’s Bloody Bomber was last seen being attacked by a Great Horned Owl, known to frequent the Ellison Courtyard pine trees--evidently, the blood on Bill’s creation attracted the voracious raptor (though some suspect it had something to do with an incident involving Bill, an owl’s foot, and a microwave—but that’s another story).

Article by Bill Norrington

Our Executive Officer, Mo Lovegreen, just announced that UCSB has received a Gold rating by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS): “We achieved 66.27 points, a Gold rating (the Gold level threshold is 65 points) in version 1.2. We are one of six institutions that have submitted under version 1.2. AASHE will be sending a formal letter to Chancellor Yang acknowledging our Gold rating. You can view our submission here.”

In 2005, Chancellor Henry Yang asked the Campus Planning Committee to create a comprehensive sustainability outline for the campus. A group of approximately 75 individual “change agents” comprised of students, staff, and faculty were trained in the sustainability framework known as The Natural Step in fall 2005. These individuals collaborated with campus sustainability staff to produce the Campus Sustainability Plan and developed the following mission statement: “The University of California, Santa Barbara is committed to global leadership for sustainability through education, research, and action.” The process has brought together students, staff, faculty, and community members, it has generated a great deal of energy and momentum, and it has fundamentally increased awareness of UCSB’s sustainability potential and the steps necessary to achieve this goal (source).

“In 2006, the Higher Education Associations' Sustainability Consortium (HEASC), an informal network of higher education associations with a commitment to sustainability, issued a call for a campus sustainability rating system. Since then, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has worked collaboratively with other non-profits and higher education associations on the development of the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System™ (STARS). A Steering Committee, Strategic Advisory Committee, and a Technical Advisory Committee weighed in on the system, and nearly 70 institutions participated in a year-long pilot program” (source). UC San Diego and UCSB were the only two UC campuses selected for this pilot program.

“STARS is designed to provide a framework for understanding sustainability in all sectors of higher education, enable meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community, create incentives for continual improvement toward sustainability, facilitate information sharing about higher education sustainability practices and performance, and build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community. The STARS framework is intended to engage and recognize the full spectrum of colleges and universities – from community colleges to research universities, and from institutions just starting their sustainability programs to long-time campus sustainability leaders. STARS encompasses long-term sustainability goals for already high-achieving institutions, as well as entry points of recognition for institutions that are taking first steps toward sustainability” (Ibid.)

Since March 2011, AASHE has partnered with The Princeton Review, Sierra magazine, and the Sustainable Endowments Institute to establish the Data Collector (The Princeton Review Green Rating, Sierra magazine’s American’s Coolest Schools, and the Sustainable Endowment Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card, respectively). The additional data within STARS allows institutions that want to participate in the various programs to complete the information needed by each organization and enables the organizations to collect this information without having to send out individual surveys to institutions. The Data Collector is a new section within STARS that these groups use to develop their rankings.

If you take the trouble to look at the UCSB STARS submission, you’ll get a rough idea of the tremendous effort that went into compiling this 280 page report. While Mo magnanimously thanks those who participated in the data collection for the submittal and gives “special thanks to the core STARS team of Katie Maynard, Bill Norrington, Matthew O’Carroll, Ryan Kelley, and Felicia Bill who did an excellent job collecting, analyzing, and uploading data into STARS,” it should be pointed out that Mo spent literally hundreds of hours in making this report possible and deserves a gold star of her own.

On January 25, Chancellor Henry Yang sent the following letter to the STARS Steering Committee which sums up UCSB’s commitment to sustainability in this context:

“On behalf of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), I am pleased to verify that our submission for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) is an accurate representation of our campus's sustainability initiatives and achievements. We are proud to be a participant in this self-assessment model which will help institutions across the nation measure their sustainability efforts and track their progress. UCSB's commitment to sustainability is among our core values and is closely tied to our Academic Plan that includes the environment as one of its top priorities.

UCSB began work on environmental issues in 1970 with the establishment of one of the nation's first Environmental Studies programs. We opened the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in 1994, and we established the Institute for Energy Efficiency to develop innovative technologies that address energy conservation in 2008. UCSB was the first UC campus to implement interim sustainability policies and to sign the 1990 Talloires Declaration. It was an early signatory to the ACUPCC that has committed the campus to carbon neutrality by 2050. To accomplish its goals, the Chancellor's Sustainability Committee assembles administrators, deans, Nobel Laureates, senior faculty, staff, and students to make recommendations for campus sustainability projects. In 2006, our students established The Green Initiative Fund to award grants for projects that help reduce our environmental impacts. They went on to establish a student-directed Renewable Energy Initiative sponsoring large scale solar and thermal energy projects. Championed by students, UCSB is currently installing a 500kW Photovoltaic array coupled with 12 electric vehicle charging stations for public use on campus.

We are home to 16 LEED-certified buildings as of 2012, with 17 more on the way, as one of three universities in the country participating in the LEED portfolio project for existing buildings, and we have the nation's first double-Platinum building. UCSB recommends that all new construction and renovations meet LEED Gold standards. Nearly 90 percent of the campus is irrigated with reclaimed water, and 238 acres are maintained as non-irrigated open space. UCSB was recognized by the EPA as one of the nation's best workplaces for alternative transportation, and the campus has extensive waste reduction programs that include recycling used cooking oil for biofuel, single-stream recycling, composting 100 percent of pre- and post-consumer food scraps in all dining halls and implementing trayless dining, all of which were initiated a number of years ago. Our Academic Senate was the first to establish a faculty Sustainability Champion in 2009 and is working on a PhD emphasis and an undergraduate environment requirement. UCSB's Ecological Coalition organizes more than 33 environmentally-related student groups on campus, including the Environmental Affairs Board, which has more than 800 student affiliates...

STARS highlights many of the extraordinary efforts going on at UCSB and will help us improve our tracking of sustainability work to better ascertain our progress. We appreciate AASHE's efforts in developing a comprehensive system with which to track and report progress, and we hope that our input will encourage other institutions to participate in and benefit from this worthy cause.”

Article by Bill Norrington

The Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program (DDETFP) awards annual fellowships to students pursuing degrees in transportation-related disciplines, and, this year, Geography graduate student Yihong Yuan was awarded $5000 (including $1500 to cover travel costs to the 2013 Annual Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington DC).

Yihong scored a double by also winning a UCSB Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship. These fellowships are awarded to exceptional doctoral students from all academic disciplines who have advanced to candidacy and who are in the final stages of completing their dissertation. This award provides a $6,667 stipend plus payment of in-state tuition and health insurance (UCSHIP) for one quarter to allow the awardees more time to finish their dissertations.

According to Yihong, "My research focuses on spatial-temporal data mining and knowledge discovery based on mobile phone usage. The objective is to develop a generalizable framework for extracting and characterizing human mobility patterns from georeferenced mobile phone datasets. This research will enhance our understanding of the relationship between human mobility and Information & Communication technologies, as well as providing insights for modeling urban mobility patterns in the age of instant access."

Yihong goes on to state, "I am really honored to be receiving these two prestigious awards. It provides me a great opportunity to focus on my research and make a contribution to the field. I hope that one day the results of this research can be potentially utilized by makers of environmental and transportation policies in order to direct people to more sustainable behaviors, as well as business people in the Location-Based Services market."

Kudos to Yihong!

Some scallywag has placed a thin, blue line across the main Geography office hallway, with symbols indicating males in one direction and females in the other. At first glance, this smacks of sexual segregation, profiling, and downright intimidation—until you realize that every office on the west side of the line is staffed by males, and that every office on the east is staffed by females.

“So what?” you say. Well, “It is the policy of the Federal Government to treat all of its employees with dignity and respect and to provide a workplace that is free from discrimination whether that discrimination is based on race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity or pregnancy), national origin, disability, political affiliation, marital status, membership in an employee organization, age, sexual orientation, or other non-merit factors” (source). Well, duh!, office location is a blatant example of "other non-merit factors."

Hats off to the whistleblower who graphically illustrated this disturbing example of discrimination in the hallowed halls of the UCSB Department of Geography. After all, you have to draw the line somewhere.

Article by Bill Norrington, with tongue firmly in cheek. BTW, Mo Lovegreen supplied the blue tape, and Bernadette Weinberg made the egregious office assignments.

David López-Carr has been awarded a Faculty Initiative Grant from the Pacific Rim Research Program for his project titled “Developing sustainable fisheries management in the Pacific Rim under changing climate: sustainability, vulnerability, and adaptation.” The Pacific Rim Research Program is a multi-campus program established to encourage Pacific Rim research among the ten University of California campuses. It sponsors a competitive grants program for University of California faculty and graduate students who do research on Pacific Rim topics in a variety of disciplines.

Dr. López-Carr’s research is focused on the uncertain trajectory of climate change impacts on the Pacific Rim. This uncertainty, coupled with notable heterogeneity in the human and physical geographies of the Pacific Rim, leaves many fisheries-dependent economies highly vulnerable. Given the importance of fisheries to sustainable livelihoods across the region, the palpable potential exists for imminent economic and social crisis in the region if we cannot better understand, and act on, existing uncertainties in coupled human-natural systems across Pacific Rim fisheries.

The proposed research aims to interface climate change and ecological data with fisheries data to understand human livelihood and marine resource impacts of distinct fishery management systems under changing climate conditions in the Pacific Rim; this will be undertaken by performing comparative and integrated analyses of the effects of climate change on human livelihoods among five comparative case studies: Chile, the Peru-Chile border, Ecuador, French Polynesia, and California. This grant will also provide support for joint-doctoral student Jaime Speed Rossiter, whose research focuses on the effectiveness of various marine conservation polices in the Pacific Rim.

Dr. López-Carr and Jaime would like to extend their sincere gratitude to all faculty and staff who assisted with this grant. Also, Jaime would like to thank the UCSB Geography Department for providing such a great research opportunity.

The UCSB Geography colloquia series is technically known as Geography 201, “Seminar in Geography,” and is required of all geography graduate students every quarter offered. It consists of a series of seminars on diverse problems in human and physical geography, as well as geographic techniques, by current and visiting faculty and researchers. “Colloquium,” as it is colloquially known today, began in 1979 and was made compulsory for graduate students under the chairmanship of Reginald Golledge (Chair, July 1980 - June 1984).

According to Meryl Wieder, the Department’s MSO at the time (Meryl retired in 2004), “the Geography Colloquium started out as a ‘Speakers' Program.’ Students and faculty were not showing up, so they turned it into a course for 1 unit credit. Students had to then write a one paragraph summary of the presentation as proof that they attended. Their grade was based on attendance that was 'verified' by the paragraph. Faculty were not attending very well and had to be constantly chided about it by the Chair, but at least there was an audience. Conversion of the visiting speakers program into a course became a way that a Chair could provide ‘course relief’ for a faculty member who needed a lighter load” (source: personal correspondence with Meryl).

In a memo to the Geography Colloquia Committee dated September 24, 1992, Professor Golledge provided a sample letter for prospective Colloquia speakers which states: “We are very pleased that you have agreed to participate in the colloquia series of the Department of Geography at UCSB. This series usually meets Thursdays between 3:30 and 5:00 PM. The general format is for the speaker to present material in as interactive a mode as possible for about an hour, followed by open discussion from the floor. We are trying to make the colloquia series appeal widely to all facets of our department and we appreciate your willingness to help us with this aim…The area of your specialty may not lie specifically within one of our designated areas. Our colloquia is designed to enrich the knowledge structures of faculty and students alike, not only by having other experts in our specialty areas address us, but also by inviting distinguished speakers whose interests lie in areas other than those in which we have chosen to specialize. If the latter situation describes your area of interest, we would like to offer the following suggestions:

1. Since our faculty and student population is so diverse, covering as it does both physical and social sciences, it would be most appropriate for you to devote the beginning section of your colloquium to a discussion of the broader framework in which your chosen problem lies. This will provide everyone with a common base of understanding needed to get the most from your presentation.
2. We are trying to make our colloquia series more interactive. If possible, we would prefer you to adopt an audience challenging presentation format rather than regarding this as an opportunity to present a formal and perhaps narrowly defined discourse.
3. In the spirit of (2) above, you should expect questions and comments from the floor at times during your presentation as well as after it.
4. In general, you will find your audience to be literate mathematically, statistically, and computationally. However, with such a large population there will inevitably be a considerable range in the confidence of audience members across these skills. We suggest you talk with your faculty sponsor before visiting the campus to get some idea of what level of understanding you may expect to occur in your audience” (source: Golledge's archived files, maintained by Bill Norrington).

 A large number of our colloquia speakers either were or later became luminaries in the Discipline. With that in mind, IT staff members Guylene Gadal and Jon Hall, in conjunction with the editor, Bill Norrington, have created an archive of colloquia presentations on the UCSB Geography web site. The listing of presenters and the titles of their presentations is not complete, but the archive is growing and, where possible, includes an abstract of each presentation, a short bio of each presenter, and any graphics used to advertise the event. We are particularly indebted to alumnus Michael Costanzo (PhD 1985) for providing details regarding 33 colloquia from 1979-1984, and if any other alumni can help fill in remaining gaps, it would be greatly appreciated.

Article by Bill Norrington

Karl Antonsson is our new Undergraduate Assistant, effective May 1, and the Department of Geography is delighted to have such a talented addition to its staff. As Karl puts it (in the 3rd person, with typical modesty): “he was born and raised in Pasadena, CA with his two siblings. During his early years he developed a passion for learning and science which has continued to propel him to this day. Starting in high school and continuing through college, Karl volunteered at a summer camp for children with Type 1 Diabetes where he counseled and taught rock climbing. During his college search, he was instantly attracted to the UCSB campus because of the warm climate and even warmer community, and he spent the next four years working towards degrees in both Psychology and Southeast Religious Studies. Karl felt so much at home at UCSB that he decided to stay on campus for work as well, and he was hired as the Undergraduate Assistant for the Geography Department. Karl was drawn to the department by the extremely friendly staff and faculty who have been making him feel right at home. As someone who hopes to go on to become a professor one day, Karl was delighted to have the opportunity to work closely with students and faculty in a rigorous academic environment. When not on campus, Karl enjoys backpacking, rock climbing, skiing, and photography. Feel free to stop by his office in Ellison Hall 1831 and say hello!”

Have you noticed the relatively recent botanic changes to the Ellison Courtyard grounds around Ellison Hall? The delightful transition from a dense mat of overgrown grape ivy to a colorful assortment of clivias, calla lilies, pride of Madeira, day lilies, datura, split leaf philodendrons, and agaves is due to the efforts of Emmer Ruano, the UCSB groundskeeper for our neck of the woods. And Emmer’s grounds are flourishing, thanks in part to coffee grounds.

Emmer is in charge of Zone 2 of the UCSB campus which encompasses an area stretching from Phelps and Buchanan to Campbell and North Halls. About 10 years ago, Emmer noticed that the Coffee Cart by the Buchanan Store threw out a lot of coffee grounds at the end of each day, and Emmer, being a knowledgeable gardener, knew that coffee grounds are good for plants. Unable to use all of the grounds for his own home composting efforts, Emmer began using them to amend the soil around his Zone 2 plantings—and vive la difference!

Coffee grounds have a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of 20:1, roughly equivalent to that of grass clippings. About 2 percent nitrogen by volume, used coffee grounds provide a safe substitute for nitrogen-rich manure in the compost pile. While freshly ground coffee is acidic, most of the acidity is removed in the brewing process, and any minor residual acidity is buffered with age or by composting. Coffee grounds also contain trace amounts of potassium, phosphorous, calcium and magnesium, all of which are required for healthy plant growth and healthy soils.

The word about using coffee grounds as mulch and soil amendment spread, and the practice has now been integrated into the UCSB Sustainability Program. Matt O’Carroll, a Waste Management & Recycling Intern with UCSB Facilities Management who is working on the new project, explains that: “The University Center here at UCSB purchases over 30,000 lbs. of coffee a year. With waste diversion from our landfills becoming a practice of utmost importance, the UCEN began composting coffee grounds from its dining facilities and satellite food services early this year. The practice has recently formalized into a coffee grounds composting program, "UCSB Grounds to Grounds," thanks to suggestions made from Facilities Management Grounds Crew staff member Robert Pinto and collaboration between staff from the UCEN and Facilities Management.

The program will continue the direct application of UCEN coffee grounds to landscape areas on-campus, where they serve as beneficial, low-cost organic soil amendment. The change will facilitate the collection and transportation of the coffee grounds, as well as significantly reduce UCEN's expenditures on biodegradable bags--a switch that will make the practice more sustainable overall. Dining facilities participating in the program include the Arbor, Coral Tree Cafe, Courtyard Cafe, and the coffee carts at Buchanan Hall, the Student Resource Building, and Humanities and Social Sciences. So, be on the lookout for the buckets at those locations, and let the smell of coffee around campus be a sign that the University is actively composting!”

Editor’s note: for more about Emmer and UCSB groundskeeping, see the July 31, 2008 article “Emmer Ruano, Groundsman Extraordinaire.”

The following is a press release by the UCSB Office of Public Affairs dated May 1, 2012, titled "With Climate and Vegetation Data, UCSB Geographers Closer to Predicting Droughts in Africa":

What might happen if droughts were predicted months ahead of time? Food aid and other humanitarian efforts could be put together sooner and executed better, say UC Santa Barbara geographers Chris Funk, Greg Husak, and Joel Michaelsen. After over a decade of gathering and analyzing climate and vegetation data from East Africa, the researchers, who are part of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), say there is enough evidence to associate climate conditions in the region with projected rainfall deficits that could lead to food shortages.

"We've been looking at climate in East Africa and trying to relate that back to patterns in sea surface temperatures, rainfall, and winds over the Indian and Pacific oceans," said Funk, who analyzes and predicts large-scale climate anomalies in Africa. Results show that over the last 14 years, the number of droughts has doubled in East Africa. Roughly half of the last 14 years have been drought years. "We've been worried about these trends for a long time," said Michaelsen, who studies the patterns of vegetation greening and browning in the area. "This year marks a bit of a watershed because we're starting to understand more the specific structure of these droughts, which is what underlay our early warning projections this year."

Through the climate data, coupled with satellite data that has recorded the patterns of vegetation greening and browning over the last decade, the researchers have detected a pattern that points to the likelihood of water shortages months ahead of time –– a pattern the U.S. government is taking seriously. A recent alert from the government-run USAID agency has taken into account FEWS NET's projection of the likelihood of low rainfall this March-May rainy season in East Africa, as USAID prepares its outreach efforts. "It's already a billion-dollar problem that they're thinking needs $50 million more; they're already anticipating a 5 percent increase in the need for aid," said Husak, who specializes in analyzing remote sensing data and rainfall. The area, which includes chronically food-insecure countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, is still recovering from last year's famine.

The U.S. government spends more than a billion dollars in food aid every year. FEWS NET was created after the 1984-1985 Ethiopian famine, an event that killed over a million people before sufficient food aid could be airlifted into the country. FEWS NET has since become a leader in integrating monitoring, forecasting, and climate trends analysis.

Famine, say the researchers, is the result of more than severe climate: Conflict, political unrest, corruption, and other human factors are also major contributors to the crisis. Additionally, relief is not just a matter of putting food on a boat and distributing it among the locals. If food aid is sent to a place that doesn't need it, the surplus could distort the local market by devaluing the prices of local products. Conversely, not providing food aid quickly enough distorts the market in the other direction, limiting access to available resources. "Prices of food have gone up," said Michaelsen. "It's not the brownness (of the vegetation) that causes food insecurity; it's the price of food." The challenge, say the geographers, will be for aid agencies to determine where their finite resources will go.

In the long term, and with more information, Michaelsen, Husak, and Funk, along with the extensive network of colleagues in FEWS NET, hope to gain a better understanding of the effects the changing climate will have on the abilities of a region –– and the agencies that support it –– to prevent future crises. "There are going to be a lot of surprises, and how agile we are at responding to those surprises is going to make a big difference," said Michaelsen.

Santa Barbara harbor, with Stearns Wharf and all the activities that range from commercial fishing to restaurants, shops, interesting people, and the Yacht Club, is one of the major tourist attractions of Santa Barbara. People of Santa Barbara began to talk about and promote the building of a harbor over 100 years ago. Between 1873 and 1921, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers completed a number of reports concerning a possible harbor. All of these reports were unfavorable, due to the potential consequences of disturbing the flow of sand along the coast. Nevertheless, in 1925, funds were raised to make the first breakwater. The first one was L-shaped and extended about 1,500 feet. At that time, a fair amount was known about coastal processes, but this was largely ignored; the first breakwater was not even tied to the shore on the west side of the harbor, which was the site of the old Castle Point near the Dibblee family home. The breakwater, which was completed in about 1929, blocked the longshore transport of sand moving east along the coast and, at first, made what looked like a good harbor for boats. Unfortunately, because it was not tied to the shore, the sand kept moving right on through and began to fill the new harbor. As a result, they had to add to the sea wall and attach it to the coast where it is today. Stearns Wharf is at the eastern end of the harbor, and, between the wharf and the breakwater, there is a narrow channel for boats to go in and out of the harbor. Once the transport of sand was stopped, it deposited a wide beach to the west of the breakwater.

When sand filled out the beach to the breakwater, it moved along the outside of the breakwater to be transported into the harbor area, building the well-known sand spit. Given enough time, the sand spit would eventually close off the harbor and cause shoaling, or swallowing, of water under Stearns Wharf. Accumulation of sand began to be a problem, and, in order to keep the harbor open, we have to periodically dredge out that sand. It is pumped by a dredge mounted on a boat into a pipeline and transported to East Beach, where it is returned to the beach to continue its movement along the coast toward Ventura. An incredible amount of sand moves along that section of coast. Because we dredge the sand, it is one place where we know the rate of movement of sand along the coast. Every year, about 300,000 cubic yards of sand is dredged to keep the harbor open. When the sand was first blocked by the harbor by piling up to the west, below what is now Santa Barbara City College, as well as in the sand spit, there was much less sand available further to the east than there was prior to the breakwater. When more sand leaves an area than arrives, erosion occurs, and that’s what happened at Miramar Beach a few miles east of the harbor and, later and even more disastrously, at Sandyland, about ten miles east. At Sandyland, there were a number of small beach cottages that had been constructed on the sandy beach. Seven years after completion of the harbor and breakwater, there had been substantial retreat, or erosion, of the coast. Houses eroded into the sea, and property damage, by today’s standards, would be many millions of dollars, as the beach eroded back about 250 feet. According to Professor Robert Norris at UCSB, at first, the people managing the harbor decided to dredge a couple hundred thousand yards of sand and deposit it in about 20 feet of water to the east of the breakwater. They assumed that the sand would move toward and then down the beach, reducing the erosion. Much of that sand is still there today! This brings up an important point: The movement of sand along the coast is mostly in the surf zone, fairly close to the shoreline.

A positive aspect of building the breakwater, other than it being a great place for us to moor our boats, take a sunset walk, visit a museum, or have a meal, is the addition of the land west of the breakwater. At City College today, there’s a track and football field whose bleachers are constructed on the old sea cliff that was there on the beach prior to the building the breakwater. All that land in front of the old sea cliff, that includes parking lots, parks, and so on, is a result of the building of the breakwater that blocked the flow of sand from the west to the east. You can easily follow this old sea cliff all the way from the City College area to Santa Barbara Point at Shoreline Park.

An obvious question is: Was building the breakwater the right thing to do? That really depends on the people you talk to. The harbor is a romantic place to go for a nice dinner or to get in a boat and sail out and observe whales in their natural environment. Speaking of which, don’t follow whales closely or harass them – it’s illegal and dangerous. A large whale swimming by Shoreline Park jumped into a small boat in the spring of 2006!

On balance, the harbor has been a great asset to the city of Santa Barbara. On the other hand, had we applied more of what we knew about coastal processes, the coastal erosion that occurred to the east could have been avoided. Today, at Sandyland, you’ll find rock revetments or walls protecting the coast, even though the sand supply has been restored.

The story of Santa Barbara Harbor reinforces the important concept known as “The principle of Environmental Unity.” The principle is loosely interpreted as meaning that everything affects everything else, or, as Professor Garrett Hardin (a famous UCSB human ecologist who died a few years ago) put it, “you can’t do just one thing.” When the breakwater was constructed, it blocked the movement of sediment on its way east and south to Hueneme Submarine Canyon near Port Hueneme. The canyon is the end point in part of the natural rock cycle: sand formed in mountain streams as far away as the Santa Maria River mixes with sand from streams and rivers draining the Santa Ynez Mountains (Point Conception to the Santa Clara River); moves south and east as a river of sand (forming our beaches); and, near Point Hueneme, the beach ends and sand is funneled to the bed of the sea to be eventually uplifted in millions of years as sandstone (much like the white sandstone we see in the mountains above Santa Barbara).

Continuing our local Environmental Unity story, the sand backed up behind the breakwater produced a wide beach west of the harbor where Del Playa Stadium and Ledbetter Beach is today. A large sand spit formed at the end of the harbor, threatening to close the mouth of the harbor off from the sea. Down the coast, deprived of sand, beaches eroded. When the dredge sand bypass system was in place, sand flowed again, but the coast in a human time framework was changed forever.

People say we need to do the right thing to the environment in order to save the world. We really want to save ourselves and hang around as a species a bit longer. As Professor Stephen Gould (a famous paleontologist) once commented: if we injure Mother Earth, she will put a bandage on, kick us out, and move along through deep time. Geology tells us that the fate of all species is extinction – we are a young evolving species. As we continue to evolve, I hope we will be able to listen better, be more compassionate, and learn to live in harmony with our home (Earth). As Stephen Gould also says, we need a compact with Mother earth because she holds all the cards, and we need to practice the golden rule of the environment: do unto Earth (the wider Earth of other people, plants, animals, water, and soil) as we would have others do unto us. Following this rule would help result in reaching a more sustainable home planet. You can find a more interesting discussion of the Golden Rule of the Environment by referencing Stephen Jay Gould, 1993, The golden rule: A proper scale for our environmental crisis. In Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History. New York: Norton and Company.